We had been walking the walls of this very touristy but beautiful, fairy tale city on a hill, when we decided to drop into a plain looking cafe.
The menu was entirely in French, and I asked the waitress, "Pardon, ce qui est la spécialité de la maison?" (Excuse me, what is the specialty of the house?) This turns out to be one of the most useful phrases to know, in any language.
With a smile and a tsk-tsk, she whisked away the menus, was soon back with un litre de vin rouge, de la maison and shortly after a steaming earthenware crock of cassoulet was plunked down in front of me.
The entire day, the fire roaring in the huge open fireplace, the gentle guitar music and the castle looming just out the window... it was a magical meal.
When we came back home, I Googled cassoulet recipes, and after reading through them and thinking hard about what I had experienced, I used Michael Lewis' recipe as a base, added some Julia Childs and Anthony Bourdain, and made a cassoulet during Christmas. With a few changes, and varying amounts of ingredients, I make a cassoulet every year, and they seem to taste better and better.
You can Google recipes, but you want to look for "traditional ones, that take a few days to cook and "improve over time."
That is the one huge ingredient you need for this dish: TIME.
From Wikipedia: Cassoulet French pronunciation: [ka. su. le], is a rich, slow-cooked casserole originating in the south of France.
The region once known as the province of Languedoc is the traditional homeland of cassoulet, especially the towns of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Castelnaudary, the town which claims to be where the dish originated. All are made with white beans (haricots blancs or lingots), duck or goose confit, sausages, and additional meat. In the cassoulet of Toulouse, the meats are pork and mutton, the latter frequently a cold roast shoulder. The Carcassonne version is similar but doubles the portion of mutton and sometimes replaces the duck with partridge. The cassoulet of Castelnaudary uses a duck confit instead of mutton.
The dish is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round, earthenware pot with slanting sides.
INGREDIENTS
You need two days to make, a couple days to re-bake, and good friends to help eat it.
This should make about two casserole dishes full, or enough to fill one of those ten quart enameled (cast-iron) pots.
Some years I make more - just buy more of everything and throw it in! click -->
6-8 duck breasts
2 pounds thick sliced bacon
1 pound lamb chops or shanks, bone in.
12 pork sausages
- Note: I get all the meat at our local butchers, not the supermarket. -
2 pounds dry white beans (Great Northern)
fresh parsley
fresh thyme
5 whole cloves
12 garlic cloves
3 large yellow onions
salt (I use sea salt)
pepper
1 cup rendered goose fat, or half oil, half butter
4 large tomatoes
5 bay leaves
1 quart beef stock
1 orange
1 bottle dry white wine (an American Sauvignon Blanc is just the ticket)
bread crumbs (I use Panko)
cheesecloth
two casserole dishes (with covers) or a 10 quart pot
Large glass of red wine to drink while you cook.
French music
Day One - The Long Day
Salt and pepper the duck. Set it aside.
Salt and pepper the lamb. Set it aside.
Get your glass of red wine. Is the music on?
Lay out some cheese cloth. You are going to make a bundle of herbs, called a boquet garni. This should make you feel more French. To make it:
Put a dozen parsley stems, a big sprig of thyme, the 5 whole cloves, one bay leaf and 6 garlic cloves on the cheese cloth and tie it into a bundle. Voilà !
Save the rest of the parsley for day four.
After the beans have soaked for an hour it is time to season them. Add four slices of bacon, one onion (quartered), the boquet garni, and salt to the beans. Simmer the beans, covered, for an hour and a half.
Cool them, uncovered.
After they are cooled, cover the pot and put it in the refrigerator overnight.
Meanwhile, while the beans are simmering... Better grab another sip of wine...
Heat the goose fat (or half oil - half butter) over medium heat until it smokes, then add lamb chops and brown them. This should take about 5 minutes per side. Set aside.
Brown the duck in the same skillet (or pot) and set it aside also.
Slice up the two remaining onions and brown these. This takes about 20 minutes. Be sure to stir them.
Peel and chop the tomatoes (Boil water, drop them in for a minute, then transfer into cold water. The skin slips right off.)
Now you have to flavor the meat. Sometimes this takes a couple hours, sometimes it takes all night. This year the meat simmered, on low, from 5:00 in the afternoon until 4:00 the next morning. Just saying...
I grab my biggest pot, and start layering in the lamb, duck, onions, and tomatoes. As I do this I add pepper, and grate in a little orange zest on each layer, and bury the remaining four bay leaves and 6 garlic cloves somewhere in the middle. Add the beef stock, all the wine except for a "sample glass" for you, and hand squeeze the orange juice in.
