Recipe 52/10 - Cheese and Potato Nests

I delved into my favourite recipe book this week - The Little Paris Kitchen - Rachel Khoo. I couldn't resist this winter staple, especially now the temperature seems to have dropped about 1000 degrees! Whenever I've tried recipes in this book before they've gone a bit wrong and never look anything like the pictures (when does that ever happen anyway though?) but I'm determined to keep trying, something about the beautiful pictures and French food always draws me back in. I loved the idea of little tartiflette nests in a muffin tin too much not to try it.

I didn't have any reblochon cheese so I used Cheddar (very French I know!) and Gruyere instead, I also didn't use a bay leaf. Good start eh? I couldn't find a 'julienne' blade anywhere so I had to slice by hand. After slicing the potatoes to about chip size I couldn't take anymore, it would have taken me all night to get to matchstick size! Even if the potatoes had been the right size there was way too much to fit in 6 muffin holes, I had to fill a dish with the rest. I also stopped at about 200g of cheese as there seemed to be way too much. Maybe this is why my recipes don't turn out right, I don't actually follow them!

 So as you can guess it didn't turn out like the picture. The potato slices were too big to form the compact nests and they needed a lot longer than 20 minutes to cook and at a higher temperature. The result was really yummy though, just more like a whole tartiflette, and if I can find a way to get the potatoes to matchstick size I will definitely try it again. Practice definitely makes perfect in this case!

You will need:

1 tbsp soft butter
500g waxy potatoes eg. Maris Peer or Charlotte
1 onion (finely chopped)
1 glove of garlic (finely chopped)
1 bay leaf
200g lardons or cubes of smoked bacon
100ml dry white wine
250g reblochon cheese (cubed)

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Brush a 6-hole muffin tin with soft butter.
3. Peel the potatoes and use the julienne blade on a mandoline to make thin matchsticks (or slice by hand).
4. Put the onion, garlic, bay leaf and lardons into a large non stick frying pan.
5. Cook until the lardons are golden.
6. Add the wine and reduce until only a couple of tablespoons  of liquid remain.
7. Stir in the potato matchsticks and take off the heat.
8. Remove the bay leaf and stir in the Reblochon cubes.
9. Divide the potato mix between the 6 holes in the muffin tin and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden and bubbling.