For a New Year: Wonder and Hope in a Humble Cassoulet
Ronna Welsh
A friend told me she made quiche the other day, and that she liked it, but it needed more salt.
I told her that it often seems impossible to taste raw ingredients at each step they're being cooked, especially eggs, meat, poultry, and seafood, but that she should always pre-sample what she is preparing. That could mean cooking up a bit of the quiche batter to make sure it tastes how she wants,
But even if we do taste diligently as we go, there are some dishes that make seasoning not entirely knowable. Pies, soufflés, ice creams, and terrines are examples of things we put together with care, but ultimately finish off with faith. These are either dishes that are served whole and intact, making last-minute fixing impossible, or that transform enough in the final finish that tasting beforehand is at best approximate.
In a way, it is the uncontrollable which keeps cooking exciting, even for the most experienced cooks. I have made cassoulet around Christmas for years. It is a great way for me to use up cuts of meat left over from a month of catering holiday parties. My cassoulet differs from year to year, depending on what I have around. One year, it was duck and white beans. Another year, I added pork, three-ways.
Cassoulet involves preparing all ingredients individually (beans, confit, sausage) to then bake off all together, slowly, at the end. The project easily becomes a three-day affair with a mess of pots. And even with all that effort and attention, I get no guarantee how the cassoulet will taste once the extra stock evaporates, the white beans soften further, the sausage cooks through, and the bread crumb crust forms. It’s a volley each time between seeking perfection and honoring humility, forsaking total control, for the gift of surprise.
A great cassoulet tastes like a thing unto itself, more than even a perfect sum of its parts. It has an almost indescribable rightness, a true clarity of form, a transformation of ingredients beyond measure and possibly even expectation.
Delicious reward in the unknowable. A little wisdom to start the new year.
From my kitchen to yours, wishing you the very best.