In college, I worked in a french bistro that served cassoulet, and I remember our clientele were always impressed at our traditional presentation of the dish. Out of this experience, I formed the opinion that true cassoulet includes duck legs, white beans, and some kind of sausage. In my research to find the perfect cassoulet recipe to make on my own, I learned that there are a lot of opinions out there about how to make traditional cassoulet.

Essentially it’s all about location. This was a stew made by peasants, and the peasants used the ingredients they had readily available to make a slow cooked hearty stew. For one region, this meant a particular variety of spicy sausage. For another region this may have meant duck legs or duck fat, and so on. Over time, different recipes built on the older ones, combining them and creating something of a cassoulet canon. Ask one person and they’ll say you absolutely must have duck confit; ask someone else and they’ll swear the key ingredient is pork belly. After some research, I settled on some (mostly) common ingredients across all cassoulet recipes:

cannellini beans
duck or pork – the duck ingredient could be duck confit, duck sausage, or duck fat, and the pork might be pork belly, or spicy pork sausage. Many recipes include 2 or 3 of these meats all in the same stew.
chicken broth
fresh herbs – bay leaf and thyme are must haves
tomato (fresh, canned, or paste)
carrot
onion
time – be ready to cook for a few hours

But there’s a whole other way to look at cassoulet. This is a peasant dish and the point is to make it with the ingredients you have on hand, just like the peasants who created it in the first place. Going to the butcher for duck legs or hunting down Toulouse sausage in a specialty foods shop just doesn’t really capture the essence of the dish. So in the end, I resolved to make the best approximation I could muster with the ingredients I could find in my supermarket. I settled on a recipe by Real Simple that fit my needs.

I decided to experiment with cooking mise en place for this recipe. This literally means “putting in place” and it’s a technique in which you prepare all of your ingredients ahead of time, so the actual cooking is just a matter of adding that bowl of chopped garlic, or that handful of fresh thyme at the appropriate moment. Pictured above: all of my cassoulet stew ingredients, minus my spicy pork sausage which was browning while I snapped this photo.

First steps: brown the sausage, add everything else, bring to a boil, and cook for at least an hour. I’m sure you can’t tell from the pictures, but I actually used a combination of great northern and cannellini beans. My grocery store actually ran out of cannellini beans, so I resolved to make do with the great northerns. Or so I thought.

The day before my cassoulet adventure, I happened to be visiting the proprietor of a coffee, tea, and gourmet food shop where I worked in high school. Knowing that he’d have some insight for me, I asked my old boss, Frank, if he’d ever made cassoulet.

“Oh, sure,” he said.
“Got any opinions?” I asked.
“You’ve got a dutch oven, right?”
“Yes I do! What are your thoughts on duck or pork or sausage?”
“Yes to all,” he told me, “but the really important thing is you have to use cannellini beans.”
“I wanted to, but the store didn’t have any.” I frowned.
“Well as luck would have it...” he walked to the back of the store and emerged with a single can of cannellini beans and deposited it in my greedy hands.

And that is the story of how I found some cannellini beans for my cassoulet. As a side note, if you’re ever anywhere near Alexandria, VA make sure you visit Old Town Coffee, Tea, and Spice on South Union street. Try the jasmine dragon pearls tea and ask Frank for his advice on french cooking.

And back to the dish, itself:

After what turned out to be more like an hour and twenty minutes, my cassoulet had finally reduced. (I got overzealous and added more than the called for 1-1/2 cups of chicken broth, but I maintain the extra liquid and extra cooking time served me well).

The next step is really fun. Cover your cassoulet in a mixture of garlic, parsley, melted butter, and bread crumbs and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until it forms a browned, crispy crust.

It will look glorious when it comes out of the oven.

Serve with something light, preferably a green. The cassoulet will be heavy, hearty, and good for the soul. This batch fed me, my two roommates, and four house guests with enough leftover for my lunch the following day. I think I’ve found my new favorite cold weather cure…

I very much enjoy the process of cooking, the ingredients, the demand on your imagination, and of course the result. Many find the process of cooking rather dull or uninspired, but I find it truly relaxing and invigorating. That being said, sometimes you are just too tired to cook. So today I want to do something a little bit different. Rather than show the newest recipe I have attempted or let you in on the secrets of a tried and true oldie, I’m going to switch gears and relate to those amongst us who are terrified by cooking (or maybe just don’t have time!) Now just because cooking may not be your thing, that doesn’t mean that you still can’t have a deliciously simple meal that you can share with somebody special.

