Cooking with 'The Cooking of Southwest France'

[Bill/SFNM]

So what white beans would you use if you didn't have access to the Tarbais?

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I've been using white emergo beans which I get from the local Spanish Table - brand name Cassoulets U*S*A*. These are $5 per pound (still expensive) vs. over $17 per pound for the Tarbais.

I should note that at 7000 feet above sea level, it takes forever for beans to cook. I end up precooking the beans in the pressure cooker. The larger beans like the Tarbais and the Emergos do better under these conditions.

Bill/SFNM

[Kerry Beal]

..... I'm exploring my bean options....

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[hijack]

Kerry, When you sort out your bean situation, please post a note here [or in the Vancouver / Western Canada section] saying what, from where, and how it worked.

We brought a pound or so of Tarbais beans back to BC from a european summer vacation and intend to try planting them in the spring, but meanwhile, what to use? The conift's aging, the homemade sausage is waiting, the weather is definitely saying cassoulet....

[/hijack]

cheers

Derek

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So I finally made the cassoulet. I used cannellini beans, organic, from the bulk store. They held together nicely, the skins weren't tough or too thick. Of course I have no basis of comparison. But I was very happy with the result.

[Chufi]

I made the chestnut soup yesterday:

I have to confess I made some shortcuts here. I had some really good guinea fowl stock, so I used that instead of making the soupbase as described in the recipe. Also, I made the soup with milk instead of cream (but drizzled some cream in right before serving). I was a little short on chestnuts so I pureed all of them instead of sauteeing some for the topping.

But this was utterly delicious. The tarragon is a very unusual and intriguing contrast of flavor. The soup is creamy and rich and luxurious. If I was hosting a Christmas dinner this year, this would be my starter for sure!

Here are Michel Bras' stuffed onions. The blob on top is the creme fraiche, which sort of solidified, which I haven't seen in any of the other pictures of this dish. I wonder what happened there? they were delicious and my guests raved about them! The filling was much lighter and more delicate than I expected. Something truly magical happens during those 4 hours in the oven!

Edited December 4, 2006 by Chufi (log)

[FoodMan]

Klary-

that soup looks decadent and the onions are very nice as well. Is the chestnut flavor really pronounced? Would you say the soup has anice roasted chestnut sweet flavor?

I made some garlic sausage recently and I am planning on putting up some confit this week as well. So, a cassoulet is in my not too distant future .

[Chufi]

Elie, I used a pack of those vacuum-packed chestnuts that I found in the back of a cupboard... you know how that sometimes happens.. I'm sure that with fresh roasted chestnuts the flavor would be even better. But I thought it was really good as it was!

[Mottmott]

Elie, I used a pack of those vacuum-packed chestnuts that I found in the back of a cupboard...    you know how that sometimes happens.. I'm sure that with fresh roasted chestnuts the flavor would be even better. But I thought it was really good as it was!

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Has anyone used the frozen chestnuts sometimes available at TJ's?

[mrbigjas]

Elie, I used a pack of those vacuum-packed chestnuts that I found in the back of a cupboard...    you know how that sometimes happens.. I'm sure that with fresh roasted chestnuts the flavor would be even better. But I thought it was really good as it was!

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Has anyone used the frozen chestnuts sometimes available at TJ's?

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no, but on a whim i picked up a package of the vacuum packed chestnuts they're selling there now, and i've been debating what to do with them. this is a good idea...

[francois]

Paula,

If you are still keeping an eye on this thread...

Do you think the recipe for Carpaccio of pig's feet would work with hocks intead of feet?

I get high quality baby pork (porcelet) from a local producer. However for some reason, I can not get the feet. There is quite a few hocks in my freezer. It would seem to be a lovely way to use them, adjusting the cooking time.

[Woods]

Elie, I used a pack of those vacuum-packed chestnuts that I found in the back of a cupboard...    you know how that sometimes happens.. I'm sure that with fresh roasted chestnuts the flavor would be even better. But I thought it was really good as it was!

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Has anyone used the frozen chestnuts sometimes available at TJ's?

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no, but on a whim i picked up a package of the vacuum packed chestnuts they're selling there now, and i've been debating what to do with them. this is a good idea...

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I have been using vacum packed chestnuts to make chestnut puree, fillings, and a shortened version of marron glace. I get them at an Asian store for 99 cents/ 6 oz. Making your on chestnut puree, sweetened or not, is much cheaper than buying it!

