As I have noted before, I hold a proper cassoulet in the most high regard. It is a religous, cultural, and moral experience. In this version I made confit of duck legs, wings, and innards in the same pot as browned lamb shanks, garlic cloves, rosemary branches, diced esplette pepper, back pepper, and lemon thyme. After 6 hours, i chilled overnight and reserved some of the fat for another use. I harvested some fresh cranberry beans from my yard and added them to the pot with a bit of water. to finish, I added sauteed whole shallots. Then I formed the crust with equal parts parm reggiano and panko plus a little epice rabelais and broiled.
We drank an 01 kestrel Syrah (WA) and a 96 Groth Cab (CA). Fantastic pairings. We were so excited to eat it, that the picture below is of the leftovers.
The salad that came first was pears, cantaloupe, mint, and rogue creamery smoky blue. We drank a 96 Alexandria muscat (OR) with that.
