From Cowpoke Beans to Cassoulets

Beans don’t always get great press, but being my father’s daughter, our kitchen is never without them. Pinto, dark kidney, cannellini, garbanzo, navy, black, and refried beans are stacked two cans high and three deep in the pantry. Bags of dried adzuki, fava, flageolet, lentil, and great white northern beans are nearby. Baby lima beans and edaname (soy beans) are staples in the freezer vegetable bin.

Recently I found a recipe for Cowpoke Beans that my father gave me twenty-five years ago. Stained and aged to the color of onionskin, it was lovingly typed on a three-by-five-inch index card—ingredients listed on one side and preparation instructions on the other. A cowboy quote speaks to the task ahead.

You’ve got to treat these little pinto beans the same way you would a newborn colt—with a lot of love and attention.

In the film Brokeback Mountain, cowboys Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist eat beans straight from cans heated over a high altitude Wyoming camp fire. My dad simmered his pinto beans in a heavy Dutch oven after soaking them overnight in cold water. Only then did he stir in salt pork, a chopped onion, garlic, red chili peppers, simmering another three hours, Dad’s tender cowpoke beans were always served with a pan of Mom’s made-from-scratch cornbread and hot maple syrup.

My own Dutch oven with glass lid has done venerable service in every kitchen Kit and I have inhabited for nearly thirty years; but we recently added a heavy French cast-iron Le Creuset roaster that has inspired me to move into territory beyond chili and Dad’s cowpoke beans.

We are  now talking about chickens, not just beans, and a Sunday dinner prepared in a pot for a hungry crowd. The dish is cassoulet, a tradition that goes back to the sixteenth century and to King Henry IV who saw chickens as a symbol of prosperity in France. To wit, according to Lydie Marshall in, A Passion for My Provence: Home Cooking from the South of France, Henry IV decreed that every French household should have a chicken cooking in a pot every Sunday.

Determined to recreate this classic country dinner, I turned to my collection of French cookbooks. Julie Child, co-author of the classic Mastering The Art of French Cooking, found cassoulet

a rich combination of beans backed with meats (pork, lamb, and homemade sausage), as much a part of southwestern France as Boston baked beans are of New England.

Next I searched through The French Menu Cookbook, by Richard Olney—an American culinary writer who lived in Paris for ten years, then moved permanently to Provence after falling in love with its light, its landscape and its odors. Olney believed there were as many cassoulets as there are cooks, and chose to define the dish as:

a slow-cooked gratin made up of two or more separate preparations, once of which is always pork and bean stew, the others of which may be chosen among preserved duck or goose, braised lamb or mutton, and roast or braised partridge.

Nostalgically, Olney added a footnote on the subject.

The gentle, sweet odor of broom (grass) which, in the past, was burned to heat the bread ovens in which cassoulets were cooked, lend, no doubt, a dimension to the dish that we shall never know.

Georgeanne Brennan in Savoring France writes,

…cassoulet is a defining dish in the Languedoc region of Provence, stretching from the cities of Toulouse, to Carcassonne, to Castelnaudary. While each city, village and family there may have its own version of the dish, it is, in essence layers of white beans that have been slowly cooked with herbs, and interspersed with layers of different cooked meats, thoroughly moistened with the cooking juice of both, topped with a final layer of bread crumbs, and then baked until a thick crust forms and the juices begin to bubble underneath.

I eliminated goose and duck as possible meats, having raised both at Breakfast Creek, where I named my flocks one and all. Chicken, pork, lamb, and sausage would have to do. The great white northerns were treated as Dad had advised me, “as lovingly as newborn colts.” While the beans simmered, the chicken and pork roasted. Lamb and sausage were browned with onions and garlic, and then simmered to a savory sauce with tomatoes, parsley, white wine and thyme. After a morning of preparation, the cooked beans, meats and sauces were layered, layered again, covered, and baked together a final two hours.

Chefs agree that the cassoulet is time-consuming and requires hearty eaters. But I was happy to cook for our invited friends Orion and Beckmeyer and Sally and Hugh Sprague who arrived with hearty appetites. Dessert was Tarte Tatin (French upside-down apple tart) baked cowboy style in an iron skillet. It was a delicious ending to a country supper of baked beans prepared French style in a pot at Boomerang Creek. Dad would have loved every bite.

Another essay by Cathy Salter
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