[hathor]

I just did a big batch of duck confit and have a question. Is curing like brining in that the temperature of the meat/spice mixture would benefit from being very cold, near freezing?

My house smelled so good yesterday, all garlicky and meaty. Its so hard to wait a week before devouring the confit!

[hjshorter]

I have a caution/comment/complaint regarding the duck rillettes. The recipe instructs the reader to chop the duck into small pieces with a mallet or cleaver before chucking in the oven with the stock & wine to cook down. This results in tiny shards of bone strewn liberally through the cooked rillettes, which must them be painstakingly picked out by hand thereby destroying the texture of the finished dish. I spent well over an hour sorting through, and my guests were still picking duck bones out of their teeth. I'm making them again this week but will skip the cleaver step.

And one compliment... The chocolate cake with fleur de sel is fabulous and easier to make than the creme anglaise It's served with.

Edited January 8, 2007 by hjshorter (log)

[Smithy]

This weekend I cooked the Oxtail Daube. The taste was fabulous, and right now I'm wishing I had more leftovers. The finished product was deep, rich mahogany in color, and the best way I can describe its flavor is to say that it was equally deep, rich and complex: meaty, almost caramelly. It is not cookbook hype to say that the flavors have multiple layers.

Pleased though I was with the outcome, I didn't try to photograph it: the shredded meat in brown sauce would require a better photographer than I to do it justice, even over noodles.

The cooking and straining process left me with a question of technique. Step 7 begins with "Strain the cooking liquid, pushing down on the onions to extract all their juices." I chose to do the straining in my china cap, which I'd lined with cheesecloth. The process wasn't very effective: the onions were so soft that my spoon tended to push them around as much as push them down. Eventually I took to bunching the cheesecloth and squeezing it gently to squeeze out as much juice as possible without rupturing the cloth. It was still a long process, and by the end I was beginning to design screen presses and vacuum filters in my head. What should I have been doing instead? Should I have poured the onions and juice into a broader, shallower strainer instead of that deep cone? Pushed with another china cap nested inside, so it would push everything at once to the walls?

[snowangel]

Nancy, this is a wonderful dish, isn't it? (Mine was made esepcially sweet because the oxtails were mis-marked as "soup bones" at $.79/lb!).

But, what I did was put the onions and liquid into a regular strainer and used a ladle as the pusher. I think that the mesh of the regular wide shallower strainer "grabbed" the solids allowing for an easy push.

This is such a luxurious and silky daube, isn't it? (and, not, it doesn't photo very well, but that's not the real marker of a great meal)

[FoodMan]

Made the Cassoulet From Toulouse this past weekend, well actually this has been in the works for months if you count the sausage, confit and pancetta .

Click here for more details and more pics!

[ludja]

Two birthdays in the past week and some friends who love French food and wine seemed like a good combination to steer us towards planning a menu from the book! My humble contributions were the salmon rillettes and the asparagus with asparagus sauce. We had a lot of fun and the dishes were excellent. It was a long, leisurely meal; we took some time out to finish preparing the asparagus and duck dishes after the rillettes. I'll add some specific comments on the dishes in a separate post.

Here was the menu:

Goat cheese and truffled tapanade pastries

Artichoke hearts stuffed w artichoke relish and reggiano parmigiano

Cremant:de Bourgogne Bailly-Lapierre (sparkling Rose)

(These hors d'oeuvres were the only items not from the book.)

Torchon of Foie Gras with Toasted Brioche

2001 Sauternes Chateau Raymond-Lafon

Salmon Rillettes with Salade Frisee and Toasted Bread

2005 Coteaux du Languedoc Ermitage du Pic S'Loup (white)

Asparagus with Asparagus Sauce

Chicken Thighs with Pineau de Charentes

Casserole of Duck Breasts with Potatoes as in Bigorre

2003 Bandol Domaine de Terre Brune (Provence)

2004 Irouleguy Arretxea Therese et Michel Riouspeyrous (French Basque)

2004 Collioure La Pinede Domaine de la Tour Vieille (Languedoc)

Spiced Red Wine Sorbet with Raspberries

Gateau Basque

2004 Collioure et Banyuls Vendanges Domain de la Tour Vielle, (red dessert wine from Languedoc)

We were able to find two wines that Paula Wolfert specifically mentioned in the book—a full-bodied red from Irouleguy (French Basque) and the Banyuls red dessert wine produced in the Lanquedoc. Other wines were from Languedoc and other points south—Burgundy, Provence and Bordeaux. Credit for procuring the wines goes to knowledgeable and generous friends with a little help from Kermit Lynch’s wine shop in Berkeley. Pineau de Charentes was used to make the wonderful chicken dish. I tasted a bit from the bottle as well; this is a very interesting fortified wine.