Get it simmering, and just let it sit and simmer, uncovered, until the liquids are reduced down to the level of the meat.
Cool it to room temperature and refrigerate, covered, overnight.
Day Two
Look in the bean pot. Julia Childs says, "...Now is the time to drain the beans..."
Well, maybe. Sometimes there is something to drain, sometimes it is a solid mass of beans. At any rate, if you drain the beans, save the water.
Remove and discard the boquet garni and onions from the beans.
Remove the bacon and fry it in the leftover sausage fat. Get rid of the excess fat, but leave the pan scraps (fond) in the bottom of the pan.
Now, open up the meat pot. Carefully pull out the meat. Discard the bones and 4 bay leaves. Save everything else.
Next, I bring the liquids in the meat pot to a simmer, and moosh up any solid tomatoes or garlic as I stir. Use some of the bean water to deglaze the sausage and bacon fond from the pan. Add this to the meat pot. Turn off the stove and let the liquid start to cool.
You should have a soupy sort of liquid; stuff settling to the bottom, liquid on top reduced and thick, but still runny.
Preheat the oven to 350°
FINAL ASSEMBLY
Line the casseroles and/or pot with uncooked bacon, like a pie crust.
Spread a layer of beans on top of the bacon.
Layer on some sausage and cooked bacon.
Next, another layer of beans, then top that with a layer of lamb and duck.
Now, use a spoon or ladle and scoop out some of the thicker stuff settled in the bottom of the meat pot "soup." This stuff is the mooshed tomatoes, onions, garlic and whatever. Spread some of this over the surface before building another set of layers.
Don't forget to build up the bacon "crust" around the sides as you layer in the meat and beans.
Be sure when you get near the top, that your top layer is beans. Keep the top of the beans about a quarter to half inch below the top of the pot/casserole.
Add liquid from the meat pot to fill in the voids until the top of the beans are just starting to be submerged. If you run out of meat pot liquid, use the bean pot liquids.
Remember to save any remaining liquids.
Stick the pot(s) uncovered in the 350° oven for 60 minutes, then reduce the oven to 250° and bake it another 60 minutes.
I usually put the pot on a baking sheet with sides, in case the liquid boils over.
Pull out the pot of cassoulet and let it cool.
This is the hardest step of all. I try a sample of it, but then I let it cool all the way down. As it is cooling, if you notice the liquid levels are down (and they will be) top it back up with any remaining liquids from the meat or bean pots.
Cover and stick it in the refrigerator.
DAY THREE:
The next day, uncover and stick the cassoulet back into the 350° oven. Bake it again for 90 minutes. Pull it out, take a sample, top the liquids and cool. Cover and refrigerate.
You will start eating tomorrow, day four.
Day Four: Fini !
It is finally time to eat!
Pull out and uncover the cassoulet. This time spread a good layer of bread crumbs over the top of the beans. Add maybe 6 small, thin slices of butter spread out on top.
Stick it into the 350° oven. Bake it once again for 45 minutes, then use a spoon and break the crust up (yes, this will mess it up, but it lets the liquids ooze out onto the top) then stick it back in to bake for another 45 minutes.
Pull it out, spread chopped parsley on top, and serve!
Now, when I make the big pot of it, we have a lot left over. So, after eating, kind of stir the remaining cassoulet a little to even it out, trying to keep the beans on top. Top off again with the liquids. By now, or the fifth or sixth day you will run out of meat and bean pot liquids, so use wine, Yum! Or beef stock, Good! Or water. Let the cassoulet cool. Cover and refrigerate.
The next day make a new bread crumb crust on top if you wish and cook it again. It only gets better with each cooking.
WINE RECOMMENDATIONS: Updated 5 January 2014.
This year we tried four wines with the cassoulet and the results were interesting.
I Googled wine recommendations and they were all over the place: one said, "...to match the cassoulet's intensity, go for a hearty red with plenty of personality, dark fruit flavors, and earthy, spicy notes..." while another stated, "...the wines we’re recommending all shared a soft, comforting mouth-feel. None were especially complex or multi-layered, but all were very enjoyable. Our conclusion, then, was that fancy, powerhouse reds will disappoint with cassoulet. Instead, look for soft, medium-weight wines that feel silky or velvety, their texture echoing that of the long-cooked beans in the dish..."
So, rather than waste a lot of time reading, we decided to waste time eating and drinking.
We all like reds, and two of us really prefer the bigger reds. So we tried what we hoped would be a variety of French or French style wines.
