Saveur

View Gallery Photo: Jean-Luc Barde

Indeed, that very evening I was the guest of honor at a dinner attended by Charron and a large contingent of the Great Brotherhood's members at a restaurant called Hostellerie Étienne, in the village of Labastide-d'Anjou, about five miles west of Castelnaudary. Many of the brothers—and a few sisters—had already arrived, dressed in flowing brown robes with yellow trim and sporting large, cassole-shaped hats. In the kitchen I could see the proprietor, a short man with white hair and glasses.

"That's Étienne Rousselot," one of the brothers told me. "He's the champion." Had I really arrived at cassoulet nirvana? "He's quite good," Charron said, less committally. But he soon dropped his reserve when the steaming cassoles were set before us and their ambrosial contents ladled onto our plates. "Super bon, au sommet!" Charron enthused, his eyes gleaming. And as I shoveled forkfuls of sumptuous, perfectly cooked beans, crispy duck, and spicy sausage into my mouth, I was perfectly happy to defer to the Grand Maître's judgment.

Charron offered me seconds, then thirds. I was in no mood to refuse. "Lots of beans, please," I requested, as he cut into the cassoulet's lovely brown crust and scooped out huge helpings before my greedy eyes. Meanwhile, the cassoulet club had begun singing in Occitan, the Languedoc's native tongue, and debating which variety of bean is most likely to make you windy. We'd been washing down the cassoulet with bottles of côtes-de-la-malepère—one of several Languedocien wines (others include corbières, minervois, and fitou) that stand up perfectly to the dish's garlicky earthiness. Then Rousselot came over with a bottle of armagnac. The last I remember, he and I had our arms around each other and were drinking toasts to Franco-American friendship.

Before I left Hostellerie Étienne that night, proprietor Rousselot invited me to come by for breakfast the next morning. When I arrived, he laid out two plates of foie gras and country ham and poured two glasses of a 1977 côtes-du-roussillon that he had brought up from his wine cellar. Rousselot told me he'd come to this region from Toulouse and opened his restaurant in Labastide-d'Anjou in 1956. When he first came to town, he didn't know how to make cassoulet, but he did know a waitress at a Castelnaudary hotel that was once famous for its cassoulet, and little by little—plying her with glasses of champagne, he claims—he got the recipe from her. "But it took me another ten years to perfect my own version," Rousselot added. Could he give me some tips? I asked. "It's all in the little things, the simple things," he answered. "For example, I leave the cassole in the oven for seven hours, at a low temperature. Also, I let a nice crust form on the top, and then break it and let it re-form at least four times."

As Rousselot took another sip of wine, I asked the elderly chef when he planned to retire. "Never," he said. "My dream is to die with an oven full of cassoulet."