Goat cheese and truffled tapanade pastries (Gateau Basque in the foreground)

Artichoke hearts stuffed w artichoke relish and reggiano parmigiano (A crock of Salmon Rillettes sealed with clarified butter is in the background)

Torchon of Foie Gras with Toasted Brioche

Salmon Rillettes with Salade Frisee and Toasted Bread

Asparagus with Asparagus Sauce

Chicken Thighs with Pineau de Charentes

Casserole of Duck Breasts with Potatoes as in Bigorre

Spiced Red Wine Sorbet with Raspberries

Gateau Basque with Creme Fraiche flavored with Aromatic Basque Mixture

Edited March 27, 2007 by ludja (log)

[ludja]

^Some comments on the dishes:

Looking back through the thread, I think we made two dishes from the book that haven't been mentioned yet, the salmon rillettes and the red wine sorbet.

Salmon Rillettes with Salade Frisee and Toasted Bread

This was delcious and easy to make. In the book Paula suggests serving this as part of a collection of small dishes--(tomato and artichoke salad, tapanade and toasted bread.) I think this would be great but we served it more simply this time with some vinaigrette-dressed frisee greens and toasted bread. While simpler, you still get the nice acidic and bitter counterpoint from the greens and the textural contrast from the bread.

I over processed the mix a bit despite Paula's instructions to maintain more of the texture of the salmon. To achieve this, next time I would probably whirl the butter in the processor (plastic blades) first to make sure it was very much softened, then add in 1/2 of the cooked salmon and 1/2 of the smoked salmon. Follow this with the egg,oil, etc. I would then just stir in the remaining flaked salmons. Be careful with the nutmeg! It adds a key flavor note but you need very little. I proceeded very cautiiously and did not need to add more than one scraping of fresh nutmeg.

Asparagus with Asparagus Sauce

I enjoyed this dish very much per Mickeycooks earlier descriptions in the thread. It's an interesting sauce b/c there is no egg in it and the pureed asparagus peels add a nice vegetal note to the sauce. I used Plugra butter. The only tricky part for me was in pureeing the peels. The recipe suggests pureeing them without any additional liquid and this was difficult in the regular size blender. We switched to a small pureeing device hooked up to Braun stick blender and it worked better. I added a little of the butter (to be used in sauce) melted and this helped to puree the peels along with stopping frequently to push material off the sides. I had my food mill all ready to go also but I wonder if I would have "lost" a lot of material over the relatively large surface of the food mill...

I'm curious to see you handled this, mikeycook, because I did like the dish but this aspect was kind of a pain. Any other comments or suggestions are welcome as well!

If I could find an easier way to puree the peels I would like to try the variant dish Paula Wolfert suggests in serving the sauce with a vegetable mix of asparagus tips, baby carrots, mushrooms and turnips.

Chicken Thighs with Pineau de Charentes

This was so delicious and may have been my favorite of the evening although how to pick... I wasn't there for the prep of this dish but I think it was prepared a few hours ahead and then gently reheated before serving. We had some simply boiled new potatoes with this dish. The sauce is intensely flavored. Thanks also to Swisskaese who I think was one of the testers of the recipe!

Casserole of Duck Breasts with Potatoes as in Bigorre

This was delicious as well. The savory potato cake with Ventreche (we used pancetta) and onions was a luscious accompaniement to the duck. The texture of the duck was excellent. One ambigious instruction is in the intial stages in sauteeing the onions and pancetta. The recipe instructs you to cover the dish and cook until the onions are silky and the pancetta (ventreche) is crisp. The pancetta did not crispy being covered (I would not have expected it to...) but we just proceed along and the potato cake was very good!

Spiced Red Wine Sorbet with Raspberries

I really enjoyed this as an interestingly refreshing sorbet. Some thought the raspberry flavor predominated over that of the wine but I thought the wine added an interesting flavor. The spice notes from simmering a cinnamon stick and a whole clove in the simple syrup are nice. I *might* try to decrease their effect a little bit, maybe by removing the spices a bit earlier in the process. The final texture of the sorbet was nice as well.

