Aligot - Mashed Potato with Cheese

This month is going to be completely French cuisine. We, the blogging marathoners are kick starting this April month's blogging as a month blogging with Journey through the cuisines as this month's theme. Every year, we make sure that both April and september as a whole month of blogging marathon with different interesting themes. Again this year we are going to run with 4 weeks of blogging marathon either with regional cuisines or with International cuisines. Without any hesitation, i went with International cuisines and i picked French cuisine for this month's blogging marathon.Apart from X and U alphabets, it was quite easy for me to pick dish's names starting with remaining Alphabets.For the first day of this month's blogging marathon, i went with this ultimate cheese loaded mashed potato called Aligot. This dish is quite popular in L'Aubrac (Aveyron, Cantal, Lozère, Midi-Pyrénées) region in southern Massif Central of France.

Aligot is made from mashed potatoes blended with butter, cream, crushed garlic and melted cheese. This dish is ready when it has a smooth and elastic texture.Aligot, this dish was prepared for pilgrims especially during winter on their way to Santiago de Compostela which is commonly known as Santigo, this city's cathedral is quite popular for pilgrimage. Today this dish is enjoyed for village gatherings and for many more celebrations as a main dish.Aligot is cooked still in Aveyron, by hand at home and they are sold as street foods in many street markets of this region. Traditionally this French country speciality is served with sausages and red wine.But we enjoyed this cheesy mashed potato with grilled chicken wings for our lunch and just loved it.Though this dish is loaded with cheese,cream and butter, this aligot tastes simply fabulous especially when the weather is too down outside.

1/2kg Potatoes
200grams Tomme/emmental cheese (grated)
1cup Milk
30grams Butter
2tbsp Fresh thick cream
1no Garlic clove
Salt
Pepper powder

Cook the potatoes with enough salt in hot water, once the potatoes gets cooked, put off the stove.

Peel the cooked potatoes and mash it with masher.

Add in the finely crushed garlic and transfer the mashed potato to a pan.

Add in the butter, milk, fresh cream and keep stirring.

Finally add the salt, pepper powder, slowly add the grated cheese slowly to the mashed potato, cook in simmer until the cheese gets well mixed with the mashed potato.

Serve hot with grilled meats or salad.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 63
An InLinkz Link-up