Keith Austin: When the world is your lobster Stories from a former Travel Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Cassoulet – a sort of southern French bean stew with sausages and duck - is my next culinary task. Many years ago Popsi Bubblehead’s sister, who lives in the Lozere region of southern France, gave me a large vacuum-sealed jar of the stuff and I have been hankering to make my own ever since.

To this end I recently mentioned it to John Baxter, an Australian ex-pat writer and biographer who has been living in Paris for more than 20 years and who is the author of the very lovely and entertaining memoir An Immoveable Feast, A Paris Christmas.

First off he pointed us in the direction of Au Bon St. Pourcain, a restaurant  just around the corner from his house in the 6^th arrondissement which he said did an excellent cassoulet . He was right, as we popped in there a few nights later for Popsi’s birthday.

However, the genial Mr Baxter also asked if I had a wood-fired oven. Sadly I had to point out that we had a two-ring electric hob and an electric oven in which only three of the four heating elements were working.

Hmmm, a true cassoulet, he said, had to be cooked in a wood-fired oven ... and, of course, then there was the question of whether to leave the crust on when it’s served or to mix it in ...

Well, they certainly mixed it in during the making of the canned cassoulet (I jest not) that Popsi purchased in our local G20 (no, not the summit) supermarche in the Marais yesterday. “It was the cheapest they had,” she said.  And with good reason.

It didn’t help that she paired this with canned spinach which, while it might have been good enough for Popeye, smelled as bad as it looked and, we discovered, tasted. Still, as I always say, you should put EVERYTHING in your mouth ONCE. You never know.

And now we do.

There will be a pause in posting for a week or so now because we are off to visit the aforesaid sister of La Bubblehead in the south. It seems wolves have been sighted in the area for the first time in many decades and they want to go hunting for them (to look at, not kill). Personally I will be happy to hunt for a genuine cassoulet recipe.