How to make cassoulet.

  About a year ago, the members of Léran's culture et patrimoine society went on a bus trip to Castelnaudary. Do a search for "Castelnaudary" and you can read the whole post. Briefly, we cruised on the Canal du Midi and, after a massive cassoulet lunch, went to the factory where the cassoles--the slope-sided brown dishes intended for cassoulet--are made.

Each cassole is made by hand.

  I already owned one that holds cassoulet for six, and another that feeds four. What I wanted was an even larger dish, and I left with one large enough for ten servings. There it's stayed in the cupboard above the stove until a couple of weeks ago when I promised to inaugurate it at a lunch for four friends visiting from the US.

That's a standard size colander which gives you some idea of the size of the cassole.

   Dozens of cassoulet recipes exist. I ended up combining the one from Saveur Cooks Authentic French and Paula Wolfert's version from The Cooking of South-West France. I also took a look at Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. Technique and main ingredients were fairly similar but I did notice massive discrepancies in the quantities of beans. Wolfert said two pounds (about 900 grams) would feed 10 to 12 and Saveur was fairly similar but Bourdain allowed 1100 grams for four people. All authors agreed that this was not a dish you make on the spur of the moment.
   We set the date and time. Saturday at 1 p.m. Lunch because cassoulet is a very heavy dish to eat at night.
   Thursday, I took the 500 gram hunk of couenne out of the fridge. Pork skin with a thick layer of fat. Feeling like Hannibal Lecter, I cut this into strips, rolled and tied them neatly, and simmered them until they were pliable. I simmered a fresh pork hock in another pot until I could stick a fork in it, then skinned and boned it.

Le bouquet garni et le head of garlic.

    Friday was an afternoon of work. I browned chopped onion and carrot, added cubed pork shoulder, added a kilo of beans (rinsed but unsoaked) an entire unpeeled head of garlic and a bouquet garni and lots of chicken stock. Everything burbled away for a couple of hours in a big cast iron pot on the top of the stove.

Pork and vegetables.

    Saturday, I was up early. The first job was to cut the pork skin into tidy squares and use them to line the bottom of the cassole, fat side down. On top went the bean and vegetable mixture, sans the garlic head and the bouquet garni, and everything went into the oven. Two hours later, I browned about 800 g of saucisses de Toulouse, a large chunk of pork shoulder, cubed, and the pork hock meat, shredded, and buried everything in the bean mixture. Next came the confited duck legs. I drained as much fat off them as I could and arranged them artistically on top of the cassoulet. And no, I didn't do the traditional breadcrumbs-on-top thingy because I wanted the skin on the duck legs to brown and crisp.


     A couple more hours in the oven. By now it was 2 p.m. and we were just getting into our first course, a light salad of greens, chopped green onion, cubed apple and hazelnuts.

Bubbling away in the oven. The cassole and contents were almost too heavy for the wire rack which fell off its moorings seconds after I'd taken the cassoulet out of the oven.

Tah-dah!!!!

    
     The cassoulet was spendiferous if I do say so myself (and everyone else said so too). The best one I've made so far. Next time, I wouldn't change a thing, except to invite a couple more people over and add in two more duck legs. As it is, there's a cassoulet "base" of beautifully seasoned beans waiting in the freezer to use as the foundation for a winter soup--or another batch of cassoulet.
     You want to know what else we had? Cheeses, grapes and figs, and then a small attack on a box of Ladurée macarons that someone had brought us from Paris. And a great deal of big red wines.

Lovely Ladurée macarons. Two dozen, each one different and a little sheet of paper to tell you which was which. We ticked them off as we ate them.

    
    

Beans meanz winter

The two weeks since I last posted have been hugely busy. First we were getting ready for Kate to arrive from Canada on December 9. Then came...well, I'll get to some of that in subsequent posts. The weather has turned truly cold. Checking Dashboard, the handy little computer gizmo that tells me the temperature, I see that it's minus four outside at 11 in the morning. By Tuesday, we'll be back to more normal daytime temperatures in the 9 to 13 degree range. 

   So, we split logs, light the fire, close the shutters, block the draughts and eat warming food which brings me to beans. This part of the Ariège is noted for its haricots blancs. Those of Lavelanet and Pamiers are noted for their flavour with everyone rushing to get their hands on the new crop. "Pour vos cassoulets" says this sign and I can't think of a more appropriate dish on a chilly night. Which reminds me, I have a chunk of salted poitrine in the freezer crying out to get snuggly with a kilo of beans and indecent amounts of garlic, onions and herbs.

Fête de la Noisette--the lunch

The annual lunch that celebrates the hazelnut is one of the high points of September. As communal meals go, this is a record-breaker in terms of size of crowd, and amount of food and wine consumed.

This year 320 people sat down in les halles in Lavelanet and 50 more had to be turned away. As always, the first course was a large slice of foie gras, this year served with pain d'épices and a fig confit. Wine flowed. The young man at the top of this post came around the tables offering seconds. Seconds of foie gras...aren't those words to haunt your dreams?

Next, volunteers deposited cassoulets on the table. As is traditional, we all lined up outside to get servings of meat off the grill, pork this year. Wine continued to flow. After that came cheese and finally dessert. Replacing the usual hazelnut based tarte was a multi-layer cake served, as is traditional, with bottles of blanquette de Limoux and hazelnut liqueur. That's my good friend, Corinne Barthez, serving coffee. 

