La Saison est Ouverte!

Frenchies all over the land will be crying “sacre bleu!” when they read this because of the premature nature of this decision but chez moi the Tartiflette season has started!

A Cheesy, oozy, creamy dish of genius which is both cheap, filling and delicious. But most definitely not healthy. Wonderful comfort food for Autumnal and wintry nights, this potato gratin topped with Reblochon cheese comes out of the oven bubbling so much it could be alive.

As I have described in a previous blog post, Tartiflette is great consumed whilst drunk and will curb your hangover by covering with a thick blanket of cheese. What more could you want?

This dish is best served with a crisp green salad dressed with a sharp vinaigrette, this cuts nicely through the richness of the Tartiflette. Make sure you've got some crusty, crusty bread to mop up your plate. Finally a delicious glass of Vin Jaune will go down a treat on the side.

But where can I buy this mysterious reblochon cheese I hear you cry! Well it just so happens that supermarkets all over the UK have started stocking reblochon so you don’t even need to go to a specialist cheese shop.

Heres my recipe (adpated from various recipes) for this delicious montagnard treat!

(feeds 4 greedy people or 5-6 skinny peeps)

Ingredients

1 Kg of potatoes (I used Maris Piper)
1 fat garlic clove
4 white onions, finely diced
300g Lardons (or bacon bits, in case you’re reading this and going- huh??)
Reblochon Cheese (I used about 300g but the more merrier!)
300 ml Single cream
A glass of white wine

Method

1.       Preheat your oven to 180 degrees and put a large pan of water on to boil.

2.       Peel your spuds and slice them into disks about 1.5 - 2 cm thick, plop them into the boiling water and boil for 6 minutes.

3.       Meanwhile prepare an oven dish, this can be any shape or size really but I’d recommend one that reasonably deep. Take your fat ol’ clove o’ garlic and crush it slightly with the back of a knife to release the juices, pick up the crushed clove and rub it all over the bottom of the oven dish, leaving any bit of clove the drop off. If you feel like you’d like a stronger garlic taste feel free to use another clove.

4.       Once your potatoes are par boiled and you can poke them with a knife but they’re not crumbling apart or going fluffy, drain them and place to one side to cool

5.       Add you onions to a pan with a splash oil and cook for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft, then add the lardons and cook these through for a further 5 mins.

6.       Next layer half your potatoes at the bottom of your dish. Season with a copious amounts of pepper (if you like pepper as much as I do ) and a little salt (watch out as the lardons will be salty)

7.       Place the onions and the lardons on top of the potatoes and cover with the remaining potatoes.

8.       Next evenly pour over the cream and white wine.

9.       Cut your reblochon, I cut it into half down the soft centre of the cheese, leaving me with two intact rinds and then place the cheese rind up on top of the gratin.

10.   Stick your Tartiflette in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the potato is soft all the way through and it look bubbling and alive!

11.   Eat and fall into cheese induced coma. End.