Bloke's Cookbook - Tartiflette

I first tasted this truly awesome dish in France and have cooked it myself on many occasions. It can be turned into a vegetarian dish by omitting the salami/bacon, although I find it wise not to tell the girls what's in it until they've finished eating - a pint of double cream will make anyone on a diet panic.

The recipe was originally conjured up in the 1980s by a bunch of cheese makers who found the market share for their Reblochon slipping. They marketed it as an old-fashioned authentic farmhouse recipe and all of a sudden their cheese sales went back up.

It's an absolute doddle to make - with practice you can have it prepared in 15 minutes - and looks brilliant. It's also a great dinner party meal, because you do all the work 90 minutes before you're due to eat and then requires minimal attention right up until serving time. This means you can socialise, pour out drinks and have fun whilst not having to fret about your dinner burning.

For this recipe, you'll need a large, relatively shallow ceramic dish. You'll also need a small pan to fry the mushroom, onion, bacon, or all three, and a mixing bowl to toss the potato slices in.

Ingredients:

1kg waxy potatoes, finely sliced;
2 large pieces bacon or equivalent amount of salami;
1 white onion, finely sliced;
2 cloves garlic, sliced down their length;
A chunk of butter around 3" by 1" by 1" (around 50g);
250g Reblochon cheese (in most supermarkets);
1 pint double cream;
Salt and Pepper;

For the vegetarian option - 250g mushrooms.

A quick note on potatoes:

The texture of a potato is very important for recipes. Floury potatoes, such as Maris Piper or Shetland Black, make excellent mashes, chips and roasts. They tend to disintegrate very fast when boiled. Waxy potatoes, such as Charlotte or Pink Fir Apple, or new potatoes, keep their shape when cooked but they make very poor mashing or roasting potatoes.
With this recipe, it's critical that the potatoes retain their shape and texture, so you should use waxy potatoes.

The Reblochon:

This cheese has a rind but goes gooey very fast. Keep it refridgerated until the last minute, then quickly cut the rind off with a cold dry knife and then you should be able to chop the cheese before it sticks to your fingers permanently.

Cooking:

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Peel your potatoes and slice them finely - the slices need to be around 1/8th of an inch, or 2-3mm, thick. Do the same to the onion and garlic.

Now chop the meat and fry in a splash of olive oil for a few minutes. No need to cook it completely.

If you're going for the vegetarian option, leave out the salami/bacon and slice your mushrooms the same way that you did the potatoes, then fry them lightly in olive oil.

Put the sliced potoates in a mixing bowl, grind some pepper and salt onto them, and toss them in the salt and pepper.

Grease the cooking dish with some of the butter. Layer half the potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Add the onion, garlic, mushroom, bacon, etc. Cut the rind off the cheese, cut half the cheese into rough cubes, and scatter it on the potatoes. Now put the remaining potatoes on top, then season with pepper again.

Pour the double cream over the dish, and cut the butter into cubes and place it all over the top.

Now place the dish in the oven for an hour and a quarter. After this time, take the dish out, place the remaining cheese on the top, leave for another 15 minutes, and then remove from the oven.

Leave for 15 minutes before you serve it.


Drinks and Side Dishes:

I normally recommend a Burgundy for this dish. It's a fairly light wine and won't overwhelm the flavour of the food. Make sure you open it at least one hour, preferably two hours, before you start drinking it. Beer drinkers will probably want something fairly light aswell. Lager drinkers should forego the typical Stella/Carling range and look for something less metallic - maybe Hoegaarden.

For side dishes, I'd probably consider garlic bread and a green salad.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - A cinch. The hardest part is cutting stuff finely - try not to chop your fingers off.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - Pretty hard to make a mess with this one. Loads of potato peelings, though, and the bowl you've cooked it in will usually need to go in to soak to get the worst off.

Leftover value: 3/5 - It's not bad as leftovers. However, the amount of cream and butter means it's not one to be eaten when hung over.