Tartiflette Recipe - French Potato, Bacon, and Cheese Casserole

hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with tartie flatt that's right i've never heard of it either which is why i was so excited to get a food wish for this because while i love doing recipes i know what i love even more is learning about dishes i had no idea existed so i did a little research and after learning this is made with potatoes bacon onions creme fraiche and stinky french cheese i decided to give this a try and it came out awesome so i decided to show you how to put this together and it goes a little something like this so first up we're going to boil some potatoes in their jackets in salted water and of course you can peel them first but they come out much better this way and please don't forget that salt very important especially for something like this we don't boil the potatoes in plain water so what we'll do is we'll bring that up to a simmer on high heat and then back the heat down to maintain a simmer and we will cook those potatoes until they're just tender we don't want them too firm but we also don't want them crumbling apart when we go to slice them so we will test those with a knife and like i said we want those just cooked and at that point we'll remove those to a plate to cool and the great thing about doing potatoes this way is that once those potatoes are cool enough to handle that skin is going to very easily peel off so what we'll do is we'll just let those sit there cooling down while we move on to the second of the three major components of this dish the bacon and onion mixture which starts not surprisingly with a whole bunch of sliced up bacon so we'll toss that in a dry cold pan and set it over medium to medium-high heat and we want to cook that bacon until cooked but not quite crisp in fact speaking of not crisp the traditional way to do this is to start with the onions cook those and then add the bacon in but to be honest i don't understand that i'm not sure why you'd start with the onions maybe one of our french fans will explain it to me but anyway like i said we're going to cook that bacon on about medium to medium-high heat until it just starts to think about getting crisp and most of the fats rendered out and once that's happened what i like to do before adding the onions is blot out some of that excess fat all right one problem you're never gonna have with this casserole is not enough fat so we'll soak up the excess with some paper towels at which point we can add a whole bunch of sliced onions and i noticed some people do like to dice them but i think the sliced work nicely and actually require less knife work so we'll dump in our onions and then season that up with some kosher salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and of course the obligatory shaker cayenne and what we want to do is cook that on medium heat until the onions are soft sweet and kind of golden and that is going to take a few minutes so don't be in a big hurry okay certain things can't be rushed like me getting ready for a big date so keep a cooking and a stirring over about medium heat or so until you end up with something that looks like this and then what we'll do to finish this mixture off is dump in some dry white wine no not something expensive but definitely something drinkable and never under any circumstances buy or use anything labeled cookie wine just don't do it it is the margarine of alcoholic beverages so we want to use an actual real white wine and we'll dump that in and we'll just cook it for like two minutes basically all we're doing is deglazing the bottom of the pan so we'll just add that in and stir it around for a minute or two until the bottom of the pan is clean at which point we can simply turn that off and reserve until needed so our potatoes are cooked our onions are set and we can move on to the third and maybe most important component the cheese and what we're going to want to use for this is something called rubleshon and i have good news and bad news the good news is it is amazingly delicious the bad news is you can't buy it in america because it's made with raw milk which apparently we can't handle but don't worry there are some almost identical cheeses made in america you can use and of course i'm going to give you all that info in the blog post and yes it does look like a brie and the reason for that is this variety of cheese is called a washed rind which traditionally are some of your smelliest cheeses smelly in a good way of course and to prep this what we'll do is cut it in half as shown and then we'll split each half in half and you know what i really wish i had parchment paper under this because that cheese is so tasty i would have looked that off the paper see now i have to look at straight off the board which is fine and then once our cheese has been prepped we can move on to final assembly so by now our potatoes should be cool enough to handle and we'll be able to scrape that skin off very easily and once those have been de-skinned we'll go ahead and slice those up into in my case some fairly thick slices you could probably go a little thinner and once those potatoes are cut we're going to place about 60 percent of them in the bottom of a buttered casserole dish and in case you're wondering i believe this is a two and a half quart dish but anyway we're going to lay in just over half our potatoes into the bottom and yes you can overlap them a little just try to get them as even as you can and once that was said i decided to give them a little sprinkling of salt and i based that decision on tasting a piece of the potato and deciding i wanted a little more seasoning and then once that first layer of potatoes is done we'll dump over the entire contents of our bacon onion wine mixture and we will spread that over as evenly as possible and by the way raise your hand if you were going to spread that unevenly had i not said that and i see no hands so that's kind of obvious and then what we'll do is arrange the rest of the potatoes over the top and hopefully some kind of overlapping aesthetically pleasing way and yes i do see that little tiny piece of skin just ignore that and then once that's set we will french this up even more by spreading over some creme fraiche and i believe technically this is an optional ingredient but you know me in my creme fresh fetish so for me definitely not optional and once we have that spread over we will place down our cheese definitely rind side up and yes i'm fully aware of how insane this looks but this all works out trust me and by the way if your cheese came with some paper attached we're going to want to peel that off not even the french who literally will eat anything will eat paper although if you had to eat paper this really is not a bad way to go but anyway i peeled that off and then what we're definitely going to want to do before we bake this is transfer to some kind of foil lined pan because if there's one thing you don't want burning onto the bottom of your oven it's really smelly french cheese so we will place that on a pan at which point we can transfer that into the center of a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until it's nicely browned and your potatoes are perfectly tender and when it's done it should look something like this that has to be one of the most interesting most stunning and most gorgeous things that's come out of my oven and since i can remember i just find the appearance beyond fascinating and what's happened here is that creamy cheese is kind of melted and combined with that creme fraiche to form one of the most delicious cheese sauces i've ever had and then before we serve this we do want to let it cool down for about 10 or 15 minutes which i'm going to pretend i did before scooping out and plating up a nice big portion and yes you are going to include that gorgeous rind when you serve so we'll serve that up but before we get to my plating suggestions i really do need to grab a fork and give this a taste and personally i'm happy just eating potatoes bacon and onions but when you add that creme fraiche and reblochone style cheese it takes this into almost impossible to explain how delicious it is territory i mean that is just borderline otherworldly and because it is so rich and decadent i don't recommend using this as a side dish i think you should serve this as a main course with a salad in my case watercress and for me that creates a meal fit for a king french or otherwise and by the way let this be a lesson to you i never did test mine with a knife because i just assumed they were perfectly tender but you know what they actually could have used another five or ten minutes i mean they were fine but you really do want them nice and tender and of course i know you're all wondering sure that cheese rind looks great but is it edible chef john will that poison me if i eat it no not at all it's fine to eat so let me show you because i sense you are skeptical so let me take a nice big piece of what i'm really hoping is a perfectly safe thing to eat and you know what it really doesn't taste like anything so sure you could eat around that if you want but there's really no reason to but anyway that's it tartiflette considered by people who consider such things maybe the greatest potato casserole of all time so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,942,707

Keywords: Tartiflette, Recipe, French, Potato, Bacon, Cheese, reblochon, cheeses, chef, john, foodwishes, side dish, main course, cooking, food, recipes

Id: ocgn6uIzxsU

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2016