Today I present a treasure of the French Alps: the tartiflette. It's a fantastic partner to a red wine (see below our choice) because it stars a stinky French cheese, reblochon. After buying my piece of reblochon in Stuttgart, I walked home with it on the stroller and kept wondering what stank so much. The cheese. Like the maroille of the north or a ripe camembert, a little poison for the nose but heaven to the palette.
To prepare your tartiflette, you need very little. The cheese, some potatoes, bits of smoked ham, onions. Peel, cube and boil the potatoes. Fry up the ham and onions in oil. Put it all in a casserole dish. Reblochon comes as a little wheel, like camembert. Cut this in half horizontally and lay each half, skin side up, on top of the ham-potato mixture, covering as much as possible. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the cheese has melted and everything is hot.
We combined this with a yummy Spanish red. It's a mixture of tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon, which I find sometimes gives us a fuller and rounder flavor than a single grape vintage. It is dry but fruity* and strong enough for a rich meal like ours.
Don't hesitate to enjoy another glass of this wine after the meal ... maybe without cheese since we've had enough after this!
Have a great Friday. And if you discover another great vino over the weekend, tell me about it!!
*I don't want to sound pretentious, and so I haven't decided yet how to talk about wine. I'm trying to understand more about it, but I'm not yet able to talk about "tannins" and "notes" and "textures." We'll have to do that wine tasting together, so that if there has to be pretension, we'll all be in on the fun!
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