Yves' Cassoulet

There are about two billion recipes for that on-line, and then everyone you talk in the south of France to has their own idea about how to make a cassoulet. To make things worse, the recipes from around Toulouse seem to be actually quite different to those from around Castelnaudary.

Just like with pizza, we've been experimenting for a while, and we're getting to something decent, good enough to document. This recipe is under construction and might change as we continue to improve the process.

Quantities are to feed several monsters (probably at least 6 people).

Ingredients

Duck (3 breasts)

Smoked bacon (poitrine fumée)

1kg White beans (tarbais), fresh

bay leaf

Onion

Garlic

2 cloves

1 carrot

Couenne (that's pig skin — French butcher will give it to you for free

Method

Peal the onion, prick the cloves in it. Peal the carrot. Set the beans, bacon, onion, carrot, bay leaf in low-boiling water.

Cook for about 20 to 30 minutes (check that the beans are soft), then drain the broth (in a salad bowl — we're using it at a later stage). Remove the carrot, onion and bay leaf.

Meanwhile: coat the bottom of a deep pot with the couenne. Start cooking, fairly gently. It stinks, but it's ok. Rub the duck with garlick and salt. When the couenne fat starts to melt a bit, add the duck (other meats can go in: pork (shoulder? what else?), and sausage.

Once the meats are cooked "enough," add the beans and just barely cover with broth.

Cook gently for 40-60 minutes.

If you have to much liquid, remove some (and serve it with a few beans and meat, as a lazy man's fabada. Obviously it's not the official recipe, but it's still too good to throw out!).

Store the solids in an earthen dish in the fridge overnight.

One hour before serving, set the dish in the oven at fairly low temperature (mark 6, 140? degrees).

There we go, that's all there is to it. With dried beans, there's a re-hydrating process that we need to test before we publish it. Also, I suspect this is the Toulousan version, which Castelnaudary people refer to as "bean soup" because of the way it's cooked: as I understand it, they cook everything in the oven, "breaking" the crust every hour or so and cooking for 4-6 hours. We haven't tested that method (yet).

Also, why is my recipe wrapped in a tiny newspaper-style column?