Gateau Basque

We had tasted this recipe prepared previously courtesy of Judy Rodger's staff at Zuni Cafe at the cookbook dinner there a year and a half ago. It was every bit as delicious this time as well. The crust is just perfect in texture (not greasy or heavy) and the Basque spice mixture really adds a wonderful flavor to both the dough and to the pastry cream. We folded some more of the mixture into some creme fraiche we served alongside. They served cherry preserves alongside the dish at Zuni and Chufi mentioned she made a fresh cherry compote with it. I'd like to do something like this as well somtime.

**One procedural note to add for the Gateau Basque. My friend was making this for the second time. The dough is sticky and crumbly as part of its nature but she found that rolling the dough between cling plastic wrap worked better than the suggested waxed paper. Maybe there were some other differences but she said she would use Saran wrap next time.

Thanks to Paula Wolfert for this wondeful book and to all the eGullet members that helped to test recipes!

Edited March 27, 2007 by ludja (log)

[FoodMan]

Great writeup, pics and commentary Ludja. My next 'to try' recipe from the book has been the chicken wrapped in cabbage and ham stuffung...but I still have not gotten to it. Another is the Gateuax Basque, so the suggestion to use the plastic wrap is very much appreciated.

[mikeycook]

If I could find an easier way to puree the peels I would like to try the variant dish Paula Wolfert suggests in serving the sauce with a vegetable mix of asparagus tips, baby carrots, mushrooms and turnips.

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I puree them in my Cuisinart. Personally, my blender doesn't do much unless I have a ton of liquid, so I rarely use it. The cuisinart is perfect for pureeing this because the blades destroy just about anything.

[Chufi]

I made the salmon rillettes this weekend. Wonderful! Because of ludja's remarks upthread about overprocessing (and mostly because I was too lazy getting out the food processor - I hate cleaning that thing), I mixed everything by hand. Just chopped up the smoked salmon into very small dice, and this worked very well!

I served it with a little herb salad (parsley, dill, coriander) with lemon vinaigrette.

[Abra]

I am such a copycat!

As a starter I served the Asparagus with Morels, which was a lovely spring dish.

[viva]

Wow! That looks amazing.

Don't feel bad... I own the pottery featured on the cover as well <cough> ... but I've never made the cassoulet. I dream about it, though.

[mrbigjas]

cherries are in here, so tonight i made the clafoutis from this book. and.... i like the julia child version better.

the main difference in the recipes appears to be the amount of milk -- both call for 3 cups of cherries, 1/2 cup flour, 3 eggs. but julia's recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups of milk, while paula's version calls for 2 cups. this makes paula's version more custardy and liquid than julia's.

a matter of preference, no doubt. and there's a possibility i didn't bake it quite long enough tonight. but still, i think i like it a little drier.

[FoodMan]

It's that time of year when cooking from this book is most appropriate again (or so it seems to me). I gave the "Poached Chicken Breasts Auvergne Style" a whirl this time around.

The result was as beautiful to look at as it is to eat. The broth is indeed spectacular and the chicken is moist and flavorful. Couple of points to note for those who might want to give it a try. First, make real sure to buy a BIG cabbage. You need those big sturdy leaves. The first cabbage I bought ended up too small and I could barely wrangle 4 decent leaves out of. So, I froze the stuffing and tried again the next week with a bigger cabbage. Hey, it proves that the stuffing freezes very well. Second, keep and eye on the cabbage leaves and do not let them overcook. Different leaves have different thicknesses, so they cook differently. As soon as a leaf is soft enough to roll (I did these in batches) take it out and cool it in a water bath.

[fiftydollars]

The rabbit compote (rabbit rillettes, uh, with prunes) has become a necessary part of the holidays. Everybody likes it and the novelty of being served rabbit never quite wears off.

[Abra]

This is the Cèpe and Walnut Cream Tart. I made one big tart instead of the 8 small ones, and because cèpes have just gone out of season here in South West France, I used a ring of pleurottes, which are like giant oyster mushrooms, a ring of regular mushrooms, and a pile of rehydrated dried cèpes. It smells fabulous, and I'm looking forward to taking it to a party in a little while.

Also, when Chufi and I blogged together a couple of weeks ago, we made several dishes from this book, including the Poule au Pot and the Tripe and Pigs Feet Stew. Both are extraordinary.