For foodies heading to ski resorts each season one of the big treats – besides the snow – ah some of the wonderful meals available to enjoy, traditional alpine recipes, often making use of what ingredients made locally made it through the winter. Dried meat, potatoes, onions and cheese are favourite ingredients and of course different regions of the Alps are home to some of the world’s best cheese – Reblochon and Gruyere to name but two.
Now a sumptuous new book – A Year In Cheese – has been published listing some favourite Alpine recipes among its pages. Written by Alex and Leo Guarneri, brothers who were the children of a food importer father and a mother who ran a Parisienne cookery school and whose careers saw them do everything from work on the till at a Paris cheese shop to stints working in the Ritz in London and the George V in Paris and now running Adrouet chain which began in Spitalfields Market in 2009 and now has eight branches in European cities.
InTheSnow set our no Michelin starred chef Robert Thorne to work on the tartiflette recipe found in the ‘winter’ section of this seasonal cookbook. We’re pleased to report the result was as stunning as anything we’ve tasted in the Alps, helped in part by the pint of double cream and 18oz of bacon in the recipe as much as the Reblochon. Robert’s personal tip is to add a few more potatoes to the 19oz suggested to balance out all the cream and cheese a little more.
A Year in Cheese by By Alex and Leo Guarneri, recipes by Alessandro Grano. Frances Lincoln, £20 Hardback