Chris Amirault

Seems like we're talking about three things (and yes I realize that "reasonable" is relative): (1) Customer makes what we consider to be a reasonable request: "I'm allergic to X; is it possible to have this dish prepared without X?" or the one I make with my seven-year-old, "Can you just plate some pasta with butter and bring cheese? I'd really appreciate it." These requests are made my a diner who has needs that are, I think, pretty easily met and are not an insult to the chef, dish, or ingredient. (2) Customer makes what we consider to be an "unreasonable" request: "Can you make sure that toro sushi is done in the middle?" or, at a high-end restaurant, "I'm on an anti-fat diet. Can you remove all butter, olive oil, etc.? Thanks." Those requests misrecognize the entire point of the dish, meal, or restaurant. Why are you asking for tuna to be cooked all the way through at a sushi joint? Why are you asking for the "fat" to be removed from your foie gras, as if that's possible? (3) Customer attempts to order a dish that is not on the menu. Every restaurant should accommodate (1). Forgive my fascist leanings, but every restaurant that has a sense of integrity and mission should refuse to accommodate (2). (3) depends on whether the kitchen can accommodate it or not, and should be described as such. Al Forno here in Providence treats its Dirty Steaks that way (thick rib eyes cooked directly on the coals of the wood oven): the dish isn't on the menu, but if the coals are burning hot and you know to order it, they'll make it; if you don't know or the coals are a bit low, they won't shut down the ovens for your slab of beef, pal. C'est la vie.

Ok, so.... I went to Whole Foods and got a muscovy duck. Not a moulard (I don't have time to order one from D'Artagnan), which the Saveur cookbook tells me I must have, but a muscovy duck. At least it's not a Long Island duck, which I read somewhere will bring absolute horror to my confit and thus to my cassoulet. I wring my hands with anxious anticipation.... Meanwhile, have you ever tried to find a massive tin of duck fat in Providence? No way, no how. So I go to plan two: the Saveur cookbook seems to suggest that the fat rendered from a single duck's skin is enough to make confit. Skeptical though I am, I'm diving in: I'm gonna render that fat, and I'm gonna salt those duck quarters, and then we'll just see tomorrow if there's enough fat to cover those pieces of duck. If not... I'll buy another duck then flay and render that bird, probably! Meanwhile, does anyone have good recipes for garlic sausage? Or can anyone suggest a good sausage type to buy? I'd really like to make my own.... Busboy, any ideas?!?

Makes sense to me -- why don't we say we'll do cassoulet between now and "early January"? Seems like a good idea to let them trickle in as we make 'em.

OK, let's do cassoulet! I'm happy to facilitate, but I must admit that I tend toward obsessive planning, so please do not treat these suggestions as rules or anything like that. Now, the obsessive planning: First off, I think that we should all weigh in on what recipes we'll be using. I'm going to use the recipe in Saveur Cooks Authentic French for the basic dish. The Larousse recipe, like so many from those tomes, seems a fascinating but vague collection of instructions; the other books I checked have less interesting recipes to me -- especially Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which is far too simplistic for my tastes and includes a bizarre suggestion that you use "Italian sausage." Which brings us to number two: I would like us to talk a bit about ingredients, particularly the sausage (BusBoy, do you have recipes to suggest?) and confit (again, I point you to Culinary Bear's thread on the subject): both ingredients can be purchased, but I think that the fun of cassoulet is connected to making these items from hand if possible. I'm game for making the sausage (if they don't need lengthy curing), but the confit may be trickier, as finding a moulard duck in a day or two is going to test my grocer's mettle. I'm also wondering about bean types, having read suggestions for navy, Great Northern, and a few others. Is anyone going to try to use fresh beans? Third, I think that we should discuss the rest of the menus we'll use, including -- mais oui! -- wine. I'm thinking of making a frisee salad (with the duck cracklings if I make the confit from a whole duck) and serving some good wine, but that's about it. Does anyone have suggestions on an appropriate wine? Fourth, let's set an approximate date. I'm planning to serve this as dinner on New Years Eve, so shall we aim for the end of this week? I know that some people might not be able to do it by then, but if we can try to get it done in the next week or so that would give a critical mass to the experience. And finally, we should probably get into massive arguments about le vrai de vrai cassoulet in either French or English, given that such tussles appear to be part of the making of this dish. (Perhaps next we can tackle French, I mean Freedom, I mean... pommes frites. ) Does that sound like a plan?

Just so long as I can pay-off a French judge or two....

I think that there's real interest in starting with cassoulet, and I'd like to support that interest. But boeuf bourgignon is a worthy later choice, for sure! Just to be clear, I'm not at all advocating a competition of any sort. I think that having a place to talk about the ins and outs of a particular dish or recipe among eGulleteers is the point, not winning or losing. I'm also not sure how that judging would work -- rather like an international skating competition, I'd think!

