Potato and blue cheese cakes with flageolet beans in cider and rosemary

Inside the crisp coating of these fried cakes the comforting potato mash is broken up by tangy pockets of melting blue cheese. It is important to use a fairly strong cheese with plenty of blue veining, otherwise the cakes will be all comfort and no character. Stilton is perfect, both because it is usually sold when fairly mature and strong and because its dry, crumbly nature doesn’t soften the mash. If you use an Irish blue, buy it from a cheese counter where you can test it first, as the s