1767. POTATO GALETTE with BACON and CAVIAR

serves four


15 thin slices of smoked bacon
4 potatoes
1 onion
butter

Sauce:
0.44 oz. caviar (sevruga)
white wine (Chardonnay)
butter
cream
shallot


Start by taking the skin of the potatoes and put them in a mandolin, which cuts the potatoes, carrots or any other vegetable in very thin slices. Mince the onion and cook it in butter. Before putting the potatoes in the mandolin, melt some butter in a saucepan. Once the butter is molten, put the potatoes inside. This needs about 3-4 minutes cooking, just as if you would make French fries in a pan.

Cut very finely the bacon with an electric machine or your hands.

Drain the potatoes and place them on a serving dish in order to prepare the potato cake. Put a layer of potatoes in the form. Continue to arrange them, as if you would make an apple pie. But be careful to not burn your fingers; the potatoes come directly out of the hot butter. Put the cooked onion in the middle and on top another layer of potatoes. You do not have to season it, because the top layer has already been salted; the bacon will season the entire dish with its taste, smoke and salt.

Cover the potato cake with thin bacon layers. Now, the plate is ready for the oven.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce that accompanies the caviar galette. Boil down the white wine with the shallots. Add more wine. This will take you about 2-3 minutes. Then, take the same amount of butter and cream in the saucepan and boil down again. Eventually, you obtain a sauce with reduced cream, which has the advantage of having a very subtle butter taste.

Now you have reached a very important and delicate point of the preparation: the mix of sauce and caviar. Two important aspects: First, you always have to use a spoon made of high-grade (stainless) steel, horns or wood. Avoid silverware, because it modifies the taste, making it bitter. Second, when you mix the caviar with the sauce, the latter has to be lukewarm. If the sauce is too warm, the caviar will gelatinize in its inside. Thus, you would obtain a type of plastic caviar, unpleasant to see and taste. So, to avoid this displeasure, place the sauce off the flame, take a good spoon with caviar and blend it fast in the sauce. After about 20 minutes in the oven, the galette should be cooked. Put the sauce directly into the dish, using a high-grade (stainless) steel, horn or wooden spoon, in order not to damage the caviar taste. Place the galette, which is very hot, on top of it and decorate with peluches de cerfeuil. Now, you only have to finalize this recipe by adding a small scoop of caviar and some pepper of the mill, very discrete. You can degustate the caviar with the potatoes or smoked duck, as you like it.


bacon recipe courtesy of: Le Trianon Palace, 1 Bld de la Reine, Versailles, France, +33 1 30 84 50 50