Tartiflette!

Ah, tartiflette, cheesy potatoey meaty dish of the French Alps. Carla and her friends had left me a half-round of reblochon cheese (which comes from the mountainous Haute-Savoie region), so I decided to try to duplicate the dish we had tasted in Le Mans last week. I didn't have the recipe myself, so I used this recipe from the French Wikipédia, along merged with ideas from this recipe and whatever I could recall from the tartiflette I ate in Le Mans the week before. I must say, the results were freakin' delicious.

Luis's Freakin' Deliciuos Tartiflette

Ingredients

• 1/4-cup of butter or duck fat (or vegetable oil, if you wanna be like that)
• One large onion, diced finely
• 4 thick slabs of bacon (low salt) or poitrine fumé if you're in France, cut into think strips / lardons
• 3 or 4 shallots, diced finely (optional)
• garlic finely chopped (to taste, but I put in about 5 cloves)
• 500-750g of potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1cm cubes (or enough to fill your casserole / pan
• 250-500ml of white wine
• 250ml / 1 cup of crème fraîche
• 1 round or half-round of reblochon (depending on the surface area you need to cover)
• a handful of fresh rosemary chopped finely (optional)

Preparation

1. Put the onions, butter and ham together in a large, deep pan and put over a medium-high heat, until they begin to brown. If the ham is fatty, you can reduce the amount of butter.
2. Reduce heat and add the garlic and the shallots to sweat them out, taking care not to burn them.
3. Put the potatoes in the pan and sauté the whole mixture, until the potatoes have started to absorb the fat in the pan.
4. Add white wine, leave on medium-low heat, and cover until the potatoes are almost cooked through.
5. Mix in crème fraîche, and rosemary if you have it.
6. Take your roblochon and gently scrape off some of the while bacterial bloom with the back of a butter knife or a spoon. If you have a whole round of reblochon, cut into quarters, if you have a half round, cut in half again. Cut all the pieces crosswize (horizontally) to expose the soft centre.
7. STOVETOP VERSION: Lay the pieces of cheese, rind-side up, over the potato-cream mixture. Cover the pan and leave on low heat until the cheese has melted into the potatoes (approx 20 min).
8. OVEN VERSION: Place mixture in a heat-safe ceramic or cast-iron casserole, and place the cheese, rind-side up, overtop. Put into a rather hot oven (450F), and cook until the cheese has fully melted and begun to brown.
9. Serve!