Cassoulet

I know you've all been on the edge of your desk chairs for the past two weeks awaiting the follow-up to my duck confit and duck quarters posts. Well, here it is folks! I made the cassoulet last Sunday for my family and served it with a simple salad and crusty bread. There are a gazillion variations on cassoulet; this one from Fine Cooking uses white beans and has pork, pork sausage, pancetta, and duck in it. I think that's the most meat I've ever eaten in one dish, and it was very very good. A lot of work, but very good. I found it funny that during the cooking process, I had to defat this broth and dump that fat, but then the next directions said to add more duck fat. I suppose duck fat is the tastiest of all the fats in the dish. Rather than post the entire lengthy recipe here, I'm going to just link to it since I didn't change anything. For a timeline and pics, read more!

3 weeks before

I made the duck confit and stuck it in the fridge to sit and get all fatty- and delicious-like.

3 days before

I made the beans and the stewed pork. The beans went into the fridge separately from the cooking liquid (which is to be used later), and the pork went into the fridge separately from the broth. Before using the broth on the day of, it must be defatted so that you can add more duck fat instead, of course.

4 hours before

I started the vegetables and tomato sauce, which includes the pancetta.

The beans and tomato sauce at the bottom of the pot

3 hours before

This is when the final assembly begins. I cooked the sausage in my big Le Creuset my neighbor was awesome enough to let me borrow, then removed and dumped the fat. A word to the wise here: the recipe says just to brown the sausage but not cook it, since it will cook in the oven for 1.5 hours. Well, we found that about half of the sausage was not fully cooked at the end, so I suggest cooking it almost completely beforehand.

Meeeeeeeeat

To assemble, half of the beans and tomatoes go into the bottom of the pot. Over that, I arranged the sausage, duck, and pork. The rest of the beans and tomatoes top it off. I then poured in the defatted pork broth, and enough bean liquid to rise to the top but not completely cover the beans. This goes into the oven for 45 minutes.

Before the initial 45 minutes of cooking

1 and 1/2 hours before

I topped the cassoulet with bread crumbs, lemon zest, and cheese then cooked for a final 45 minutes. At the very end, I popped on the broiler to crisp it up nice and good.

45 minutes before

This is by far the hardest part of the recipe. Let it sit for at least 45 minutes so that all the yummy juices thicken slightly. Don't touch!!

Immediately before serving

Assemble a simple salad of greens, cranberries, walnuts, and goat cheese with a light vinaigrette. Warm some fresh crusty bread and set the table.

Et voila!