Food: Cassoulet follow-up
May. 20th, 2008 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseThis 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,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
