Péla — The Cast-Iron Potato Dish of Savoie

Péla (also pèla or pélâ) is the Savoyard equivalent of tartiflette's rustic ancestor — a cast-iron-skillet dish of potatoes, onions, and cheese that predates tartiflette by centuries and remains the authentic mountain cooking preparation that tartiflette romanticized for the tourist market. The name comes from the péla (or poêle à longue queue), the long-handled cast-iron or copper pan traditionally hung over the fireplace in Savoyard farmhouses and used to cook directly over the hearth embers. The preparation: boiled potatoes (firm-fleshed, 1kg, peeled and sliced 5mm thick) are layered in the péla with caramelized onions (3 large, sliced and slowly cooked in butter or lard for 30 minutes until deeply golden) and sliced Reblochon (1 whole cheese, 450g, halved horizontally). The dish is placed in the oven at 200°C (or traditionally slid into the bread oven after the bread was removed, using the residual heat) for 25-30 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling and the edges of the potatoes are crisp. The fundamental difference between péla and tartiflette: péla uses fully cooked potatoes (boiled, then assembled), while tartiflette typically uses raw or par-cooked potatoes; péla has no cream or wine (tartiflette adds white wine and sometimes cream); and péla is traditionally made in a specific long-handled pan over embers, not in an oven dish. The péla is the purer, more austere version — potato, onion, cheese, heat — without the refinements that tartiflette added when the Reblochon producers' cooperative reinvented the dish in the 1980s for marketing purposes. In mountain restaurants and farmhouse auberges, péla is still served directly in the cast-iron pan — brought to the table bubbling, with a basket of green salad dressed in walnut oil vinaigrette and a plate of dried Savoyard sausage.