Cheese and Onion Potatoes — The Simplest Things Hold

Sven and I made our morning circuit — kitchen, back hallway, front porch, lakefront walk, kitchen again, breakfast for both of us. The same circuit every day for years. The repetition is its own grace. There are people who would find such a routine unbearable, and there are people who would find it salvific. I am the second kind. The routine is the rope I hold in the dark, and the rope is what gets me from one end of a day to the other. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. I cooked Sweet corn and butter this week. Corn from the farmers' market in late August. Boiled five minutes. Eaten with butter and salt and nothing else. The simplest perfect meal. The Damiano Center: the regular Thursday. The soup is the soup. The conversations are the conversations. The week is held by the Thursday. I do not know what I would do without the Thursday. The Thursday is the structural element of the week. The structural element does not collapse if the rest of the week goes sideways. The Thursday holds. The lake was iron gray. The kind of gray Paul loved. He used to say: "That is the gray that means weather is coming." He was always right. I miss being told. I miss being told what the lake means by a man who knew what the lake meant. I have learned to read the lake on my own. I am, at this point, an adequate reader. I am not as good as Paul was. I am better than I would have been if I had not had to learn. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. The phone rings less than it used to. Not because fewer people are calling, but because the people who call are mostly the family, and the family has settled into a rhythm — Peter daily, Anna twice a week, Sophie weekly, Elsa biweekly, Karin Sundays, Astrid Sundays. The phone rings predictably. I pick up predictably. The predictability is the love at this stage of life. It is enough.

The corn was the centerpiece that night — five minutes in boiling water, butter, salt, nothing else — but I needed something alongside it that felt equally steady. Cheese and onion potatoes are that kind of dish. They ask nothing theatrical of you. You slice, you layer, you wait. The oven does the rest while the kitchen fills with a smell that belongs to every autumn I can remember. It was the right companion for a week held together by routine and rope and the people who still call.

Cheese and Onion Potatoes

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Set your oven to 375°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with butter.
2. Layer the potatoes. Arrange a single layer of sliced potatoes on the bottom of the dish. Top with a layer of sliced onion and a generous handful of shredded cheddar. Dot with butter. Repeat layers until all potatoes, onion, and cheese are used, finishing with cheese on top.
3. Add the milk. Pour the milk evenly over the layers. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika.
4. Cover and bake. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
5. Uncover and finish. Remove the foil and bake an additional 15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.
6. Rest before serving. Let the dish sit for 5–10 minutes before serving. The layers settle and hold together better with a brief rest.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 13g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 30g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 420mg