Potato Galette with Bacon and Caviar

An avid art collector, chef Gerard Vie puts a lot of thought in aesthetics when creating a recipe and constructing a gourmet dish. This recipe for Potato Pancake with Bacon and Caviar is a good example of his fine sensibility and elegant style. Like an artist painting a canvas, Chef Vie arranges every ingredient on the plate to achieve a balanced and beautifully composed dish.

In this recipe, long thin strips of smoked bacon are layered one on top of the other to make an outer crust; thin chips of potatoes are lined inside to make a galette or pancake. The method used is similar to making apple tart but instead of pastry, bacon is used as crust and instead of filling the pie with slices of apples, it is filled with thinly sliced potato chips. Depending on your preference, you can also substitute smoked bacon for smoked duck, which also goes terrifically well with caviar and cream. Just slice the smoked duck into long thin strips with the help of a cutting machine to get evenly cut meat. If cutting without a machine, place the meat in the refrigerator or freezer and allow it to harden before cutting with a very sharp knife.

Chef Vie personally likes to use Sevruga caviar for this particular recipe for its smaller eggs and finer grains that blend well with the cream sauce. This is a less expensive kind of caviar compared to the more extravagant Beluga and Ossetra varieties but still superior in quality and taste.

When mixing the sauce and caviar, remember two important points: Use a spoon of stainless steel, horn, or wood. Anything else will modify the flavor, making it bitter. Also, when mixing the caviar with the sauce, the latter must be lukewarm. If the sauce is too warm, the caviar will gelatinize and become plastic-like.