potato and camembert pie

When I worked as a nanny in Switzerland I learnt to love the combination of cheese and potatoes. Being a Swedish girl partly brought up on country cooking, I was already loving all kinds of potatoes, but I hadn’t very often combined them with cheese. Let’s just say that Raclette and fondue put an end to that! (And then I came to England and discovered cheesy cheddar mash – oh my.)

I’ve really been quite good with my meal planning during the weeks, but when S has been here on the weekends we’ve fallen into a bit of a “we’re on holiday-mentality”, meaning that we’ve been eating out a lot or have been doing impulse shopping at the supermarket when we’re hungry. So this weekend I was determined to break the habit – and was browsing BBC Good Food and Ica for autumn-inspired comfort food. And I found this. Potato and Camembert pie.

I immediately emailed S, just sending the link and putting “Sunday lunch?” in the subject line, and the response came back “oooh ok :)” so I knew I was good to go. It didn’t look too difficult, if only I could get hold of puff pastry that wasn’t in smaller sheets and that wasn’t frozen (which also involved Googling puff pastry to remember what it’s called in Swedish lol).

I managed to find the pastry, but the sheets were smaller than the ones called for in the BBC recipe – so I reduced the number of potatoes a little, but kept the crème fraîche and the Camembert the same. It turned out really nice, but I accidentally cut through the pastry when trying to score it – so it’s not the prettiest, but it’s very tasty! The Camembert melts out in between the potatoes and the crème fraîche adds an extra mouthful of flavour. S and I were discussing that it would probably also be really nice with pancetta or maybe mushrooms in the mix.

 

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Ingredients (4 portions)

600g potatoes

2 x 250g puff pastry

100 ml crème fraîche

250g Camembert

salt

pepper

egg

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Peel and slice the potatoes. The original recipe states that this pie is best made with floury potatoes, so that’s what I used.

Put the potatoes in a pan with cold water, bring to boil, and let boil for two minutes. Drain them and return to the pan. Mix in the crème fraîche and season with salt and pepper.

Cut one of the puff pastry sheets into a circle – roughly 25 cm in diameter – and place a third of the potatoes on it (leaving about a 1 cm edge). Put the Camembert on top of the potatoes, then add the rest of the potatoes – keeping the edge.

Cut the second pastry sheet into a circle – roughly 28 cm in diameter – and brush the edge of the smaller circle. Drape the larger sheet over the potato and Camembert, and crimp together the edges.

Brush with a beaten egg and bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes.

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It really wasn’t very difficult to do – I just underestimated how thin the pastry was. Other than that it’s quite an easy yet impressive dish, and it works well all year round because the Camembert gives it a comforty feel while it’s not too heavy.

/t