Good potatoes

I surprised myself the other day by inventing a little when I had a few extra ingredients and very little time. See, the problem is that I'm not sure what the difference is between potatoes au gratin and the other potato thing whose name completely slipped my mind. I used to make potatoes anna, which is thinly sliced potatoes brushed with clarified butter and baked in this circle place to make a sort of crispy potato pancake thing, sort of like grown-up hashed browns. You serve them with sour cream and it's this fantastic thing. But it takes an hour and I only had 30 minutes, so I made this instead.

Christine's Crispy Sliced Potatoes
3 large russet potatoes
4 T heavy cream
3 T butter
2 slices bread
1 oz parmesan
1 tsp dried rosemary
salt & pepper

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Peel and slice the potatoes thinly, pressing them into a paper towel to dry. (I layer them onto one paper towel, add another over the top and keep adding more potatoes until I've dried them all in layers.) Spray a 9" square baking dish with nonstick spray and stack the potatoes in layers until they're all inside. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to season. Pour the cream over the tops of the potatoes. Slice 2 tablespoons of the butter thinly and spread the slices around the top. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. In the meantime, process the slices of bread together with the parmesan and rosemary. Melt the last tablespoon of butter in the microwave, and add to processor. Pulse until mixed. After 25 minutes, pull potatoes from oven and spread the crumb mixture over the top, adding more salt and pepper if necessary (I really like salt and pepper, so I add it to each layer). Switch oven setting to broil, still on 400 degrees, and replace dish in oven. In my oven, it takes 5 minutes for the crust to brown up really nice, but watch it carefully if you haven't used your broiler before. When it's done, the top should be crusty and brown, with a little shine from the cheese and butter.

This is really good fresh. The crumbs lose their crunch when reheated, so when I make it again I will probably adapt it to allow for one-day use. Also, this would be really good with some minced garlic in the crumb too.