The idea for this article came to me a few nights ago. Mary and I had the fortunate opportunity to dog sit for my boss’s dog, Taco. (I know, don’t you love it!). By the time we returned home, however, I had realized that I wasn’t in much of mood to start a meal, and I don’t really like to phone in the stuff I put in my stomach.

So Mary and I did what we often do in this scenario, we went down to our local Trader Joes and picked up an assortment of our favorite cheeses, bread, meat, vegetables, chocolate, and of course some wine! We always have such a wonderful time uncorking some wine and simply snacking on little treats rather than having an elaborate meal. On this particular day we chose to go with a European theme, so we tried to find Product of “Country in Europe” on all the products we bought. Now, obviously this is not possible for certain things, but we stayed pretty true.

So let’s break down what we purchased at our friendly neighborhood Trader Joes.

1. Villa Antinori – 2007 – Toscana Wine – Product of Italy – $17.99
2. White Goat Cheese Gouda – Product of Holland – $4.00
3. Port Salut Cheese – Product of France – $5.00
4. Marinated Olives – Product of Greece – $3.99
5. Prosciutto – Product of Germany – $3.99
6. Dark Chocolate with Hazlenuts – Product of Switzerland – $2.99
7. French Baguette – Product of US (French Style, unfortunately teleportation hasn’t been invented just yet)

Don’t be afraid to try your own combinations!

Villa Antinori Toscana

We chose this wine because while it costs a little more, it is one of our favorite wines. We discovered it a few years ago in a small liquor store in Boston. The wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. This offers a wonderful flavorful yet drier wine. And its alcohol content is around 11%, allowing the tastes of other items to really pop!

White Goat Gouda Cheese 

We adore this Gouda! It offers a creamy texture, but maintains that smokiness you expect from a great gouda. Combined with some other ingredients it feels like it almost melts in your mouth.

Port Salut Cheese

This soft cheese is what I like to refer to as a more sophisticated brie. It is a great cheese for spreading on your bread of choice and it offers a lovely tangy note.

Marinated Olives

I love olives! Mary hates olives! So I did most of the eating of these. There isn’t much to say here accept the sour and earthy tastes of the olives brings down your dish to a more human level, having been elevated so greatly by the wine and cheese.

Prosciutto

You have to have meat and what better than some lovely salted pork from Germany? This gives your creations a little extra oomph. I love the texture – so different from anything else on the plate.

French Style Baguette

We love our baguettes.The crisp of the bread is art on its own, but combined with the other ingredients and you get a masterpiece of flavors!

Dark Chocolate with Hazelnuts

To close off the meal, this Swiss made chocolate really balances nicely with the wine and tastes absolutely delicious! A perfect end to a simple yet delicious meal.

Give it a try!

Good Spirits Folks!

Or so says my father, which is a separate issue for another time. He didn’t eat the Brussels sprouts, but he was seriously missing out.

Recently, my father and brother came out to LA for a visit and stayed with me for about a week. You can’t realistically eat out for every meal during that time period and I have a GF kitchen that I wanted to remain in that state. The solution? GF meals that don’t make the gluten eaters of the world turn up their noses (though my father did anyway, based on his feelings on Brussels sprouts.) Since my family is a meat and potatoes sort of clan, that’s exactly what I made.

I can’t pass up a good purple vegetable, so we went with the small multicolored bag of them from Trader Joe’s. First, wash all the potatoes and Brussels and then quarter the potatoes and halve the Brussels.

Then throw them in a baking dish and added enough oil to lightly coat everything as well as salt and pepper to taste. I used my (clean) hands to mix all this business, which my brother thought was exceedingly strange, but I contend it is not.

Put the whole concoction in the oven for at least 35 minutes at 375 degrees. If it starts to brown too fast either turn down the heat and cook for longer or cover with tin foil to prevent burning.

