We want to make a warm winter dish. What could possibly be better than Pot Roast and Mashed Potatoes? The answer is: Pot Roast and Aligot. We first had Aligot in France and fell in love with it. It is mashed potatoes that was cheese melted into it. Making it even richer. There was a recipe for Aligot in The New York Times and we decided to make it. First we had to scramble to get the proper pot roast, which in French is called a Paleron. It is a full flat-iron steak. We finally found one.
I was prepared to make mashed potatoes, but we happened to stop in at Joan's on 3rd Street and they were selling a supper rich mashed potatoes. So we bought the mashed potatoes and used them. We then used a fabulous trick on mashed potatoes that we observed from eating a ChiSpacca. We had refrigerated the store bought mashed potatoes. When we were ready to cook them we removed from the refrigerator and let them reach room temperature. We then put them in a pan and continually wisked in cream and milk. They reheated perfectly. We then added the cheese. Shumon joined us and the dinner was perfect for a cool night.
You can get the recipe for the Pot Roast from our blog of: March 15, 2016. Click the date to get the recipe.
Aligot
Cheesy Mashed Potatoes for the Soul
New York Times
In times of great stress, or of flickering, low-level dread, I find
that canceling all my plans and staying in to make mashed potatoes generally
helps. This year, there were quite a few opportunities to do so.
Election-related anxiety gnawed at me for months, lighting up old networks of
pain in my shoulders and back. Mold bloomed around the mysterious wet patch
that appeared in my bedroom ceiling. I started a thrilling, but terrifying, new
job. And as the holidays neared, I worried about my grandmother, almost 80,
living alone. Still, I let about half her calls go to voice mail each week, and
hated myself for it.
I turned to aligot, the cheese-thickened mashed potatoes with roots
in central France. Aligot doesn’t fix anything, but it does put a little
cushion between you and the abyss, whatever form the abyss might take.
To make it, you’ll need a ricer. You could, technically, blitz
everything together in the food processor, but you risk potatoes with the
gooey, elastic texture of an industrial-strength glue, setting up between
planks. If you’re in a delicate emotional state, as I usually am when I start
these potatoes, it’s better not to risk it. Besides, pressing down on the ricer
is an essential part of the process. Squashing hot, tender potatoes through
tiny holes is a pure and simple joy, one of the rare cooking tasks that’s just
as fun as those Play-Doh sets once had you believe. The potato rushes out in
tiny, twirling, noodles. You don’t need to worry about lumps.
In France, aligot is traditionally made with tomme fraîche or
unripened Cantal, but those cheeses can be hard to find. At North End Grill, a
restaurant in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, the chef Eric Korsh makes aligot
with a little bit of roasted garlic and a lot of Comté. Any cheese that melts
well will do, but for aligot you also want to seek out a cheese with a capacity
for stringiness. I’ve had great aligot with Comté, Gruyère and Emmental, and
fresh mozzarella can also work in a pinch.
Aligot puts a little cushion between you and the abyss.
Ham el-Waylly, a chef at the Brooklyn diner Hail Mary, starts with
Robuchon potatoes. Among cooks, the phrase “Robuchon potatoes” is shorthand for
what many still consider the Platonic ideal of mashed potatoes: a flawless
purée, mounted with an obscene amount of butter and named for the celebrity
French chef Joël Robuchon. In a video dedicated to his famous mashed potatoes,
Robuchon leans over a cook and says in French, quite sternly: “More butter!
More butter! More butter! More butter! More, more, more!”
Robuchon uses ratte potatoes — an expensive variety from France. He
boils them whole, then peels them while hot. After pushing the potatoes through
a food mill, he adds loads of cold butter over the heat and finally some milk
or cream, whisking the whole thing until it’s an airy, slow-moving cloud.
Waylly starts around there, then adds a mix of Gruyère and a soft-ripened cow’s
milk cheese from Vermont, even throwing in part of the bloomy rind. The key, he
told me, is to whip the potatoes with confidence, vigor and speed once you add
the cheese, to build up the stringiness as it melts. “When you pull it, you
want it to seem like you’re pulling at fondue,” Waylly said. “You want to see a
good amount of strands falling, and they should have some strength. They should
fight with you.”
Stringiness is the whole point of aligot, that long, delightful
stretch, the way it takes on all the qualities of melted cheese but remains
mashed potato. And though it’s tough to get it like the cooks in Auvergne, some
of whom can pull spoonfuls of hot aligot that stretch several feet, you can
still get a good, cheesy texture as a beginner, working with a small amount of
potato over low heat.
At home, in the 20 minutes or so it takes for the potatoes to cook
through, I like to get the rest of the meal going. I brown sausages and wilt a
big bunch of greens in the same pan. I have a glass of whatever wine is open in
the fridge. By now, things are looking up. Cheesy mashed potatoes are on the
horizon, like sunshine after a long, dark night. And by the time those potatoes
are ready, so am I.
Ingredients
1 pound russet potatoes, peeled and
quartered
¼ pound cold, unsalted butter, cut
into 1/2-inch cubes
½ cup cream, heated
½ pound Comté or Gruyère cheese,
grated
Salt to taste
Preparation
1.
Simmer the
potatoes in water until very tender to the point of a knife, about 15 to 20
minutes. Drain potatoes, and tip out any remaining water from the pot. Push the
hot potatoes through a ricer back into the pot. Over low heat, use a heatproof
spatula to move the potatoes around the pot for a minute so that any excess
water can evaporate.
2.
Add butter to
the potatoes, half at a time, stirring until completely incorporated. Add hot
cream, half at a time, stirring until incorporated. Add cheese a little bit at
a time, stirring vigorously, until all the cheese is evenly melted and the
spoon makes cheesy strings as you pull it away from the potatoes. If necessary,
turn the heat up a little. Taste, and season with salt. Serve.