In the end, we ended up agreeing with the second opinion I noted above: the softer wines. So a link to that web site, Wine Review Online, is included below.
Here are the wines we tried and why, and then the one we chose as best.
And yes, we did finish the others, and even the "worst" of them was great. But we wanted the greatest!
First, I picked a St. Francis Rockpile Red, 2008.
We got this after a wine tasting one year, and the grapes were slightly damaged by a fire nearby. The wine had a very slight smoky taste to it which I thought, when I tasted it, would be perfect on a cold night with hot cassoulet. So I set it aside. The wine is a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Merlot. This was our second favorite of the four.
We also picked a Thomas Laurent 2007 French Bordeaux.
This was a gift from a friend, and we saved it figuring a good French wine had to be great with a French meal. This was the winner. It was understated, and the food just really brought out the best of the wine, and the wine highlighted the flavours of the cassoulet.
Third, we tried a local wine, Alger Vineyards Lusty Red, one of our favorite table wines. It is primarily a Petite Sirah, blended with Syrah, Zinfandel and Orange Muscat. This one, while we all like it with meals in general, was our least favorite with this meal. It was perhaps too big; at any rate it clashed, so we ended up drinking it with dessert.
The next day we opened a bottle of JM Cellars 2009 Margaret's Vineyard Estate Red, from Walla Walla. This is a very rich, smooth wine, almost velvety, and the pre-eating drink was just fantastic, in the lingering smell of the cassoulet. But, after eating a few bites of the cassoulet and then taking another drink, the smoothness disappeared and a kind of bitter end came on the wine. Gail didn't notice it as much, but I set mine aside, and carried on with water. Then, after dinner, I enjoyed a nice glass of this wine. We chose it because the label says it is a "...Bordeaux varietal" made of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cab Franc, Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot and Carménère.
*About the Best: Cassoulet, Dakaro, Eating, and Friends
Well, after the initial tasting, we decided to keep exploring wine options.
First, we took some cassoulet to our friends in Sacramento, where we had two French wines with it (click on photo above). The wines were good, but somehow uninspired, not the match we were looking for.
So, we called up our friends, David and Kathy Roth of Dakaro Vineyards, and they agreed to supply the wine if we supplied the cassoulet. Kathy and Steve brought the salad and chocolate, the Roths brought over four bottles of wine, I baked up the unopened pot of cassoulet for the fourth time and we had a great, long evening of eating, drinking and talking.
We started with a white wine new to us: Turkovich 2011 Estate White Blend, from Winters, California. We looked at each other in surprise; Steve and I didn't even know there were wineries near Winters. David gave the wines a rave review, and sure enough, the Roussanne / Viognier blend was crisp, clean, perfectly balanced and complimented the tomato, basil, balsamic and Parmesan - Reggianito bruschetta we made as an appetizer. David thought the perfect crispness of the bread was what set it off, and I thought the play of the wine against the basil and balsamic was the ticket. At any rate, the wine and bruschetta combo was a real winner. Looks like we will be taking a tasting trip to Winters soon.
We moved on to the salad, cassoulet, and the three Dakaro wines.
First up was the 2010 California Tempranillo. This is a good, solid wine on its own, but the cassoulet brought out a kind of harsh end taste to the wine. Not a good match. BUT... the really really weird thing was, after we had finished the other wines and cassoulet, before dessert, we went back to revisit the Tempranillo and it was an excellent wine to finish the meal with. Standing alone, without the food, it was once again a smooth, rich, good drinking wine.
We next poured a small sample of the 2011 Shasta County Cabernet Franc. Before we even tasted the wine, the nose alone told us this was going to be a great match, and we were not disappointed. The wine opened up the flavors of the cassoulet, and the meal opened up the flavors of the wine. All in all it was a very complementary match.
The third wine was the light and drinkable 2011 Shasta County Big Spring Obsidian, a red wine blend. Once again, the smell told the story and it was a great one. In this case the wine seemed to "sweeten" the cassoulet, to provide a kind of counter-point to the flavors.
So the debate came down to trying to decide which was the better of two great matches: David thought that this would be the clear winner if it was opened up a bit earlier, so we all swirled and tried to aerate the wine. I really liked the Cab Franc and the Obsidian for the different ways they worked with the cassoulet, but upon revisiting I really preferred the Cab Franc. At any rate, we found two really good wines to go with the meal.
And so the evening passed slowly as we ate and swirled, drank and debated...
...and the really great news is that I checked our wine closet, and we have some more Dakaro Cabernet Franc tucked away to go with the left over cassoulet!