Piece de resistance

[John Whiting]

I've had several private requests for my cassoulet recipe, as well as a public one, so I'm inserting it here. It's not so much a recipe as a method, but it contains enough information to be intelligible to anyone who is familiar with the process.

Cassoulet for the New Millennium

This year I decided to approach the cassoulet from an entirely different perspective: start from the desired result and work backwards. The traditional components, all of which may or may not appear together, include a bean stew, a pork stew, a lamb stew, sausages, and confit of goose or duck. What I wanted was a dish containing all of these, slowly braised in the oven in the usual fashion, with an overall flavour, but in which the individual components preserved their distinctive identities.

There were several problems to be solved. The richest meat flavours are obtained through roasting or grilling, but the tastiest cuts of meat are usually the toughest, which require marinating followed by a long slow roast. This is impractical for relatively small quantities of meat.

The usual approach for a cassoulet is to brown the meat and then stew it with an appropriate assortment of vegetable and herbal flavourings. This time I decided to make use of our large thick-bottomed pressure cooker. First I browned the meat thoroughly on all sides, on the bone, so that the fat was partially rendered. It was removed and the vegetables sautéed, more slowly, in the fat. (If you do it the other way around, as is often suggested, it’s almost impossible to avoid burning small bits of veg that are left behind.) A small amount of white wine was added to deglaze and then reduced; the meat was returned to the cooker, which was topped up with a bit of water, the lid sealed in place, and the stew cooked under pressure for fifteen minutes, then checked and cooked further as necessary. With pressure cooking, the meat can cook in a small amount of liquid, which means that the stock is very intense without reduction. In fact a large pressure cooker, with a rack, is a miniature version of a professional steam oven costing thousands of pounds.

When first opened up, pressure-cooked foods may be somewhat lacking in flavour, but after they’ve rested, the flavours come together and intensify. There is, of course, no crispness—but that is of no importance when the cassoulet will be simmered in an oven for several hours. What survives is the flavour of the caramelisation that has resulted from the initial browning.

This worked well with the lamb and pork. The latter was a big piece of free range belly which included all the necessary meat and fat, and the skin for lining the bottom of the cassole. After cooking, the bones were stripped and the skin, fat, meat and stock went into separate containers for refrigeration. All were labelled – before I was through I would end up with a dozen assorted packages!

But what about the goose? The traditional method of preparation is confit, which, before refrigeration, was the only reliable means of preservation. This I felt to be unnecessary if the meat was to be used immediately. I put this to Paula Wolfert at a recent Oldways conference in London. She agreed, up to a point. It was not worth making confit, she said, unless it was going to sit for at least six months. After that, unique flavours emerged which were not obtainable by any other method.

But I didn’t have six months. What I had was a frozen half goose – complete with neck and head! – which I had bought on the market in Chateau Thierry. And the cassoulet had to be ready within a week.

I decided on an unorthodox approach – roasting. Since the bird was bilaterally severed, it would lose a lot of juice; and so I roasted it inside a melt-proof plastic bag, open side up, the skin rubbed with its own fat and the cavity filled with carrot, celery, onion, garlic, seasoning, a sprig of thyme, a sprig of rosemary, and a couple of bay leaves. This was roasted in a medium oven until it was well browned and then the entire contents of the bag, including the juices which had already been extracted – but no additional liquid – were transferred to the pressure cooker and steamed for fifteen minutes.

The carcass was then removed, the neck and head cut off and returned to the pot, and the meat stripped from the carcass when it was cool enough to handle. The bones and skin were returned to the pot and the mixture pressure cooked for another fifteen minutes to make a concentrated goose stock, from which the precious fat was then separated. In the meantime, the meat was cut into bite-sized pieces and left to cool before refrigeration. Mary and I tasted it and agreed that it was some of the most densely flavoured goose we had ever experienced.

Then the Toulouse sausages, also bought at the Chateau Thierry market. These were roasted in a pan on a rack, covered and with a little water, in a medium oven until well browned; then allowed to cool, cut up into short lengths and refrigerated.

That left only the beans – four lbs in weight – some of which had been bought on the Perigueux market, the rest organic dried canellinis from Le Fromagerie in Highbury. They were soaked overnight, the water thrown away, then brought to the boil for 12 minutes in fresh water, also thrown away, and finally simmered gently for just over an hour, with an onion, carrot, celery and a bouquet garni, in four pints of chicken stock made from fifteen free range carcasses obtained from our generous butcher. (The beans, though dried, were new and so took less time than the usual aged imports.) None of the goose, lamb or pork stock went into the pot; these were to be kept, undiluted, for the final simmer of the assembled cassoulet.

