Browsing Tag:

cassoulet

Entree/ Pork/ Sandwiches

Cassoulet Toast

Not the time consuming two day project of a traditional cassoulet.

What is a cassoulet you say? Well if you like white beans then let me tell you about this cassoulet. No it isn’t a casserole it’s a slow cooked dish (maybe casserole would be a stretch) that contains meats like bacon, pork sausage, ham, pork skin, duck and can have goose or mutton.

Making a traditional (French) cassoulet would take you a couple of days at least. By the time you make your duck confit and prep everything and then cook for hours the next day, you have invested a lot of time into what you might think is just beans and ham. The first time I we made this (or Paul/Scott made it) we did the confit one day and we used dried beans and not canned beans. It gets stirred during the day while cooking so the crusty top layer gets pushed to the bottom. If you want to see their results look here.

I won’t go into more details in making the tradition version because this Cassoulet Toast is easy. I first saw the recipe at David Lebovitz’s site and was one he had made from Susan Spungen’s book The Open Kitchen. Susan is a cook, food stylist, recipe developer and author. I started following her on Instagram because of her food pictures and now I own her book and can’t wait to try some of her recipes.

Continue Reading…

Entree/ Game/ Pork

A Very Good Cassoulet

This was fantastic and so good on a cold winter night.

I was hoping to try this in France last Spring but there were so many other things to try and I had already made this a couple of times so it didn’t bother me that it wasn’t on my list of “tried things” while there.

Did you grow up (or still do) eating white beans in a bowl with a big chunk of corn bread on the side (please don’t say sweet cornbread) with maybe some chow chow to add to your beans. We did and they were the best beans you could possibly hope for at the time. A few years ago, my dad showed my husband how he had started making beans. He would soak the beans over night and then he would put the beans in a pot (he used a pressure cooker) with a couple of country style ribs (or backbone depending on where you live) and a ham hock.

Then along came Cassoulet (new to me). A word I had heard but never paid much attention to. I had never had the dish before our French Country Feast a few years ago. It was fantastic. A cassoulet is a stew made with white beans, sausage, duck confit, sometimes lamb, ham hocks and ham bone. Now, how could that not be an out of this world dish.

This recipe may take hours in the making but it will well be worth it in the end. I would either serve my mother’s cornbread recipe or a crusty French bread with this. There are so many recipes on the Internet for cassoulet and methods of making it. I would suggest reading a few before trying this recipe. In the end though, how can you mess up beans and a bunch of different kinds of meat. The end results will be great, no matter what you put in it.

BLAST FROM THE PASTFried Eggplant Chips with Honey Drizzle was an appetizer we had in Seville, Spain. Very delicious. I was excited to see that 2,600 people have looked at this recipe. Back in March I had 1,600 views — WOW. I really get excited when I think how many people just happen to find a recipe of mine through a google search.

Continue Reading…