Cassoulet and Company

Last week, for a Saturday night dinner party, Patty and I set out to re-create Julia Childs' cassoulet recipe from her magnum opus, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."  My former neighbors, a.k.a. "The Vernon Street Gang," would be our guests.  Julia suggested we prepare the cassoulet over several days, and it's a good thing she did!  It was a monumental task I began Thursday night and worked on at various times until our guests arrived.

Cassoulet is a French, bean-based concoction into which is added whatever red meat one has handy, along with tomato sauce and a variety of spices.  It's one of those dishes that provoque arguments as to where the real version was invented and what ingredients are required to make what is, indeed, the real version.  Ours had pork, lamb, and, in a minor deviation from Julia's recipe, some Polish sausage instead of saucisse de Toulouse.

Frankly, I don’t like the way Julia presents the recipes – they’re very hard to follow. I think a good blog idea would be to publish simplified versions of everything in her book.  The cassoulet recipe could have been a lot simpler.

In any case, the work was worth it, as the dinner party was a resounding success.  Documentation is below.  (You can enlarge the image by clicking on it.)