Cassoulet
I’d been thinking about making a cassoulet for some time. Anywhere I looked on the internet for a suitable recipe wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I wanted it to be fairly authentic in as much as wanted it to contain duck, lovely best-quality sausages, a mirepoix-style base cooked in duck fat and white beans such as haricot and all cooked in a thick, well-flavoured sauce of stock and tomatoes. From hereon the need to authenticity ended. Reading Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking I realised that it isn’t essential to use confit de canard, but to par-roast some duck legs instead. The great French regions where cassoulet hails from use ingredients that for them are in great cheap abundance. In the UK confit de canard is a luxury. Inspired by the outline of a recipe in French Country Cooking I devised my own version of a cassoulet. Being somewhat lazy (as far as batch-cooking three meals on one day can be called lazy!) I used whatever tins of beans I had in my larder. Luckily for me I had a tin of Mexican baked beans that had been lingering in the back of the cupboard for a very long time, crying out to be used in a a nice big stew. They gave a very subtly background smoky flavour to the dish, not very Languedoc I know, but the outcome was everything I wanted, hearty, rib-sticking and the duck fat gave a lovely rich flavour.
Serves 4 for dinner with 2-3 left-over portions. If you wanted to serve this for a dinner party of 6-8 I would add extra duck legs.
Prick the skin of the duck legs and rub with salt and then roast on a rack in a roasting tin in an oven preheated to 160 degrees C for 45 minutes. A couple of times baste and pour off and reserve the duck fat
Meanwhile brown the sausages all over and set aside.
Rub garlic well into a casserole dish, and then heat a couple of tablespoons of the duck fat in it, then add the onion, garlic, celery and fennel. Sweat the vegetables on a gentle flame for 20 minutes.
Add the sausages and duck to the casserole and gently mix with the vegetables. Add the beans, tomatoes, stock, wine and herbs and gently mix everything together and bring slowly to the boil.
Put the casserole, covered in an oven for 1 hour at 160 degrees C.
Serve with lots of buttered steamed greens.
I’d been thinking about making a cassoulet for some time. Anywhere I looked on the internet for a suitable recipe wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I wanted it to be fairly authentic in as much as wanted it to contain duck, lovely best-quality sausages, a mirepoix-style base cooked in duck fat and white beans such as haricot and all cooked in a thick, well-flavoured sauce of stock and tomatoes. From hereon the need to authenticity ended. Reading Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking I realised that it isn’t essential to use confit de canard, but to par-roast some duck legs instead. The great French regions where cassoulet hails from use ingredients that for them are in great cheap abundance. In the UK confit de canard is a luxury. Inspired by the outline of a recipe in French Country Cooking I devised my own version of a cassoulet. Being somewhat lazy (as far as batch-cooking three meals on one day can be called lazy!) I used whatever tins of beans I had in my larder. Luckily for me I had a tin of Mexican baked beans that had been lingering in the back of the cupboard for a very long time, crying out to be used in a a nice big stew. They gave a very subtly background smoky flavour to the dish, not very Languedoc I know, but the outcome was everything I wanted, hearty, rib-sticking and the duck fat gave a lovely rich flavour.
Serves 4 for dinner with 2-3 left-over portions. If you wanted to serve this for a dinner party of 6-8 I would add extra duck legs.
- 2 Gressingham duck legs (drumstick and thigh)
- 6-8 very good quality sausages
- 2 onions, very finely chopped
- 2-3 ribs of celery, very finely chopped
- 1 head of fennel, very finely chopped
- 1 faggot of herbs (parsley, thyme, bay etc, tied together in a bundle)
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- 2-3 400g tins of haricot or cannellini beans
- 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
- 300ml good stock
- Glass of red wine
Prick the skin of the duck legs and rub with salt and then roast on a rack in a roasting tin in an oven preheated to 160 degrees C for 45 minutes. A couple of times baste and pour off and reserve the duck fat
Meanwhile brown the sausages all over and set aside.
Rub garlic well into a casserole dish, and then heat a couple of tablespoons of the duck fat in it, then add the onion, garlic, celery and fennel. Sweat the vegetables on a gentle flame for 20 minutes.
Add the sausages and duck to the casserole and gently mix with the vegetables. Add the beans, tomatoes, stock, wine and herbs and gently mix everything together and bring slowly to the boil.
Put the casserole, covered in an oven for 1 hour at 160 degrees C.
Serve with lots of buttered steamed greens.