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The contents of your cassoulet pack - haricot beans, bacon hock, pork rind, belly pork, diced lamb and French country sausage
you will also need:
2 quartered onions
2 carrots
3 cloves
garlic
bouquet garni
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt, pepper
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme
Pork and beans is a combination popular in cuisines around the world but nowhere more so than the Languedoc, in south west France, with Cassoulet. An earthy combination of haricot beans, sausage, cured and fresh pork, breadcrumbs and, usually, preserved duck or goose, or lamb. Toulouse, Carcassone and Castelnaudary all have slightly different recipes, each claiming total authenticity and originality, but the gist is the same. The finer points are argued about at length by societies of people in funny hats but the basic method remains unaltered.
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| Riverford Farm Shop recipe collection |
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| cassoulet from the Riverford cassoulet pack |
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For the average person at home it is a fairly intimidating dish, not least because of the list of meats you need. However once you have them it requires no specific culinary skills and when you have cooked it once you will be an old hand, entitled to wear a funny hat. We have put our Cassoulet pack together to make it easy for you. The Riverford Cassoulet pack includes, haricot beans, bacon hock and pork rind for the first cooking; lamb, pork and sausage for the second/sauté stage, and breadcrumbs to finish off. You will also need some stock vegetables to cook with the beans and the items listed on the left to finish the dish. The quantities might seem large but, like all casseroles, it is even better reheated the next day. Alternatively, freeze half of it before you start adding the breadcrumbs.
Here’s how you do it
The haricot beans are cooked with bacon hock, pork rind, two quartered onions, two carrots, garlic and bouquet garni, in enough water to cover until soft. Add more water if necessary.
Meanwhile brown the rest of the meat, starting with the lamb and pork and then add the sausages cut into 10 cm lengths. Remove the meat and reserve. Add two chopped onions and two chopped cloves of garlic, soften and brown slightly. Add a four peeled and deseeded tomatoes, a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree, salt, pepper, a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme and a ladle or so of the bean liquid and gently simmer for thirty minutes or until you have a nice thick sauce. |
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Remove the hock and rind from the bean pot. Pull the meat from the bone and finely dice the hock skin and rind. Discard the herbs, onion and carrot. Stir the tomato and onion mixture into the beans - which should again be barely covered with liquid.
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Rub a casserole or earthenware pot with a clove of garlic, put half the beans plus liquid in the bottom, add the lamb, pork, rind skin and cooked bacon pieces, and cover with the rest of the beans and liquid before baking in the oven at 140°C for an hour. Remove from oven and push the browned sausages into the beans making sure they are covered. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top, patting down with a wooden spoon and put it back in the oven. Every twenty minutes or so break the crust that will have formed from the breadcrumbs, push it down and sprinkle on another layer. If it looks as though it is drying out too much add a little liquid or keep the breadcrumbs to a minimum. Finally smear duck or bacon fat or lard on and leave the final crust to crisp and golden. The finished texture should be firm rather than sloppy but not cloying; it shouldn’t have liquid running out when served with a spoon and the beans should have begun to disintegrate. |
| The twists are endless – mainly revolving around the use of confit (preserved duck or goose). I have never used it, simply because it isn’t the sort of thing I keep in my larder or see in the local butchers or deli. I think the lamb provides an adequate substitute but if you want extra unctuous richness use a tablespoon of duck fat at the beginning of the sauté stage and before you cook the onions, pour off the fat from the sautéed meats. Add the fat again at the end with the breadcrumbs. |
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Topic number two for intercity rivalries and feuds beneath the walls of Carcassone is the amount of times the crust should be broken. One to eight are available in the Languedoc lottery but as long as the texture is right I shouldn’t worry about it. Some people say the rind should be laid, skin side down, in the bottom of the casserole rather than dicing it up. Others say you should only cook it in a month that begins with a capital letter. |
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