Potato-Egg Pie: It's so good you'd never believe we started with fresh ingredients

I think the pie pan makes this a pie.

Potato-Egg Pie 3 small potatoes, cooked and sliced (peel if desired) 3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced 2 tablespoons flour 1½ cups milk 1 tablespoon butter 3 ounces cheese (¾ cups shredded) Salt and pepper to taste About 3 tbsp breadcrumbs Heat oven to 350°. Grease a pie pan. Shake a little bit of salt and pepper in the bottom of the pan, then lay the potato slices on top of it. Lay the sliced boiled eggs on top of the potatoes. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Thoroughly whisk the flour into the milk. Then add it to the butter and cook, stirring constantly, until it boils. Remove from heat and add the cheese, stirring until it melts, Then add the breadcrumbs. Pour/spread this over the potatoes and eggs. Bake until lightly browned on top, about 20 minutes. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

As we noted a few recipes ago, The Southern Districts Advocate devoted an entire edition of "In the Kitchen" to cheese and pudding. Naturally, we couldn't resist trying the other cheesy recipes, starting with the pie. (The steamed puddings will have to wait until we dig our jackets back out of the closet.)

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

When I saw the title "Cheese Pie" in all capitals, I imagined a whole pie shell filled with glorious cheese and barely enough other things to hold it together. I thought we would melt an entire party cheese tray into a single pie pan and euphemistically call it a casserole. It sounded so delicious that I barely managed to wait long enough for one of the last chilly nights of late spring.

Instead of starting with a cheese grater, the cheese pie starts off with potatoes. This is when I learned that no matter what you do, potatoes will always take longer than you think. I thought the pressure cooker might be faster than boiling, but we still had to wait half an hour. In a fortunate accident, the potato was perfectly cooked when the pressure cooker boiled itself dry and the top stopped jiggling. It had also unwrapped itself.

I had to kind of smush the potato slices into the pan, but they already looked like a mess anyway. Because I always like potatoes better with the skins left on, I kind of pressed the last little fallen-off bits into the gaps between potato pieces.

Next, we added the boiled eggs. I would like to once again say how much I love Delia Smith's egg-boiling tutorial. These came out perfect. No runniness in the center, and none of those unbearable gray rings that cause so much stove-side fretting.

Moving over to the melted butter, I wasn't sure why we're supposed to add the milk "gradually." Though it was kind of interesting to see the first splash of it turn into a yolk-free fried egg.

We are next directed to stir in the flour. I suspected this would end in a lumpy mess, but nevertheless gave The Southern Districts Advocate the benefit of the doubt. After all, every printed recipe theoretically worked for someone. Of course, I couldn't stir hard enough without sloshing the entire pan all over the stove. I had to pour everything back out so I could whisk it in something more suitable. (Isn't it nice to have a dishwasher so I don't have to worry about the pileup?)

I knew this lumpy mess would happen would do it anyway.

Ahh, doesn't that look better?

Next, it was finally time to put the cheese in the cheese pie! I know we're cutting this recipe to a third, but I expected a lot more cheese from a recipe that title-drops it. Perhaps I am a bit picky about my cheese pies, but I think the cheese should be a beautiful orange mountain over the sauce we're about to stir it into. I guess with a depression on, we had to economize on cheese even when featuring it.

Lastly, we are supposed to add "breadcrumbs to taste." Unfortunately, I am not Australian enough to have any taste in breadcrumbs. Then I remembered that Delia Smith made something called "bread sauce" in one of her Christmas specials. (I know Delia is British, but there's a lot of culinary overlap between the two countries so we'll just go with it.) I copied the amounts from her recipe because Delia has never done us wrong.

When we stirred this together, it tasted like a grilled cheese. (Or is it a cheese toastie in Australian?) Our sauce had also turned into a paste. The recipe says to "pour over potatoes, etc" but we ended up ineptly spreading it instead.

To my light surprise, our pie's top layer actually browned a little bit in the oven. It didn't look like a sauce, though. Instead, it was more like I had poured some sort of bread batter on top which had then baked in place.

When I tasted this, I couldn't believe the recipe didn't start with getting last night's dinner back out of the fridge. n the most carb-stupored way possible, this is what leftovers should taste like. It was the same kind of satisfying as Mrs. Mary Martensen's fish pie (which also uses potatoes and cheese). Very little of today's cheese pie remained to put away after the pan got cold.