How to make a great Turnip Tartiflette
Also known as…Turnip and Leek Gratin
All you purist Tartiflette eaters, look away now!
I love trying new fusion style recipes with Savoyarde ingredients. The turnip Tartiflette is my latest recipe using Reblochon cheese and swapping around a few ingredients. The humble turnip called a navet in French – it’s le navet so the t is not pronounced. I got these from our local farmers market, I bought a mixed veg panier. The surprise of which veg will be in there each week is fun. I also love the fact that everything is grown locally, most of it still has earth on and all the produce is in season. So, no surprise that most of the veg at the moment are root vegetables.
Ways to cook turnips
I researched various ways of cooking turnips and came up with the regular soups, roasting, or mashing them, so creating a gratin type dish seemed a little different. As turnips have a sweet and delicate taste, using them in a Tartiflette instead of potatoes I thought would work. It did! And made this dish a little lower in carbs. I added leek, onion and garlic for flavour, mixed with crème fraiche and then topped with the classic Tartiflette ingredient – Reblochon from the Haute Savoie. The Reblochon, I bought from our local Fromagerie in Viry, which I love to visit. I used the red label reblochon as this is milder and better for cooking with. The Green label is Reblochon Fermier and this is better eaten on a cheeseboard. Learn more about Reblochon here.
Turnip Tartiflette Recipe
Turnip Tartiflette
Equipment
- Medium size ovenproof dish
- *Large sauté pan – large enough to end up with all the ingredients in
Ingredients
- 750 g turnips – peeled and sliced
- 1 onion – sliced finely
- 1 leek – sliced finely in rounds
- 3 garlic cloves – chopped finely
- 35 g unsalted butter
- Splash of olive oil
- 200 g smoked bacon lardons
- A good teaspoon of Thyme
- Pinch of Nutmeg
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 200 g crème fraiche
- 1 whole Reblochon keep in fridge until needed as it is easier to slice
Instructions
- Heat the oven to between 180 – 200℃.
- Peel and slice the turnips – I used a mandolin to do this.
- Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil and add the sliced turnips and cook for around 5 minutes until they are just tender, then drain them.
- Melt 25g of butter in a *large pan with the splash of olive oil. Sauté the sliced onions and leeks for about 5 minutes until soft, add in the chopped garlic, thyme and grated nutmeg.
- Then add in the bacon lardons and cook for another 5 minutes.
- Lower the heat, you may want to add a little more butter here and add the sliced turnips to this mixture and carefully stir together to coat the turnips in the buttery mixture.
- Add the crème fraiche to this mixture again carefully stirring it through to coat everything.
- Butter an ovenproof dish and then pour this mixture into the dish spreading it out evenly.
- Cut the Reblochon into slices – keeping the skin on and layer this to cover the whole dish.
- Cook in the oven for around 20 – 25 minutes until it is golden on top and bubbling well.
How to make a Turnip Tartiflette
Filling in the dish 
Add the sliced Reblochon on top
Serving Turnip Tartiflette
As this is quite a rich dish with the cream and cheese, a simple green salad goes well and pop a few cornichons on the side. Fresh crusty French bread goes down well too!
To make this a vegetarian turnip Tartiflette you could leave out the bacon lardons and add in chestnuts or mushrooms.
Bon Appetit!
Try other Tartiflette recipes
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