Some people eat to live. Others live to eat, journey and journal.
Sylvie Bigar is one of those eaters — and writers — who discovered that her taste for cassoulet, a magical dish that dates to the 14th century, taught her something not only about the Occitanie, a French region between Spain and Provence that was “at the crossroads of history and civilizations.”
It also taught her something about herself, her roots, and her family.
“Cassoulet Confessions” is the first food memoir from Bigar, a French-Swiss journalist who also penned a cookbook, “Daniel” with top French chef Daniel Boulud.
Bigar’s initial assignment was to travel to Carcassone, interview Chef Eric Garcia, co-founder of the Academie Universelle du Cassoulet, and write about cassoulet, a rustic French stew with beans, herbs, pork, duck confit, sausage and other meats that vary from town to town. She ended up writing many articles about the stew, its ingredients, and Occitanie.
“I knew there was a book to write about this experience and that it was much more personal than reporting on learning to cook a dish. Still, it took me more than ten years to find the key to the familial and dramatic stories that hid under the cassoulet crust,” said Bigar when The Post interviewed her at new sushi hotspot Jōji. “Cassoulet ended up serving as a thread, and a metaphor, that would lead me to find my identity and my home.”
Bigar was drawn in as soon as she entered Garcia’s dining room at his restaurant, Domaine Balthazar, in Carcassone, with its famed medieval fortress and towers.
“As a food and travel writer from New York, I thought I’d write a simple article on the history of cassoulet, meet a chef, taste some beans and head home,” she said.
It took more than a decade, but Bigar finally uncovered why she had become so obsessed with cassoulet.
“Over time,” she said, “I wrote about the pots, I wrote about the chefs and the Universal Academy of Cassoulet. I wrote about the meats, the herbs and yes, about the beans as well. But then I realized that the stew was the thread that led me to face my childhood, my family’s heritage, and its dramatic history. Finally, I was able to confront one of the primal questions that keep all of us up at night: Where’s home?”