Cassoulet, A Journey
February 10, 2019 by JennyFor years, friends have been raving about Rancho Gordo (“RG”) and when I received the Desert Island bean sampler kit for the holidays (thanks Darcie), I decided to find out more about this company and their products.
Apparently, I do judge a bean by its cover and RG’s beans are colorful with fun packaging. The humble generic bean in the clear bags at the grocery store are wallflowers while RG’s beans’ dance card is full. The quality of RG’s beans are superior and to find out why – I urge you to read Steve Sando’s Rancho Gordo story on their website.
When I reached out to the company, I asked about their cookbooks first (of course) and then requested a cassoulet kit to review and one to giveaway to our members. Thus my cassoulet journey began with a single bean (or bag of beans), as I plunged myself into Kate Hill’s Cassoulet: A French Obsession.
Kate’s book is packed with history and recipes for this dish, and is recommended reading before you begin your journey. While cassoulet is a French classic, each cook imparts their own personality to the dish as I did with Kate’s recipe (which is similar to a recipe on the RG site). Our indexed online recipes total 150 cassoulet variations alone, while our recipe library boasts 850! For those unfamiliar with the definition of this dish: “Cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked casserole containing meat, pork skin and white beans. The dish originated in the south of France. It is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round, earthenware pot with slanting sides.”
I prepared the cassoulet in Le Creuset, making the beans in my Le Creuset Dutch Oven in fig, one of Le Creuset’s new calming colors for spring and layering my dish in a vintage Le Creuset roasting pot.
There is a time commitment to prepare this masterpiece of a dish, but the flavor is well worth the investment. I grew up on navy beans simmered all day with a ham bone. My mom wasn’t a great cook but she made a mean pot of beans. We’d have the beans and mashed potatoes for dinner and the next day a bean and mashed potato sandwich. Don’t knock it until you try it.
While that bean dish is glorified due to being steeped in nostalgia, the cassoulet is life giving. Warm, rich with a deep pork flavor and a bite from the peppercorns (I used extra). My cassoulet was made with chicken and sausage. The chicken was juicy and fall apart tender, while the skin was crispy. The perfect bite for me was a spoonful of the beans with the toasted breadcrumbs moistened with the fat from the meats. I took Kate’s recipe in the book and ran with it – that is what cooking is all about. Paying homage to a classic dish but making it your own.
Just as the cassoulet is a French classic, so is Le Creuset cookware. As mentioned above, while I used the new fig colored Dutch Oven for the beans, I layered the cassoulet in a vintage Le Creuset roasting pot. Mixing the new with the old works in cooking and in cookware.
Valentine’s Day is coming up next week – one of Le
Creuset’s spring colors would be a beautiful gift. I adore
these new hues and want to redo my entire kitchen with tones of fig
and sea salt. The new colors are calming, soothing and elegant all
still made with the same quality Le Creuset is famous for. Someone
tell my husband I want a braiser in sea salt. Thank
you.
As if you need an incentive to buy more French cookware: if you
purchase $150
worth of products from Le Creuset you will receive two adorable
heart ramekins using the code LOVE.
I hope to bring you more information on Rancho Gordo’s other cookbooks, especially French Beans and will try to convince my friends at Le Creuset to bundle a giveaway for Mother’s Day.
Rancho Gordo is providing one Cassoulet Kit (which includes two pounds of their cassoulet beans and a copy of Kate Hill’s Cassoulet) to EYB Members in the US. One of the entry options is to answer the following question in the comments section of this blog post.
Which Rancho Gordo product would you like to try and which of Le Creuset’s spring colors is your favorite?
Please note that you must be logged
into the Rafflecopter contest before posting or your entry won’t be
counted. For more information on this process, please see our step-by-step help post and this forum post.
Once you log in and enter your member name you will be directed to
the next entry option – the blog comment. After that, there are
additional options that you can complete for more entries.
Be sure to check your spam filters to receive our email
notifications. Prizes can take up to 6 weeks to arrive from the
publishers. If you are not already a Member, you can join at no cost. The contest ends at
midnight on March 27th, 2019.
Special thanks to Le Creuset for sharing one of their new spring colors with me for review and photographs. Also thanks to Rancho Gordo for supplying me with one of their cassoulet kits. The photos above are taken by me except the bean sampler and cassoulet kit photo which are courtesy of Rancho Gordo. The new calming colors spring line photo is courtesy of Le Creuset.
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