1 Cook the potatoes in their skins in salted boiling water.
2 Cut the bacon into small mirepoix (small cubes) and melt it slowly in a heavy pot. Add the finely sliced shallots, then add the dandelion greens that have been peeled, rinsed three times, and sliced. Season and let cook gently covered for 5 minutes.
3 When the potatoes are cooked, peel them while still hot and crush them with a fork, then add them to the pot.
4 Mix them with a wooden spatula into the cooked salad, pour in the cream, add just a pinch of salt because of the bacon, and give a good grind of pepper. Return to gentle heat for 15 minutes of cooking.
5 Serve this pork belly and dandelion salad nice and hot.
6 You can also toast thick slices of country bread (Poilâne style), cut them in half, and let each guest spread a spoonful of this preparation on them, creating a very tasty open-faced sandwich.
7 Cretons is the name for small pieces of bacon in Picardy, a region famous for its beets and its legendary Soissons beans.
In Picardy, the small cubes of fatty bacon that you melt slowly in a pot are called cretons. Elsewhere they don't know about them. But it's this slow melting of the bacon with the shallots that gives all its flavor to this mixture. The dandelion greens just come to balance out the saltiness of the bacon. It's an old-fashioned recipe from the thrifty kitchen, brought back to modern taste by chefs who dig into their regional heritage.
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