Cassoulet de Castelnaudary

Ingredients

• 800g dried lingot or cannellini beans
• 4 confit duck legs
• 400g Toulouse sausage, or another coarse garlicky pork sausage
• 500g pork shoulder, cut into 4cm chunks
• 200g pork rind, cut into wide strips
• 1 ham hock or pork knuckle (about 700g)
• 2 onions, halved
• 2 carrots, halved
• 1 whole head of garlic, plus 4 cloves, peeled
• 3 cloves
• 1 bouquet garni (thyme, bay, parsley stalks)
• 3 tbsp duck fat from the confit jar
• 60g dry white breadcrumbs
• 3 litres cold water
• Salt and black pepper

Before you cook

• Tip the beans into a large bowl, cover them with cold water by ten centimetres, and leave them to soak overnight.
• Drain and rinse the soaked beans the next morning.
• Stud one onion half with the three cloves.
• Take the duck legs out of the fridge an hour ahead so the fat softens and they come away cleanly.
• Cut the pork rind into strips about three centimetres wide.
• Cut the pork shoulder into four-centimetre chunks and season it with salt and pepper.

Steps

1. Put the pork rind and the ham hock in a large pot, cover them with the cold water, and bring to the boil.
2. Skim off the grey foam that rises, then drop the heat to a bare simmer.
3. Add the clove-studded onion, the carrots, the whole head of garlic and the bouquet garni.
4. Simmer uncovered for one hour and thirty minutes.
5. Lift out the hock and the rind and set them on a board to cool.
6. Strain the broth into a clean pan and discard the vegetables and herbs.
7. Put the drained beans into the broth and bring it to a gentle simmer.
8. Cook the beans for forty-five minutes until tender but still holding their shape, then take the pan off the heat and leave them sitting in their broth.
9. Set a heavy frying pan over medium-high heat with one tablespoon of duck fat and brown the pork shoulder chunks on all sides for about eight minutes.
10. Move the pork to a plate and brown the sausage in the same pan for five minutes, turning it once.
11. Cut the sausage into thick lengths and set it with the pork.
12. Pull the meat from the cooled ham hock in large shreds and discard the bone, skin and gristle.
13. Wipe the frying pan, add the remaining duck fat, and warm the confit legs skin side down for six minutes until the skin crisps.
14. Lift the duck out and set it aside.
15. Heat the oven to 150C fan.
16. Line the bottom of a wide earthenware dish or deep casserole with the strips of pork rind, fat side down.
17. Rub the inside walls of the dish with the peeled garlic cloves.
18. Spoon in a third of the beans, then lay over the pork shoulder, ham hock meat and sausage.
19. Cover with another third of the beans, then nestle in the duck legs skin side up.
20. Finish with the last of the beans and pour over enough hot bean broth to come just level with the surface.
21. Scatter the breadcrumbs evenly across the top and bake, uncovered, for one hour.
22. Break the crust with the back of a spoon and press it gently under the surface.
23. Repeat that crust-breaking three more times at twenty-minute intervals, adding a ladle of hot broth if the beans look dry.
24. Let the finished cassoulet stand for twenty minutes so it settles before you take it to the table.