TUESDAY WAS CASSOULET DAY AT THE AUBERGE. CASSOULET IS a classic dish, a generous family meal and the pride of Gascon cooking. It is named after the earthenware pot in which it is traditionally cooked. Some say the dish was created out of necessity during the Hundred Years War, when anything to hand was thrown into the pot. There are many different variations made throughout Gascony, and possibly as many different recipes for it as there are cooks. Marie-Jeanne’s cassoulet au confit was her own take on a well-known theme.
The first stage of preparing a cassoulet took place the day before: gathering white haricot beans, the local large variety, haricots tarbais. The haricots formed the bulk of the dish. We would collect a generous basketful of haricot pods. Inside the beans were plump, creamy and mottled. They were soaked in water overnight to make them full and soft. On Tuesday morning Marie-Jeanne prepared the sauce, consisting of onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, herbs and stock. She deseeded the tomatoes by scooping out the centres and pushing the flesh through a sieve with a wooden spoon. Meat formed the basis of the flavours: pork spare ribs, ham, shoulder of lamb and whole Toulouse sausages. A few pieces of pork rind added to the flavour.
The cassoulet was cooked slowly in the huge fait-tout cast-iron stockpot throughout Tuesday afternoon. The smell always made me feel hungry. The French word mijoter, meaning a long, slow simmering, describes the process so aptly, evoking the gentle bubble of the stew and the intermittent rattle of the lid. Towards the end of the cooking, confits de canard and some chunks of the local black sausage were added. Finally, the cassoulet was transferred into earthenware serving dishes, a layer of breadcrumbs spread on top and each dish baked in the oven just long enough for the bread-crumbs to form delicious golden crusts. Marie-Jeanne’s cassoulet was hearty, filling, smooth and thick, with a rich, gutsy, warm, gamey, country flavour. There is a homely, reassuring quality about cassoulet; it is truly satisfying. If I were a Gascon, I’m sure it would be my comfort food.
The meals we ate en famille usually echoed the food being served in the restaurant. On Tuesdays, several dishes of cassoulet would be prepared during the course of the day, some for the restaurant and some for us.
When haricots were not being used in a cassoulet, they were served plain with vegetables. I told the Cazagnacs that in England we eat something called baked beans, small haricots cooked in a sugary, starchy, tomato-flavoured sauce, sold in tins. My description met with contorted expressions of revulsion.
‘I’ve heard of these baked beans,’ Marie-Jeanne said, ‘but I’ve never tasted them.’
She explained that the French cook something similar in the form of haricots à la tomate, which sounded so much more gastronomic. It occurred to me that baked beans are really a sort of simplified cassoulet without the meat, although it was best not to say so.
At lunchtimes the restaurant was busy with local farmers and tradesmen, sitting with tourists and guests. In the evenings it was full of local people and residential guests at the Auberge. I was surprised just how much time and hard work go into running a successful restaurant. Everything needed to be done at once and the pace had to be kept up all evening, until eventually things began to slow down as guests finished their meals and chatted over wine and an Armagnac digestif.
Marie-Jeanne was a marvellous cook. Just as Jacques-Henri was truly at home on the farm, she was at home in the kitchen. She was a steadying influence when we were rushed off our feet. A special quality about her, which I hadn’t noticed at first, was the way she quietly showed concern for everyone’s wellbeing.
The spirit of the restaurant was about capturing and presenting the true flavours of the region, les saveurs des beaux terroirs gascons. The word terroir is deeply significant, describing all the factors – the soil, the climate, the stock, the methods of cultivation, the cooking techniques and the character of the people – which combine to give the food its distinctive flavour. Terroir embraces the landscape, the sense of place, the history of what people have always done there, and evokes a connection with patterns of life that have evolved in harmony with the land.
Goose fat, graisse d’oie, and duck fat, graisse de canard, are the defining background flavours in most Gascon cooking, like butter in Normandy or olive oil in Provence. They give a rich flavour to meat and vegetables and are the traditional means of preserving food. Goose fat was great for improvising something quick and tasty, such as quartous, potatoes that were quartered, parboiled, then pan fried in a good ladleful of fat, tossed in roughly chopped garlic and parsley, and served hot and crispy.
Duck breasts are reserved for magrets, the thighs for confit. Cooked in its own fat, confit looks solid in preserving jars, but the meat has a velvety, flaky texture. Petits pois accompany confit very well. Smaller pieces of duck and goose are cooked and potted as rillettes. The smallest pieces of meat and anything else left over, known as les parures, are fried in very hot fat to make fritons, crunchy, appetising nibbles, particularly delicious still warm.