At last, on the day before serving, the assembly. There being such a large quantity, this was done in a large plastic washing-up bowl. Because of a mid-winter warm spell all the various stews were refrigerated, and so they were warmed slightly, one by one, in the microwave. This was primarily to avoid tearing the beans apart, which had already been thoroughly cooked so that, after the final baking, they would properly dissolve in the mouth without chewing.

The various stocks were combined, heated and collected in a separate bowl – except for the bean stock, which would be used for topping up. A brilliant addition, suggested by Paula Wolfert and recommended by Charles & Lindsey Shere, is a quantity of cooked pork fat blended with garlic; I used a half pound of fat and the equivalent of a couple of heads of garlic – all of this stirred into the combined stocks before adding to the bowl.

The final mixture was twice what would fit into our largest cassole, and so the excess was packed away in plastic boxes in the freezer. Starting with the squares of pork skin laid fat side down in the cassole, I transferred the rest of the contents of the washing-up bowl, pouring it and shaking it down so as not to break up the beans with a spoon. Then warmed stock – first the rich concentrated stock from cooking the meats, thoroughly mixed with the blended fat/garlic, and then a bit of the bean stock to supplement – was poured in little by little until the cassole was filled within half an inch of the top. Finally, crumbs of home made whole meal bread – mostly hard crusts slightly moistened and broken up in a food processor – were evenly scattered over the top and the divine goose fat liberally drizzled over all. This was baked in a gas 3, 325ºF oven for a couple of hours, the crust broken up once and again at the end of that day’s cooking. (This would make it easier for the top-up stock to penetrate the next day.) It was then left overnight to cool and to integrate.

On D-Day (D for Devour), the cassole was topped up with heated bean/chicken stock and put into a cold oven three hours before it was to be served, and the temperature set again at gas 3. (Because of overnight absorption, it was necessary to check the liquid level and top up again more than once .) At the end of two hours the cassoulet was gently bubbling and a new, delectable crust had formed. Ceremonially it was brought to the table. An entire cassole, the largest made by Mssr. Not, was emptied by ten hungry people. A guest proclaimed that its flavours had gradually revealed themselves like the successive mountain ranges in a Japanese print. No cook was ever happier.

©2000 John Whiting, Diatribal Press, London

[jaybee]

Thank you , John. I see I have my work cut out for me. What was MFKF's opening line in her piece "How to cook a wolf"?--"First, get a wolf....

[SobaAddict70]

That's absolutely amazing, John. Cassoulet, like Peking duck, is one of those dishes that I just dream about making. Unfortunately, it seems so labor intensive that I've relegated it to dreamland -- that, and not to mention that I wouldn't know the first thing about making duck confit, much less rendering its fat, which correct me if I'm wrong, is the key to the entire puzzle.

Speaking of Peking duck, that's probably something I'd like to try making in my lifetime -- but short of blowing air through a bamboo tube to separate the skin from the meat, brining the bird, and hanging it up to dry in the shower stall for up to three days, I think I'll keep dreaming about it for a little while longer. Talk about the ultimate in impressing someone.

*sigh*

[Jaymes]

Thank you , John.  I see I have my work cut out for me.  What was MFKF's opening line in her piece "How to cook a wolf"?--"First, get a wolf....

TURTLE SOUP:

"Take one live she turtle......" (actual recipe from one of my cookbooks)

John. That is absolutely brilliant. And amazing.

But after perusing it thoroughly, I have decided it would be far easier (and more in keeping with my humble abilities) for me to just buy a plane ticket, fly to London, track you down, and engage in creative sucking up until I get invited over to your place for Cassoulet.

[jaybee]

Speaking of Peking duck, that's probably something I'd like to try making in my lifetime -- but short of blowing air through a bamboo tube to separate the skin from the meat, brining the bird, and hanging it up to dry in the shower stall for up to three days, I think I'll keep dreaming about it for a little while longer. Talk about the ultimate in impressing someone.

Soba, I had sort of tired of this dish, probably die to the lackluster preparations available in New York. My last night in Beijing, I asked my client to take me to a restaurant that serves the ultimate version of this dish. He took me to the place that suposedly created it in the 19th century. They had six separate brick wood burning ovens going each hildoing several racks of ducks. They probably served 200-300 an hour! They have a huge duck farm of their own to supply them. How good could it be? So good that I would go back to Beijing just for that meal. The meat was succulent and richly flavored and the skin was like a savory confection. My client was not up for eating any meat that night, so I consumed nealry the entire duck myself! I will ask him if the restaurant gives out a recipe or technique card.

