Cassoulet de Millbrook

A Main Course.Once I tasted the beautiful salty, meat filled cassoulets of France I searched for a few recipes (mostly in charity shop bought cook books) until I found what worked for me.

Since then, cassoulet has become something of a staple at Millbrooker Towers. In all truth, though I don't follow recipes any more; once you've grasped that a cassoulet is just a glorified bean stew, making it up as you go along and chucking other things into it becomes second nature.

Traditionally, cassoulet is made with Toulouse sausage, belly pork, bacon and butter beans. I tend to use whatever I've got lying around. I'm cooking a cassoulet for dinner tonight, as it happens; I'm using black eyed beans (because I love them) AND butter beans along with a handful of haricot beans that I found towards the back of the cupboard. We're also a bit short on the meat to make a traditional cassoulet - so here's what I'm up to in the kitchen, take from it what you wish, adjust ingredients, adjust cooking times etc...

Any purists reading the list of ingredients below will exclaim "that's not a cassoulet!", but the recipe works, it's very inexpensive to make and it's not very time consuming.

To listen to how this recipe is made, click the podcast player below:

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Here are the basics.

(NOTE: all of the beans come dried, this makes them very inexpensive - hooray! - but means you need to soak them in cold water overnight before cooking, so plan ahead).

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This makes loads for four and enough for six if you're not too greedy.

Ingredients:

100g black eyed beans

100g butter beans

40g haricot beans

A tablespoon or so of olive oil (ordinary veg oil is fine, too)

A large onion, roughly chopped

Three big or four smaller cloves of garlic, chopped up small.

1x400g tin of tomatoes (chopped, cheapest available)

Pork stock cube, dissolved in 500ml water

500g gammon, chopped or sliced according to taste (use any salty meat and/or chopped up sausages)

A couple of bay leaves

A teaspoon of oregano

70-80g of fresh breadcrumbs (any colour bread will do)

Black pepper to season.

What To Do.

Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

Drain the beans, and then

boil them in fresh water for 10 minutes, drain and put to one side.

While the beans are boiling, heat the olive oil in pan,

add the onion and "sweat" (gently fry) for a few minutes until it starts

to look transparent. Add the garlic and carry on "sweating" for a minute or two.

Add the meat. Stir constantly on the heat, allow the meat to brown.

Take the pan off the heat and add everything else (EXCEPT the breadcrumbs), stirring well to make sure it's well mixed up.

Put the pan back on the heat and boil for about 7 or 8 minutes, this starts the flavours combining with each other.

Transfer the lot to a casserole dish, cover and pop it into the oven at Gas 5 (160C/325F) for about an hour and a half.

Remove from the oven, remove the lid and sprinkle with the breadcrumbs.

Return the casserole, uncovered, to the oven for another hour.

That's it - you've made a cassoulet! Now plop it in whatever you consider to be reasonably sized portions in front of whoever's going to be eating it and enjoy.

Serve with crusty bread or a small portion of mashed potatoes.

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To drink? This is a full flavoured French country recipe, adjusted for my laziness in the kitchen, so it simply begs for a big red Cotes de Rhone. Perhaps sacrilegiously, a decent red Rioja washes this down very well indeed, as well. If red wine isn't your thing, a dry white - if your budget stretches to a Chablis, then go for it. An inexpensive Frascati will work well, too.