Cassoulet tips

Getting ready for a February Cassoulet party - duck confit, garlic sausage, type. No lamb. Any reccos from the pros on prep, wine accompaniment, other menu items ?

Christina, that's the kind I like to make (Castelnaudary) -- the others use mutton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassoulet

I tend to NOT use tomatoes (for historical reasons I laid out elsewhere, it is a Precolumbian dish) -- and I have tended to get the hard to find tarbais beans but I have decided recently that they are too expensive and don't really make much difference in the finished product.

The most recent recipe I used had an interesting touch. I have had some trouble getting the bread-crumb topping to turn out properly. This recipe said you should pre-toast the bread crumbs with oil/butter on a cookie sheet in a hot oven, and salt lightly. This gives light crispy delicious crumbs that are "thirsty" for the juices in the stew, and give a really good texture and flavor to the final dish.

Back on the old board, I posted a cassoulet recipe that came from my pal Nilo. Once a year, he goes through the whole process and then has a guys night where we all leave in pain from OD'ing on the dish.

The RC is at http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_subm ... s/299.html

Ooh, useful. Planning to do a cassoulet later this month as well, so really appreciate this info.

Christina,
I just made a cassoulet this past weekend, of the pork and duck confit variety. The recipe I loosely follow is one published by MFK Fisher in a Time/Life book on "Provincial French Cooking." It's a two day process, in which the bean stock is prepared ahead of time and the meats can be braised early, too. The day of preparation involves assembling the cassoulet: a 1" layer of beans, followed by the salt pork, lardons, sliced sausage, duck confit and braised pork. Another layer of beans follows, then another layer of meats, then the final layer of beans, then topped with bread crumbs a few dollops of duck fat. The stock is poured over the whole thing, it's heated to boiling on the stove and cooked in the oven at 350° for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hr. I use Purcell Mountain Farms Tarbais beans for authenticity, but any white bean will do. Here's a link to a post I made about it a while back.

Mark Lipton