“Quick” Cassoulet

“Quick” Cassoulet
Cassoulet is a classic dish based on beans and pork (or lamb) found in the Southwestern region in France. The dish normally takes 2-3 days to prepare, this version takes that lengthy time down to less than two hours but it is still packed with flavor.

Utilizing Price Chopper’s Central Market Spiral Ham, which I will be talking about and serving Dec. 19 (Latham, NY 873 New Loudon Road 11am-2pm), Dec. 20 (Saratoga Springs, NY 115 Ballston Ave. 10 am – 1pm), and Dec. 21 (Saratoga Springs, NY 115 Ballston Ave. 10 am – 1 pm)

Ingredients

1 each Onion, diced medium
1 each Carrot, peeled and diced medium
1 clove Garlic, minced
1/2 pound Pork sausage, precooked (garlic sausage, kielbasa, bratwurst)
1 1/2 cup Ham, diced medium
¼ lb. Bacon, sliced
2 tablespoons Fresh Parsley, minced
1 teaspoon Fresh thyme, minced
1 each Bay leaf
2 cans (15 oz. each) Navy beans, drained
1/4 cup Dry red wine
1 cup Chicken broth
½ cup Dry white bread crumbs
As desired Salt and pepper

Method

1.Preheat oven to 325 degrees

2.Heat a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat, add two tablespoons olive oil, then add onion, carrots, and garlic and sauté 3-5 minutes or until softened. Add the sausage to pan, sauté until browned, and then add the herbs and ham and sauté for another 2-3 minutes then remove from heat, season the mixture with salt and pepper.

3.Stir in beans, wine, and broth. Turn into a 1 1/2 quart casserole (lined with bacon) and top with bread crumbs. Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 45 minutes longer. Serve in bowls with a side of French Baguette and a glass of the red wine used for making the cassoulet.

Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CEC
Chef-Instructor Schenectady County Community College
School website – www.sunysccc.edu
Personal food blog – www.cheftanner.com

Finding a Good Cassoulet

Well the cold weather has hit, it now gets dark at 6pm and that can only mean one thing in my book, it's time to make the first cassoulet for the cold season. Cassoulet is such a delicious dish and I relegate it to the cold months for a number of reasons. First, it is a very heavy dish of stewed beans and meats and quite honestly who wants to be bogged down with a heavy stewed dish like that in the hot summer? Second I live in a small apartment and the process of making the cassoulet is one that really heats up the apartment. (Just as a note, the picture to the left there is the cassoulet that has been in my oven all night)

In the first step I am braising either pork or lamb in a pot and then in another pot I'm simmering beans with veggies, ham hocks, etc. This gives off such an huge amount of steam and heats the place up even with the air conditioning on, "it's not so much the heat but the humidity" lol. Then it goes into a 400 degree oven for an hour and then for 3 hours at 275. That really heats the place up a lot as well, "aw but that's a dry heat." I'm not going to get into cassoulet itself too much as I made a post here which was my first Gastronomical Inspirations post that had a recipe for the dish.

What I do want to talk about is restaurants in Boston that sell cassoulet. I've actually been to a few that offer the dish and I thought I'd offer my recollections in case you may want to check out the locations yourself with this cold weather hitting us here in the northeastern part of the United States.

One of the first restaurants I dined at in Boston was Petit Robert Bistro, located in Kenmore Square. Their cassoulet takes the win for the least expensive at $14.00. The sausage was a traditional Toulousian, garlic sausage with good flavor, the confit on the dish was a bit flavorless, but the real disappointment was the beans, they were extremely tough and undercooked. Beans in a cassoulet should be cooked to the point that they just barely hold their shape. This is a product of haute cuisine which removed the long cooking process which you'll find in my recipe. The flavors were good though, just not something I would go out of the way for. The top was sprinkled with JAPANESE panko crumbs (not even browned), I think Escoffier just rolled over in his grave...

