Cook-off 1: Cassoulet

[jgm]

May I make a request? I've never made anything this ambitious before, and I live in an area of the country in which even procuring the ingredients would be an ordeal. (I've yet to find a decent local source for good sausage, for example, so obviously I'm going to have to mail order it, and other than Dean & Deluca, I don't even know where to begin. As for duck...I have no idea.) Therefore, I'm going to sit this one out and just enjoy reading.

Since I've never made sausage or confit either...

Anyone with a camera who's willing to take pictures of the making of the confit and the sausage, plus the rest of the cassoulet, would be contributing to the education of a very eager student. I promise to hold onto your every word and pixel.

How about posting your progress along the way? You'd forever have a special place in my heart.

[Busboy]

I'm in.  I received Bouchon just yesterday, so I'll be using that.  I've never done cassoulet, and have to confess that I don't even know what it all involves....

But I'm still in.  :-)  Oh, and I have a container of liquid gold - duck fat liberated from Xmas eve dinner - that I brought home with me back to NM.  Hee!

Andrea

http://tenacity.net

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There's no cassoulet recipe in Bouchon, unfortunately.

[judiu]

Is anyone else absolutely horrified at the thought of 'lobster cassoulet'?  I'm almost at the stage of not eating in places that have it on the menu.

My tuppence worth :  lamb, confit duck, couennes, sausage, belly pork.  Bear is a crumb advocate.

And if you can't use your breath to defrost your car door lock the next morning, there wasn't enough garlic in it.

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Lobster cassoulet? Brrrr!

What's "couennes?" It sounds like it might be French for "cojones", but I don't know if they'd go in a cassoulet!

Lovin' your thoughts on the garlic!

[little ms foodie]

May I make a request?  I've never made anything this ambitious before, and I live in an area of the country in which even procuring the ingredients would be an  ordeal.  (I've yet to find a decent local source for good sausage, for example, so obviously I'm going to have to mail order it, and other than Dean & Deluca, I don't even know where to begin. As for duck...I have no idea.) Therefore, I'm going to sit this one out and just enjoy reading.

Since I've never made sausage or confit either...

Anyone with a camera who's willing to take pictures of the making of the confit and the sausage, plus the rest of the cassoulet, would be contributing to the education of a very eager student.  I promise to hold onto your every word and pixel.

How about posting your progress along the way?  You'd forever have a special place in my heart. 

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You can buy your duck and sausage products from here

[Chris Amirault]

Anyone with a camera who's willing to take pictures of the making of the confit and the sausage, plus the rest of the cassoulet, would be contributing to the education of a very eager student.  I promise to hold onto your every word and pixel.

How about posting your progress along the way?  You'd forever have a special place in my heart. 

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Sure! I am hoping to do just that, starting tomorrow. In the meanwhile, check out Culinary Bear's amazing thread on making confit, which meets your standards exactly.

[Chris Amirault]

The short answer is that I don't have a garlic sausage recipe, either of my own invention or in any of the cookbooks around the house.  As with my approach to so much else in life and in the kitchen, my approach to sausage-making is, ahem, somewhat undisciplined.  If you held a gun to my head -- or a large glass or Corbiers in front of me -- I'd probably start with a decent mild Italian sausage recipe, reduce or eliminate the sage and fennel seed, and add in a good shot of cumin and coriander -- and extra garlic, of course. 

The long answer is that there is little guidance that I can find, but work is slow right now and I'd be happy to spend a couple of days knocking around to see what I can come up with.  The usual suspects are of little help: Bourdain calls only for "pork sausage;" Craig Claiborn's old New York Times Cookbook calls for "garlic or Polish sausage;" Julia gives a recipe for susage cakes spiced only with allspice, bay, cognac and a small clove of garlic; my boys Jacques and TK got nothin'.

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Thanks, Busboy -- I'll be happy to see what you find. I think I'm going to take a crack at making them based on your suggestions here.

[Chris Amirault]

I'm a bit torn about the sausage situation. I was going to make the confit myself, but the sausage, I'm not so sure. Seems more like a commodity than the confit....

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If I could find decent garlic sausage here, I'd use it, but I'm not finding any. As for the KA attachment:

[P]erhaps I'll see if I can get the proper attachment for my Kitchen Aid to grind the meat and fill the casings. Does anyone know what this will cost? My Kitchen Aid is a hand-me-down older model, so I'm concerned about whether or not I can get the right accessory.

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I'm pretty sure that the attachment I have (gotten off of eBay) is standard for all the mixers. It fits onto the front where that little metal KitchenAid cover flips up. But I'm not sure -- sorry.

What do we think? Must the sausage (and the confit for that matter) be made from scratch? Will purchasing ready made ingredients result in penalties or disqualification? 

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I certainly hope not! We can disqualify the disqualifier for displaying such intolerance! I would argue that greater variety is the way to go, particularly given the limted availability of certain items in this dish.

Also, I'll go ahead and make this offer. If you're out there, Mr Bourdain, you are of course invited. 

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Beat you to the punch, Al; I PMed him about it already. Perhaps he can solve our sausage dilemma....

