2022 Tour de France - Stage 15: Rodez to Carcassonne.
Happy Sunday…typically a day of rest reserved for long slow-cooking meals where you just lay around and do nothing all day except dread that work is merely only a few hours away. Well, I missed that memo today because I decided to make aligot. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a luxuriously smooth version of mashed potatoes, but it takes a LOT of stirring. I was so pooped, I decided to show you the sloppy pot and all. How much stirring? I can’t really tell you. I lost track of time, maybe 15-20 minutes. It’s nuts. I highly recommend you get this at a fancy restaurant. But, if you like to suffer for your meal, a recipe is below!
Aligot
2 ¼ lbs butter potatoes
1.25 cups cream
1 stick of butter
1 lb of semi-soft French cheese (like Gruyere), thinly sliced
Peel and rough chop your potatoes and bring them to a boil. Drain.
Return the drained potatoes to the pot over medium heat and add the cream and butter. Mash everything together until no more lumps remain. Season with some salt and pepper to your liking.
Add the sliced cheese and stir…seemingly forever. Your arm will hurt. You will eventually stop using a spoon and start using a whisk when the texture gets close in hopes that it will help aerate and texturize the potatoes (I'm pretty sure this helped speed things up). You're getting closer when a light film starts developing in the pot.
You are done when large, thick ripples hold from your incessant stirring/whisking and when you lift the spoon/whisk from the potatoes it slowly, but uniformly, falls from the instrument, very similar to a mozzarella cheese pull.
Serve; try it with my Caillettes from yesterday! ______________________________
Copyright 2022, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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