To those of you who celebrate it, Happy Christmas! (I wish I could also parenthetically say "War is over," like John and Yoko did, but, alas....) Awaiting me downstairs are two pounds of cubed lamb shoulder and three bottle of chianti that my wine merchant tells me are wonderful, so I need to get crackin' on my Xmas stew. Thus, this note will be quick. As much as I like the writer's work and am looking forward to getting Les Halles, my original idea was to select one recipe, just to see how many people turn out the "same thing." However, that idea was provoked not only by the confit thread but also the "authenticity" thread, which is a concept that this project could fiddle with in interesting ways. So I think that we should make a few different cassoulets, including a couple Les Halles. I'll snoop through my other French books (including, I tremble to imagine, Larousse) and try to find another. Julia must've weighed in on cassoulet, too, yes? I feel very strongly, however, that what makes this project compelling is the ability to compare like to like. So (accepting the epistemological limits regarding Platonically authentic dishes -- phew) can we all agree to make something that is trying to be an authentic cassoulet? No lobster (or chipotle, or fig, or calimari, or...), then, yes? Finally, I think that next week is perfect for me. Shall we try to have our results up around the first of the year? It can be our take on black eyed peas, which is, I believe, a favorite New Years dish below the Mason-Dixon line here in the States. Wonderful! I'm so glad that everyone's excited by this!!

I agree that the cassoulet recipe in Les Halles is a great place to start. I don't have my copy of the book (might be under the tree, but i placed an order through Amazon that should arrive within a week). Maybe, as a starting point, someone who has the book can post a listing of the ingredients. (I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't violate eG's copyright policy, btw.) Some of us will have to do some hunting to track down stuff. I also imagine we'll be able to have a spirited discussion about what to or not to use as substitutes for beans, sausage, etc. It will also be interesting to talk about wine pairings -- but I'm getting ahead of myself! Anyone want to get that ingredient list up here?

[This is the first cook-off; click here for the Cook-Off index. -- CA] In Culinary Bear's great thread on confit, Al_Dente mentions that he's thinking about trying Bourdain's cassoulet recipe in January. Turns out I had had the exact same dish in mind (and I finally just ordered Les Halles Cookbook from Amazon, with the eGullet link of course, to be able to use his recipe), and it made me wonder: Every couple of weeks, might it be possible for us to select some recipe, either from eGullet or a well-known cookbook, and all make it, eat it, snap photos of it, and compare notes and pix? I'm thinking of more involved dishes (like cassoulet). Like the Wine of the Week gang, different people could get tagged to facilitate, nag, and so on. I suggest this because I'm usually the only person in my non-virtual life who would be compelled to discuss the absurdly picayune points of cooking, but I can imagine a large number of similar obsessives around eGullet. If enough people are game, I think it would be a blast! So, what do you think? Any takers?

Great stuff! I join the others in anticipation for the second stage! And, for the US folks, does any one have a duck fat supplier for the home cook? I found D'Artagnan and Club Sauce offer it, but nowhere nearly as cheap as you have here, Culinary Bear (8 lbs for 11 pounds?!).

Does that book, or any other, have a rough guide to equivalences? Can you substitute based solely on percentage?

Seems that the trick there is trying to come up with a suitably grey sauce under which you can hide the little buggers....

I bought my partner one of these 99% Scharffen Berger babies at Sur Le Table last month. Having never had utterly unsweetened chocolate before, and having rarely the chance to cook with such great stuff, she immediately asked out loud what the heck to do with the thing that would do it justice. Just the sort of question that belongs on eGullet! So I ask those of you with experience: how do you treat the 99% stuff? What adjustments do you make? Any particular recipes that benefit from such wonderment? In advance, thanks!

I admit to replying to this thread just because I'm DYING to know what this is and want to bump it up to the top of the "New Posts" list! I have googled trying to find it but no luck. Surely some eGulleteer knows! Maybe you should post something in the Elsewhere Asia/Pacific forum....

Keema Mattar! This isn't the recipe I use (which is from Madhur Jaffrey), but it's close enough. The great thing about this is that I usually have all the ingredients, including frozen ground meat and frozen peas. It's a great thing to put on top of a mound of steaming basmati rice....

Thanks very much, Chef Adrià! I'm grateful for your efforts -- and for your generous, collaborative humanity. We here at eGullet strive to create an informed yet supportive community across our many differences. Your comments about food, cooking, and people are inspiring. And please do enjoy your sabbatical! You deserve it!

