Mastering the Art of French Eating

by Ann Mah

Was this last point hubris or heresy? There was only one way to find out. I got in the car and headed east for Carcassonne.

  * * *

  * * *

  The landscape between Castelnaudary and Carcassonne stretches dusty and flat, farmland baked dry by the generous sun that spills over the region. From the highway I saw the occasional hill town rising in the distance, left over from the Middle Ages when villages were built on high ground to help prevent attack. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the Cathars flourished in this region. A sect of Christianity descended from the Byzantine Empire, they embraced a rigid doctrine—forbidding meat and requiring celibacy. Cathars found tolerance in the Languedoc, constructing châteaus and citadels, amassing adherents—called “les Bons Hommes”—and weapons. They became such a concern to the Catholic Church that in 1207 Pope Innocent III dispatched a mission of papal legates to the region to slow their activities. When one of the envoys was assassinated, it was all the proof that Innocent needed to launch a religious crusade. The town of Carcassonne saw its share of blood during these wars, with a siege in 1209 that expelled the Cathars from its city walls. Decades of war and massacre followed, ending in a fiery inquisition that burned the remaining heretics alive. In 1321 the last Cathar was executed.

  Today the old town still looks remarkably as it must have in the Middle Ages, perched on a hill, with turrets and moats and gap-toothed fortifications protecting a warren of steep cobblestone streets and thick stone buildings. Only a handful of residents live in the ville haute—as the upper section of Carcassonne is called. Rather it’s given over to museums, shops selling cheap tourist knickknacks, and restaurants advertising cassoulet. Even so, I thought I caught a glimpse of the wretchedness and wonder of medieval life as I moved from the chilled shadows of a side alley to the harsh light of the town square.

  In a small hamlet a couple of miles from Carcassonne, I met Jean-Claude Rodriguez, the chef and owner of the restaurant Château Saint-Martin and the founder of the Académie Universelle du Cassoulet, an association devoted to the promotion and protection of cassoulet. Yes, there’s another one. And, as I soon discovered, while the Académie and the Grande Confrérie share a similar mission, they are bitter rivals.

  Rodriguez founded the Académie in 2001, with the goal of “protecting the cassoulet made by restaurants with high-quality products from the region.” Its hundred members also wear robes—in red and white—medals, and hats that look like saggy chef’s toques, and they meet several times a year to taste cassoulet and judge them worthy of inclusion on their list. Sound familiar? Unlike the Grande Confrérie, however, the Académie has admitted chefs from other countries, such as Australia, the United States, and Japan.

  These days very few chefs—even avid devotees like Rodriguez—prepare the traditional cassoulet of Carcassonne. “This used to be a country of vineyards, and in the vines we found partridges, wild hares, and other small game,” he said. “But the landscape has changed. The cassoulet with partridge . . . it’s a lost recipe. Once or twice a year, I make a version with wild game. The rest of the time, I use confit de canard.” His voice drooped so dolorously as he admitted this that I didn’t have the heart to ask him about its similarity to the Castelnaudary recipe.

  I thought back to Prosper Montagné, the culinary lexicographer and cassoulet devotee, who had declared that Carcassonne was “God the son” of cassoulet. He meant that it embodied the dish’s legacy, but now his words seemed to turn the recipe ghostly, lost to a changed landscape, a different way of life. Nothing lasts forever, I thought. Not even cassoulet.

  * * *

  * * *

  At the airport in Toulouse, the woman at security pulled my hand luggage, and I knew why. “Can you open it for me?” she asked.

  “C’est une cassole,” I told her, unzipping the bag to show her the heavy dish.

  She pushed it aside and started digging deeper into the corners of the bag. “Qu’est-ce que c’est . . . ?” I heard her mutter. “Des haricots?” She pulled out a box of white beans that must have looked dangerous in the X-ray machine, haricots lingots du Lauragais bought in a shop in Castelnaudary. “There are two boxes of beans?”

  “To make cassoulet at home.”

