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Cassoulet Confessions Event Monday, Feb 27th (post includes “Gateway” Cassoulet Recipe)

February 23, 2023 By Morgan

CASSOULET CONFESSIONS: AN EVENING WITH SYLVIE BIGAR, VINCENT FRANCOUAL, MORGAN BAUM AND LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPERIt was back in 2021 when Sylvie first reached out to us. Her memoir, Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family and the Stew That Saved My Soul was going to be released by Hardie Grant, and she wanted to see if there might be any synergies.

Fast forward, we created a Special Edition Cassole to coincide with the launch of the book.

Now, this coming Monday, Sylvie will be in Minneapolis for an evening dedicated to cassoulet.

We’re co-hosting an event at Alliance Française, the ticket price includes the entrance fee, a copy of Sylvie Bigar’s book, refreshments,  and a cassoulet tasting. 

One of my heros, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, founding host of the Splendid Table on MPR, will moderate the panel featuring:

  • Sylvie Bigar, author
  • Vincent Francoual, local French chef at Chloe in Minneapolis
  • and yours truly, Morgan Baum, owner of the Clay Coyote

This event is for Alliance Française members only, so you’ll want to first set up an account on the site in order to checkout: https://www.afmsp.org/events/cassoulet

Sylvie’s Gateway Cassoulet Recipe

Excerpt from Sylvie Bigar’s food and travel memoir, Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family and the Stew That Saved My Soul, published by Hardie Grant, September 13, 2022

YIELD: Serves 2
TIME: prep 40 mins, cooking time 21/2 hours

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) dried cannellini beans or other large white beans
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
8 garlic cloves, peeled
1 parsley sprig (leaves only)
3 thyme sprigs (leaves only)
½ tablespoon salt
350 g (12 oz) fresh pork belly with skin, cut into 3 cm (1 in) cubes
1 tablespoon duck fat
200 g (½ lb) fresh pork sausage, cut into 5 cm (2 in) long pieces
2 legs duck confit
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper
1 liter (34 fl oz/4 cups) store-bought chicken stock

  1. Rinse the beans thoroughly, then soak for at least 2 hours but no longer than 12 hours.
  2. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
  3. Drain the beans and rinse under cold water. Fill a 4 liter (135 fl oz/ 16 cups) Dutch oven with water and bring to a boil. Blanch the beans in the boiling water for 7 minutes, then drain and run under cold water again. Set aside in a bowl.
  4. In a blender, combine the onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, salt and 60 ml (2 fl oz/1⁄4 cup) of water. Puree until smooth.
  5. In the Dutch oven, sear the pork belly cubes over medium heat until browned on all sides – about 5 minutes. Stir often to prevent burning. Remove and set aside.
  6. Melt the duck fat in the Dutch oven over medium heat, then cook the sausage, stirring frequently until brown – about 5 minutes. Remove the sausage and set aside, then add the duck legs and sear for about 1 minute per side. Remove and set aside. Add the garlic/onion puree and reduce heat to low. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring regularly and scraping any pieces of meat stuck to the bottom.
  7. Add the puree to the beans, along with the carrot, and mix until well coated.
  8. Transfer about one-third of the bean mix to the Dutch oven, enough to cover the bottom.
  9. Layer the pork belly over the beans, then the sausages. Finally, place the duck legs on top and cover with the remaining beans. Season with the nutmeg and a good grind of pepper. Add just enough stock to cover the beans. Reserve any remaining stock to add during the cooking process.
  10. Bake uncovered until the cassoulet comes to a simmer on the sides and a crust begins to form – about 40 minutes. Reduce heat to 150°C (300°F) and cook for 1 hour 45 minutes, checking regularly to break the crust with the back of a spoon and ensure that the cassoulet remains moist. Add stock or water if necessary.
  11. Remove the cassoulet from the oven and let it rest for 15 minutes before serving. Place the Dutch oven at the center of the table and serve family style.

Event Location:

Alliance Française in Minneapolis
612-332-0436
227 Colfax Avenue N Minneapolis, MN 55405
Monday, February 27th from 6-8:30pm

 

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Filed Under: Events, Foodie News, On the Horizon, Our Story, Pottery, Recipes Tagged With: casole, Cassoulet, cooking with clay, events, France, french food, sylvie bigar

Pots in the Wild: We spy a Clay Coyote Cassole in the Wall Street Journal

September 22, 2022 By Morgan

Did you see our new, special edition Clay Coyote cassole in the Wall Street Journal?

It was featured in along side a great interview with author Sylvie Bigar. The article also includes her recipe for cholent. Read the full article here. 

Order your copy of Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family and the Stew That Saved My Souland the new cassole today.

“ln her new memoir, “Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family and the Stew That Saved My Soul” (Hardie Grant), Ms. Bigar examines her family’s troubled past as she chronicles her pivotal visits to Carcassonne. Along the way, cassoulet provides a surprising key to her identity. While eating cholent, a traditional Ashkenazi dish, at a Shabbat meal in New York City, she discovers exactly why that cassoulet tasted like home to her: Cholent is cassoulet’s precursor.”

