Toulouse-Style Cassoulet and Cream-filled Almond Cake

I made a Toulouse-Style Cassoulet on Saturday, using this recipe from Food and Wine Magazine. (Why? Because a favorite restaurant was serving it, giving us the idea. We figured it would be cheaper to cook it ourselves.) We had friend RJ over, who had the meal a year ago at this same restaurant (it is an annual event), and he believed our version tasted better than theirs. Unprovable, but we'll accept the sentiment.

By the way, the restaurant is Sympatica. It's run by a couple of -- I don't know what you call them, beyond chefs who specialize in meats. Charcuterists, perhaps? They own a couple of gourmet charcuteries around town, and this restaurant. The menu changes weekly; every Tuesday, they announce the prix fixe menu for the upcoming weekend (the restaurant is only open Friday and Saturday nights, and for weekend brunch, but the brunches are not unusual). They serve family style; our only complaint is that the setting is in a cement-walled room, and it can be so noisy you can't hear your neighbor talk.

I started preparing the dish on Thursday, for Saturday's dinner. None of the steps were particularly hard -- Cassoulet is essentially just a bean dish (flavored with every corner of a pig that you can imagine, and then some duck thrown in for good measure). But there were many steps. It starts with curing ham hocks, cubed pork shoulder and fresh pork skin (if you can find some) in salt and pepper overnight, while simultaneously soaking beans in a separate pot. The next day, you combine the two, with a bouquet garni and, curiously, a whole head of garlic, unpeeled -- and let them simmer for hours, filling the house with delicious wafts of scent.

While bubbling all that flavor into the beans, you remove the salt from some salt pork (the little pan above, in the photo).


The next day, after letting it sit overnight to allow fat to rise to the top and be skimmed off, you heat the mess up again. Puree the stewed whole head of garlic with the de-salted salt pork, and stir it in. Then pour the stew into a casserole, layering in duck confit (a form of cured duck). Bake. Finally, fry up some French Toulousian garlic sausage and nestle the sausages into the top of the casserole, top it all off with bread crumbs and bake some more.

It was really, really good. Many layers of flavor, well worth the time involved.

The restaurant menu was actually:

Saturday, January 31st
Cassoulet Night

Country Pate with House Pickled Vegetables and Dijon Mustard

Blood Orange and Belgian Endive with Oil-Cured Olive Vinaigrette

Cassoulet with Duck Confit, Toulouse Sausage, Pork Belly, Phipp's Country Store Heirloom Cannelini Beans and Breadcrumbs

Cream-Filled Almond Gateau with Apple Compote

Here at home, we had instead, cheeses brought by RJ, crudites, a couple of baguettes (purchased), and a Spinach salad with orange slices. But for dessert, the Texan mixed up a very nice Almond Cake, with whipped cream and a simple Apple Compote.

It was also very, very nice.

By the way, the children had bratwursts, carrots, and cupcakes for dessert. Philistines, yes, but it left more for us adults.

Finally, to brass tacks. The restaurant price was $38 per person, not including wine and gratuity. Here at home, there was so much cassoulet that before the baking section of the production, I threw half the stew into the freezer. (If nothing else, I didn't have a big enough pan for all of it.) Taking into account the cheeses, salad, bread, and the whole cake (of which about 1/2 is still left), but not the wine, the meal cost $18 per person! And that was for almost 3 servings of cassoulet each! (No, we didn't eat all those servings in one sitting. Well, not all of us did.) The single most expensive item was the duck confit, purchased at Whole Foods (I later found some at the charcuterie for about half the price. No wonder they call the store, "Whole Paycheck").

Perhaps, however, I should factor in gasoline. We had to go to five different gourmet shops in town to gather ingredients (and phoned a sixth). Even so, we didn't find a source for fresh pork skin until after the point when I could include it in the pot, so it could be argued that this isn't even close to "real" Toulouse-Style Cassoulet. I did learn that if I had just gone to the charcuterie owned by the Sympatica chefs, I could have cut my supplies-travels in half (they do carry Toulousian sausage, proscuitto, pancetta, and fresh duck confit, but they don't customarily carry plain ordinary ham hocks or pork shoulder).

Still it was a fun project, which I will happily repeat (it will be easier next time). And anyway, we already have half a pot of cassoulet in the freezer, to be pulled out in a few weeks.

Vivi briefly mentions Lesson #13

Really quick -- a week ago, I made the Duck with Garlic, Tomatoes and Olives. It is very easy, and very tasty. Note that the recipe serves 4, not 6, as every other recipe in the book does. (We invited RJ over, and the meat was a little stretched. We had no leftovers.)

I was disappointed before cooking the dish, because I prefer sweet sauces with duck, and this is not. But even so, this was really good, and I want to make it again. We had lots of sauce left over, which I couldn't figure out how to use, so I recommend serving it with rice or noodles. We ate it with a loaf of half-whole wheat No-Knead Bread, which was quite good for soaking up sauce.

I skipped the Marinated Sea Bream with Fresh Dill, and served cheese (some gruyere, some stilton with apricots, and some other that was on hand) and another packet of the gravlax I made and froze last September.

Instead of the Crêpes with Red Currant Jelly (which I will make in future), I finally made the Riz à l'Imperatrice (or Empress Rice Pudding), according to the directions in Lesson #12. Cook rice in water briefly; cook it the rest of the way in milk. Macerate dried fruit in kirsch. Make a crème anglaise, add gelatin and whipped cream to make a bavarian cream. Fold the cooked, cooled rice, the macerated fruit, and the bavarian cream together, slop into a charlotte pan and chill.

But you're not done yet. Melt red currant jelly, add gelatin, and then pour it over the unmolded pudding, and let chill some more before serving.

My bavarian cream wasn't setting, so I folded everything together and put in the charlotte pan anyway. This meant (I reverse-engineered later) that the rice sank to the bottom, leaving a 2-inch layer of simple bavarian cream at the top of the pan.

That meant that when I unmolded it, the heavier rice part squashed down the lighter cream, making the pudding into kind of a turban shape (the Texan said it was a crown, thank you).

It is very rich, and the red currant jelly adds something to the flavor, offsetting the rich blandness with a slight sharp crispness. Still, I think I like my rice pudding the old-fashioned, just-cook-rice-in-milk way. Others (Girl-Child, resident Brother) loved it.

Note about the fruit. The recipe calls for "candied fruit", and I just don't think that means the candied orange peels, crystalized citron, and alien-green-colored cherries and pineapple that we find here. I spent some effort trying to find the sorts of candied fruit that we saw in southern France, (photo taken at the Nice Old City Market in 2004) but to no avail. In the end, I used a mixture of raisins, currants and chopped apricots. I love raisins in rice pudding usually, but this blend didn't work. The apricots and raisins essentially melted, the currants didn't soften despite hours in kirsch and then pudding.

Next time someone I know goes to France, I'm requesting they buy me a small packet of candied fruit, and I'll try making (my own version of) rice pudding with them. nudge nudge wink wink