On my last shop before my partner returns home from two weeks away, Whole Foods dangled a dry-cured rib eye in front of me, and even at $17/lb I had to grab it. Sauteed that salted and peppered puppy in butter to rare while some haricot verts and, a few minutes later, a bunch of fat shiitake roasted in EVOO and salt at 500 in the oven. Washed it down with a Big House Red. Damned skippy, that.

Having just watched Supersize Me for the first time, I am now thinking that McD's et al will soon have to replace the "heavy eaters" (at least once a week) and the "super heavy eaters" (three two four times a week) that make up about 60% and 20% of their customers, respectively, since those folks will be dead, suffering from major systems failure, or victims of late-onset diabetes in a few short years. So I think one next major trend will somehow involve fast foods that can bring new customers in to McDs. Happy Meals do this pretty well, of course, but when it takes kids about 20 years to grow up but it only takes a handful of years to off a regular customer.... I know just the thing, but since I assume Ronald his own self reads eGullet, I'm not sharing. Just doing my part to bring down the Evil Empire. edited because curly quotes persecute me -- CA

I think andiesenji and BusBoy are onto something here when they compare "traditional" and "authentic": I seem to remember a scuffle about authenticity and tradition that was about the very subject of cassoulet. I'm bit foggy on it, but I believe that the last two versions of Larousse Gastronomique got some heat about required ingredients, and the tiffs about authenticity were settled by producing certain claims about regional traditions and thus dodging the issue about one authentic master recipe. As andiesenji's two friends and their sausages indicate, of course, cassoulet is one of those dishes that provokes bitter arguments about the many master recipes around, and thus demonstrates how deeply held ingredient rules can be perceived as flexible by some and as utterly inflexible by others. Many years ago, when the Al Forno spin-off restauarant, Lucky's, was still around (and you could get their astonishing dirty steak all the time -- but that's another thread), they had a cassoulet with most of the usual ingredients, but the duck wasn't confit; it had been braised in fat or something. I had a foodie friend, a regular at Pot Au Feu, the local French joint, who sniffed, "That's not cassoulet. It's beans." Not authentic, not traditional, just... not. edited for clarification -- CA

You know, I think of myself as pretty securely high on the food chain and generally and qualm-free about food, one of those eGulleteers who not only eats anything but enjoys most that he'll eat. I am not very squeamish, either. I have pointed at cute little rabbits, watched throats being cut and their skin being pulled off, and carried their warm, muscular bodies home with me; I have killed and halved lobsters, prying the still jerking raw meat out of the tail. I'm no hunter and have never lived on a farm, but I like to think that I can't really be freaked out about food. When I just saw this photo, depicting what those velvety, gelatinous chicken feet look like before they arrive on the dim sum cart -- -- I immediately had primal flashbacks to head-spinning, stomach-raveling moments during "Creature Double Feature" and embarked on an extended anxiety attack, with visuals, involving avian toenails. Cool Multi-Culti Foodie-Man just left the building to dry heave behind a dumpster. Ignominiously yours, etc.

This reminds me of a recent family gathering. My dad's massive family is from Nova Scotia, and they make this dish called "rappie pie," which involves lots of pork fat, chicken, pork fat, onion, bacon, and potato. And pork fat. So there were something like eight trays of the stuff, and each one looked different, and everyone was chatting about how could you not crisp the pork rinds, and you have too much chicken.... I don't think that they were arguing about authenticity, though; I think that they thought that ALL of them were authentic. But different. And this is just one family came down from Novie eighty years ago. Who knows what happens nowadays at parish socials up there..... PS. Here's a recipe from an Acadian web site. Not enough pork fat, if you ask my family....

Inquiring minds want to know! What might move Mario down toward authenticity -- and who's standing there with arms crossed, proud in the knowledge that she or is is, truly, utterly authentic?

Seems a shame not to use drippings for the pudding, and the butter substitute seems wrong-headed to me. Why not roast a prime rib between now and the meal, save the drippings to bring with, and have some nice sandwiches for a week? Of course, this is the sort of absurd suggestion that I believe to be practical, so feel free to ignore.

Given that there are no true origins against which one can test "originality" (those cave people roasting tubers and small beasties on spits didn't write down their recipes, and everything since then has been a tweak of some sort or another), and given that pretty much most cuisine can be shown to be a revision or adaptation of some prior cuisine -- maybe Jinmyo's definition has a pleasingly jovial and comfortable relativism to it....

Supermarkets around here (including mid-range and high-end places) seem to be selling more and more food prepared in the store. Whole Foods has two stores here in Providence, and the second one has a massive salad bar, sushi, soup, sandwich, roast chicken, etc. etc. etc. area, far bigger than the store built a decade ago. Is store-made take home still booming where you live? edited to clarify clunky verbiage