Cassoulet- bean, bean, duck

This is what the days look like through my i-phone- subtly altered states of deliciousness as we tackle the cassoulet kind of season.

It begins with a bean.

Not just any bean, but a fresh from the pod, first pick of the season, plump pillow of a bean we call Coco, Coco de Paimpol.  (for more info about this sweet bean from Brittany- http://www.cookipedia.co.uk/wiki/index.php/White_bean) . These beans are sold in large netted bags by the 20 kilograms and they are one of my favorites for making Cassoulet. Since they are not completely dried when sold in their pods, they take a scant 30-40 minutes to cook with no pre-soaking.

It doesn’t take long for our energetic group to shell the 2  kilos we bought yesterday at the market. The large thumbnail sized pearls fill the bowl.

As the beans cook in a broth of their own making w/ leeks, carrots, thyme, bay, peppercorns & a bit of bacon the crew starts work on sorting out the pork rillettes we started yesterday.

 Hand work is good work and the piece of charnu or coppa that we simmered for 4 hours yesterday falls apart and mixes with the gelée and fat from the confit.

Once seasoned, tasted and potted in a group of little bowls, we covered the rillettes with a layer of duck fat before storing in the fridge.

While we worked, we stopped for a simple mid-day snack- fresh tomatoes, more rillettes, and a salad of green beans dressed with Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s gift- Pistachio Oil!

Fatally delicious, with a sweet nutty taste, the haricots verts bath in this green glory accompanied by a slice or two of freshly cured pork tenderloin.

The Chapolard’s latest’s pig offering to the Grrl’s Meat Camp crew was the source for the 18-inch long tenderloin, salted, peppered and hung for 2 weeks in my Piggery Larder. This might be my newest, favorite muscle to cure and you Charcutepalooza’ers had better start sourcing your good mature pork now!

Next we teased out the bones from the duck legs we had confited, they make a much nicer presentation in the cassoulet. I’ll tell you more about that later this week.

We cooked the saucisse de toulouse, browned up some andouillettes, and assembled the whole savoury package in a Not brother’s cassole. The day ended around Camont’s table as a smattering of rain drops officially crowned this Cassoulet season. Let the beans begin!

Kate’s Official Camp Cassoulet Recipe here!

Pancetta + Ventrèche= it’s about the pig…

I swim in a sea of charcuterie every week as I plow the waves of good food produced by the neighboring farms of the Lot-et-Garonne: salted hams, meaty saucisson, head cheese, terrines, patés, and other cured and confited parts of the fatted pig. As a cook, I began my sea trials in meat here as I discovered the extraordinary flavors of each cured piece of the pig. I started to learn my hind leg for jambon from my forward leg- shoulder for fresh saucisse de Toulouse. Then it was loins and chops, ribs and collar. Next came the innards…

Like all novices, I worked my way up and down the coast of liver, kidneys, brain, lung, and blood. I watched as pigs were slaughtered and butchered on family farms, one at a time, with care and respect for the ‘year of meat’ to come. Then I began to help- trimming meat, carrying ourt orders from the grand-mères as whole pigs were put up in jars- canned, sterilized in a water bath and stored, or salted, peppered, and hung to age in a corner of the barn.  But it wasn’t until I barged into the life of a small pig farm that I learned the most important past of this ocean of charcuterie. It’s the pig. Just simply the PIG.

Imagine the first visit to the Chapolard farm in 1997 with my good friend Elaine Tin Nyo. She wanted to do a series of photographs and videos for one of her edibly inspired art exhibits. I had already begun cooking my way through the pig with the market advice of Marc Chapolard, who selling me a piece of pork a week talked me through the process of cooking boudin, salting a tail, or roasting a collar. There is an image of that first visit to Baradieu- Marc holding out his hands full of ground grains- grain that they grew on the farm to feed their pigs.

Oh, Pigs eat too. I want to know what I am eating eats. What? What do pigs eat?

My brain was moving slowly forward. These pigs eat wheat, barley, corn, oats, sunflowers, favabeans, soy… How big are they? Oh, big. Very big as these meat growing pigs are intended for charcuterie as well as fresh meat. Twelve months old, 400 lbs+ of solid red meat and firm flavorful fat. The Chapolards know that their mature pigs’ meat is fully developed in both flavor and structure. Here in Gascony, we believe that the best charcuterie is not just from certain types of breeds finished on fancy diets, but rather from a well balanced diet fed its entire life and a ‘grownup’, fully mature animal. Oh, this pork meat is like beef. Not veal. Can you imagine making corned veal, veal jerky, or veal bresaola? The meat cells must develop sufficiently to be able to cure properly both in flavor and in texture.

There are technical reasons behind all this, but for us amateurs of good meat our best chance to getting good pork is to ken your pork producer or artisan butcher and learn as much as you can, piece by piece. I have the luxury of, after 14 years, knowing the Chapolards well.  Baradieu is not a pigshit-free showcase farm; but they raise their Large White/Pietrai/Duroc pigs with the sort of care over 12 months from birth to slaughter that produces delicious and tasty meat. Like this slab of pork belly I used for my ventrèche géante.