Another cassoulet I have had, was at The Butcher Shop. I loved the presentation here. It was served in a small earthenware pot, which honestly was probably a flower pot, but it had the appearance of a casoul which is the dish a cassoulet is traditionally cooked in. The beans were also Tarbais beans, which are an AOC product designated for the proper traditional production of cassoulet in France. The major flaw is the same that hindered the Petit Robert dish. The beans were tough, undercooked and honestly the flavors of everything in the dish were not melded together. It was almost as if all of the ingredients were simmered together and then tossed in the pot. Sad to say, I think this was my least favorite, and was not indicative of the restaurant because otherwise the restaurant is one of my favorites in Boston. However, the cassoulet had none of the traditional flavors of a true cassoulet.

On another night I had the advantage of trying the cassoulet of Brassarie Jo which is near the Prudential Center. I've been telling myself I don't like this restaurant for awhile, but for some odd reason I have returned a number of times. The service is mediocre, the food in general is so-so and the cavernous room reminds me of a large banquet hall, not a French brasserie dining room. At any rate, the one good thing this place does put out is the weekly special on Thursdays. It is a traditional Toulousian with sausage, duck confit and pork. The flavors are spot on, again the only issue is the toughness of the beans and slightly undercooked, but not to bad. This just again comes from not cooking the cassoulet the traditional peasant way.

The most recent one was a couple months ago at Gaslight Brasserie du Coin, which is the newest brasserie addition to Boston. Loud, semi-raucous, yet subdued atmosphere which seems to me to be very traditional French. Cassoulet for them is a Sunday event. Curious how the menu for both Brassarie Jo and this place look the same, and they both feature cassoulet on their menus as weekly specials. Jo has been around a lot longer though, Gaslight just opened. This cassoulet was served in an individual cast iron pan. The smells were incredible, the flavors were spot on, but it shared the same fate of the Brassarie Jo cassoulet with the undercooked tough beans.

So of the four I just mentioned, I would have to say the Gaslight Brasserie du Coin and Brasserie Jo were my favorites. If I had to choose one, I would have to go with Gaslight, because it had a bit more flavor and honestly the atmosphere and much better service are much more appealing. I keep wondering however, why do these restaurants serve this dish with the beans improperly cooked and the flavors not completely melded together by the long cooking process. If one were to tell me, it is because they can not take up the oven for such a lengthy process, then I say "why serve the dish at all?"

I think the answer lays more in the fact that people just don't know. Not only the consumer who assumes that this is the way it should be, but the chefs as well. When the constant is to make the dish this way, it becomes the norm, and that is a shame, until then, if you want the most traditional cassoulet you can come to my house, or try out my recipe, lucky for the people in my classes the next two nights they get to imbibe in my cassoulet.

I woke up today with France on my mind

Truth be told I wake up with France on my mind most days, however recently those thoughts have pervaded my mind more often. Perhaps it is because I was suppose to go on a trip to Burgundy with Clive Coates through my graduate program and it fell through, or it is just the amount of cooking and dining out I have been doing lately of the cuisine. Since I moved to Boston last January I have eaten at more French restaurants in this short time than I have in my entire career. These have not all been great experiences, but some of them have been amazing.

As for the cooking portion, I have always loved cooking French cuisine, but starting my Masters degree in Gastronomy at Boston University has propelled my love for the cuisine even further. Last semester I took an online class with Jacques Pepin and another professor Dr. Claflin from BU being the instructors. It was a phenomenal way to get my mind to look at the cuisine in a different way. Not only did the culture get reinforced for different dishes I have always cooked, but it inspired me to cook more regionally with all cuisines. I specifically fell in love with the Southwestern portion of the country and with the help of Paula Wolfret's writing, I have been able to experiment more with that regionalism found there.

Too often as chefs we are instructed in the ways of haute cuisine and I think that many of us have missed out on the wonderful peasant cuisines found in regional cooking in many countries. It is not always necessary to take a dish and stack it as high as possible, put three sauces on it, maybe some carrot foam and a cracker made from some unpronounceable chemical. Sometimes just a dish of tomato braised beans, with some garlic sausage, maybe a piece of duck confit, and a couple pieces of braised pork, combined and slow cooked for hours can be the best thing in the world, by-the-way we call that dish cassoulet, more specifically from the town of Toulouse in southwest France.

