If you're looking for a delicious and the Perfect cheese and potato pithivier Recipe? This is the best place for you.
Named after the central French town of the same name (which, confusingly, also claims a much older almond cake, the pithiviers fondant, as its own).
the pithivier is a free-standing puff pastry pie so magnificent that it’s as much centrepiece as dinner.
The traditional example, which is not dissimilar to the frangipane-filled galette des roismade to celebrate Epiphany, has a sweet almond centre, though these days a pithivier is just as likely to be savoury.
Indeed, though charcutier Nicolas Verot tells me that “what makes the big difference between a pithivier and a pie [tourte] is that a pithivier contains unchopped meat [or vegetables], unlike a tourte”.
though in reality, it seems, anything goes. Pierre Koffman does a pheasant one, Rosie Birkett a version filled with cauliflower cheese, Parisian patissier and celebrity chef Cyril Lignac adds truffle to his pork and cheese number … the list goes on.
Perfect cheese and potato pithivier
In fact, the internet is full of recipes for pithiviers stuffed with fish, fruit, and even tofu and mushrooms – chopped and otherwise.
Difficult as it was to narrow it down, I’ve decided to focus on a cheese-and-potato filling, for the sole reason that a pithivier is, in Bake Off parlance, a true showstopper, and in my experience nothing stops shows as well as molten cheese.
The advice on the pastry and construction, however, applies whatever you put inside.
m starting with the pastry because, really, this is what defines the pithivier – without puff pastry, it’s just a pie.
It is undeniably more faff than shortcrust to make, but after following the instructions in Calum Franklin’s book The Pie Room, I’m reminded that the time-consuming
aspect of the process is waiting for the pastry to chill between rolls and folds, rather than that much active work.
I would therefore commend this to you as an opportunity to make your own, not least because I struggled to find butter puff pastry in my local shops, and the non-butter kind available commercially often contains palm oil.
Feel free to use whatever you prefer, but do consider having a go for a special occasion (and when else would you make a pithivier?).
I haven’t put a recipe below, because, frankly, I couldn’t improve on Franklin’s.
Homemade or not, it’s important that the pastry and the filling are well chilled before you start construction, and I’d recommend rolling it out a bit thinner than the 2-3cm called for by Mark Hix in the Independent (though I suspect that this has to be a typo, so I don’t even try it).
I do try a clever, one-sheet version by Caro Blackwell on the Taste of Savoie blog, which involves cutting out pastry like a tulip, then bringing the petals together on top to seal, but I’m too clumsy and end up with a cheese Vesuvius.
If you are similarly afflicted, I’d stick with the standard two-sheet method below, instead, welded together with egg wash. Much safer.
The potatoes
ould not advise adding raw potatoes, however thinly sliced, to a pie, as the Waitrose website suggests.
even simmered in stock for two minutes, as Hix recommends, they’re rather crunchy for my testers’ tastes.
Much as I love potatoes, they are much better soft. Franklin goes as far as to make a auphinoise, simmering the spuds in milk and cream, then baking them in a slab before putting them in his pie, which is, of course, extremely popular, but, given that you’ve probably already been busy making pastry, I’m going to keep things simpler with slices of cooked potato, as in Blackwell’s recipe.
Australian food writer Phoebe Wood deserves a special mention for filling her pie with crushed potato.
I love mash with a pie, especially when gravy is involved, but we agree that in a pie.
we prefer something with a bit more structural integrity, especially because the cheese layer above it should, in a pithivier, be liquid.
The cheese
I use lactic lancashire in Hix’s recipe, the results of which remind me pleasurably of our own cheese-and-onion pies, and tangy, mature cheddar in Franklin’s.
the Waitrose version demands nutty gruyere and Wood salty crumbled feta. All, of course, are very tasty –
potatoes and cheese always make a handsome couple – with the feta in particular adding a refreshingly light, summery note, but I’m after a cheese that will melt almost like a gravy, which makes Blackwell’s Alpine reblochon the obvious candidate.
Reblochon is not the easiest cheese to get hold of and, good as it tastes, its chief attraction is the obliging way it behaves when heated, so also bear in mind camembert, baron bigod, wigmore, vacherin mont d’or, tunworth and brie, all of which should work well, as will most other soft rinded cheeses.
That said, if you prefer, substitute roughly 150g grated hard cheese, instead.
Ingredients
- 1kg fairly large potatoes, preferably waxy ones (eg charlotte or desiree)
- Salt
- 100g unsmoked bacon lardons, or chopped thick-cut bacon (optional)
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme, picked
- 1 tbsp oil, or butter
- 4 large leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced
- Nutmeg, to taste
- 700g puff pastry (see introduction)
- Flour, for rolling
- 1 medium soft cheese (eg reblochon, camembert, brie, vacherin, Baron Bigod)
- 1 egg, beaten with a little water
Try out this perfect “The pithivier”, are you a frangipane traditionalist, or do you agree that this beautiful pie is too good to confine to dessert? And, if so, what do you like to put in yours?
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Have a wonderful breakfast!
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