[Ling]

I'm in for the cassoleut recipe too, but I'll probably be making it sometime later in January since I still have a few holiday dinners this week and I'm going away for a weekend soon.

[bleudauvergne]

I will also be doing this in January - When schedules are back in swing and more relaxed for planning. I will not be making the sausages at home.

[Chris Amirault]

Got the duck confit going. I had a 4 lb muscovy duck, which is apparently not as fat as a moulard duck -- but I got plenty of fat and skin off of it:

That's now in a 350 oven rendering. (I have to hold myself back from eating every one of those skin cracklings and searing my tongue in the process!) I can't quite tell yet, but I think I'm going to have enough fat to submerge the pieces, if barely, tomorrow. (Update: I got 1 1/2 cups of duck fat.) Here's the duck, quartered and sea-salted:

If you look carefully, you can see that the left breast is a bit nicked up; getting that duck skin off is a pain in the butt.

So the duck pieces are in the fridge, the skin's nearly done, and the frame and wings are simmering in a stock pot. That's it for today, I think. Tomorrow I'm going to take a crack at those sausages, if I can find casings.

edited to add the quantity of duck fat I obtained -- ca

Edited December 30, 2004 by chrisamirault (log)

[Jensen]

I've reconsidered making my cassoulet.

I had to choose between yummy duck fatty food (i.e., the cassoulet) and maintaining my weight loss. Weight loss won out.

So, I'm going to have to wait until the next cook-off. (Of course, I'm assuming that we'd all like this to be a regular thing.)

Chrisamirault...what's on the books for February?

[fryguy]

A "Toulouse-style sausage", as well as a bunch of other sausages, is available from:

http://www.frenchselections.com/database/d...dhunt.hts+G540+

Edited to say, I'm not affiliated, nor have I eaten the sausage in question.

Edited December 30, 2004 by fryguy (log)

[little ms foodie]

alright! duck legs are confit'd (is that a word?) and beans are soaking overnight!

I'm a bit short on duck fat. Do you think I can use a little bit of the fat that is holding the duck legs? I really don't want to go buy more! The fat was used to cook them and is now storing them in the fridge.

Also I have been reading the duck confit thread and it's interesting that the times for duck confit are slow and low where as in the Les Halles book it was 1 hour at 350F. Any comments from those who normally make either?

[fou de Bassan]

Inspired by this thread, I am now about halfway through the process. I am sticking to the recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So, no duck or goose as I only had about one leg worth of confit in the fridge, although I might throw that in fwiw. The pork and mutton are cooked and cut up and waiting in cold storage as are the beans. The house smelled incredible today. Tomorrow the sausages and lamb in stock then final assembly and baking on Saturday.

Little ms.foodie, I do not have les halles and so cannot say anything about that method. I have always found the low and slow method to give reliably unctuous results.

Chrisamirault, thanks for proposing this dish, you made me do something about this constant craving for cassoulet.

[Chris Amirault]

I'm a bit short on duck fat. Do you think I can use a little bit of the fat that is holding the duck legs? I really don't want to go buy more! The fat was used to cook them and is now storing them in the fridge.

Also I have been reading the duck confit thread and it's interesting that the times for duck confit are slow and low where as in the Les Halles book it was 1 hour at 350F. Any comments from those who normally make either?

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I urge you to visit the confit thread, where Paula Wolfert has dropped by to provide a slew of useful answers to just these sorts of questions. My sense is that the texture of the confit depends very much on maintaining a low cooking temperature for quite a while, which would make 1 hr at 350F too fast and hot. Perhaps this is one of the cut corners to which Chef B refers in his introductions to the recipes?

[Chris Amirault]

Made the sausages today. I used the basic proportions from Aidell's meat book and the tips from Culinary Bear. It turned into an exhausting process just shopping for everything; I couldn't find butt and had to settle for a whole pork shoulder, which required trimming and boning.

So here are the basic ingredients, with about 2 lb ground pork meat and a bit under 1/2 lb of ground fat; some thyme, salt, pepper, cumin, and coriander; five minced garlic cloves and a minced onion, sauteed in a bit of duck fat and cooled.

And here's a blurry (sorry!) shot of the stuffing process, for which I used the KitchenAid attachment.

That went really well, but was time consuming, and I'm a bit afraid that there's air in the sausages.... But I'm just a nervous nelly about this process, increasingly.

Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that my gently simmering confit is going to be ok -- that has me stressed out, too. I keep fantasizing about old French men wearing strange hats tasting my casoulet and deeming it "Merde!"

Happy New Year! More in 2005.

[little ms foodie]

beans, pork belly, pork rind and aromatics are simmering on the stove in preparation for tomorrows meal. I'm doing this before I head out to a party later, probably will smell like pork. I'm sure I'll be a hit with all the guys! haha!

[Chris Amirault]

Well, the house is now suffused with a heady, seductive, almost sexual aroma that I can't particularly describe -- garlic and fat and duck roasted into some sort of savory ambrosia? -- which makes the last three days of rather obsessive cooking worth it, let me tell you! I was beginning to lose faith last night.... Now all that's left are three hours tonight and another three or four tomorrow, breaking the crust regularly.