Anyone with vegetarian tendencies may feel uncomfortable in Gascony. The Gascons are proud of their farming traditions and take a healthy attitude to their animals, especially when it comes to eating every part – and I do mean every part – of the animals they have so carefully reared. Some guests, especially the locals, loved their veal tripe, wobbly, off-white chunks of honeycomb-patterned calf stomach – oh yes, fried in goose fat – and eaten with capers to sharpen the flavour. Not for the squeamish!
The Cazagnacs bought their ducks and geese from a specialist farm about fifteen kilometres away, at L’Isle-en-Dodon. Marie-Jeanne made the trip there every two or three weeks and a couple of times I went with her. A notice at the entrance to the farm promised VOLAILLES – CANARDS GRAS – OIES. Poultry – fat ducks – geese. The plump free-range ducks lived in large enclosures in the fields in front of the farm. Some had arranged their own freedom: they’d escaped from the enclosures and were waddling along the drive and around the barns. They quacked happily and ruffled their tails as they pecked at bits of food on the ground. They had no idea of their fate.
We walked up to the top field to see the geese. They had a large field, with lines of trees for shade in the day and a long arched shed for shelter at night. These were big geese, fully mature, ready for eating. As we approached they were curious and boldly came up to the fence to eye up the strangers. Their persistent squawking sounded almost human, as if they were trying to talk to us, but we couldn’t quite catch what they were saying. Inside the shed the floor was covered with khaki-green caca, and a pungent smell wafted out of the door.
Gascony is the homeland of good country cooking. The food reflects a landscape that is simple and unadorned, created by generations who have worked the land with love. Cassoulet can be put in tins, confit de canard can be put in jars, pâté de foie gras can be put in pots, but the food is best savoured among people who know the land, sitting around a stone table in the open air, on a summer evening with a glass of wine, listening to the chatter of friendly voices. Gascony is known for la douceur de vivre, a place for taking it easy and enjoying simple pleasures. Good food, good wine, good company: la bonne chère, le bon vin, la convivialité.
The secret of Gascon cooking lies in its honest simplicity. There are no overriding tastes, no strong seasoning, no disguising sauces. Flavours blend together, complementing each other rather than competing for attention. Natural flavours are allowed to speak for themselves. A pork sausage tastes like a piece of pork and contains chunks of meat, more like pressed pork than the ground-up paste of mass-produced sausages. The colours of the food, from the beans to the jam, reflect those of the land, shades of golden brown running together, with nothing sharp or intrusive to spoil the harmony.
Marie-Jeanne baked most of the bread needed for the Auberge. She made a simple pain paysan, a small oval-shaped wholemeal loaf. Sometimes she made dark rye bread, pain de seigle, which was slightly bitter and I particularly liked. This was Gascony – there was never a baguette in sight!
Nothing was ever wasted. When bread went stale it was torn into chunks, rubbed with a garlic clove and salt, then roasted, dipped in oil and eaten hot.
The restaurant offered a variety of local cheeses. Marie-Jeanne wrote out a list of those available that week, which she pinned up on the restaurant wall, stating the name, location and in some cases the telephone number of the producer. Customers could order cheese by type, texture, maturity and whether it was sweet or dry, doux or sec, describing what they wanted to taste. I liked a mild, creamy ewe’s milk cheese, with a subtle aftertaste of lamb on the bone.
Marie-Jeanne’s pièces de résistance were her tarts, both savoury and sweet. One of her most delicious was ewe’s milk cheese tart, tarte au fromage de brebis, with shallots and herbs in a crumbly pastry. The tart was baked gently, and came out of the oven at the moment when the top was just turning a buttery-yellow-brown colour. Ideally served warm as a starter, the delicate moist filling trembled on your fork and the warm, cheesy flavour immediately flooded your mouth. It was a little taste of heaven.
Tarte maison was Marie-Jeanne’s tomato and onion tart. When a freshly cut slice was put on the plate, the juicy syrup from the tomatoes oozed over the sides. I stuck my finger into the little pink pool to taste the tomatoey-oniony syrup, which was both zesty and sweet.
The orchard at the farm supplied fresh fruit for plum tart, tarte aux prunes. The plums were baked on a thin pâté sucrée base. The tarte aux prunes came out of the oven smelling warm and tempting, a shining glaze covering the succulent fruit, darkened to lustrous purple, almost black, and just beginning to shrivel.
The orchard produced more plums than could be baked in tarts. Surplus fruit would be stewed, pulped, sieved and preserved as pulpe de pruneaux. The pulped prunes had an intense flavour, tangy, rich and thick, with the appearance of melting chocolate sauce and a hint of chocolate in the aftertaste.
