A few of my cabbages in the garden are no more. Which might beg the question, why am I making a confit out of squirrel instead of rabbit? Because the rabbits in the vegetable patch dine on the efforts of my hard work at night. On those occasions when they allow themselves to be seen cavorting in daylight, I am carrying a hoe, not a shotgun. Meanwhile squirrels (unfortunately for them) expose themselves to all manner of unlucky timings that shorten their mortality, from being indecisive road-crossers to standing on a limb barking while the hunter nearby is relieving himself. So, alas, no rabbit for my dinner, only squirrel … but only for now, sweet bunny, only for now.

Why confit and cassoulet? Let’s start with the obvious. They are each beautiful French words that we love saying for the reason that we can actually pronounce them. Indeed, being linguistically challenged myself in all languages, including my native, this may be the main reason that I fixed this dish: the recipe provided me the confidence to roll both words off the tongue and into a conversation. They also are intended to sound, in their Frenchiness, highly palatable and highly desirable (which also leads to highly priced surcharges at whatever froufrou bistro you land in for your date night). Hiding plain foods under clever foreign names that often translate essentially to the same dishes as their American counterparts is a time-honored sport of our restaurateurs to inflate their bottom line.

Think about it: Does simply uttering the word pâté not encourage more guests to sample my efforts than if I had called it what James Villas does, Pork Jowl and Liver Pudding? Would some of you not be reading this (if anyone is indeed reading it) if I had called my dish Salted Squirrel in Bean Stew?

So now let’s reduce the two words — confit and cassoulet — to their essentials. A confit is an ingredient (and a process) made by curing a piece of meat in salt, then cooking it in a fat for long hours, before eventually storing it submerged in the same. It keeps for months until needed. Meat, salt, fat. What could be simpler (and taste better)? The one-dish cassoulet is your average Monday night bean dinner, except it contains multiple versions of salt and fatted proteins, all combined to take you on a supercharged highway to a coronarial destination both blissful and corpulent. (Though, the French are all reported to be skinny, so better take up cigarettes.)

As a personal philosophy of cooking, I don’t hold much truck with theories of cultural appropriation, but I do believe strongly that one should try to cook with local ingredients. Adapt any recipe to what you grow and what is in your larder. Don’t you be buying no champagne vinegar when what you have on hand is a perfectly good pear vinegar that you brewed. The beans you harvested this summer in your garden (in my case butter beans) will do just fine. Need salt pork? How about that freshly cured jowl under the stairs. Link sausages? Well, thanks to the deer hunting acumen of a favorite nephew coupled with the curing skills of a local Mennonite butcher, both in South Louisiana, I have them by the coils.

Will the resulting dish be a traditional Toulouse cassoulet? Certainement pas. Just as the French settlers in Louisiana made their beloved boudin with ingredients found at hand, good cooking in East Tennessee also reflects place. Food should never be confined to a straightjacket, with one exception … my chicken sausage gumbo. (Perfection is not to be trifled with.) But truly, all that really matters in the end is that you cook your meals with love for friends and family.

Ms. Ronni “I declare” Lundy, in her well-written cookbook Victuals, an Appalachian journey with recipes, is the source for the cassoulet that I cooked. With many modifications, of course. She is also the author of the instructional injunction to not let your “fat get frisky” when cooking the confit. Those are words to live by.

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Reading this weekend: A Factotum in the Book Trade (M. Kociejowski), a dense, yet delightful read about a life spent in the antiquarian book trade in London. Written from the perspective of an employee, not an owner. And, The Reactionary Mind (M. Davis), a distributist stand against modernity.

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