Baked Bean Stew -- *Cassoulet De Castelnaudary* --
Keys:
Yield: 10
Ingredients:
First
Cooking:-
1 1/2 lb white beans (those from Soissons are held to be
best)
4 oz fresh pork skin rolled up and tied
1/2 lb cubed salt pork belly
2 x carrots, scraped and sliced
1 x onion, peeled and stuck with 6 cloves
3 clv garlic, peeled
1 bn fresh herbs: parsley, thyme, rosemary, fennel, bay
leaf, tied together
6 x black peppercorns, crushed Second
Cooking:-
1 x leg of preserved goose or duck (confit), with its
dripping (1/4 of a fresh bird can substitute)
1 lb boned, rolled, and tied shoulder of lamb (optional,
but it may substitute for the goose)
1/2 lb lean pork cut into large pieces
1/2 lb fresh pork sausage (saucisse de Toulouse or any
garlic-flavored fresh pork sausage)
3 clv garlic, crushed
2 x onions, chopped
2 lrg tomatoes, skinned and chopped (or an 8-ounce can of
tomatoes)
1/2 lb dried spicy garlic sausage
Salt and pepper
Method:
"Mme. Escrieu, sturdy mother of four strapping sons, lived with her
family, two pigs, a dozen rabbits, a cow, three bird dogs, a yardful of
chickens and guinea fowl, and a loftful of plump pigeons, in one of the
farmhouses near my cottage in the Languedoc. Madame, a massively built
matriarch, told me she made a cassoulet every two weeks in the winter
months for her family's Sunday luncheon - never for the evening dinner,
as at least six hours were needed to digest it. More often would have
been too much even for their gargantuan appetites.
Her method began with the preparation of her own confit d'oie made from
goose or duck fattened for foie gras, but from which the precious liver
had been removed and potted. The down from the birds had already been
sterilized in the oven and used to restuff the matrimonial featherbed. I
watched her construct her mighty masterpiece.
"The cassoulet, the archetypical peasant meal, is a controversial dish.
Food writers, culinary scholars, and restaurant chefs have been plucking
and worrying at it for years. The cassoulet, quite simply, is the
creature of its maker: a balance of habit, necessity, availability, and
as with all the best peasant cooking, the special genius of the cook.
The cassoulet is unusual in that most of its ingredients are home
prepared pantry items which demonstrate the cook's abilities in depth.
The perfect cassoulet can only spring from the perfect larder. Even the
cook's good night's sleep on her well-stuffed goose-feather bed can make
all the difference.
"Toulouse, where the subject has entered the more rarified air of
*gastronomie*, insists on the addition of a length of fresh Toulouse
sausage and leg of mutton to the stew. Carcassonne adds both mutton and
partriges - and brooks no deviation. Others add what they judge to be
their essentials. I put my money on Mme. Escrieu."
Time: Start a day ahead; 30 to 40 minutes plus 4 hours cooking
You will need a heavy saucepan, a frying pan, and a cassole or toupin,
or your favorite large earthenware pot with a lid. Check the beans for
little bits of gravel, and then put them to soak overnight in cold
water.
The next day, drain the beans and put them into a saucepan with the rest
of the "first cooking" ingredients. Cover everything with fresh water,
bring to a boil, and skim off the gray foam which rises. Turn down the
heat and simmer the beans for an hour, until they are soft but still
whole, adding more boiling water if necessary.
Meanwhile, prepare the meats in the "second cooking" group. Put the
preserved leg of goose or duck into a frying pan and melt off the
drippings. Take out and reserve the leg itself. Or prepare the piece of
fresh bird by broiling it gently for 10 minutes on each side until the
fat runs (put these drippings into the frying pan). If you're using
lamb, fry it until the outside is caramelized. Fry the pork with the
garlic in the goose drippings, until browned. Remove and reserve them.
Fry the onions. Drain off the fat which remains and save it for the
finishing.
When the beans are ready, take out the onion and the bunch of herbs.
Untie and lay the pork skin (with the fat side down) in the base of the
earthenware casserole. Layer the beans with the meats, onions, tomatoes,
and garlic sausage into the casserole, finishing with a layer of beans.
>From now on it is only a matter of oven time. Long, slow cooking is the
trick. Cover the pot and put it in a preheated 250F oven for 2 hours (if
the beans get too dry, pour in a little boiling water - the beans will
harden if you use cold water).
At the end of this time, take the lid off the casserole for the final
stage, which will take another hour (completing the four hours).
Pour a tablespoonful of the melted goose fat over the surface of the
casserole. Increase the oven heat to 325F and return the dish uncovered
to the oven. It will take half an hour to form a beautiful crust. Break
this with a spoon and stir it into the beans. Mme.
Escrieu maintained it is this operation which gives cassoulet
authenticity. On the final stirring, taste, and adjust the seasoning
with salt and pepper. Leave for the final half hour. Now you reap the
reward of your patience: beneath the golden crust the meats will be
tender and fragrant and the beans melted into a delicious creamy mass.
Serve the cassoulet with a strong red wine - perhaps that of Cahors.
M.Escrieu still held the license, from his father and his father before
him, to distill his own walnut-leaf flavored eau-de-vie - which made a
fine digestif after his good lady's masterpiece.
A green salad completes the meal, together with a small piece of a
pungent goat's cheese such as that supplied to the Escriux from a cousin
in the nearby Montagne Noire.
Suggestions: The cassoulet can be made the day before, but give it an
hour in a half in a gentle (250F) oven to reheat and crisp the crust.
If you have no preserve goose, omit it. Mme. Escrieu did not always
include it either. Use good lard instead of the goose drippings.
If you would like a particularly crackly crust, scatter freshly made
white bread crumbs over the surface of the beans for the final crisping.
Stir 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh herbs (parsley, chives, tarragon)
into the stew when you stir in the crust for the last time.
Pork can replace lamb, or both fresh meats can be omitted, or replaced
by fresh all-meat pork sausage. Mme. Escrieu would only add (and indeed
only had) the fresh sausage just after the annual pig killing.
Mme. Escrieu would sometimes replace the fresh meat with a scrag end of
one of her home-dried hams, particularly toward the end of the winter
when supplies were running down.
~Angelique~
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