Letters To Bourdain

Dear  Chef Bourdain;

For a long time I was an adherent of the notion that everything is better with bacon. This was a mistake – like telling a friend you like monkeys, and then getting monkey shit for every gift-giving occasion for the rest of your life, I was inundated with bacon-related gifts. Lest I sound like a cad, let me say, bacon-related gift items are pretty much as awesome as they sound. But it did teach me that not in fact quite everything goes better with bacon.

Happily, French cuisine is not one of those things that doesn’t go better with bacon. Let me unpack that unwieldy sentence for you – the recipes in your book often contain bacon, and are always better for it. I hadn’t realized bistro style cooking was quite so bacon-positive. (Must be third-wave baconists, I guess.)

Almost everything is better with bacon.

Tartiflette is an obscure name for an amazing dish. I’m pretty sure if we gave it a more appealing name, it would rapidly become a much-beloved bar food like potato skins or buffalo wings. “Tartiflette” doesn’t really convey what a beautiful mashup of potato, bacon and cheese this is. I will henceforward refer to it as “The Triumph of Bacon.” Hmm, maybe that still needs some work.

Tartiflette, aka The Triumph of Bacon, aka Oh Shit That's Good!

This one was really easy, too. Boil some potatoes, a skill mastered by everybody who can get potatoes. Skillet up some bacon.

Be prepared to fend off Assistant Chef Bourdain and other interlopers.

Drain off most of the grease and set aside the bacon. Fry up some onion in the pan until it’s nice and moogly. And that’s it. Remain vigilant, interlopers will have smelled the bacon and the onion and become interested.

Eyes in the back of my head, when bacon is at hand.

Scumbling up the potato, bacon and onions in the pan is easy. Then put in a layer in a casserole, and cover it with rebolochon cheese. Another layer of the mix, and another layer of cheese on top. Melt in oven. Bask in the glory that is one of the most comforting of comfort foods imaginable.

Melting, bubbly, bacony comfort.

I served this with some crostini to dab it on or scoop it up. I think something like fritos scoops would be white trash…but white-trash-delicious. This also reheated beautifully, in some ways even better than it was fresh out of the oven. In the future in cold weather, I might make this well ahead and reheat as a starter. I’m definitely making while skiing next month – putting this firmly in the “Hit” category.

What’s seeming to be the heart of bistro style cooking is recipes that are relatively easy, keep well and reheat nicely, and are very delicious.  The challenge has been finding some of the ingredients that would be very common at the actual Les Halles, but are esoteric here in Los Angeles. But the methods I’m learning, and the heart of the style are really valuable.  It’s kind of like practicing kata or forms in martial arts – first you learn the individual moves, then you see how they go together and flow from one to another – but the work of making the cognitive leap from understanding parts to the whole that is greater than the sum of those parts takes time, repetition and some stroke of inspiration.

So far those strokes of inspiration have, happily, involved a lot of bacon. What a wonderful discovery!

Yours with bacon;

Davy