These savory potatoes could serve as a main course for lunch with just a small green salad to balance their richness. They’re really much too interesting to play second fiddle in a meal. Select large, blemishless Idaho baking potatoes for this dish.
Serves six.
6 large Idaho potatoes
1/2 inch of kosher salt in a baking pan
Olive oil
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
1/2 lb. Black Forest ham, cut in 1-inch julienne
Sea salt to taste
Freshly milled pepper to taste
1/3 cup sour cream
8 oz. Gruyère (Swiss) cheese, shredded
Preheat the oven to 425.
Wash and dry the potatoes. Make a one-eighth-inch incision around the top of one-fourth of the potatoes so that a cap can be sliced off when they are cooked. Rub the potatoes with olive oil and place them on the bed of salt, which will absorb any excess moisture and prevent a “steamed” effect. Bake them for about 45 minutes while you prepare your stuffing ingredients.
When the center of the potatoes tests done, remove them but leave the oven on. Cut off the caps, scrape out their flesh, and do the same with the potato “boats” you have left. Leave a fairly sturdy shell about one-fourth-inch thick so they won’t collapse.
Put the tops and shells back into the oven while you mash the potato flesh perfectly smooth with the butter, sour cream, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the ham and cheese (reserving one-half cup cheese to use as topping) quickly and return the potato mixture to the bottom shells, spooning in the filling loosely. Put the caps on the same pan. Sprinkle the reserved cheese on top of each potato.
Reheat the stuffed potatoes in the same hot oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Stand the now-crisp potato caps up in one end of the stuffed potatoes and serve at once.
