Cassoulet is an amazing dish that has to be the most perfect food of comfort. It's a slow-cooked stew/casserole thing with sausage, duck, pork fat, and white beans. When it's done right, the beans are infused with the flavors of the simmering meats and just melt in your mouth. It's a home cooked dish that you don't find too often in French restaurants in this country that tend to focus on more fancy fare. But if you find a place that serves cassoulet, order it immediately! Well, maybe not in the sweltering death heat of summer. I think it's more a fall to winter type dish.
There are two places in DC that, according to my French father-in-law, are worth going to for cassoulet.
Bistrot D'oc and
Bistrot Du Coin. Bistrot D'oc also has some tasty macaron for desert which I really love.
As for making it, from what I understand, it's a very involved dish. There's a lot of prep work and a whole mess of cooking, heating, reheating, recooking. Takes hours. Or days. I haven't tried it myself so that might all be urban myth, but the cassoulets I've had certainly taste like they've been simmering for hours.
So yeah, cassoulet. Put it in your face.
