Have you ever followed a recipe word for word, teaspoon for teaspoon, pinch for pinch and still have it go horribly wrong?

I did that.  Well, I didn’t follow it EXACTLY because I substituted the chicken broth with veggie broth, but broth is broth after all.  I think that there was just too much of it.

This is what the dish was supposed to look like.

Toronto Life magazine recently ran a series of Holiday Feast Recipes and since I had been meaning to make some scalloped potatoes forEVER I decided to try Ben Heaton’s Scalloped Sweet Potatoes because the picture practically jumped out from the page I was reading.  This was not going to be a quick recipe – it takes time to slice the sweet potatoes, an hour to caramelize the onions and then at least an hour of baking time.  I should have tackled this on a Sunday but thought it would just mean a later-than-usual evening meal.  Was I ever wrong.

I got the sweet potatoes, the dry mustard, salt, red onions, olive oil and nutmeg.  I forgot the mace but did finally track down the Lancashire cheese which was NOT readily available at chain grocery stores as was stated in the article.  No luck at Sobeys, No Frills or Fiesta Farms but I did find it at Loblaws so I bought two.  Not sure why I do that.  I’ve got a habit of buying multiples of things that I have had a hard time finding just in case, I suppose, I might have to try to find them again.  This strange behaviour could be rationalized somewhat:   since I hadn’t tried this cheese before, which is described as both crumbly and creamy, I wasn’t sure how it was going to shred.  I have a hard time envisioning how a solid block is going to look like shredded in a cup so I thought better to be safe than sorry.

I dusted off the old demon mandolin and sliced the four tough tubers.  After crying my way through the red onions, I sautéed them to caramelization which always takes longer than I expect.

My anxiety mounted as I fought to repress memories of bad lasagna layering.  I stifled my impulse to run screaming from the kitchen and stared at the pan.  After taking ten deep breaths,  I was ready.

Ready to layer.

Sweet potatoes first – spice – onions – cheese – sweet potatoes – spice – onions – cheese …. cream and broth poured over top, spread out the foil and pressed gently to make sure that the liquid distributed evenly.

I was a layering Ninja.

Into the oven it went and we waited.  I checked on it once or twice during the hour and it seemed to be bubbling away until the time was up and I pulled off the foil.  The sweet potatoes were cooked through but the pan was full of liquid that should have been absorbed by now.  I took off the foil and put it back in the oven and turned up the heat to 375F to see if it would move things along.  Nope.  Half an hour later the liquid was still very liquid-y.

What to do, what to do?  I left it in for another 20 minutes then put it under the broiler.  Ten minutes later it came out.  The top layer had crusted over like a skin but underneath it was soup, I tell you.  The whipping cream, cheese and broth looked like an unappetizing slurry.  By then it had been about three hours and we were all starving.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I took out two blue and yellow boxes, emptied the contents into boiling water.  I cut the stalk off of the broccoli, added a quarter of an inch of water to the pot, covered it and turned it on high.  I shredded some Lancashire cheese (which is, by the way, delightful) on top and there we sat, eating our Kraft Dinner with a twist.  It was perfect, as was the broccoli, bright green and beautiful.  Easy peasy, nicy and cheesy.