  She nodded as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

  After so many months of toast, it felt a little unnatural to spend two hours in the kitchen. But I had downloaded some podcasts, and they kept me company as I cleaned and chopped and stirred. I’d forgotten how meditative cooking could be, how free my mind felt to wander while my hands busied themselves with a knife and a pile of vegetables. I thought about Calvin and the care package I planned to send him, to cheer him along until his next visit home. I thought of Nicola, growing bigger every day, and the pretty pink invitation for her baby shower that had arrived in the mail a few days earlier. I would miss the party, but I had already made a trip to Bonpoint, where I spent a happy half hour among the tiny frilly underpants, flowered rompers, and plum-colored cashmere cardigans, buying two of the sweetest baby outfits I had ever seen. I hoped my friend would dress her daughters in them and think of me.

  I thought of the homesickness that had gripped me like a migraine a few weeks before, leaving me shaky and pale. The feeling, so sharp and unfamiliar, had shocked me with its strength. But there was no cure for it, no pill I could swallow, no number of long-distance phone calls that could ease the ache. A couple of weeks later, the sting had lessened a bit, quieted by the distractions of daily life: an emergency visit from the plumber to fix a leaky radiator, a shared square of afternoon chocolate with my colleagues at the library, a laugh with my husband over Skype. But it still lurked, the homesickness, and I knew it would return, perhaps sooner rather than later, an unstoppable wave. I had made choices in my life, as we all must make choices, and I didn’t regret them. But still, there were consequences, sometimes painful, and they would linger for the rest of my life.

  I thought of Aux Fins Gourmets, which I’d walked by a few days earlier on my way home from work. I had glanced in the windows, wondering if I’d see Bernard-Henri Lévy. Instead I saw a darkened space lit by pools of candlelight, white cloths on the tables, an empty dining room. When I looked at the posted menu, cassoulet was no longer listed. The restaurant had been sold—one more remnant of Paris abandoned to the figment of my memory. It made me wonder how much of homesickness was merely nostalgia, a yearning for a perfect ideal that never really existed.

  I skimmed foam off the simmering beans and added a bay leaf. At the last minute, I had decided to forgo cassoulet for a bean soup, a lighter, healthier dish that appeased my hypochondria, one I could freeze in small portions and eat over the days and weeks to come. The cassoulet recipe would wait for another, more festive occasion—I had saved the other box of beans to simmer with sausage and duck confit, to share at a dinner with family and friends. But tonight I cooked just for myself, an offering to our Penates and Lar Familiaris that came from me and no one else.

  Cassoulet de Castelnaudary

  Cassoulet is not a difficult dish to make, but it requires at least three days to cook. I adapted the recipe below from one given to me by the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary. I find that dividing the process makes it easier to tackle. You can consolidate, but remember that the true secret of a good cassoulet is time. Confit de canard and saucisse de Toulouse are sold online by mail order from gourmet food shops like frenchselections.com or dartagnan.com.

  Serves 4 or 5

  1 pound northern beans

  2 quarts chicken broth (if not homemade, use “no sodium” or “unsalted”), plus more for cooking the cassoulet

  2 duck confit thighs, cut in half

  ½ pound garlic sausage (saucisse de Toulouse or saucisse à l’ail), cut into large chunks

  ¼ pound pork shoulder, belly, or knuckle, cut into large chunks

  ¼ pound fresh pork skin (optional)


  2 to 3 cloves garlic

  A 2-inch piece of salt pork

  1 teaspoon nutmeg

  Salt and pepper to taste

  DAY ONE

  Sort and wash the beans. Place them in a large bowl and cover with cold water by 2 to 3 inches. Soak for at least 8 hours, or preferably overnight.

  DAY TWO

  Drain the beans of their soaking water. Place them in a large pot and add enough cold water to cover them by 2 inches. Bring to a rapid boil and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain.

  In a large pot, heat 2 quarts of the chicken broth. Add the beans, bring to a boil, and skim off any scum. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the beans are just tender but still whole and unbroken. Allow the beans to cool in their cooking liquid.

