Cassoulet in Castelnaudary...

The birth place of Cassoulet ... it was only a 2 and a half hour drive from where we were sampling wines so I thought it'd be rude not to! Teamed with a night in Carcassone it was hard for my better half to say no too. The Cardogan Guide to the south of France declared this "the best gourmet restaurant in town". Perhaps it was... 20 years ago! The decor was incredibly OTT and out of date but this was more amusing than off putting. It was cold and raining outside and we were pleased we'd made it in time for lunch sessions last orders (2pm!)

There were many pre fixe menus ranging from €13 through to €45 ... not wanting to go crazy for lunch we picked a 4 course affair at €20. 

Foie  Gras wrapped in sausage meat then a thin rolling of lard covered in trotter jelly galore!

as you can see from the photo, the late seventies decor also made it onto my plate along with tasteless tomatoes and olives(?!)

The Cassoulet came with 2 thin chipolata  sized sausage, a piece of pork knuckle and a slice of pork belly along with a  piece of goose which i couldn't work out where on the goose it was from as it was so small and dry! The beans were plentiful of course and delicious too I just thought the whole dish (which was for both of us to share!) was very mean on the meat. 

After the cassoulet arrived "faisselle de fromage blanc" which was homemade fromage frais swimming in cream sprinkled with white sugar which took me straight back to my childhood.

Finally we got creme caramel with a generous amount of liquor. We had this with a lovely bottle of corbieres.

Here is the Chef ... Monsieur Francois Gibassier ... He probably thought I was some guide book critic! We had a lovely lunch and for the price it wasn't bad. I have a theory that if you are known for one thing, and its as much as a faff as cassoulet you're going to get a bit lazy and cut a few corners after doing the same dish day in day out for 20 odd years ... so Castelnaudary may be the birth place of cassoulet and you may be able to get it in every hotel, restaurant, cafe, bar and bistro in town but it may not be the best you'll ever have!

Domaine St Hilaire

Just a couple of shots to keep everyone interested upto date on our search for the Charles Lamb wine. Hobby and I are currently in the Languedoc region in the South West of France staying at the Domaine St Hilaire just outside Montagnac. We currently stock a rose from this estate and are here investigating their reds & whites whilst also discussing printing our own labels.

The Domaine has a lovely "boutique" chambres d'hotes which is making our visit all the more pleasant! Semi retired couple Anne and Jonathan James  took over the domaine in 2002 and have turned it into a great place to visit and buy wines from too!

Cassoulet

I like to think that this is my signature dish. I don't remember having this as a child and my mum has never attempted it (its far to unhealthy for Maman!) although she has had mine and is very complementary of it. The first time I made it for my parents they were about to leave for a trip to France for one of my many cousins weddings, Papa told all his brothers (he has 6 brothers, 5 sisters!) that I had attempted the cassoulet and achieved success ... after such compliment I couldn't help but to endevour to improve it!

Ingredients for a Cassoulet for 6 people

6 duck or rabbit legs

1 litre (about 2 jars) of Goose fat or Duck fat

600g of pork belly

12 toulouse sausages

1 large onion

1 bouquet garni 

6 cloves of garlic

1 bottle of white wine (optional)

Couple of carrots and celery sticks

4 large tins or 8 little tins of Flageolet beans(aprox) or 250 grams of dried Flageolet beans

Any dried pork scraps you may have stock piled!

I sometimes add confit pig cheeks, confit gessier, left over rilletts, terrine or saussison!

Day 1

If you are using dried Flageolet you need to soak them or 24 hours (or at least over night!)

Confit you Duck or Rabbit legs by placing them in a roasting tray and rubbing big salt generously all over them. Add rosemary twigs garlic cloves to the tray and then pour over melted fat until the legs are covered. Cover the tray with foil and place in an oven of about 200c for about 2.5 hours. Remove from the oven and check that the flesh and skin has come away from the bone. Allow to cool before storing in the fridge for the next day.

If you are going to the trouble of confiting for you cassoulet i always think its worth doing a couple more legs as they keep in the fat for at least a week or two. You could shred them and make a duck, orange and chicory salad or even attempt rillettes! You could just reheat in the oven for 20 minutes and serve with celeriac mash and red cabbage.

