Picasso said, “Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal,” He might as well as been talking about French cooking. It’s an arena where you need to borrow and steal techniques if you’re going to learn, not to mention excel. Cassoulet is a good example. It’s a deceptively tough dish to get right. Take my latest attempt. Between working with Toulouse sausages, braising lamb, rendering duck legs for confit, all together had to work together as a composition with beans at the center. But at the end, it worked. There’s nothing more satisfying to me (at least sometimes) than seeing a crusted dish bubbling out of the oven. So recently we did some cassoulets at work. With our new Maitre’d at the helm, it sold out the door and I had to continue remaking it to keep up with the sales!

Cassoulet from Jeremy Shapiro on Vimeo.