Cassoulet night

Earlier this week, I volunteered to make a cassoulet for the final farewell dinner before friends go home, and Peter and I take the train to Paris. 

Make that two cassoulets because there were ten of us. 

Thursday, I soaked a kilo of white beans and Friday morning I cooked them with parsley and thyme from the garden. Then, after lunch, I got serious. First I chopped two carrots, two onions, two celery sticks and six garlic cloves, not coarsely, not finely but somewhere in between. After I'd sautéed these in olive oil for a few minutes, I threw in two or three chopped tomatoes (one large and two small). Once everything had softened slightly, I mixed the veggies with the beans. These all fitted in the big copper pot--just. 

Leek leaves went around bay leaves, thyme and parsley, and were tied into two tidy little bundles with the string from the enormous roll--butcher's string I think--that I bought at last Sunday's vide grenier. I buried these in the beans, added chunks of semi-sel pork belly, chicken stock and water, and cooked it all for about two hours until the "soupiness" disappeared but there was still lots of juice. 

Pale sausages and flabby duck skin aren't favourites with anyone. I cut a big coil of saucisse fraîche into manageable lengths and browned them in the frying pan. Friends Wes and Antonya had contributed three big jars of duck confit. I fished the legs out of their yellowy fat (oh yes, I saved it) and browned the legs in the oven which also got rid of excess fat which I also poured into the big glass jar. 

Now, it was time to put it all together using the copper pot and the large pottery cassole. A layer of sausages on the bottom, then the bean mixture, a shake of salt and pepper, and repeat. Finally, I semi-submerged the duck confit chunks. 

Our oven couldn't hold it all so we carefully put the two pots on planks of wood in the rear of the Clio and drove them over to the gîte that would be the site of the evening's revelry. The oven there would only accommodate one pot so the second went across the impasse into the kitchen at the Impasse du Temple, the B and B where some friends were staying. We sprinkled dried bread crumbs on both cassoulets. An hour or so later, dark gold, crispy and bubbling, they came out of the oven and went on the table. See photo of the two cassoulets, empty plates and expectant expressions.

Rainy Day Cassoulet in Carcassonne

Wearing warm sweaters, jackets and resolute expressions, we headed for Carcassonne. Normally it's under an hour's drive but today we swerved and braked hard when we came on a vast vide grenier in Montréal. Too chilly to do this one serious justice but we did come away with an impressive pair of fire irons for five euros. 

By the time we had parked the car, crossed the moat, and were in the cité (the famous walled part of Carcassonne), it was lunch time. Too cold to eat under the plane trees unfortunately but just right for a three-course Sunday lunch at La Maison de Blanquette. 

This is an off-shoot of the original "Maison" in Limoux and, as there, it's a strong supporter of the Sieur d'Arques winery. You get a glass of blanquette while you mull over what you're going to eat and a half-bottle of wine per person included in an already reasonable 14 euro tab. Two went for goat's cheese salad, two for toast spread with a garlic-and-anchovy purée. Three cassoulets, two steak frites. Iles flottantes and clafoutis to finish before we rumbled off, warm and fed to roam around the city.

God, it must have been bleak work patrolling those walls except for the rare moments of fun when you threw boiling oil on invaders down the purpose-designed chutes. No guard-rails anywhere so I suspect falling to one's death was only one of the job hazards. That and avoiding the humungous boulders hurled by giant catapults located outside the city walls. 

The carbo-laden lunch meant we only needed a light frittata for supper.

Cassoulet Day in Castelnaudary

Hot weather and cassoulet aren't obvious partners. But, even though it was 37 degrees, the chance to eat this iconic dish in Castelnaudary, the town where it's said to have been created was too good to pass up. So that's what we did last Saturday along with hundreds of others, at the 9th Fête du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary.

I really like the way that French people believe food and fun should take precedence over mundane things like traffic. Barriers stopped us going into the town centre so we parked in what we hoped would be a shady spot (P.S. it wasn't) and strolled up to the main square. Strung between the plane trees, blue bunting flapped and snapped while increasingly high decibels revealed we were closing in on the promised animation musicale non stop.

Restaurants, cafés, bistros, stalls, stands, everyone had some kind of cassoulet deal going on. What to do? A 15 euro package sounded good to us, especially when it included salad, bread, a cassoulet (with a free cassole--the slant-sided pottery dish that holds it included) dessert (let's not get excited here, it was canned fruit salad) a quarter litre of vin rouge and a cheery server.

Every cassoulet is different. Besides the essential beans, this one held a chunk of duck breast, a length of sausage, couennes (rolls of pork fat) and a piece of coustellou (rather bony pork)--in other words, all the ingredients pictured on the official poster. 

 Everyone sat at long tables under white tents. 

Outside, several kilos heavier, we browsed the stalls selling organic vegetables, honey, bread, hams, wine and crafts, slowly making our way back to the Canal du Midi for the afternoon's entertainment. Young guys teetered out on a long pole suspended over the water and tried to retrieve a French flag. A half dozen or so corporately sponsored  floats held a water battle. All were in costume. We're still trying to figure out why the McDonald's team was dressed as ancient Egyptians.