Un cassoulet de souris d'agneau

The basic ingredient in a French cassoulet is white beans. They can be lingots blancs — that's what I used — or they can be haricots tarbais, a different variety of white bean which is grown around the city called Tarbes, about 75 miles SW of Toulouse. Le cassoulet is a specialty of SW France, and especially of Toulouse, Castelnaudary, and Carcassonne.

The first step is to soak the dried lingots in a good quantity of cold water. Most recipes call for soaking them overnight. I ended up soaking these for at least 18 hours. They were very tender after they cooked in my slow-cooker (mijoteuse) on high heat for about three hours.

Actually, I've been known to make "fusion" cassoulets using other varieties of beans, including black-eyed peas (cornilles) or giant lima beans (haricots de Soissons). Beans are beans...

An ingredient that's really good in cassoulet is plain pork sausages. These are the ones I used, saucisses de Toulouse. You would especially expect to have them in a Toulouse-style cassoulet, which also includes salt pork, lamb, and duck. These were advertised as being nitrite-free. Before putting them into the cassoulet I sauteed them in some duck fat in a frying pan until they were at least partially cooked. Then they cooked in the cassoulet dish with the beans and other ingredients for 90 minutes in a medium oven.

The reason I ended up soaking the lingot beans for such a long time was that I had planned to cook them overnight in the mijoteuse along with four souris d'agneau (lamb shanks from the back leg of the animal). Then I realized that there wasn't enough room in the cooker for the beans and the lamb. So I cooked the lamb shanks overnight on low in the cooker, and then cooked the beans the next morning. After the lamb was cooked and had cooled, I pulled all the lean meat off the bones and discarded the bones and fat, which had given their flavor.

I cooked the lamb shanks with carrots, celery, onions, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and spices including black peppercorns, allspice berries, and some hot red pepper flakes. And then I cooked the beans in the lamb broth, adding to the pot a slab of salt-cured pork that's called petit-salé in France. Petit-salé comes with the pork rind (la couenne) still on it, and it contains a lot of gelatin that melts, enriching the cooking liquid.

When the beans were cooked, I decided to chop up the carrots, onions, and celery stalks that had cooked in the mijoteuse with the lamb shanks. That's kind of a rustic way of serving beans. A lot of cooks wouldn't include vegetables like those with beans, but I say why not? Vegetables are good for you, and they add some color to the dish.

I put about a third of the cooked lingot beans in the bottom of a baking dish and then I put  chunks of lamb shank meat in a layer over them. After I took the lean lamb meat off the bones and got rid of the cartilage and fat, I put the meat into a hot oven to brown and dry out for about 20 minutes. It had just simmered in water overnight, so browning it gave it a little extra flavor, I think.

After sauteeing the sausages to pre-cook and brown them slightly, I put a second layer of beans over the lamb and arranged the sausages on top, pressing them down into the beans as much as I could. I also cut up some of the petit-salé that had cooked with the beans and arranged chunks of it around the edges of the dish.

The cassoulet was all assembled at that point, except for two steps: pouring on just enough of the lamb and bean broth to not quite cover the beans and then sprinkling on a good quantity of dried breadcrumbs (called chapelure in France). Then, for good measure, I drizzled some melted duck fat over the crumbs. You could use vegetable oil or melted lard or chicken fat instead of duck fat in this recipe.

And voilà — the assembled cassoulet went into a slow oven for 90 minutes. You want everything very hot when you serve it. A lot of the liquid will be absorbed by the beans. Toward the end of the cooking time, you can turn up the oven to brown the top of the cassoulet.

I don't remember the first time I ever ate cassoulet, but I remember fondly one Walt and I had in 1989. We were in a restaurant in the town of Castelnaudary, which many say is the birthplace of the dish. It was unforgettable.