[jaybee]

Speaking of Peking duck, that's probably something I'd like to try making in my lifetime -- but short of blowing air through a bamboo tube to separate the skin from the meat, brining the bird, and hanging it up to dry in the shower stall for up to three days, I think I'll keep dreaming about it for a little while longer. Talk about the ultimate in impressing someone.

Soba, I had sort of tired of this dish, probably die to the lackluster preparations available in New York. My last night in Beijing, I asked my client to take me to a restaurant that serves the ultimate version of this dish. He took me to the place that suposedly created it in the 19th century. They had six separate brick wood burning ovens going each hildoing several racks of ducks. They probably served 200-300 an hour! They have a huge duck farm of their own to supply them. How good could it be? So good that I would go back to Beijing just for that meal. The meat was succulent and richly flavored and the skin was like a savory confection. My client was not up for eating any meat that night, so I consumed nearly the entire duck myself! I will ask him if the restaurant gives out a recipe or technique card.

[jaybee]

Second posting removed

[John Whiting]

Note that my method doesn't call for making confit. Paula to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't think it's necessary. In fact, more than one honest English or American alien transplant to the Southwest has commented that local farmers are more often popping their birds in the freezer than going through the time-honored but laborious process of salting, rendering, cooking and sealing. For cassoulet purposes, roasting and/or steam brazing is quite good enough. The trick is to get the flavor of caramelization into the pot in advance of its final amalgamation.

The other important aspect of the final cooking is keeping the dish moist enough not to dry out, but not so wet as to turn into soup. If it gets too thick and sticky, you can always add more water or stock, providing it hasn't hardened into an impenetrable mass.

Any professional chefs reading all this will doubtless have thrown up their hands in horror. My gradually evolved method is simply a labor of love; at no point have I tried to go back to an earlier stage and make the process more efficient.

I've gradually come to the conclusion that, in making a tolerable cassoulet, method is more essential than authentic ingredients. I once made a cassoulet from scratch in the course of a single afternoon, using only ingredients available at an ordinary supermarket on the north coast of Scotland. Instead of a goose, or even a duck, I used a decent free range chicken, and drizzled chicken fat over the breadcrumbs that formed the crust. A fussy Frenchman who ate the result swore it was better than most of the "authentic" cassoulets he'd eaten in his own country.

[Wilfrid]

Making a confit of duck legs is actually pretty easy - Soba, I use a method I found in Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating. I usually try to fill a big jar with duck and rabbit legs covered in duck fat at the beginning of winter. It did go wrong last year - first time - when something contaminated it and the meat turned green. Normally it's a day's work for several good meals.

Because I usually dip into the jar for a piece of confit to crisp in the oven and serve with frites, I don't always have my own confit available for cassoulet. But there are suppliers of confit out there. The imported tinned stuff is usually absurdly expensive, but in New York Dean and Deluca have duck leg confit for around $8 a piece, as does the French Butcher for a few cents more. I am not going to insist that confit is essential to cassoulet, but I dolike its distinctive flavor and texture. I make a cassoulet in less than two days, but I suppose it will be just that much less succulent than John's. Not that I get too many complaints.

[Toby]

Thank you for the cassoulet recipe, John. It sounds so delicious and I like that you didn't confit the goose; confit always taste too salty and tough to me. What exactly does a cassole look like? There's a line drawing in E. David's French Provincial Ckg. but it's for one portion and looks like a shallow flowerpot. She refers to another drawing in the book which isn't that helpful. Is there a cover? Why does the bottom look smaller than the top--is it for exposure of all ingredients?

The NY Times had a recipe quite a while ago for an Italian cassoulet-like dish that I cook (with some changes to the recipe) for dinner parties. You cook cannellini beans with chopped-up pancetta, a little celery, garlic, onion, carrot, thyme in some chicken stock until the beans are tender and most of liquid gone. Meanwhile really brown well-seasoned cut-up duck (or I think goose would also be good) in a little olive oil. Then brown pieces of Italian sweet sasage in the fat. Drain off most of the fat, deglaze pan with red wine and then put that and the duck pieces, sausage, beans, the rind part of a piece of parmesean (and more stock if too dry) in a pot that can go in the oven. I use a French earthenware casserole with a handles on the side and a cover. Then bake in oven, covered for a while, and then uncovered to get a little crusty till everything is blended together, duck is very tender, and most of liquid is gone.

I've made this in September with grilled figs wrapped in pancetta, diced-up heirloom tomato salad with basil and mustard dressing, and a clafouti-cake with peaches and raspberries for dessert (or other fruit combinations). (Recipe for that is in Michael Bauer's The Secrets of Success Cookbook; it needs to be overcooked, almost burnt. In the winter I'd think of something else to start and make Patricia Well's pear tarte tatin.

