A Life in Smoke & Salt

©Toby Allen Photography

So we started experimenting with smoking duck legs back in the autumn.  The first bit of produce I ever sold was a hot-smoked duck breast and we’ve been supplying them to a our local deli ever since.  I always disliked the idea of buying the the breasts on their own, felt like a bit of waste (although I’m sure the legs always found a happy home).  We were selling 15-20 breasts a week, so what to do with all these duck legs? Well to me there’s only way to cook legs – confit.  So I had an idea, a quick google yielded little support for my theory but I reckoned that since a good confit requires a cure anyway why not sneak in a cheeky cold smoke for a few hours before it meets the fat.  It worked and soon our smoked duck confit sandwich made its debut at Brockley Market.

©Toby Allen Photography

As much as I love sandwiches, the bitterly cold weather of the new year required a more robust outlet for our smoked duck confit.  Cassoulet seemed the obvious choice, given our access to lots of lovely smoked bacon.

With my two main ingredients and a recipe sorted that just left the important matter of sausages and beans.  I settled on a delicious Toulouse sausage from The Ginger Pig, and dried haricot beans.

Our Cassoulet, with smoked confit garlic toasts, can be found at Brockley market for four weeks only from 4^th-25^th Feb 2012.