Cassoulet

We've been making Cassoulet since 1996 with various complicated French recipes, and even took a class at L'Academie de Cuisine. It's a great, rich, hearty, cold-weather bean and meat stew from southern France. We've even made a pilgrimage to Castelnaudry which claims to have invented the dish; indeed, the fields all around the town are planted with the white beans that comprise the base. Now we're not so fussy, especially after seeing L'Academie's chef-owner wasn't even following his own recipe. We always used to start with a 2-pound bag of white beans, but it makes a ton of rich stew; here, we're cutting back to 1 pound dried beans to start: it still makes 6-8 portions.

The basic idea is to cook the rehydrated beans in a rich, flavorful stock, then combine with garlic-y sausage and duck confit; some recipes have you layer them, others have you combine at service; it's OK to just combine when you're finishing in the oven.  Most recipes suggest adding breadcrumbs and fat while finishing in the oven and this gives a wonderfully crunchy crust.

We make duck confit with a simple sous vide technique; it's so easy there's no reason not to have this simple luxury.

Ingredients

• 1 pound Beans, dry, white, northern or flageolets (2 Cups)
• 4 Cup Stock
• 1/2 pound Bacon, slab
• 1 Carrot, cut into thirds
• 1 Onion, halved, stuck with the Clove
• 1 Clove
• 1 Bouquet Garni
• 1 Tbs Salt
• 2 piece Duck Confit (legs), prepared earlier
• 1 Sausage, garlic or lamb, cut into coins
• 2 Onions, finely chopped
• 3 clove Garlic, chopped
• 1 Tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped bean-size (or 2 Cups canned)
• 1/2 Cup Breadcrumbs
• 1/4 Cup Duck Fat from the Confit

Beans

Soak Beans in 3x amount of cold water for 12 hours. If after 6 hours water is cloudy, change it. Drain. Rinse the Beans and place in large heavy-bottomed pan. Cover with cold water and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain. Return Beans to the pot and add 4 Cups Stock. Add Salt, Bacon, Carrot, Clove-studded Onion, and Bouquet Garni. Bring to boil and simmer for about 1 hour, until beans are almost tender. Do not stir while cooking.

Meat and Veg

Meanwhile...

In saute pan, brown the Sausage; you can also brown the Duck, skin side down, or pull the skin and crisp it separately, adding the cooked Duck Confit in later. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. In the same pan, sweat the finely chopped Onions in butter until soft and translucent. Add the chopped garlic, tomatoes, and 1/2 C of the cooking liquid from beans. Cook covered for 5 minutes; if drying out, add some stock.

Assembly

When the beans are almost tender, remove Carrot, Onion, Bacon, Bouquet Garni; Beans should be still quite wet, lots of liquid remains; this is necessary. 

Add the Onion/Tomato mixture, Sausage, Duck meat pulled from the bones. 

Check the seasoning of the Beans; some cooking liquid should remain.

In a large oven-proof casserole, layer or simply combine the meats and beans with their liquid. Sprinkle with Breadcrumbs and pour 1/2 Cup Duck Fat over the crumbs. Bake covered at 325F for 2 hours. Uncover 20 minutes before done to brown the Breadcrumbs.

2012-02-26 Dry Beans

We didn't have hydrated or soaked beans so use a pressure cooker to expedite the cooking -- we wanted cassoulet tonight, dammit! We used 2 pounds dry Great Northern Beans (about 5 Cups), 15 Cups water, 6 Tbs Oil (to prevent foaming), and included Bacon Rind, Carrot, Onion. Pressure cooked at 15 PSI for 20 minutes, and the beans came out done -- done enough to eat, but a little too done for further cooking. Since our beans were wet and finished, we cut back from 8 Cup Stock to 5 Cups. We baked uncovered so we didn't cook any more than necessary. Here too we used duck confit made directly by sous vide method. Next time, for 2 pounds (5 cups), cut back to 12 cups water and 15 minutes pressure cooking.

Sous Vide Duck Leg Confit

We love duck leg confit but don't want to scavenge for a bucket of duck fat. We can instead cook it sous vide in a minimal amount of fat, and add salt and seasonings directly to the cooking bag. This makes it a no-brainer, without losing quality and taste.

