I've made this a couple of times, and it's always popular. It works well as a (very hearty) side dish, or cold the next day like a cheesy, bacony Spanish omelette. Originally this recipe was called "Grape Pickers' Potatoes" (it's a Hugh Stanley-Fearnley-Wittingstalliferous recipe) and I can imagine it would certainly set you up after a day of hard labour.
Ingredients
- 750g of potatoes
- 40g of butter
- 300g of smoked streaky bacon rashers
- 1 teaspoonful of rosemary
- 150g of Gruyère cheese
- Salt to taste
- Ground black pepper to taste
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Peel the potatoes and slice them very thinly.
- Grate the cheese into a bowl.
- Chop the rosemary finely.
- Use some of the butter to grease an ovenproof dish (I used my round metal pie dish, which is 24cm wide).
- Stretch the bacon with the back of a knife so that it won't shrink when it cooks.
- Line the dish with the slices of bacon, covering the bottom and sides, and leaving the upper third or so of each rasher to hang over the sides. I did mine in a sort of spiderweb from the centre.
- Place a layer of potatoes on top, season with salt and pepper, then scatter on some of the rosemary and cheese.
- Repeat the layers three times (or however many it takes), finishing with a layer of potatoes.
- Cover the top with the overhanging bacon and dot with the remaining butter.
- Cover with a tight, double layer of foil.
- Bake for an hour and a quarter, by which time the potatoes should be cooked and tender.
The recipe doesn't mention this, but my dish was full of fatty water at this point, which I poured off. My Ma suggests to take off the cover at this point, turn up the heat and bake for quarter of an hour longer to crisp up the bacon on top.
- Remove the dish from the oven and leave to stand for ten minutes.
- Gently loosen the bacon from the sides of the dish and turn out onto a plate to serve.
