Fancy Baked Beans

NOTE: THIS POST CONCLUDES OUR THREE WEEK SERIES, WE'LL BE USING THE ELEMENTS FROM LAST TWO WEEK'S POSTS TO COMPLETE THIS WEEK'S RECIPE.

Some dishes are about far more than a paltry meal. These are the foods so very saturated with tradition and history and ceremony that eating them is as much about ritual as it is sustenance. One need look no further than American Thanksgiving dinner for an example; where tradition supersedes practicality, and each individual feast is marked by a bird far too large, flanked by sides far too numerous, and manned by relatives eating far too much. It's tradition. The French, in particular, excel at this sort of elevating food beyond a meal to a rite (sans gluttony). France, and it's culinary history, are filled with such stereotypes. Take, for instance, the ceremony surrounding the release of each new vintage of Beaujolais, or the pomp during the first winter truffle harvest. There are several such specimens, but my favourite, if I might cut to the quick, is cassoulet.

Cassoulet is, essentially, baked beans. There are several regional variations in southwestern France, where this meal originated, but most of them contain white beans, pork, sausage, and smoked/salted/confit meats. Namely, a spicy pork sausage, hamhock, and confit duck or goose, with the occasional addition of lamb or mutton, but variations abound. These items are all slow cooked together in a wide, earthenware dish called a cassole until the beans are rich and creamy, and a caramelized crust has formed on the top. Fancy baked beans.

Not content with the fact that fancy baked beans taste good, the French (particularly those of the self-proclaimed capitol of cassoulet: Castelnaudary) have cassoulet festivals and special events celebrating the tradition. Locals have even formed the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary. “The Great Brotherhood”, according to their website, “is to ... disseminate and defend the reputation of the cassoulet of Castelnaudary , ensuring respect for tradition and quality.”

Really. It's just beans.



So, cassoulet is beans, made bigger than life, in France, through tradition. Outside of it's country of origin talking cassoulet with fellow chefs is not unlike talking politics: it shouldn't be done. It only takes someone to mention that they favor one ingredient over another, or that they add tomato, for moisture, and the argument is on. Soon it's all “That's not how it's done.” and “You can't leave out the ham.” or “Your method is stupid.” Feelings get hurt. Many of the chefs I know are abnormally attached to their cassoulet. Obsessively. Relationship-ending stuff.

If this weren't reason enough to leave cassoulet alone, making the dish requires a great deal of work. You've got to cook beans, sausages, hamhock, possibly a stock, and confit duck, all separately, some of which can take days, and then combine them and cook them for a further day or so. Some methods call for the cooked cassoulet to be rested overnight and then cooked again for a further few hours before serving. It almost sounds like too much effort.

Luckily, too much effort is something of my M.O. here at OHC.



Borlotti Bean and Rabbit Cassoulet

Those in the class who payed attention will notice that neither “borlotti” nor “rabbit” were ever mentioned as ingredients in traditional cassoulet. We're not going to talk about it, in the interest of preventing a fight. Trust me. It's desperately delicious.

For this you'll need the sausages from a couple weeks ago and the beans, rabbit legs, and stock from last week.

500g rabbit and pork sausages
1 tbsp rendered duck or pork fat
2 small white onions, peeled, rough chop
3 cloves garlic, peeled
500ml rabbit and ham stock
4 cups cooked borlotti beans
2 confit rabbit legs, removed from fat, meat removed from bones
bean cooking liquid

Heat the fat in a large fry pan on low heat. When melted and warm (not hot) and add the sausages. Cook the sausages gently until they color on one side, flip and continue cooking. Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, blitz the onion and garlic with 100ml of the rabbit stock. Add this paste to the pan with the nearly cooked sausages and bring the lot to a simmer. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the onion no longer smells raw. Remove from heat.

Preheat your oven to 150ºC. In a wide, deep (earthenware if possible), baking dish, layer the cassoulet. First, a layer of cooked beans, then the sausages and onion paste. Follow this with another layer of beans. Top this with the picked confit rabbit meat. Finish this with a final layer of beans. This should, hopefully, fill your dish and leave with you no additional beans (although you're probably hungry by now, so a few handful's of perfectly cooked beans wouldn't kill you).

Ladle in enough of the rabbit and ham stock so that the level of the liquid is equal with that of the top of the beans. Bake, uncovered, for 4 hours. After the first hour, open the oven and push down the crust of that forms on the surface of the cassoulet, and top up the liquid using the rabbit stock. Repeat this process every half hour until the four hour's cooking is complete led. At any time the stock runs out, switch to using the reserved bean liquid to keep the beans moist.

For the last half hour, do not disturb the crust, but add a bit of stock if the cassoulet looks dry.

At the end of four hours, remove the cassoulet from the oven. Your beans should be individually intact, not mushy (a product of slow cooking), and the crust on top formed of a mattress of crisp beans and caramelized bits of goodness. Cool slightly, and serve a warm cross-section of beans, meat and sausages.

I usually suggest accompaniments, but not here. Perhaps you'd like some bread, I don't know. I just eat my fill off cassoulet and shut up. Oh. Wine. You'll need red wine. Tons.