Food: Cassoulet follow-up

This is Monday's post.

The first time I made cassoulet was an accident.

All right, one does not commit to twelve hours of cooking by happenstance, but I'd been looking at this recipe for a long time. I'd loved the cassoulet I'd had in Carcassonne, and to my mental palate this recipe would be an excellent starting point. But who has 12 hours to cook?

When it snowed on New Year's Eve, I enlisted my housemate with a car, and drove around the corner to get the salt pork, pork, and lamb. I had all the other ingredients, except the duck, and the duck was optional.

Because I started late, I wasn't done until nearly ten pm, but that was all right. I took it too the Buttery for their New Year's Eve party.

The next year, I did it with the duck. By the following year, I'd moved to Dorchester and decided that it was too difficult to reheat things at the Buttery. So I invited people to come over after midnight if they wanted a brief respite from the hubbub of the big party. This meant I began the new year as I wanted it to go on, surrounded by friends and good conversation.

After doing this for two years, tpau noted that she couldn't come eat because she didn't eat pork, but she still wanted cassoulet.

So, I made my first revisions. The easiest one was to replace the pork in the lamb and pork section and make it all lamb. Since I'd roasted a goose recently, I used goose fat instead of the pork fat, though I only used about three tablespoons rather than the half pound called for.

The local chinese market (Super 88), had duck sausages. I picked one whose ingredient list didn't seem too Asian, and used it for the sausage portion with olive oil (and I didn't use enough that first year) replacing the salt pork.

The beans lacked the melting smoothness they get when cooked with enough fat, but otherwise, the recipe turned out well. I think everyone ate well.

When I moved to California because my father was sick, I insisted on making cassoulet on New Year's eve. I only made a half recipe and a degree of difficulty was added by the loathing my mother feels for garlic. She claims an allergy, but I've seen no evidence of one.

I cut back the number of onions and used only one, but I added two leeks, which are milder, and replaced the teaspoon of garlic in the two places it was used with a Tablespoon of shallot. This time I knew to use more olive oil in the bean section and found that a third of a cup gave me the texture I was looking for.

Chinese sausages were out, but Whole Foods had a chicken andouille that listed every ingredient (garlic often hides under the rubric of 'spices') and had no garlic at all. Mom kept telling me to leave it out because she didn't believe there was a sausage without garlic.

Even the half recipe gave everyone seconds and also let us have an easy dinner on New Year's day.

A cook's bookshelf

Today's post. I'm caught up.

Let me start by saying that I have enough cookbooks to cover three five-foot long shelves. Probably more, now that I think of it, as I've added to my collection since putting my books into storage.

When my family had the kitchen remodeled in their current house, I asked for bookshelf space. I got two shelves each of which was just over two feet long. I laughed. A lot.

But I know people whose cookbook libraries make mine look tiny and they can't boil water without scorching the pan. I know great cooks who own one cookbook or none at all.

If you have an interest in a particular cuisine or region, then I recommend heading for a good bookstore and sitting down with the books and reading recipes. If the writer can't make it clear what texture the sauce needs to be, then you don't need the book. Or if the author insists it can only be stirred counterclockwise (without explaining why), then leave the book on the shelf. (By the way, there are certain things that should only be stirred in one direction. Fondue will curdle and certain roux won't set up if you keep changing the direction you're stirring in. Even in those examples, though, after the initial danger stages have passed, it's possible to vary the stirring so your wrist doesn't tire.)

Once you've found a good book on that cuisine, look at the others. See where they agree with the book you've found and where they overlap. If the principles seem in agreement, start looking at the recipes. There should be some overlap as every cuisine has its specialties, but the duplication should be minimal. With two books, you can be both wide and deep in your experiments.

Don't forget the travel section. I found Patience Gray there, and I use her recipes often.

To give an example, I plan to bring a spice cake to work on my birthday. I can't find the recipe I used a few years ago, so I looked at several online recipes and finally printed out three. I'll be using the spice mix from one and the wet dry ingredient balance from another. The third one has details on how to adjust the cooking time for a square rather than a round cake. I'm pretty sure it will be a good birthday cake.

Don't shun celebrity chefs. Food Network is fun. I love watching Two Fat Ladies and would love to taste the food they prepare. Alton Brown (all genuflect) provides a scientific basis that lets me experiment with confidence. Early Rachel Ray shows have good first principles and occasionally some nifty ideas.

Having said that, I don't own any of their books (though that may change with Alton). I wouldn't let Emeril feed my dogs, and, if I ever get my hands on Bobby Flay, I'll feed him to my dogs (even if they are supposed to be vegetarian). (Side note: Westies often have problems with certain proteins, particularly fowl.)

And I find Nigella Lawson -- whose emphasis on the sensuality of food should be a natural fit for me -- more annoying than Rachel Ray. She does have pretty (and expensive) blue measuring cups, though.

I do own Jamie Oliver's first cook book and find it clearly written and invaluable on subjects like how to stock a pantry. My own tips will have his fingerprints on them (and yes, I'll acknowledge that at the time, too.). His newest book, Cook seems to be a more detailed take on the same subject -- the basics of cookery and how to blend flavors.

There was a Time/Life series in the late sixties through early seventies that came with spiral bound recipe books. They are wonderful. I use the Provincial French one often, and I've found and used recipes out of all of the ones I own. They are a staple of library sales. I can't thank Lucy and the Professor enough for introducing them to me. The big picture books that came with them aren't as good, but they are pretty.

I have several cookbooks by Nika Hazelton. She's not a very good cook book writer, the travel segments of the books tend to be better, but when I purchased them they were often the only books available on the topic. The Belgian Cookbook was for many years the only English language cookbook on the subject.

Lastly, I have to mention the first food writer I ever read. Waverly Root wrote for The International Herald Tribune, and I discovered him when we moved to Belgium. He's a thoughtful essayist who deeply loves his subject. His books on French and Italian foods have had a profound influence on me, and his ideas helped me to formulate my questions for my class in persona cookery.