Tausi Insider

Photo : from my point of view ( Shutterstock ) To say that people “like” the combination of cheese and potato would be to grossly undersell the power and popularity of the combination. They are a match made in heaven or, more accurately, France. Pommes aligot is the ne plus ultra of cheesy mashed potatoes. Far from mere cheese-flavored potatoes, these could almost be called “potato-y cheese.” Pommes aligot hails from Aubrac, a once-volcanic region in south-central France. It’s somewhere in between mashed potatoes and fondue, and it is intense, stretchy, and rib-stickingly comforting. The phrase “dangerously cheesy” gets thrown around a lot, particularly by that cartoon cheetah, but this is one case where it actually rings true. This dish is 43% cheese by mass. It contains so much cheese that it behaves like cheese. The cheese energy is so powerful, I’m afraid to let my lactose-intolerant boyfriend look at the dish, much less eat it. Making aligot is not technically difficult, but...

There are a lot of ways to prepare mashed potatoes, and almost all of them are valid (even, or especially, the microwave method ). Most mashed potato recipes start the same way: Cube the spuds into roughly 1 1/2-inch chunks, then cook them in simmering water until they can be easily mashed with a fork. This usually takes about 20 minutes, but Cook’s Illustrated notes you can shave off half of that time   by slicing the spuds into 1/4-inch rounds, rather than cubing them into chunks. This move is quite obvious when you think about it: A thinner piece of potato will cook faster than a thicker one, and a uniform slice will cook more uniformly than a lopsided chunk. (There will, of course, be some irregularly shaped pieces taken from either end of the potato. That is the nature of things that grow in the ground.) Slices also take up less space, which means you use a smaller pot and less water (you just need enough to cover the spuds ). You can try out Cook’s Illustrated’s full rec...