Cassoulet — Castelnaudary, France

Cassoulet is a slow-baked dish of white beans and preserved meats, brought to the table still in the earthenware pot it was baked in, its surface closed by a crust formed during the last stretch of cooking. The dish is claimed by three towns in the same corner of Languedoc — Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse — each with its own version and its own argument. Castelnaudary at least supplies the name: the cassole, the flared earthenware dish fired at Issel, a few kilometres away, that the dish is cooked and served in. The Chaurienne version described here keeps to lingot beans, duck or goose confit, Toulouse sausage, pork rind and a little fresh pork, without the lamb that appears in the Carcassonne version. The beans are first simmered in a broth built from the rind and aromatics — onion, carrot, garlic, a bouquet garni — until tender but not broken. The meats are browned separately, then everything is layered into the cassole lined with more rind, covered with the cooking broth, and baked for a long stretch at a low oven temperature. A crust forms on the surface as it bakes; it is broken and pushed back into the juices repeatedly, seven times according to local telling, before being allowed to set for the last time. The result each cook works toward is the same golden, faintly crisp crust over beans that have absorbed the fat and flavour of the meats without turning to purée. Households and restaurants argue over the exact ratio of beans to meat and how dry or moist the final dish should be, but the technique — long bean cooking, layered assembly, repeated crust-breaking — stays close to constant across the versions.