Day 2 

Put together your stock pot of white wine, water, carrots, celery, bouquet garni & halved onion.

If you are using dried beans them drain them and add them to you pot once its been brought to the boil and add your pork belly (you can cut this into strips about 2cm thick before popping in the pot).

The beans need about 1.5 to 2 hours (they should be over cooked to normal standards but still hold their shape).

Whilst this is going on you need to brown your toulouse sausages in some of the fat from the confit tray and set aside for later. You don't have to cook through the sausages as they will cook through in the dish in the oven later.

Once the pork has been in the stock pot about 45 minutes scoop it out and set aside to cool down. Trim off the skin and layer of fat from the topside of the belly, cut into cubes and set aside for later.

Once the beans are done drain them but keep the stock and set aside. You can discard the bouquet, carrot and celery but keep the onion

Pull your confit legs out of the fat. The skin and flesh should have come away from the bone, hold the bone and gently twist it until it comes free of the internal knuckle.

If you can find the cloves of garlic in the fat pull them out too and with a heaped tablespoon of the fat pop into the magimix or blender along with the onion from the stock pot.

If you are using tinned beans make sure they are well drained and rinsed.

You now have to fry those little cubes of fat  in another spoon of fat from the confit tray. This is a horrid job and I find the best thing to do is keep the heat down and pop a lid on top of the frying pan. Add these to the blender after about 10 minutes and wizz up the fatty oniony mess!

Now you can build your cassoulet... and get fat all over yourself!

Coat the inside of your oven dish with the wizzed up oniony fat. A layer of beans at the bottom of the dish followed by a spoon full of the onion fat on top of which the toulouse sausages then fat then beans then fat then the strips of pork belly and any scraps of pork products you have knocking about then fat then beans then fat then you confit duck or rabbit legs. 

Pour in some of the stock that you set aside earlier into the the dish but don't cover the legs ... you should only just see the stock under the last layer of beans. 

Cover the dish and place in the oven at 300c for 1 hour then turn down the oven to 180c for another 2 hours. Take out of the oven and allow to cool.

Day 3

Preheat the oven to 200c. Reheat your cassoulet for 1 hour until violently bubbling and serve with bread and a green salad on the side.

This dish does take a while to prepare and is a very messy fatty dish to prepare but is worth it and if you confit extra legs you have another meal or so almost ready to go. 

It is perfect for dinner parties as you have only to reheat on the night and enjoy your guests company.

There are cheats... like buying ready confited duck legs so adapt it your self however be aware that the amount of love and fat that goes into will show through in the end product!

Of starch and cheese… again (sorry)

I was in a fantastic cheese shop in Paris and saw they were selling tomme fraîche from the Auvergne... so I popped to the organic veg stall in the street market for some potatoes and went home to make Aligot... It's basically cheesy mash, but as made by the gods.
For four people:
1kg floury potatoes (I used red skinned ones)
350g Tomme Fraîche (Elizabeth David says you can substitue very young Lancashire if you're desperate), chopped into little cubes
2-3 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped
250g crème fraîche
150g butter

Boil the potatoes, then peel them and pass through a mouli to get a nice fluffy mash
heat the cream and butter in a large pan until the butter melts
Add the potatoes, garlic and cheese and stir vigourously with a wooden spoon until the mixture goes really elastic.
Enjoy.


Some people eat it with lentils and bits of pig, I had it with some fresh cèpes sliced and fried like schnitzel...
mmmmmm

Madelaine madness....

These are real madelaines that I actually made! Over christmas my madelaines obsession went overboard in that we decided that instead of the might mince pie we would tamper with the classic madelaine recipe and come up with some chistmassy alternatives to have with coffee.

We had Coffee and Cardamon, Candied peel and cinnamon, Allspice, prune, nutmeg, mace, ginger & cinnamon.... other successful flavours were ameretto and dark choc chip 

and fig and walnut. The regular recipe that I use for Madelaines (which I might add does not need embellishment at all, only for Christmas Fun!) is as follows

150g of quality unsalted butter

200g of plain flour

100g of caster sugar

100g of ground almonds

6 free range eggs

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 orange

Mix the butter, sugar and ground almonds together with your hands until a buttery ball, then crack one egg at a time mixing it in with a wooden spoon ... 

you should now have a runny batter.

