Hasselback or "Swedish-style" potatoes

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 4 potatoes, you will need:

• 1 4 potatoes
• 2 50 g Clarified butter
• 3 thyme
• 4 50 g Comté cheese
• 5 2 slices ham
• 6 fine (or table) salt
• Total weight: 840 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
53 min.	1 hour	1 hour 53 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Wash and dry 4 potatoes. You can peel them if you prefer, but it's not essential.
2	With a vegetable peeler or knife, make a dish under the potato, removing a slice. We do this so that they are stable afterwards.
3	Place the potato, with the dish created in the previous step underneath, on a chopping board. To make cutting easier afterwards, surround the potato with 5 mm-thick pastry blocks. If you don't have any, use whatever you have on hand that is also around 5 mm thick: school rulers, "Chinese" chopsticks, etc.
4	Using a sharp knife, slice the potato from top to bottom along its entire length, until you reach the wedges. Note that the beginning and end of the potato are too small to be protected by the wedges, and will be cut off completely.
5	Do this for all the potatoes.
6	Brush the potato slices with a brush dipped in clarified butter, and put a pinch of salt in each slit. No secret, it's a bit time-consuming, but it's quicker with 2 people: one to spread the potato slices, and the other to add the pinch of salt. Preheat your oven to 200°C (390°F).
7	Do this for all the potatoes, then place them on a sheet of baking paper on a baking sheet. Brush the outside of each potato with butter, sprinkle evenly with salt and thyme, and bake at 200°C (390°F) for 40 minutes.
8	Meanwhile, cut 50 g Comté cheese and 2 slices ham into strips, then into small squares, approximately the diameter of the potatoes.
9	After 40 minutes, remove the potatoes, which should already be golden brown.
10	Divide the pieces of ham and cheese between the slits in the potatoes. It's best to spread the chosen slit with a knife blade, insert the piece of cheese or ham, then remove the knife blade, holding the cheese or ham in place. Here again, working in pairs is a very good idea.
11	Return the potatoes to the oven for 15-20 minutes.
12	Serve on their own, or with a green salad, for example.

Remarks

This 2-step cooking method takes a little longer, but you'll get much better results than with raw potatoes topped with cheese and ham before going into the oven.
This is a recipe that can be adapted to just about any taste: you can change the cheese and meat as you like. You could even replace the ham with vegetables, such as grilled zucchini slices.
If you prefer, replace the clarified butter with oil.

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