And for my next trick… make-shift CASSOULET! Tonight I am embarking on another experiment, hooray! Experimenting in the kitchen is fun. So we’ve been eating very well the last couple of nights. I had some left over roast chick, a few slices of flank steak, and a few sausages I need to use. Hmmm, the gears are turning, a stew is formulating… how about a riff on Cassoulet? The original uses any combo of duck, goose, pork and sausage (and sometimes mutton!!) I’ll substitute in the flank steak for the pork and chicken for the goose and be all set! Since my proteins are already cooked, I’m short-cutting this usually labor-intensive recipe. And I’ll put another twist on the original by substituting black beans and chick peas for the traditional white beans. The dish is traditionally slow simmered with carrots, onions and canned tomatoes, with wine and stock – then topped with bread crumbs and finished in the oven for 3 hours. Hellew – let’s quick cut this sucker down to 30/40 minutes.
Here’s how else I will modify this classic: I intend to toss fennel into the veg mix, goodness it's my new favorite vegetable and I always have it on hand. I’ll brown my sausage first and set them aside, then brown all my veggies, throw in my diced flank steak, get everything browning nicely, deglaze with the canned tomato (which I whizzed up in my cuisinart) then dump in my beans, place my sausages back in the pot to finish cooking and cover with a cup of water. Take a breath and a sip of wine. At the end I’ll pop in my chicken leg/thigh just to warm through. This one is SO EASY. All in one pot, nothing to it. I crisped up my bread crumbs on their own under the broiler then sprinkled them on top. I don’t have the traditional cassoule pot (that’s how this dish is named, after the earthenware dish it cooks in) so I used my 8 qt All-Clad (thanks Sharon Lee) and just served it on a platter with the crispy bread crumbs scattered about. I also toasted some nice whole grain bread to go with.
Ingredients:
1 carrot
¼ chopped onion
½ sliced fennel bulb
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomatoes, whizzed up into pulp
1 can black beans, drained
1 can chick peas, drained
1 roasted chicken leg+thigh (or whatever you have)
2 slices of steak, diced into 1-inch pieces (or whatever you have)
2 sausages (or whatever you have)
Sprigs of thyme
Glass of water
Salt
Pep
Oil
Cassoulet – the remix:
If you get the gist of how this recipe comes together from my intro - get cracking. If you want a little more info here you go. Get your largest pot on high heat and drop in a drizzle of olive oil. Pop in your sausages and let them get a nice brown sear on the outside, each side a couple of minutes. I set off my smoke alarm doing this, but it was worth it as the sausages had an EXCELLENT brown crust. Pull out the sausages and dump in your veggies, hold out the garlic for now. Brown your veggies with a dash of salt and pep, then throw in the garlic. Sautee the garlic for a minute then pop in your beef and brown it all. Then add in your beans and swirl that around for a bit. Then add in your tomato pulp and let it bubble. Pop in some sprigs of thyme. Pop your sausages back in, cover with a glass of water so that the liquid covers the sausages and simmer for 20 minutes on low heat. Whiz up some fresh bread crumbs with a few thyme leaves, salt and pep and scald the crumbs under the broiler to a golden brown. The bean mix should have reduced and thickened – submerge your chicken bits into the beans and give it another 5 minutes. Then pull out all the meat bits – the beef will be too small to fish out, but the sausages and chicken can be easily set aside. Pour the beans and veggies onto a platter, arrange the meat on top and scatter the bread crumbs over everything. Finish with a few more sprigs of thyme and voile! Cassoulet – le remix. Enjoy! Er, do those sausages look a bit, unsightly?
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