Sift in the plain flour bit by bit ... if it gets lumpy then take to it with a whisk.

Lastly, finely grate the rind of one orange and together with a teaspoon of baking powder mix into the thickened batter.

Madelaines have there own type of shell like moulds which you can get in tin or silicone form ... the latter will save you alot of time and heartache in the end. You should be able to pick these up from a good cookery shop or cooks department in John Lewis.

Fill up the mould only half way (a heaped teaspoon should do it) and bake at around 170c for about 15-20 minutes. Eat them within an hour to get them at their best!

The mixture should keep in the fridge for a couple of days at home (although make sure its kept in the fridge as there is raw egg involved) They are wonderful warm for breakfast, elevenses, goute...

When I first started making them a couple of years ago I was sure that there was something missing from the batter as a remembered a crunchiness from my childhood ... I eventually came to the conclusion that as I mostly ate madelaines on the beach in the summer holidays or in the car on the way home from the beach, that the crunchiness was probably sand!

Stirring Up the Charles Lamb Figgy Pudding

A bit belated but here are some pictures from the end of November when we made the Charles Lamb Figgy Pudding. As you can see its a real family affair with Claudette, Hobby myself and bear all having a good stir. Sanchia put it all together with a liitle help from a recipe sent from my sisters husband mother?!?.... 

Christine up in Newcastle. Our Secret? ... Soak the figs in quality London Porter for at least 3 days before you even get going on the rest.

Salon of Taste to Tuscany in six drunken days

Last week I went on holiday by mistake. But I’m quite glad about it. It all started in Torino, at the Salon of Taste…
http://www.salonedelgusto.com/eng/pagine/02_i_presidi.lasso?-session=salonedelgusto2008:42F9478B13d38064F4mwtK342406
Salone del gusto was just amazing – an unfathomably huge building brimming over with edible delights. The experience for me was, on the first day, fairly goat based. Soft goat salami (pitina), which might conceivably be the most delicious meat product I’ve ever consumed; more of a cured meatball than a salami really, rolled in maize and smoked over juniper. And Cypriot sun dried goat with sea salt and oregano. Then Violino di Capra. Yes, goat violin. A whole air-dried goat leg which looks like a violin (and is sliced as if playing a violin) but tastes like meaty, salty, aromatic joy.
(Actually, the violino that we purchased was almost tragically lost in a bar later that evening, in what has become known as ‘goat-gate’. Turns out it wasn’t lost, but perhaps our minds were, after tasting quite so many Vermentino).
In other, non-goat news, there was the Lardo. Eating thin slices of cured pig fat is officially not a chore. And then there was the Palermitan spleen bun. Unctuous offal in a bun. Has to be the new burger. A lot of dipping cheese in honey occurred after this point, and interspersing slivers of mullet bottarga with pistachio granita and oysters. It is all a blur.
The gastronomic odyssea next took in Alba’s annual truffle festa, where the main occurrence was a fairly gratuitous inhalation of truffle spores, then to pretty Bra, the headquarters of the slow food movement where Osteria Boccondivino (http://www.boccondivinoslow.it/ita-boccon/storia.htm) cruelly forced me to eat the most ambrosial panna cotta in history. Plates were licked. Involuntary sounds were made. They made me drink some extraordinary Barolo, too. Nightmare. (But go there).

Then, via a tiny Ligurian beach holiday within a holiday (lasting 2 hours and a lot of onion foccacia) final destination, San Pancrazio was reached:
www.corzanoepaterno.it
This place is something of a paradise on earth where abounds endless chianti, beauty, pecorino and generosity. And lamb smoked over rosemary in a fireplace, a stone pizza oven in which dough was obedient, poached eggs with shaved truffles, and a little trattoria where they tried really hard to destroy me with truffles and porcini, but I’m a fighter so I survived to tell this tale. Go there, too.