Marie-Jeanne’s signature dish was a local speciality dessert, croustade aux pommes. She peeled and diced apples, then left them to soak in Armagnac. When they were well soaked, the apple pieces were placed on flaky pastry disks, which were covered with apricot jam; a disk of flaky pastry was put over the top and the edges pressed together. Making the croustades called for considerable dexterity: the flaky pastry had to be rolled into sheets so thin Marie-Jeanne referred to it as le voile de la mariée, the bridal veil. Before putting the croustades in the oven she brushed the top with beaten egg, then baked them until the pastry rose in layers of crisp, golden leaves. The moment she took them out of the oven, she gave them an extra drizzling of Armagnac. This ran quickly over the surface of the pastry and spattered on the hot baking tray, giving off a sharp, alcoholic aroma.
Marie-Jeanne made large quantities of jam, most of it for sale in jars, on display on the hall table. She used local fruit: plum, apricot, peach and watermelon. Watermelons grown especially for jam are quite different to those grown just for eating: they have hard, light-coloured flesh. With nothing artificial added, all the different jams turned out a natural brown colour. They were thick textured and retained the strong flavour of the fruit. The jam was sold in big 1.5 kilogram jars, with squares of ecru linen tied over the top of the lid. I watched Marie-Jeanne in a quiet moment in the dining room, smiling to herself as she cut out the linen squares using pinking shears to give pretty zigzag edges. She was performing a labour of love.
We often ate a fruit salad of Quercy melons for dessert in the evening. They had lovely, sweet, perfumed, orange flesh, which left a natural syrup on the lips. Marie-Jeanne poured a twist of mountain lime blossom honey, miel de montagne au tilleul, over the melons. The sharp flavour of the lime countered the sweetness of the honey. Delicious. The same honey was also used to sweeten a tisane infusion, which we sipped as we relaxed in the courtyard at the end of the evening’s work.
The pleasures of the table are central to Gascon life. The importance of food to the wellbeing of the people was understood by the southwest’s most distinguished son: Henry IV, the first Bourbon King of France. When Henry was born in the Château at Pau in December 1553, his grandfather rubbed the infant prince’s lips with the local sweet Jurançon wine to make him manly and vigorous, a true Gascon. As a boy young Henry was a free spirit: he ran barefoot with peasant children in the mountains and grew healthy and strong. When he became king, he helped to heal the enmities of the religious wars and brought peace and prosperity to the country. The key to his domestic policy was expressed in a simple wish: that every Frenchman should have a chicken for his pot on a Sunday.
In Gascony, and particularly in the Béarnais area around Pau, they think of Good King Henry as one of their own, lou nouste Henric, ‘our Henry’. He is also known as lou Gentilhome gascoun, ‘the gentleman of Gascony’. In an endearing piece of political spin, Henry said that the rest of France was annexed to Gascony, instead of the other way round.
I found working with food enjoyable, but some kitchen chores were very tedious, in particular peeling the cornichons. These baby gherkins have a subtler taste than a full-sized gherkin. They are great pickled, but first they have to be peeled. The phrase éplucher les cornichons still revives memories of sore fingers and a stiff neck. The problem was that they couldn’t be peeled; rather, they had to be rubbed with a tea towel to remove the rough outer skin. They were very small, smaller than my little finger, making the rubbing fiddly and awkward. Sometimes we did them in their hundreds and what seemed like thousands. Florence didn’t seem to mind rubbing the cornichons; in fact she actually seemed to like it. Fiddly and repetitive, it was similar to threading melon seeds.
Cordials, such as sirop de menthe, sirop de grenadine and sirop de violette, were kept on a high shelf in the kitchen, near the doorway. Marie-Jeanne had told us that the sirop de violette was the most expensive cordial, distilled from violet petals, a speciality of Toulouse. One frenetically busy evening in the restaurant, Anja became a little flustered, not helped by Nicolas acting up in the kitchen. Reaching for a bottle from the shelf, she knocked off the bottle of sirop de violette. It smashed to smithereens on the floor. The sirop made a sticky, violet puddle, oozing around the broken glass, and I have to say it smelled lovely, perfumed and slightly heady.
Anja was clearly embarrassed. I quickly fetched a dustpan, brush and mop and cleared up the mess – to be helpful, of course, not because I was trying to impress her. She seemed to appreciate my gesture. I still wasn’t sure what Anja thought of me, she kept her feelings quite guarded, but I’d like to think this was the turning point.