The Cheesiest Mash Aligot
Welcome to the first of my new series ‘A-Z of potatoes’ and we’re starting strong with ALIGOT.
Aligot is a French dish from a region known as L’Aubrac. It’s a decandent mix of mashed potato and cheese that creates a gooey, stringy, delicious potato side dish. The authentic cheese to use is a French cheese known as a ‘tomme fraîche – but believe me when I say I tried my hardest to get this in the UK but it was so hard! At one point I was literally trying to order it to arrive in Ireland when I went there as it was so hard to import. Blame Brexit. Therefore, appreciating not everyone will be up for smuggling it into the UK, I made a version using a mix of mozzarella and cheddar. People of France, please don’t be mad. I know it’s not FULLY authentic but this is an easy way to make a version here in the UK that is absolutely delicious too.
I actually had the pleasure of trying Aligot when I was in France and I made a TikTok on it as part of my World’s Best Potato series which you can see here. It was at a Christmas market in Lyon, sprinkled with like a bacony cured meat which was absolutely SUPERB. You could take some inspo from that and get some bacon bits fried up a top my version of an aligot – or just have it in a dish you’d usually have with mash for an extra bit of special (bangers & aligot, steak, ribs etc). I actually had it yesterday with a rack of lamb and it was *chefs kiss*.
Let me know if you try it and be sure to send me all the pics.
Love Pops Xx
Ingredients
- 700g Maris Piper potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm thick rounds
- 3 balls of full fat mozzarella
- 70g grated cheddar
- 70g grated comté
- 70g grated taleaggio
- 50g melted, salted butter
- 250ml warmed double cream
- 1 ladle of potato cooking water
- Plenty of salt and pepper
Method
- Get all your spuds in a sauce pan, just covered with cold water. Add 1 tbsp table salt and get on to boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes until completely tender and falling off the end of a knife when poked.
- Drain the potatoes through a sieve and keep the cooking water. Place the sieve of potatoes back over the pan they were cooked in and place a tea towel over the top and leave them to steam dry for 5 minutes or so.
- Once the potatoes are dry, you can begin to push them through the sieve to get a fine mash.
- In a microwave safe jug/bowl add the cream, butter and a torn mozzarella ball and microwave on high for around 45-60 seconds until melted (or in a saucepan stirring constantly) and pour this into the potatoes and mix well.
- Add in the rest of the cheeses, you can of course adapt these to your taste but I love the nutty-ness the Comté brings to this dish.
- Place the pan with everything in back on a low heat and just keep mixing until everything is fully incorporated, this can take some time but just keep going until all the cheeses have visibly melted.
- You will be left with a gooey, thick, smooth potato mass. It’s perfect for dunking big juicy sausages into or underneath a bit of steak.