  While the beans are cooking, prepare the meats

  In a large sauté pan, gently brown the duck thighs over medium-low heat until golden, then remove. In the same sauté pan, brown the sausage in the remaining fat and remove. Brown the chunks of pork and remove. If using pork skin, cut it into 2-inch squares.

  Peel the garlic cloves and mash them into a paste together with the salt pork. Add this paste to the beans and their cooking liquid, along with the nutmeg.

  Assemble the cassoulet

  Use a cassole if you have one. Otherwise you can use a 3½-quart Dutch oven.

  Line the bottom of the vessel with the cut pork skin (if using). Drain the beans, reserving their cooking liquid, and season them lightly with salt. Layer a third of the beans on top of the pork skin. Arrange the duck confit and chunks of pork on top. Spread the remaining beans in a layer over the top. Add the sausages, poking them into the beans until just their tops are visible. Warm the bean-cooking liquid and pour enough of it into the cassoulet to barely cover the beans. Sprinkle a dusting of freshly ground black pepper across the surface. The cassoulet can rest here, covered, overnight.

  Cooking the cassoulet

  Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Place the cassoulet in the oven and allow it to cook for 3 hours. While it is cooking, it will develop a brown crust on top. Pierce the crust and moisten the surface, taking care not to disturb the layers below. Allow the crust to re-form 2 or 3 times. If the beans start to look dry, moisten them with several spoonfuls of extra bean-cooking liquid or chicken broth. Remove the cassoulet from the oven, cool, and refrigerate overnight.

  DAY THREE

  Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Cook the cassoulet for 1½ hours, breaking the crust with a spoon and moistening the surface at least twice. If the beans look dry, add spoonfuls of extra bean-cooking liquid or chicken broth. You can serve the cassoulet now or remove it from the oven and allow to cool. Refrigerate overnight.

  DAY FOUR

  Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Heat the cassoulet for 1½ hours, moistening with extra bean-cooking liquid or chicken broth as necessary. Serve immediately in its vessel, gently simmering and unstirred.

  Chapter 7

  Alsace / Choucroute

  I know very little about my paternal grandparents, who both died before I was born, but here are some of the things I’ve gleaned: They came to the United States in the 1920s, emigrating from Toisan, a coastal city in Guangdong province that lies at the heart of the Chinese diaspora. They owned a Chinese restaurant in Fresno, California. They had more than ten children, some biological, some adopted. They were Catholic, but their ancestors may have been Muslim (the name Ma, which they changed to Mah to appear more American, means “horse” and is common among Islamic Chinese; it sounds like Mohammed). They spoke a regional dialect, also called Toisan, a derivative of Cantonese. They passed this language to their children along with a love of plants, a taste for bitter melon in black sauce, narrow feet, and a predilection for heart disease.

  Here are some things I don’t know about my grandparents: If I look like them. If they missed China. If they were legal immigrants.

  I’d been thinking about my grandparents ever since September, when I’d received a letter from the Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration, the French version of immigration services. As a diplomat’s spouse, I was eligible for French working papers, but—though Calvin’s job at the American embassy had smoothed my path considerably—I still had to navigate the application process.

  The letter I’d received was a thin, photocopied sheet “inviting” me to a visite médicale, a medical examination, the first step toward exchanging my temporary working permit for official documents. And so several weeks later, on a crisp and bright October morning, I joined a line of people waiting outside a dreary office building in the eleventh arrondissement. The limp air of disinterested bureaucracy hanging over the block told me I was in the right place before I even read the sign.

  Americans who move to France share two horror stories: acquiring a French driver’s license and obtaining a carte de séjour. The former necessitates buckets of cash, the latter reams of paperwork; both require infinite reserves of patience. But even forearmed with this knowledge, I was surprised by my experience.

  Inside the office the process was a series of petite mortifications, from the obligatory educational video on laïcité, France’s policy of secularism, to the interview that assessed my language proficiency to stripping down and posing bare-chested for an X-ray meant to ensure that I wasn’t carrying tuberculosis. Thankfully, I understood the separation of church and state, spoke French, and was free of TB.