 

Photos for WSJ by Emma Fishman

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Filed Under: Foodie News, Our Story, Potter's Life, Recipes Tagged With: cassole, Cholent, clay coyote pottery, Media, Mediterranean Diet, Pottery in Action, sylvie bigar, wall street journal

Meet Sylvie Bigar, Author of Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France and the Stew that saved my Soul

August 29, 2022 By Morgan

It was just about two years ago that I had the opportunity to meet Sylvie Bigar, the author of Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France and the Stew that saved my Soul published by Hardie Grant.

Cassoulet Confessions Cover release 2022

Together, we shared a love of food, travel, and pottery. This September, we’re launching a new take on our cassole form. It’s a nod to the vessel that Sylvie’s cassoulet master uses in the Occitanie region of Southern France. 

We’ve tried the recipes included in the book and you will love them! On September 13th, you can purchase Sylvie’s new book and the cassole. Both the book and the cassole will be available in the Gallery and online. 

Read more about Sylvie’s story below: 

When food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar accepted an apparently anodyne assignment on cassoulet, France’s ancestral bean and meat stew, she could not have known that she was about to jump into a rabbit hole that would lead her miles away from her upper-crust childhood in Switzerland, and force her to reckon with her identity and her own dramatic family history.

Today more than ever, we recognize the magical power of taste. From Proust’s madeleine to the cozy sense of comfort yielded by a sip of chicken soup, we let emotions transport us back in time, but even orange blossoms can taste bittersweet and Sylvie’s first cassoulet bite somehow carries her to the gilded mansion of the dysfunctional childhood she’s spent decades trying to forget.

sylvie bigar making cassole in clay coyote limited edition cassoleCassoulet Confessions, a poignant gourmand memoir, traces Sylvie’s journey through the stunning French countryside near Carcassonne, as she learns the deeper meaning of authentic cassoulet from her culinary guru. As the book vacillates between generational family drama and Sylvie’s gastronomic training, the reader is engulfed in the simmering smells of the French kitchen, then suddenly thrown in the front seat of the family car, her schizophrenic sister at the wheel.

This manuscript is a sensual experience extolling the pain of hunger for home and authentic, sumptuous food along the dramatic backdrop of Sylvie’s Jewish family. Her poetic and deceptively simple prose offers an immersive experience, both delicious and terrifying at the same time.

A literary feast, you will want to place this book on your shelves right next to the beloved Language of Baklava by Diana Abu Jaber, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter and the works of Ruth Reichl.

Award-winning food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and is based in New York City. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Food & Wine, Forbes.com, Saveur, Bon Appetit, Food Arts, Departures, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, National Geographic Traveler, Gotham, Hamptons, Time Out New York, Air Canada, Passport Magazine, Narratives, Southampton Press, and New York Resident, for which she has also served as food editor. In French, Sylvie has contributed to Le Figaro Magazine, Histoire magazine, Le Temps and FrenchMorning.com.

In 2020, Her uncle died with the French Resistance, and she had to visit the spot for the Washington Post won a New York Press Club Journalism Award in the Travel Writing for a newspaper category. In 2018, Departures magazine’s Hunting Gooseneck Barnacles on Vancouver Island won the bronze award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation for Best Culinary Travel. Back in 2016, French Cassoulet, an Obsession boils over for the Washington Post won a gold Travelers’ Tales Solas Award for Best Travel Writing in the food and travel category.

Sylvie co-authored Chef Daniel Boulud’s definitive cookbook, Daniel: My French Cuisine (Grand Central, 2013) as well as Living Art: Style Your Home with Flowers with floral artist and designer Olivier Giugni (Atria, 2010). Her New York Times essay about Aimé Césaire, “Beneath Martinique’s Beauty, guided by a Poet” was published in Footsteps, a curated collection of the New York Times’ travel column.

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Filed Under: Events, Foodie News, On the Horizon, Our Story, Potter's Life, Recipes Tagged With: Art of Cooking, beans, cassole, Cassoulet, cassoulet confessions, cookbook, cooking with clay, duck, french cassoulet, french cuisine, french food, Mediterranean Diet, stew, sylvie bigar

Makers of MN Podcast: CLAY COYOTE (SEASON 4 EPISODE 29)

July 29, 2022 By Morgan

Stephanie Hansen of Stephanie’s Dish

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Stephanie Hansen of Stephanie’s Dish and Makers of MN Podcast to talk about:

  • How we started out (pump house days!)
  • Why Flameware is so cool, err hot
  • Our making process
  • How we develop new pots including the Pizza Stone and our new collaboration with Sylvie Bigar to make a cassole that goes with her new memoir coming out this September.
  • The Cooking with Clay Trends
  • Nickel-Free Cookware movement
  • The Minnesota Pottery Festival
  • And so much more!

Listen (or read the transcript) here! 

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Filed Under: Events, Foodie News, On the Horizon, Our Story, Potter's Life, Recipes, The Gallery, The Studio Tagged With: cassole, Cassoulet, cooking with clay, flameware, our story, podcast, Stephanie's Dish, sylvie bigar

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