Cassoulet

Cassoulet is one of those things that, like the lochness monster, seems like the thing of legends. Frenchman reminisce, foodies dream. And me, I'd never have one. But like so many others, I've dreamed out it. So this week, I set out to make it.

My recipe was based on Julia Child's in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Although I had heard from Karen, who once made the same recipe but with what she had instead, you didn't have to remain completely true to the recipe and it would still turn out amazing.

So I put together my list of items, and gleefully crossed them off the freezer inventory list as I pulled them from the depths of the chest freezer.

I started off with this ham roast. We got it in probably 08 or 09 through the Riverview meat CSA. For most of the recipe, I went with half of what was called for, but the ham roast fell about 2/3 of the recipe size.

The ham roast has a little odd-shaped bone in the middle, so I took out the boning knife and went to town. Okay, it was a decent-sized odd-shaped bone.

After removing the bone, the pork was an odd shape and I worried that it would cook unevenly. So I tied it up. It doesn't look so bad!

Then you brown the pork on all sides in a cast iron. Traditional.

You add some onions, carrots, and garlic plus a little herb cachet (parsley, garlic, bay left, thyme). Then you roast it in the oven until it hits 180. Well, since the FDA approves of eating pork at 145 now, I admit that I took it out at 140. Perhaps that my mistake since I found the resulting pork in the cassoulet to not be meltingly tender as I would have wanted. Bad Veronica.

Meanwhile, I had 2 1/2 cups of great northern beans (they'rrrrrre GREAT!) and boiled them for two minutes and then let them soak for an hour. Then I added sliced pork belly and onions and another herb cachet. The pork belly is from Heritage Farms and I had 1 1/2 lbs. Since the recipe called for 1 lb and I was halving it, I sliced the pork belly the long way and took off a third for my recipe.

In reflection, I think the pork belly was way more fat than meat, but high quality fat.

Anyway, you put all that in the pot and let it simmer for an hour and a half.

Although the recipe didn't specifically call for duck, it said you could roast it and add it. What is a cassoulet without duck? So I had bought the last seven legs at Dekalb FM when I was there -- four for Thanksgiving dinner -- so without a plan in mind, I salt and peppered them, browned them in the cast iron, and tossed them into the oven with the pork. I took them out roughly around 120.

Then we moved on to the lamb preparation. We had received a package of something like 12 shoulder chops from Many Fold Farms in our CSA. I had no idea what I would do with such a package, but I needed about 1 lb of lamb meat and the package, with bones, ran roughly 1 1/2 lbs. Sounded perfect.

After the meat had defrosted, I boned all the lamb with my boning knife. I had been drinking so I was very careful, but then I cut myself washing it. Tsk on me.

Anyway. I took the pile of meat, salt and peppered it, and browned it in the cast iron.

Then I took the lamb bones and browned those too. I originally planned to take some pork bones from the freezer, but I ended up with enough just from the lamb.

Then you take the lamb, lamb bones, bay leaf, another herb cachet (same mixture), tomatoes (and I used two Riverview tomatoes that we had frozen from last summer), plus two cups of homemade chicken stock. Oh yeah, and some white wine. I think it was a Pine Ridge chenin blanc. Poor me, I had to drink the rest.

Anyway, you put that into the oven and let it do its thing.

After all these pieces are done, you drain the beans (holding onto the bean cooking liquid in case you need it) and put the beans into a pot and add all the pork and lamb liquid. You let that simmer for five minutes and then sit for ten to absorb flavors.

While that was going on, I prepared all the meat. You can see I cubed the pork, left the lamb chunks, removed the lamb bones, deskinned the duck and then pulled all the meat off the bones and chopped it, sliced the pork belly, and also some Pine Street Market Toulouse sausage (the traditional for cassoulet) which I browned in a pan and then sliced. Pay no attention to the onion in the corner.

Then you are supposed to do layers of alternating beans and meats in the pot. I had enough for one layer of beans, all the meat, and then more beans on top. You add in all the liquid again, and top it off with bean cooking liquid, if needed to have the beans covered. I was lucky. As you can see, the liquid just comes shy of the beans.

You put that in the oven to roast uncovered. Actually, you are supposed to top it with a breadcrumb parsley mixture, but by this time -- about six hours after I started cooking -- I was tired. You are also supposed to break the crust and baste the beans twice during cooking. I didn't do that either.

When the cassoulet came out of the oven, it had this nice crackly top. I scooped out two portions for us to eat -- small ones because I didn't know how rich it would be. You can see that we barely made a dent.

Plated up. The broth was incredibly flavorful. The lamb and duck were fabulous. The pork belly was a bit too fatty but also luscious. The pork was a little tough. I blame myself.

Josh likes the cassoulet very much. I like the flavor, but I also haven't been back for more. Josh had second helpings and I packaged up the rest. We have three tall containers in the fridge.

I picked up the most recent of Jacques Pepin's books this weekend, the one with the 700 of his favorite recipes. One of them calls for a quick couple hour cassoulet. Now that we've gone through the full, I'll try the shorter one.