Tartiflette

Potatoes and bacon under half a cheese laid rind-up, where the potatoes are boiled first and the cheese is not grated.

Not vegetarian — contains lardons, which are pork, reblochon whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg waxy potatoes
• 250 g smoked lardons
• 2 onions, sliced
• 1 whole reblochon, about 450 g
• 150 ml dry white wine
• 100 ml crème fraîche
• 1 clove garlic
• salt and pepper

Method

1. THE CHEESE IS HALVED THROUGH ITS EQUATOR AND LAID RIND SIDE UP. Not grated, not cubed. The rind becomes a lid that holds the cheese in place while it melts downward through the potatoes, and it browns and blisters into the best part of the dish. Grated reblochon melts into a uniform layer and loses all of that.
2. AND IT IS A WHOLE REBLOCHON, NOT A SUBSTITUTE. This dish is one cheese and there is no honest replacement -- a different cheese makes a potato bake, which is fine and is not tartiflette. Said plainly rather than offering a swap that does not work.
3. THE POTATOES ARE BOILED FIRST AND THEN FRIED, which is the difference from the cream gratin on this site. There they go in raw and cook in the cream for an hour; here they are boiled whole, cooled, sliced and fried in the bacon fat, and the oven is only melting the cheese.
4. Potatoes boiled whole in their skins, 20 minutes, until just tender. Drained and COOLED, then peeled and sliced thickly. Hot potatoes break up when sliced.
5. Lardons fried in a dry pan until the fat runs and they crisp. Lifted out.
6. Onions softened in the fat 10 minutes until golden.
7. Potato slices into the same pan and fried 8 minutes, turned carefully, until catching at the edges.
8. Wine poured in and bubbled away almost completely, scraping the base.
9. Lardons back in, crème fraîche stirred through, seasoned with pepper and very little salt -- the bacon and cheese carry it.
10. An oven dish rubbed with the cut garlic. The mixture tipped in and levelled.
11. The reblochon halved horizontally through the middle -- a long knife, carefully -- and both halves laid on top RIND SIDE UP.
12. Baked at 200C for 25 to 30 minutes until the rind is blistered and browned and the cheese has run down through the potatoes.
13. Rested 10 minutes and served from the dish, with something sharp beside it.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes