The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Alsace & the North · Starter

Munster au Cumin et Pommes de Terre en Robe

  • Easy
  • 20 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · earthy · bright · aromatic Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole farmhouse munster, about 400 g, in its box
  • 1 kg small waxy potatoes
  • 2 tsp cumin seed, or caraway
  • Coarse salt
  • Black pepper
  • 1 shallot, chopped fine
  • 20 ml cider vinegar
  • 40 ml rapeseed oil
  • 1 head of frisée or a bowl of lamb's lettuce

The skills inside

Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsFrying the paste until the oil splitsSalted water & the float testThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

The words inside

MunsterCuminHead Cheese & the Aspic ArtsFrisee

Allergen screen

Found: dairy

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Take the cheese out of the cold a full hour ahead and leave it in its box; at fridge temperature the paste is rigid and it tastes of nothing but salt.
  2. Boil the potatoes in their skins in heavily salted water until a knife slides in and out with no drag, then drain and keep them covered and hot.
  3. Toast the seed in a dry pan over low heat, shaking, until it darkens a shade and smells of aniseed rather than dust, then crush it coarsely.
  4. Warm the whole cheese in its box at 90C (195F) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the centre wobbles under a fingertip while the rind still stands up. 12 min
  5. Dress the leaves with shallot, vinegar and oil, split the hot potatoes open and spoon the running cheese over them, finishing with the crushed seed and pepper.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes

  • A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
  • It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
  • It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
  • It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
  • The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.

Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Syrah or Grenache/GSM
Also Right
Malbec
From the Taps
Porter
Zero-Proof
Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Munster au Cumin et Pommes de Terre en Robe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Alsace & the North kitchen