On New Year’s Day I was already dressed, but sleeping, when I got the text telling me where to be.

We had been partying at my friend’s house the previous evening when the year turned. This was Lausanne so I saw the year in an hour earlier than the folks back home in Newcastle upon Tyne.

In my darkened hostel room at 1am there were three other warm breathing bodies in the room so I took my pyjamas to the bathroom to change and snuck back in straight to my top-bunk bed in the semi dark. The other sleepers were kind the next morning. They were probably going ski-ing and wanting to leave early but nobody put the lights on, waiting until it was light outside to get up and showered and check out. But when the room had quietened I also got up, had a shower and fragranced myself and got dressed. Then I thought coffee? No… sleepy…. I climbed back up to my lovely, comfy bed and slept for 2 more hours.

At the youth hostel “Lausanne Guest House and Backpacker”, I had picked the top bunk of a double bunk like a child. From there – during daylight – I had a view out of the window across the tops of the fudge coloured, snow dusted buildings, down the hill, all the way to the huge Lac Leman. Theoretically I should have been able to see the mountains on the far side but it was always too hazy for that.

An interesting aside is that they do not give me a duvet cover. I was issued with a fitted under sheet and a flat sheet – just a long piece of unhemmed white cotton fabric as wide as the bed and longer than I am – which I used between myself and the duvet.

At around 11 my friend sent a succinct text message – “come for early lunch”; I stopped for coffee on the way – these little Swiss coffees are quite delicious.

When I reached her house she was still in her pyjamas but she was frying braising cooking. Onions, garlic, chilli, duck, tins of beans and bacon and sausages. She was making cassoulet because, she said, she had been wondering what she could make using just the ingredients that she had to hand. Her hands are generous. The chilli and garlic fumes in the high ceilinged kitchen were so intense that we had to open the windows and let the 1°C air in. I was coughing and the fresh air helped.

When we sat down to eat it was gloopy and fragrant and so incredibly tasty that I did not realise until later that this would become my new year’s resolution. To make cassoulet. Not to just make it from a recipe book but to understand it well enough that I can make it anywhere, any time.

Tonight I take the duck and pork out of the freezer. Put the haricot beans in to soak overnight. Here starts action.

Tomorrow I make cassoulet 1.