  As the authorities poked and prodded, squeezed and scolded, I thought of my grandparents almost ninety years ago. Because of them I had grown up in California, the child of an American born in America, with all the confidence and hubris that implies. But today I, too, was an immigrant, stripped of familiarity and fluency, and the experience left me humbled.

  My language interview was held in a plain, windowless room not unlike the warden’s office in a low-security prison. The fonctionnaire quizzing me had dark eyes and hair and a surprisingly warm smile. We chatted for a few minutes about my French studies, my work, and my husband’s post at the embassy. Then she spent several minutes printing out a series of colorful attestations—they looked like the participation certificates handed out to a children’s soccer team—and informed me that I needed to sign up to take the formation civique, a daylong class on French government, history, and culture.

  “It provides knowledge of the principles of the French state,” she said.

  “La formation civique?” A civic formation? “I’m already formed,” I joked.

  She smiled faintly. “Désolée.”

  But her apology had revealed a chink in her armor, and I tried to push through it. “Do I still need to take the class even though I’m only here temporarily? My husband is an American diplomat,” I reminded her. “His post ends in three years.”

  I could feel her wavering, but then she shook her head. “Désolée. Tout le monde est obligé.”

  Something in her voice told me that tout le monde was not obligated—that some people managed to slither out of it. Then again, this was a perfect example of French logic—all people are equal, therefore all people must take the formation civique (except those who don’t have to). It followed the same logic as the policy of laïcité discussed in the video I’d just watched: Religion and government must be kept separate (except in certain circumstances such as the calendar of public holidays, which is still guided by Catholic feast days). Who was I to argue?

  I joined a group of people in a dingy waiting room, all of us struggling to wrangle the unwieldy film of our chest X-rays. While we waited to see the doctor who would proclaim us fit or unfit, the people around me chatted in quiet voices, a soft carpet of languages I didn’t recognize. The institutional atmosphere felt universal to waiting rooms around the world; I recognized the smell of stale coffee, the fluorescent-tube lighting, and scuffed linoleum from the DMV in California, the jury-duty room in lowe
r Manhattan, a bank in Beijing. But then a number would be called—cent quatre-vingt-douze!—and I would be jolted back to Paris. Not the Paris of lacy wrought-iron towers and toy boats sailing in marble fountains but a grittier, gutsier city, one of new beginnings and pinched pennies and endless stacks of paperwork.

  I was the last person to be called that morning. I waited, fidgeting as the room emptied, reading the pamphlets on HIV that the X-ray technicians had thrust upon me. My stomach began a quiet rumble, which grew louder as the minutes ticked toward noon. To distract myself I started speculating about the people who had been in the waiting room with me. Where did they come from? Why had they moved to France? And, perhaps most interestingly, what were they going to have for lunch? I imagined noodle soup perfumed with basil and cilantro or fine-grained couscous spiked with harissa.

  Like all cuisines, France’s did not develop in a vacuum. It absorbed flavors and techniques through its porous borders, via age-old rivalries with Italy, Spain, Germany, and Belgium (to name but a few), and by way of its former colonies in North Africa and Southeast Asia. A walk through Paris was like a stroll among the regions of France and her interests, the Savoyard restaurants near the rue Mouffetard that served fondue and raclette, the thirteenth arrondissement’s fragrant bowls of phô—a Vietnamese word possibly derived from the French pot-au-feu—the Corsican épicerie that emitted a whiff of powerful cheese and dried sausages, the bakeries in the nineteenth selling tiny honey-soaked pastries, the bright Alsatian brasseries with their oversize goblets of beer and metal platters brimming with cured pork.

  It was the last one that gave me pause now, as my stomach began its slow growl toward lunch. I thought of the region of Alsace in eastern France, a producer of fruity wine decanted into long-necked bottles, and the home of choucroute garnie: finely sliced, fermented cabbage (which looked an awful lot like sauerkraut) topped with sausages and ham. The dish stood between two cultures—was it French? was it German?—a culinary witness to a region that had changed hands several times in the span of only a generation. With each change in power, Alsatians were forced to switch allegiances and languages, becoming strangers in a familiar land.