French Cassoulet

travelers-tales

By Sylvie Bigar

An obsession boils over.

The minute I breathed in the scent of caramelized sensuality rising from the massive clay cassoulet pot, I was bewitched. It made no sense. Born Jewish to a fashionably thin French mother and an ascetic Swiss father, I was raised on steamed sole and haricots verts. My father regularly asserted that he didn’t live to eat but ate only to live.