French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [222]
‘Spread the beans on the table, so that you can see if there are any stones or grit to be discarded. Put them into a little cold water, and rub them between your hands to get rid of the dust. Change the water at least twice; not until it comes out quite clear are the beans properly clean.
‘Put the beans into a small marmite or stock pot with 3 pints of cold water. Bring to the boil, cover, remove from the fire, and leave them for about 40 minutes. The beans swell, go white, and throw off the oxide of potassium which they contain. The purpose of this operation is to make them more digestible and less flatulent.
‘Throw away the water out of doors, not down the sink; its smell infects the kitchen for twenty-four hours. In the Languedoc the housewives keep this liquid in well-corked bottles and use it for removing obstinate stains on white and coloured linen.
‘Return the beans to the pot with 2 to 5 pints of tepid water and a little salt, and bring to the boil.
‘In the meantime partly roast the mutton and soak the sausage in tepid water to rid it of dust. Add the meat and the sausage to the beans, plus the bouquet of parsley tied with a thread, the preserved goose, the tomato cut in half and the seeds removed, and the onion stuck with cloves. Cook extremely gently for 2 hours.
‘Cut the salt pork or bacon into dice; crush the peeled garlic cloves. Dip a sturdy knife into very hot water and chop the salt pork or the bacon and garlic together. Add them to the beans. Cook for at least 1 more hour, preferably 2.
‘Now carefully remove to a plate all the cooked meat. Transfer the beans to a deep earthenware or fireproof china dish, with just enough of their juice to moisten them; they should be milky white, and soft to the touch. Season them with pepper and sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs. Put the dish in a hot oven for 15 minutes.
‘Cut up the mutton and put it in the centre of another dish with the preserved goose flanking it on one side and the sausage on the other. Serve the two dishes at the same time, with very hot plates.
‘With this dish, drink a light red wine.’
I have quoted Colombié’s recipe as he wrote it, but anyone who has experienced the dish in its native country, at Toulouse or Carcassonne, will know that it is more usual to find the meat and the sausages buried within the beans, and that it also includes the little squares of pork rind which make it so rich. Probably Colombié’s version was the one current in his native town of Castres in the Tarn; as a matter of fact it is excellent, considerably less exacting both to cook and to eat than the Toulouse version; the manner of cooking the beans without a preliminary soaking works perfectly. And the preserved goose can be replaced, as it not uncommonly is nowadays by Languedoc housewives, with a larger piece of shoulder of lamb—2 lb. instead of 1 lb.—or with more sausages or with a small duck, partly roasted, then jointed. There should be enough for four people, but one never quite knows what other people’s capacity for a cassoulet will be.
CASSOULET DE TOULOUSE À LA MÉNAGÈRE
BEANS WITH PORK, LAMB AND SAUSAGES
To cook the better known version of the cassoulet, in quantities for about eight to ten people, the ingredients would be 2 lb. of medium-sized white haricot beans (butter beans will not do), 1 lb. of Toulouse sausages (a coarse-cut type of pure pork sausage to be bought at Soho shops) or a garlic-flavoured boiling sausage of the kind now sold by most delicatessen shops, a pork sparerib or bladebone weighing about 2 lb., 1 lb. breast or shoulder of lamb (both joints boned), 8 to 10 oz. of salt pork or green bacon, an onion, a bouquet of herbs, garlic and seasonings, breadcrumbs.
Have the rind of the pork removed as thinly as possible. Remove also the rind from the salt pork. Cut these rinds into small squares and put them into the saucepan with the salt pork and beans, previously soaked. Add the onion and the bouquet of herbs, plus 2 flattened