Meat : Everyday recipes

• Four 10cm circles and four 12cm circles of filo or similar pastry
• Eight thin (2.5mm thick) slices of large andouille (see footnote)
• A quarter of a well-ripened AOC Camembert
• 300g of potatoes, cooked in their skins
• 1⁄4 litre double cream
• 50g Isigny AOC butter
• 5 cl Pommeau (Normandy speciality, see footnote)
• 5g sugar
• 10 green cardamoms
• 10 Szechuan peppercorns (see footnote)
• 5cl sunflower oil
• Fine salt, freshly ground pepper

Working off the stove, put the sunflower oil into a non-stick frying pan. Place the four 10cm pastry circles in it and add a slice of andouille. Peel the cooked potatoes and cut into thin rounds (3mm). Season the potatoes and lay them on top of the andouille, followed by the last slices of andouille. Place the larger, 12cm, pastry circles on top and use a 10cm tart tin to hold down the puck-shaped galettes, sealing the two pastry edges together. Leave the tart tins on top of the galettes and put the pan on one side while you make the sauce. Put the Pommeau and the sugar to reduce in a saucepan. At three quarters reduction, ad the double cream and the quarter Camembert. Bring to the boil and put a blender through the sauce and thicken it with the 50g butter. Add the spices and leave them to infuse for 15 minutes. Season and keep the sauce warm.

Cook the galettes off on a fierce heat. Once the edges have properly cooked together and the pastry base has started to brown and crisp up, gently turn them over and cook the other side. While the second side is cooking, pour some sauce into each plate ready for the gallettes as they come out of the pan. ( If necessary, you can take surplus cooking oil off the galettes with some kitchen towel before serving them.). If you cannot obtain the spices for the sauce, you can replace them with little cubes of apple.

Notes:

The andouille is a kind of Normandy sausage, sold by French charcutiers in a range of sizes. This recipe will work best with a wide one. A galette is a generic term for any puck-shaped cake, biscuit, or other pastry-based recipe, whether sweet or savoury. Pommeau is a Normandy drink made from fresh apple juice cut with Calvados (Normandy’s apple-based spirit) to arrive at an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 17%. It can now be found in good food stores outside Normandy. Szechuan peppercorns come from northern China and are widely available through supermarkets as well as Oriental grocery stores.