Tartiflette: a French winter warmer perfect for New Year

Well, Christmas may be complete, but the festivities are far from over: the new year is just around the corner. As we stare down the barrel of the end of the decade, we’re not quite ready to give up the cheese board, the doorstep-sized leftover sandwiches, or remove our hand from the Quality Street box. But although the food might be the same post-Christmas, the tone of our eating has changed slightly. Christmas cooking (and eating!) can turn into a logistical marathon: juggling pans and hob space, reconciling wildly different cooking temperatures for items that need to be in the oven at the same time, catering to a raft of traditions and preferences, all of which need to be satisfied in this single, momentous meal. Preparing Christmas lunch can feel like a maths GCSE problem.

So, having survived Christmas broadly unscathed, it’s no wonder that we want the indulgence without the faff. Well, tartiflette delivers that, and in spades. Tartiflette must be the ultimate indulgence: little waxy potatoes and onions and streaky bacon cooked with butter and white wine and cream, and then baked with an entire reblochon until bubbling and gooey. It’s a perfect dish for New Year’s Eve: one that screams special occasion, one that should be shared with friends. It is richer than Midas and cheesier than Cliff Richard.

Tartiflette tastes like a dish that is as old as the mountains in the Savoie from which reblochon hails, and, to be fair, its inspiration is found in a properly traditional recipe called péla. But the origins of the modern version are actually – delightfully – pedestrian. It was, along with the hummingbird cake, a marketing ploy: the Union Interprofessional Reblochon developed the recipe in the 1980’s to promote the sales of reblochon, and printed it on the back of the cheese boxes.