Here's the method I used, which basically combined aspects of Les Halles with Saveur Cooks Authentic French.

Using LH, I cooked up a few ham hocks with an onion and aromatics until they were tender:

I also cooked the beans, which soaked last night, with two strips of fat back from the shoulder, the huge bone from same, and aromatics, in diluted duck stock (from the frame the other day):

Then I used some of the duck/pork fat to sautee the sausage, to which I added (following Saveura puree of water, onion, and a full head of garlic:

Here's what the duck confit looked like before I boned it, trying to keep it in big chunks:

And when it was all done this afternoon, here was the mise en place for cassoulet assembly (note the Diet Coke off to the left, a pathetic attempt, along with some celery and carrot sticks, to feel as if I'm preparing to eat something other than, well, cassoulet):

Layer one of the cassoulet, beans and sliced fat back:

Layer two of the cassoulet, with the chunks of ham hock and the sausage:

Layer three of the cassoulet, the onion/garlic puree and the confit:

Layer four of the cassoulet, the rest of the beans and cooking liquid just barely to cover:

I then put it in the oven for an hour at 350F, and turned it down for about three more at 250F, keeping it moist. Then it'll cool, then into the fridge, and then back in the oven tomorrow morning.

Dinner tomorrow around 12 noon for the three of us and two friends. I don't know if I'll have a chance to get to a liquor store, so I might have to tempt the wrath of the cassoulet gods and serve a nice Chianti I've got. Still hoping to find some decent frisee for a salad.

How are others doing? Little ms foodie, how's it going??

[little ms foodie]

hey chris, your pictures are great!! And you are way less messy than me!

my cassoulet cooked yesterday and today will go back in around 6:30 so we can eat it!

I left the duck legs whole as that is how I've had it served to me, I also had to add a bit of water to my bean liquid as I didn't have quite enough.

I've also found that I need a new big Le Cruiset pot!

[Wolfert]

I agree that the confit of duck leg with bone-in looks a lot better than cut up and scattered about in the cassoulet. In restaurants and at photo shoots that is standard.

In the home, I never saw a cassole (the earthenware dish used to bake the cassoulet) large enough to accomodate enough confit of bone-in duck to serve 8, 10 or 12.

[fou de Bassan]

The cassoulet was fabulous! We fed 8 adults and 4 kids, sent people home with extra and still have leftovers We started with kir, drank Gigondas and Pauillac with the meal and finished with coffee and quince brandy. With a big green salad and strudel for dessert it was absolutely the best way to start the new year. The aroma of the cassoulet filled the house. After we had left the table, one guy kept excusing himself. We wondered why until we found him filching from the pot on the counter! His value went way up in my eyes, anyway, as I took it as a compliment. We ate at one and are still full. Bon appétit to all those who have yet to enjoy their meals!

[little ms foodie]

My husband had never had cassoulet......he is a convert. I got many kisses and "this is sooooo good" at dinner tonight.

Didn't have a damn French wine in the cellar so we had a 10 year old Cristom Pinot Noir, excellent.

The only thing was my duck confit was a bit salty. Will read thru the duck confit thread and make some notes. The Les Halles book has received its christening grease stains.

And the best part......we have leftover too! Lunch tomorrow

[Chris Amirault]

I agree that the confit of duck leg with bone-in looks a lot better than cut up and scattered about in the cassoulet. In restaurants and at photo shoots that is standard.

In the home, I never saw a cassole (the earthenware dish used to bake the cassoulet) large enough to accomodate enough confit of bone-in duck to serve 8, 10 or 12.

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That was my sense, too. In many photos I perused, home cooks (and, it seems, those persnickety men in France themselves) boned the confit, for diners' ease.

I tried to break each piece of confit into two (as per Bourdain), and in doing so some pieces flaked a bit. I also wasn't about to let pieces stick to the bones just for style!

[Chris Amirault]

The cassoulet was fabulous!  We fed 8 adults and 4 kids, sent people home with extra and still have leftovers   We started with kir, drank Gigondas and Pauillac with the meal and finished with coffee and quince brandy.  With a big green salad and strudel for dessert it was absolutely the best way to start the new year.    The aroma of the cassoulet filled the house.  After we had left the table, one guy kept excusing himself.  We wondered why until we found him filching from the pot on the counter!  His value went way up in my eyes, anyway, as I took it as a compliment.  We ate at one and are still full.  Bon appétit to all those who have yet to enjoy their meals!

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That's fantastic! Can you tell us more about what recipe you used and what you put in it?

[Chris Amirault]

My husband had never had cassoulet......he is a convert. I got many kisses and "this is sooooo good" at dinner tonight.

Didn't have a damn French wine in the cellar so we had a 10 year old Cristom Pinot Noir, excellent.

The only thing was my duck confit was a bit salty. Will read thru the duck confit thread and make some notes. The Les Halles book has received its christening grease stains.

And the best part......we have leftover too! Lunch tomorrow 

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It looks fantastic! What kind of sausage did you use? And other ingredients? Do tell!

I must say I love those plates!