So with my opening blog I give you a bit of my passion for French cuisine and hope to have interaction with many food lovers across the globe. It is my hope to give you a few words on food each day, perhaps some restaurant reviews as I dine out often and just my general thoughts on what I am cooking each day and perhaps a recipe to go along with it. I am a busy graduate student and hop to give you a feeling of what it is to be a passionate chef and foodie setting himself out upon a new direction in a different world. Seeing as I mentioned cassoulet and I have so many friends who hear me talk about it, I thought I share with you my version of the dish.

Cassoulet

Ingredients:
2 lbs. of dried haricot beans (Tarbais if available, otherwise use navy beans)
1 lb. boneless pork shoulder cut into large chunks
10 oz. Pork skin with fat attached (Your local butcher can get this, or use fat back)
2 fresh ham hocks, cracked in half
2 medium onions, diced large
3 carrots, diced large
1 whole carrot, peeled and left whole
1 whole onion, peeled and left whole
6 springs of thyme tied together with 1/2 bunch of flat leaf parsley
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 Tablespoon of tomato paste
2 quarts of home-made chicken stock
6 legs of duck or goose confit with meat removed into large chunks
1 lb. of Toulouse sausage cut into large chucks (if unavailable use a fresh garlic flavored sausage)
Bread crumbs as needed
Salt and Pepper

Method:
Serves 10-12

1. 12 hours or the night before preparing your cassoulet, season the pork, hocks and skin liberally with salt and pepper and let sit in the refrigerator. Separately place the beans in a bowl and cover with water until about one inch over the level of the beans and let sit overnight as well.
2. When ready to begin, simmer the pork skin in water until it is soft and takes on a translucency. Remove it from the water shock it in cold water and then tie it into a roll with strong.
3. Heat a large cast iron pot over medium-high heat. Add a couple tablespoons of fat from your duck confit to the pan and brown the pieces of pork shoulder. Add the half of the carrots and onions then saute until the onions begin to caramelize. Next add the tomato paste, garlic cloves, stock, tied pork skin, bouquet garni and bring to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer under the pork is very tender, or about 1.5-2 hours.
4. While the pork is simmering drain the beans of their soaking liquid and rinse under cold water. Place the beans into a separate large pot along with the whole peeled onion and carrot, ham hocks and the bundle of thyme and parsley. Cover with fresh water and bring to a boil, lower heat to bring pot down to a simmer and allow to simmer for two hours or until the beans are tender.
5. When both the pork and the beans have become tender, remove from the heat and allow to cool for 30 minutes or until the ham hocks can be safely removed and the meat can be pulled from the bones and shredded. Discard the whole onion and carrot from the beans along with the bone from the ham hock after you have removed the meat.
6. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees.
7. Unite the pork skin from the pork ragout and use it to line the bottom and sides of a large cast iron dutch oven or similar coated stoneware vessel like the ones made by Emile Enrie. Place 1/3 of the beans into the bottom of the pot and season with pepper and salt. Then place one-half of the assorted meats (braised pork, ham hock, confit, sausage) on top of the beans, repeat the layer of beans, then meat and then the final 1/3 of the beans. Pour enough liquid from the braise and if necessary beans in order to just cover the top layer. Top the beans with a few tablespoons of the fat used to make the confit and then place a liberal coating of bread crumbs on top.
8. Place the pot into the pre-heated oven for one hour. When one hour has elapsed reduce the heat to 275 degress and continue to cook for another three hours. During the cooking time periodically check to make sure that the top of the cassoulet is moist, if it starts to dry add some of the cooking liquid from the beans.
9. Remove the pot from the oven and refrigerate it overnight.
10. The next day remove the pot from the oven and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the pot back into the oven for another hour and then reduce to 275 degrees again and cook for another three hours, remembering to continuously keep the top of the cassoulet moist.
11. At this point the cassoulet is ready to serve, remove from the oven and spoon onto a large plate or serving bowl making sure each person gets some beans and a bit of each of the meats. This dish is best served with an appropriate full-bodied Bordeaux.