Last Saturday, I came home carting half a pound of duck sausages, half a pound of Toulouse sausages, 4 cured trotters, 4 pounds of piglet shoulder with about a pound of rind still attached, 4 pounds of fresh ham hocks and four duck legs confit. What brought on all this pork fat madness? Well, late Thursday afternoon, I decided (foolishly, perhaps) on the spur of the moment to make cassoulet for Sunday's Super Bowl gathering at the Macapinlacs' house. I looked up Saveur's recipe, and cross-referenced it with ones from Chez Panisse, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I discovered, rather quickly, that there were about as many different ways to make cassoulet as there are surrender monkeys in France. After some further poking around on egullet, I concluded that Paula Wolfert's recipe, from Modern Southwestern French Cooking was the best. Easy enough, I thought. It's only $14.80 on Amazon... I'll pick it up from Stacey's tomorrow. In the meantime, I emailed Max, the East Bay cassoulet expert. He emailed me back promptly, and told me to order:

sausage
confit
belly
(pork) shoulder and
rind

I called various butchers immediately. In addition to the cuts Max suggested, I also asked for fresh ham hocks. (Saveur's recipe called for them). I learned that pork belly, pork rind and fresh ham hocks are pretty tricky to get ahold of on such short notice. Most of the butchers were quite friendly, even though I wound up calling them something like four times each. Joe Scalise, upon hearing me recite my list, paused and declared, "Lady, you're asking for some pretty off-the-wall stuff here. But I'll go and see what I can get." Well, how much more bizarre was this than caul fat? At Cafe Rouge, Shannen suggested using one of their trotters (a pig's foot soaked in red wine, then packed in salt) instead of a ham bone with the beans. But between the two of them, I was able to obtain everything except the belly. I figured the extra pound of pork rind and the ham hocks made up for it, though.

As for the recipe itself, it turned out that the Cooking of Southwestern France was out of print. D'oh! I did pick up The Slow Mediterranean Cookbook, which had a cassoulet recipe as well. But that recipe turned out to be different than the one everyone was raving about from the Cooking of Southwestern France. On a whim, after my rounds at the farmers' market, I stopped at Moe's Books. As luck would have it, they had a used copy! For ten bucks! So I picked that up, along with used copies of the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook and Chez Panisse Pizza, Pasta and Calzone. I almost picked up a first edition of Richard Olney's French Menu Cookbook, but decided to exercise some restraint. Sorry, Slow Med Cookbook. As gorgeous as you are, I'll wait til you cost less than 35 bucks. Back to Stacey's you go!

As soon as I got home with my meat packages, I started cooking right away. I was pleased to discover that the ham hocks still had rind attached. I removed the rind from the shoulder and hocks, and started simmering the meat on the stove with the hocks. I cut up the rind (which is actually harder than I thought it would be, even with my trusty Globals). Now it was time to break in my new Le Creuset dutch oven, and what could be better than rendering pork fat? Now, Pork rind is a little different than caul fat. The skin, once it is heated, sticks like the devil! And it has a tendency to uh, I'm not sure how to put this, but it can jump out of the pan. Seriously. I had it on low heat, and I decided to sit down with Zack for a few minutes. I was listening to it sizzle, then I heard a pop, then a different kind of sizzle, then a thud. Like a landing-on-the-floor type thud. Zack gave me a weird look, so I went to check it out. Yup. Sure enough, there was a chunk of pork rind lying on the floor. So I guess I shouldn't have left it unattended. Amazingly, although the pork fat was sizzling away, none of the stuck bits burned! I was beginning to understand why one of these damn french enameled pots cost so much. And once I deglazed with some red wine, the browned bits came right off. Yummy! Those little brown bits (fonde) would serve to flavor the beans, which I added to the pork rind, along with the trotter and an onion. In the meantime, I sauteed the sausages in duck fat with a puree of a whole head of garlic and an onion. Oh my god, did it smell good! Zack was like, "I have to admit, that smells sooooo good!" Eat your heart out, Emeril. Anyways, I assembled the dish in layers - beans, then stewed pork, then the sausages and garlic, then duck confit, then the rest of the beans, and into the oven it went, for a total of eight hours Yes, it was good, yes it was fatty. And my Le Creuset oven amazed me again - nothing stuck! With a swipe of a sudsy dish sponge, all the baked-on crust and grease came right off. I'm going to have to get me another one of these things. So yeah, that's my cassoulet experience. Sorry that this is so badly written. It's late, and I'll edit this later, and add links.