Flammenkuche on delicious:days

Alsace is one of the smallest regions of France, pressed up against both Germany and Switzerland.  I visited the city of Strasbourg there a couple of months ago with work, and somehow managed to eat nothing but bretzles, flammenkuche and creme fraiche for three days. 

Alsace breztles, from Wiki

Bretzles are basically Alsace pretzels.  They were being sold studded with salt, seeds, cheese and even sweet (I think the one on the far left of the picture is sugared like a donut).  Very moorish and tasty.

Flammenkuche are a thin based pizza made with creme fraiche and onion instead of tomatoes and topped with cheese (and sometimes ham etc).   Anyway, there is a recipe on the delicious:days site, I wanted to jot it down before I forget, and I also found another on the Alsace Terrorir website in French - although I'd swap the poitrine fumée (aka bacon) for Gorgonzola or sun-dried tomatoes. 

Strangely, the first time I had flammenkuche was not in Alsace, but in Fontainebleau (a French town hundreds of miles away near Paris) where we were staying.  It was the end of August and most of the restaurants were closed for the French summer holidays, but we found one open called La Petite Alsace.  Initially we were a little disconcerted because of the enthusiastic decor, inspired by a Swiss chalet and because we didn't really know what we were ordering.  But the flammenkuche arrived bubbling hot on flat wooden boards with an implausibly large selection of cheese melting on top ... and was fantastic.  Mmm.  The best.

It's also good with Alsace wine, which in the region is usually served in long green-stemmed glasses.  Many years ago I bought a set of six of these from Oxfam, and only realised last month (after many years of use) that they weren't designed for serving champagne - doh.