About 10 to 15 minutes before you think the roasting potatoes and veggies will be done put your meat on the stove. Grease the pan with a bit of olive oil and put over a medium heat. The steak will take about 10 minutes to cook to rare, longer for more cooked meat, depending on the thickness.

Slowly the steaks will start to brown.

Try not to get too freaked out if the steak starts to bleed! Eventually, everything works out and you have a good solid meal to feed some hungry folks.

What are some things you serve to your family when they are at your house? I hope you get to eat steak, too!

Recently, I was flipping through the pages of a cooking magazine, and found a recipe for garlic bread you bake in the oven as a loaf. Jeff and I tend to make cheesy garlic bread in the toaster oven, but when we saw this we knew we needed to try this simple, delicious garlic bread.

So take some garlic…we used four cloves, but it definitely could have used more. I must say, the following night I made it again with Becca (I know, a little outrageous, but would you have it another way?) and I used double the garlic…so use about eight cloves, is what I’m suggesting.

Then, add your kosher salt directly to your garlic, and smoosh them together!

Then melt some butter, and add some olive oil, too, because it’ll make the butter go farther. Exact measurements aren’t that important, because loaves of bread are seldom the same size!

You’ll need fresh parsley too, because it just makes your bread that much more delicious. Trust me, here.

Then, cut the bread into slices, but don’t cut all the way through.

Perfect. Now, here comes the good part…

Coat each piece, on both sides, in the mixture of garlic/parsley/butter/oil.

Then put the loaf back as you found it. No one will know, no one will even suspect it’s full of delectable buttery garlic!

Wrap it up and put it in the oven for 15 minutes at about 375. Then, unwrap it and leave it in for 5 more minutes.

Then take it out, and it’s all crispy on the outside, but moist on the inside, and basically the best thing ever. We had it with ravioli and asparagus, but it was easily the star of the show.

I have to be honest. I kind of cheated on my first bean recipe for this month. The truth is this dish was delicious, but that deliciousness had very little do to do with kidney beans, and honestly not much to do with the original recipe.

I chose a recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen for cauliflower, bean, and feta salad. I admit that I picked the recipe without even reading the blog post. I saw cauliflower, beans, and feta and I decided it must be glorious. When I actually sat down to cook I finally read SK’s post and discovered that she’d been a little underwhelmed by this salad.

Rats! I was unsure how to proceed, but it was a beautiful day and I had cauliflower, beans and feta cheese. I decided to risk it but not to go out of my way to follow the recipe exactly. It called for endive, which I did not have on hand and was too lazy to venture out to whole foods to procure. It also called for various fresh herbs – chives, parsley, rosemary. I had none of these, but I did have leftover cilantro from the cumin tilapia!

I got started by roasting the cauliflower.

Then, I decided to substitute caramelized onions for the endive. This is what I mean when I say I cheated. Caramelized onions make everything delicious. That’s just a fact. This recipe didn’t stand a chance of being anything other than my favorite thing ever.

The recipe also called for walnuts, which I did not have. Instead I roasted the handful of pine nuts I had on hand.

Time for the main event.

I crumbled about 4 oz of feta cheese into the mixture. (The recipe only called for 3 oz. Oops.)

So just to recap: this dish now includes caramelized onions, feta cheese, AND cilantro. Remember what I said about cheating? You know how some people just cover all their food in ketchup and salt? That’s kind of what I do with onions, fresh herbs, and cheese….

And you mix it all together with a few tablespoons lemon juice, some vinegar (I used rice vinegar but SK called for red wine vinegar), salt and pepper, and a helluva lot of olive oil. Honestly it was just too much olive oil. The original recipe called for 1/3 cup rosemary infused olive oil. I nixed the rosemary, but I did not account for the fact that my addition of caramelized onions amounted to one big (scrumptious) oily mess. In hindsight, I should have nixed the oil all together, and it’s hard to imagine how even the original recipe would need a whole 1/3 cup. Definitely consider cutting this down if you’re planning to try the recipe yourself.

Like most things I make for the blog, this salad lasted less than 2 hours in my house. I ate one serving directly off this plate, then mixed it with some spinach salad and let the oily goodness be my salad dressing. I plan to make this again all spring and summer. It was perfect for eating on the back porch with a glass of wine and watching the sunset.