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France and the Alps · Volume 16, Altitude, Cheese and a Border the Kitchen Never Drew

Gratin de crozets au Beaufort

Savoie, specifically the Tarentaise valley

Gratin de crozets au Beaufort, buckwheat pasta squares baked in cream and Beaufort cheese: a rustic gratin dish of small buckwheat pasta squares bound in a pale creamy sauce, the surface deeply browned and blistered under a thick layer of melted Beaufort.

Illustration

Time
40 minutes

Savoie, specifically the Tarentaise valley, buckwheat's own crop of choice.

As tradition built it

Serves 4. 20 minutes' preparation, 20 minutes' cooking.

Ingredients

  • 400 g buckwheat crozets
  • 2 onions, finely sliced
  • 200 g lardons
  • 30 cl liquid crème fraîche
  • 200 g Beaufort, grated
  • to taste salt, pepper and nutmeg

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
  2. Cook the crozets in salted water about 15 minutes. Drain and rinse briefly in cold water.
  3. Cook the lardons over a medium heat without fat for a few minutes. Add the onions and cook 4 to 5 minutes, until soft and translucent.
  4. Heat the crème fraîche and stir in three quarters of the Beaufort.
  5. Mix the cream with the crozets, then the lardons and onions. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.
  6. Turn into a gratin dish, top with the rest of the Beaufort, and bake 10 to 20 minutes under the grill until the cheese melts and browns.

Notes

The recipe is the Coopérative Laitière de Moûtiers's, the Beaufort cooperative of the Tarentaise. Its lighter crozets au Beaufort use no cream: crozets and thin strips of Beaufort layered, 200 ml of broth and 100 g of melted butter poured over, about 15 minutes at 180°C. The previous figures came from the Savoie tourist board.

What a modern chef changes

Home-dried crozets, and a Beaufort-forward béchamel in place of plain cream

Rungs 1 and 5

Method

  1. Make the crozets from scratch and dry them in a dehydrator held at a controlled 65°C for 24 to 36 hours, following rung 5's own logic directly: this reproduces the slow, sub-70°C traditional drying discipline far more reliably than a domestic oven, and produces a firmer, better-textured pasta than most shop-bought dried crozets.
  2. Build a light Beaufort béchamel rather than folding in plain crème fraîche, a roux-based sauce finished with the grated cheese melted through gently below 70°C, using the same temperature discipline rung 1 establishes for fondue. This gives a more stable, less likely to split sauce that coats the crozets evenly rather than pooling at the base of the dish.
  3. Finish with a thin, separate layer of extra-aged Beaufort d'alpage, grated fine, added only for the final two minutes under the grill, so its more complex, longer-aged character survives as a distinct top note rather than melting entirely into the base sauce.
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