Two Potato and Mascarpone Gratin

I came across this recipe when I was working on my Christmas dinner menu a few weeks ago.  I was very interested in making it then, but decided to go with a potato dish that was lighter (in case you are interested, I went with a Martha Stewart recipe for Christmas).  So when looking for dishes for this week, this was near the top of my recipe stash and I decided to go with it.  I had initially planned to serve this with fish, but we had the fish yesterday and honestly, neither Dan or I were that interested in a full meal tonight (it is a downfall of ours... we need to work on full balanced meals).

So I stuck to this recipe almost to a tee.  This was the first time I had worked with mascarpone and I'm always excited to try new things.  Mascarpone is softer than cream cheese, but the same sort of medium.  The flavor is like cream cheese but, a bit boring.  I was able to spread it on the layers kind of like butter-cream frosting on a cake.  The only change that I made is that I ran out of scallions during Tuesday's dinner, so I added a little fresh thyme to the bread crumb topping.

Dish came out really well.  The mascarpone got all melty and kind of like a cheesy gravy (but not gross like it sounds).  Topping was lovely and browned and added the perfect crunch, but not too much.  Balance between the sweet potatoes and the red potatoes was nice; although the top layer of the sweet potatoes didn't cook as well as I would have liked so they still had a little bite to them.  Overall great dish, definitely not a full meal.  Funny thing is that while I was enjoying it, I thought to myself that it would be a great dish for a holiday, and it was then that i realized that this actually came from a holiday issue of Rachael Ray's magazine.

I'm out of town tomorrow night on an overnight adventure with a friend, so Dan will be enjoying left-overs.  Not sure what my dinner plans are yet, but of course will be meat-free, but will more than likely include fish or crustaceans since I will be in Charleston, SC.  We'll see what we can find!