Aligot

Mashed potato beaten with young unsalted cheese until it ropes, which only one kind of cheese will do.

Not vegetarian — contains tomme whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 1 kg floury potatoes
• 400 g tomme fraîche, in thin slices
• 150 ml double cream
• 80 g butter
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• salt and white pepper

Method

1. THE CHEESE MUST BE YOUNG AND UNSALTED, AND IT IS BEATEN RATHER THAN STIRRED. Tomme fraîche is a few days old, barely salted and still squeaky, and its proteins are intact enough to stretch into long strands when worked. An aged cheese -- cantal, cheddar, gruyère -- has proteins that have already broken down, and it will melt beautifully and never rope. This is the one ingredient with no substitute, and a page that pretended otherwise would be selling you a disappointment.
2. IT IS BEATEN HARD AND FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, with a wooden spoon, lifting the mass up out of the pan and letting it fall back. Stirred gently it stays a cheesy mash. Beaten properly it changes character in front of you: it goes glossy, tightens, and starts to come away from the sides in a sheet.
3. AND IT IS DONE OVER A LOW HEAT, NOT OFF IT. Too cool and the cheese will not work; too hot and the proteins tighten and squeeze the fat out, and it goes oily and grainy. A low flame and constant movement.
4. THE POTATO IS RICED AND MUST BE DRY. A ricer, never a blender -- blended potato is glue before the cheese is anywhere near it, and glue does not rope either.
5. IT IS SERVED THE MOMENT IT IS READY. Aligot stands for about ten minutes and then stiffens into something you cannot serve. There is no keeping it warm.
6. Potatoes boiled whole in their skins in well-salted water, 25 to 30 minutes until completely tender.
7. Peeled while hot and passed through a ricer back into the dry pan.
8. Over a LOW heat, the butter beaten in, then the cream and the garlic. Seasoned now -- the cheese adds almost no salt.
9. The tomme added a handful at a time, each lot beaten in until it disappears.
10. BEATEN HARD 5 to 8 MINUTES, lifting and dropping the mass, until it is glossy and pulls away from the pan in long elastic strands.
11. Tested by lifting the spoon high: it should fall in a continuous ribbon you can hold up.
12. Tasted for salt and white pepper.
13. Served immediately, straight from the pan, with sausage or on its own.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes