Truffade

Sliced potatoes fried with aged cheese and pressed into a cake with a crust, where nothing is mashed and nothing is beaten.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains cantal whose rennet the source does not name, pork.

Ingredients

• 1 kg waxy potatoes
• 300 g cantal, in small cubes
• 150 g streaky bacon, in strips
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced
• 40 g butter
• 2 tablespoons oil
• salt and pepper
• chopped parsley

Method

1. NOTHING IS MASHED AND NOTHING IS BEATEN, which is the whole difference from the aligot on this site. These are potato SLICES, fried until they take colour, with cubes of aged cheese melted between them and the lot pressed down into a cake and turned out. There is no stretching and no rope: what you are after is a crust on both faces and distinct pieces of potato inside.
2. WHICH IS ALSO WHY THE CHEESE IS AGED HERE. Cantal, properly matured, melts into the gaps and browns. The young unsalted cheese the aligot needs would be wrong in this one -- it would go stringy and pull the cake apart when you cut it.
3. THE POTATOES GO IN RAW AND ARE NOT PARBOILED. They cook in the fat, slowly, which is what gives the edges their colour. Parboiled first they collapse into mash the moment they are pressed, and then you have made something else.
4. IT IS PRESSED AND LEFT ALONE TO FORM A CRUST. Five minutes undisturbed on each side, with a lid or a plate pressing down. Stirred about, there is no crust and no cake, just a pan of cheesy potatoes.
5. AND IT IS TURNED OUT WHOLE, onto a plate, upside down, in one movement. A wide pan and nerve.
6. Potatoes peeled and sliced 5 mm thick. Rinsed and DRIED thoroughly -- wet slices steam instead of frying.
7. Bacon fried in the oil in a wide heavy pan until the fat runs. Lifted out.
8. Butter added to the fat. The potato slices in, with salt, and spread out.
9. Cooked over a medium heat 20 to 25 minutes, turned with a spatula every 5 minutes, until tender and coloured at the edges.
10. The garlic and the bacon returned for the last 2 minutes.
11. The cantal scattered over and through, and the whole thing PRESSED DOWN firmly into a flat cake with the back of the spatula.
12. Cooked undisturbed 5 minutes until the base is crusted. A plate pressed on top helps.
13. Turned out onto a plate, slid back in upside down, and given 5 minutes on the second side.
14. Turned out whole, pepper and parsley over, and cut in wedges at the table.

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