This is an intimidating post. It's also an intimidating venture. Cassoulet is a French peasant dish that's anything but simple. I suppose if you bought all your ingredients instead of making them from scratch, you might bring the cooking time down to 24 hours. But this is not a dish for the faint of heart. Or the lacking in time and patience.
The main players:
That's meat, and lot's of it. Ham hocks, pancetta, salt pork, sausage (homemade by Liz and Greg over at Sour Cherry Farm, pork skin, pork shoulder, prosciutto and duck confit (also homemade by the farmers). Hard core. I guess back in the day this was a dish made of all the extra bits of stuff at the end of winter when all the fresh meat was used up and the family really needed some hearty fatty goodness.
G helped by chopping up the onion.
We simmered the salt pork and pork skin until the skin was supple (what? I know- it's crazy.)
Hey, check out this duck fat- you can never have too much of this stuff. That's what Liz told me anyway.
Here we have our fresh ham hocks. They were available at the Hudson grocery store, because it's crazy like that. We had to send Greg to get these because the hock that Liz bought at Whole Foods was funky, and not in a good way. We put in way too much time and effort into this thing to let one piece of off meat ruin the whole pot.
We browned the cubed shoulder:
And the hocks:
Then we sweated the veggies and slightly browned the prociutto and pancetta.
At this point I sort of stopped documenting- I'm sure I got distracted. Canellini beans had been soaking. All the meat sans sausage and confit goes in the pot along with the beans and everything is covered in duck stock (obviously made by Liz and Greg). It cooks like that for about an hour and a half. Then it went outside into the cold night to cool down. Don't worry, we weighted it down to avert critters.
The next morning, you skim off the excess fat. Then you let it come up to room temp. About three hours before you want to eat, you seperate all the meat and fat out of the pot. Chop up the meat and add it back to the beans. Slice the pork skin into slices. Then you layer that in the bottom of your dish. Next comes some beans, and then a layer of skinned and deboned confit. Then more beans mixture. You bake that in the oven for a while and start to salivate at the amazing aromas.
Liz was really really excited.
We browned the sausage and cut it into manageable chunks and nestle it into the pot.
And take lots of pictures. Who knows the next time we'll attempt this one.
Like the meta double-blogging pic?
Here's one with my french rolls baking in the background. (My first attempt at baguette that didn't quite turn out. I'll tell you about it some time.)
When the bread crumbs are golden brown and delicious, it's time to eat.
This was a brown meal. No green allowed.
It may not have been the prettiest thing, but it was the most flavorful, rich thing I've ever put in my mouth.
Was it worth it?
Yes.
Would I do it again tomorrow?
Probably not. My arteries would protest.
It was a great time though- a true team effort- G, Michael, Liz, Greg and I all did our parts. It wouldn't have been fun at all to do this alone.
So there you go. Cassoulet. If you ever see it on a menu, you should probably order it. It probably won't be as good as ours, though.
We used two recipes from Paula Wolfort. One from here, and one from her book, The Cooking of Sourthwest France.
You can check out even more over at Sour Cherry Farm which will have a post up soon.
Oh, by the way, Liz- you left your book. And your duck fat. We're holding them hostage until you return to us for another delicious weekend.
Meet us at Five Guys in Kingston and you'll get your baby back.
Playing,
Meredith
1 comments:
I am super impressed at your saturday posting. Cassoulet looks amazing!
By the way, what's a ham hock? What part of the pig is that?
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