[SobaAddict70]

Wilfrid, if you ever happen to bring your version to a pot luck or if you're having guests over for dinner, keep me in mind.

Its one of those "to do" things on my list, but not sure when I'll get to it.

How many legs go into a jar? Are they big legs? I've never done any canning or anything like that (although I did make garlic vinegar once), so is there anything I should watch out for?

hehe...this is my new project for this winter, making confit for the first time. no no, not tomato confit, but the real thing.

SA

[John Whiting]

What exactly does a cassole look like? There's a line drawing in E. David's French Provincial Ckg. but it's for one portion and looks like a shallow flowerpot.

Exactly what it looks like. The Not family make them in a graduated series of sizes from about 6" to 15" (across the top). The steeply angled sides give you lots of crust without the contents drying out too quickly. The oven is moderate, so no cover should be used; in fact you wouldn't get a crust at all.

Before we got our cassoles, I sometimes made cassoulet in an oven-sized pottery lasagne dish we'd had made, about three inches deep. Acres of crust, but I had to keep careful track of stock levels in the dish. Lovely results, but I was firmly told by an authority that this was a perversion. However, his own cassoulet pot was just an ordinary shallow bow-sided casserole. What price authenticity?

A baked bean crock will do OK in a pinch, but practically no crust. The best answer, for those who can't travel to Languedoc and bring back their own, is in fact very simple and thoroughly satisfactory in every way -- a large pottery mixing bowl with a wide top and gently curving sides. The proportions are almost exactly those of a proper cassole; that's what I used in Scotland for my improvisation. The only quibble is that the outside as well as the inside is glazed, which an expert will no doubt tell me invalidates the entire operation.

[jaybee]

John, I have a large (16" wide), shallow (2" deep) glazed crockery dish that is mean for slow oven cooking of paella. From your description of a cassole, it seems this would work to form a crust, deliver moderate heat evenly and not dry out the contents. Not that I wouldn't like the excuse to buy yet another cooking implement. Would this work?

[PaulaJ]

Oh, so many of these menus sound far more tantilizing

than some restaurants I've visited recently!

I like the I-want-to-try-it, so we're having it approach for

some of our dinner parties. Have served seared foie gras

w. a mango based sauce, salad w. warm quail, fettucini w.

lobster-morel- cream sauce, and rack of lamb. Chocolate

souffles or Emily Luchetti [?sp] raspberry champagne cake.

[John Whiting]

jaybee, at 2" deep, your paella dish would produce mostly crust without enough "steaming space" underneath for proper braising. (Of course, without a lid, braising isn't the proper name for the process, but it approximates it.) So it would probably end up yummy and gooey -- not exactly a cassoulet, but not something you'd throw away.

Also, the capacity of the dish would hardly justify the work involved with so many different ingredients. My advice is, go for the largest clay mixing bowl that will fit in your oven, which is also a perfect bread bowl. Don't worry about making too much; made-up cassoulet freezes just fine and, baked again with a new crust and added liquid, is even better. It must have been a different soup-like process without a crust, but Anatole France reported that the cassoulet at his favorite restaurant had been stewing continuously for twenty years!

[Jon Tseng]

- Yes confit definitely a good one for dinner. Was doing some over the w/e (to stuff ravioli). Make ahead... easy... (apart from having to salt in advance) and very difficult to get wrong. Only problem getting the fat (according to a Roux brothers book if not enuff fat you can top it up with water, though haven't had to try it yet).

- Other bankers guaranteed to impress are syllabub for desert (double cream, lemon juice, sherry, sugar whipped together - do a google search on "everlasting syllabub" for the canonical Elizabeth David recipe) and chocolate truffles (half and half 70% dark chocolate and creme fraiche, melted together, cooled, rolled in cocoa). Both are delicious and deceptively simple. Truffles especially good for send your victims - sorry, guests - off on a high note.

- The Peking duck in peking is suitably memorable, though wouldn't like to try it at home - difficult to get a hot enough oven so always end up with fatty, scraggly bits under the skin. Also a bit of a pain doing the blowing up thing (have done it with a straw - but do you really want someone's phlegm inflating the skin of your supper?). Would be interesting to see how it comes out in an italian wood-fired oven, though.

cheerio

J

[Miss J]

Also a bit of a pain doing the blowing up thing (have done it with a straw - but do you really want someone's phlegm inflating the skin of your supper?).

Depends on how well I know them, really.

Miss J