“THE PRESENCE OF A BUTCHER IN A DISTRICT SAYS AS MUCH FOR ITS INTELLIGENCE AS FOR ITS WEALTH. THE WORKER FEEDS HIMSELF, AND A MAN WHO FEEDS HIMSELF THINKS.”

H. De Balzac- “The Country Doctor”

You say Pancetta. I say Ventrèche. It’s all rolled pork belly @Charcutepalooza!

This is always a funny one.

Ventrèche is bacon.

A sort of fresher, peppery, meaty, and naturally porkier bacon.

Almost all the Gascon recipes I know start with a little this- duck fat, a little that- thyme and bay, and a handful of lardons…usually cut from a thick slab of ventrèche. Salted just overnight,  the ventrèche (ventre means belly in French) is covered liberally with fine fresh ground pepper then rolled tightly and tied before gently smoking overnight. It flies off the market stall chez Chapolard at Nerac in large pieces, thick slabs or sliced thinly. This is cooking charcuterie that adds flavor to civets, daubes, and cassoulets; or cooked and served as part of a main course, on a meaty salad, or with a couple golden-yolked, fresh farm eggs.  Tim Clinch makes these meat portraits look so delicious!

This particular piece of ventrèche is made from a 12 month old Yorkshire/Landrace/Duroc cross, fed on home grown grains (wheat, barley, sunflower, corn, soy and feverol) and slaughtered, butchered, cured and sold- all within a 20 mile radius. I call  it Seed-to-Sausage. You can read more about the Chapolard farm here. Tim photographed it as part of a Natural Light/Natural Food photography workshop. on my terrace table, outside under the vines.

Our Artisan Butchery & Charcuterie students usually work wrapped in white at the

Chapolard’s Baradieu farm in the cold stainless steel and white tiled cutting room build inside one of the old wine barns or chais. It’s not fancy, but it’s modern and meets the EU norms for hygiene. This is Marjorie, a French apprentice butcher in the cutting room.  She’s attacking a ham to be cut into chucks for making saucisson.

But when real hand-to-hand patience is needed, we sometimes take a field trip over to the centuries old house where Madame and Monsieur Chapolard live- grand-pere and grand-mere to us. This day they were teaching Sarah Wong, Chef Educator at the Seattle Culinary Academy how to roll and tie the ventréche that are sold at the Saturday Morning market at Nerac. I shot some video on my Canon G11 without a thought of editing, sounds track etc. Now with Charcutepalooza at hand and the February challenge being salt curing, I thought I’d share how we do it …down on the Gascon farm.

The ventreches are salted overnight, sprinkled liberally with fresh ground pepper, then rolled and smoked over night. They are sold the next day at the market. Fast and delicious!

So for all my Charcutepalooza friends, here’s a taste of Gascony and some some Gascon/Basque music by Xarnege to discover and enjoy!

Projet Cochon- the Butcher & the Kids

The white blackboard read: Project- “dans le cochon tout est bon” . And so it was.

This week, twenty-four French lycée students between 16-20 years old and their professors M. Franck LAPIERRE and M. Jean Marc BOUILLY allowed three American kitchen-crashers to look over their shoulders as Dominique Chapolard, artisan butcher and pork producer, demonstrated in the expansive  school kitchen that “in the pig, all is good!”

The attentive white-clad chefs-in-training crowded around as M. Chapolard reconstructed the whole pig carcass, piece by piece, organ by organ. Silence reigned as Dominique, our master butcher mentor here at Camont, explained what goes into making good pork from field to table.

Only when he split the skull to reveal the tiny brain did squeamish teenage yelps erupt.  Quickly silenced by Chef Lapierre, he teased them that they see more blood on the horror films they watch. After the initial hour of dissection, as the muscle groups began to resemble familiar meat cuts, this next generation of France’s good cooks began to chop and grind, season and taste, while the scent of Gascony’s prized pork filled the kitchen. A hind leg became a Jambon, a shoulder a Roti de Porc. The large rib cage transformed into ventreche, poitrine and travers. Legs broke down into jarret and pied de porc while the caul fat was washed and leaf lard rendered out before grattons were drained and pressed into a terrine.

This fine piggy day was a part of “Cooking at the Source-Gascony“, a collaboration between Robert Reynold’s Chef’s Studio in Portland, Oregon and my own Kitchen-at-Camont. We spent the morning with our good friend and farmer/butcher Dominique Chapolard as he did a day long demonstration for the students of  the Lycee Jacques-de-Romas in neraby Nerac. For upcoming Duck workshops in the U.S. and France consult our program pages.

Could this be your Perfect Pig on an October morning?

The Agen market is full of surprises on a perfect fall morning.

Today, shopping for quince, cress, and cilantro I ran into a drove of pigs.

Free-range, pasture-raised French pigs.

Like a stage setting, simplicity itself- one knife, a cleaver, a wooden block,

& a smile.

Julien Veyrac

of Tournon d’Agenais

No one was more surprised than me to meet the new butcher boy on the block

and discover some damn good looking charcuterie and fresh pork.

Merci, Julien for taking over the family farm.

See you next Wednesday for your andouillette-

my secret ingredient for an onctuous cassoulet.

Wednesdays- Agen Central Market