Traditionally, duck legs are dry brined with a lot of salt and some spice in order to draw out the blood and firm up the flesh; it's then rinsed, dried, then submerged in duck fat and cooked low and slow, and finally left to cool completely covered in an anaerobic layer fat. This is a technique borne out of the necessity to preserve the meat before refrigeration.

Since fridge-free preservation is not our concern, we don't need to draw off the blood that would spoil in the bucket o' fat. We'll just add a reduced amount of salt and spices to our vacuum bag with the legs directly. We can leave it that way in the fridge to let the seasoning penetrate a bit before cooking sous vide, but that my not be necessary -- the long cooking time should be enough. When cooked, we'll pour off the juices and fat, and separate, then save the jelled juice separate from the fat: both have plenty of uses.

We'll cook in the skin which should render some fat. If we're serving this directly, we'd then sear in a screaming hot pan, skin side down to crisp up. For cassoulet, we'd pull off the flesh and then crisp the skin separately to use as a crouton-like topping.

Various recipes suggest anywhere from 75-82C temperatures, for 8-24 hours. We'll go with 80C for 12 hours, since we're targeting meat for cassoulet; we'd probably do 8 hours for a leg we'd sear and serve by itself.

2 whole Duck Legs, skin on
1 Tbs Kosher Salt
2 tsp Pepper Corns
1 Bay Leaf
2 clove Garlic, minced
3 springs Thyme
2 Tbs Duck Fat (from previous adventures; pork, bacon, butter, or oil are OK in a pinch)

Sprinkle the legs with the salt.
Grind/chop the dry spices and dust the legs, sprinkle on the garlic.

Add the duck, spices, garlic and a couple tablespoons of duck fat to the vacuum bags and seal.
Let sit overnight in the fridge for flavors to penetrate.

Cook sous vide at 80C/176F for 8-12 hours.
If you're serving this soon, pour off the fat and liquid and separate, and save; then finish the duck as you like (e.g., sear the skin on ripping hot cast iron).
If you're saving this for later, drop the bags in an ice bath to chill, then store in the freezer until desired.

Pork Belly using the Fredy Girardet method

I first saw this mentioned as a innovative way to cook fish in the Modernist Cuisine books: fish is placed in a pan with wine coming up most of the sides of the fish, with the skin exposed, and broiled -- the liquid keeps the flesh from overcooking while letting the skin brown. Could the same be done for pork belly? We came pretty close.

Some others have blogged about doing the original Fredy Giaradet method on fish, with mixed success. Cook's Illustrated came up with a fine technique involving slow-roasting to cook, then crisping the skin in a thin layer of hot fat in the November 2015 issue (pay wall). I figured I'd try marrying the techniques.

I cut the pork belly into 3 cm widths, then scored through the skin in about 1cm increments; these would be where I cut for service and plating. Scoring would expose the fat under the skin to the heat.

Per the Cook's Illustrated technique coated the meat with a sugar/salt mixture on the bottom and sides, leaving the skin alone. This was placed, unwrapped, in the fridge overnight to flavor the meat and dry the skin.

The next day, I carefully placed them in as small a skillet as would contain them, and filled it with an affordable, quaffable white wine until it just came below the fat/skin height. If I had copious cider, I would have used that instead, but we saved Irene's homemade cider to serve with dinner.

This was placed in the oven, with the skin a couple inches below the broiler to cook. It took a fair while: the wine heated, cooking the flesh. The intense heat of the broiler first dried the skin, then it started to brown, and finally it began to bubble as the fat boiled, crisping the skin. I had to add a bit more wine part way through since evaporation dropped the level to a point where it was exposing the flesh.

I took it out when it looked about crispy-bubbly enough; I should have probably left it in longer. The wine protected the meat from overcooking, but there was still a hard, chitinous edge to the skin that wasn't ideal -- longer cooking should have caused the fat to puff more of the skin, until it became one big crackling.

I sliced each pork belly slice through the cuts that we made at the outset, then fanned them out on the plate for service. We paired them with Brussels sprouts and turnips that we roasted in the oven below the pan with the pork belly -- good cool-weather dinner.

Irene said the wine was too acidic; again, if we made a big batch of cider (or found some reasonably priced stuff that wasn't sickly sweet) I'd use that instead.