Mexican Cassoulet

In response to yet another snowy stretch in March, Ann and I were looking for something warm and comforting. One of us suggested a White Chicken Chili, an easy-to-make slow cooker dish that we eat somewhat frequently in the winter. It's a simple stew of dried white beans, chicken thighs, onions, poblanos, chopped cilantro, garlic, and Mexican oregano with water to cover. I throw into the slow cooker in the morning and it cooks itself all day. The prep work is trivial: dicing the onions and chiles and peeling and mincing garlic, a matter of five to ten minutes. The results are wonderful for such a minor investment in prep.

A Bowl of "Mexican Cassoulet"

This time, rather than using the usual if unspectacular Great Northern Beans, I remembered that we have a big box of beans from Rancho Gordo in the pantry, so I went fishing in that box and pulled out a pound of Rebosero Beans. I don't know these beans from Mexico at all but they seemed like they would make a nice pot of beans with chicken and green chiles.

Somehow between putting the beans on to soak overnight and the next morning when I started to cook the beans, I decided to cook the chili in the style of cassoulet just like I had done recently with the Tarbais beans that I got from Rancho Gordo.

Rather than dump everything in the slow cooker, I proceeded just like cassoulet. Step one was to par-cook the beans with two cloves of garlic and two bay leaves. Step two was to brown the bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. Step three was to cook the mirepoix (poblanos, onions, and minced cilantro stems) with a bit of Mexican oregano and garlic. Step four is to mix the beans with the mirepoix and put half of them in a casserole. On top of this, I layered in some very spicy green chile that Rob and Dyce brought back from their last trip to Santa Fe.

Next, in went the chicken and then the rest of the beans on top. The final step was to pour all the bean cooking liquid over the top and then put the uncovered casserole into a very slow oven for about six or seven hours. Unlike a traditional cassoulet, I did not punch the crust down and let it re-crust, for the simple reason that we were not home.

Rebosero Beans Soaking Overnight

Par-Cooking the Beans

The Finished "Mexican Cassoulet"

The results were quite astoundingly good. And I'm in love with these rebosero beans. They are certainly my new favorite bean for refried beans, far surpassing Mayocobas, my previous favorite.

St. Paddy's Day 2024

Ann and I haven't typically celebrated St. Patrick's Day in the past, neither of us being of Irish heritage. My family is, however, of similar Celtic origin from across St. George's Channel in Wales where St. David is the relevant patron saint. Last year, we celebrated with Dyce at our house. We had planned to go to their house, but Rob was sick.

Corned Beef, Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes, and Soda Bread

This year, the four of us managed to get together at their house where we were able to get our dog fix. I must have thrown the ball for Lola five dozen times; that little dog might fetch a ball all day if someone were to indulge her.

In typical fashion, the guys outdid themselves with puff pastry twists to accompany Irish mules followed by a smoked Wagyu corned beef and all the usual accompaniments: cabbage, carrots, and potatoes.

They also scored a delicious loaf of soda bread from Village Baker, a loaf of a sort that I've never had before. This version was slightly sweet and flavored with caraway and the tiny raisins that people call currants. I think that this sort of Americanized soda bread is unknown in Ireland where mainly I have encountered unflavored wholemeal (whole wheat) bread with no sugar and no fruit.

The Irish mules (Tullamore Dew, lime, and ginger beer) were super refreshing on a quite warm day, our first really warm day of the spring, though it was too chilly to sit outside. We all remarked that we are surely due for a couple more snowstorms before spring truly is here, but the nice weather was a bonus. After the mules, we switched to a wine that we brought.

I was scratching my head about what wine to pair with corned beef and decided, because of the salty nature of said beef, the warm weather, and Dyce's preference for white wines, to go white. A little body and a hint of sweet fruitiness wouldn't hurt the pairing either.

I initially thought a drier Chenin Blanc or a Riesling, but then I remembered that we had some Walla Walla white the cooler. A white Bordeaux style wine, this Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc blend is rather heavier on Semillon than is typical of Bordeaux, lending the wine extra weight and fruitiness to hold up to the salty beef. I liked the pairing.

Irish Cheddar Puff Pastry Twists

Refreshingly Delicious Irish Mules

Whiskey, Lime, and Ginger Beer

Stunning Hyacinths

Rare Moment Where Lola was Almost Still

Village Baker Soda Bread

Thank you to Rob and Dyce for their always wonderful hospitality!

Old Chef, New Trick

The last time I ate at Taco Bell would have been when my daughters were tiny young things. My eldest, Lillie, loved their bean burritos and would ask for them from time to time. And very occasionally, I would relent. You're beat; it's late and you're scrambling to get groceries after work; the kids are screaming; you know the drill!

Time flies and now that little girl is an internal medicine resident at a hospital in North Carolina. Seemingly without my noticing, it has been a very long time, a full generation or more, since I ate at Taco Bell (or for that matter, any fast food joint). As a consequence, I have no familiarity with their products, bean burritos aside, if even they sell such a mundane (although pure profit) item any longer.

Apparently in recent years, Taco Bell makes a thing called a crunch wrap, which according to hearsay is their biggest selling item, but one of which I have been woefully ignorant. Call me culturally illiterate.

Chipotle Black Bean Crunch Wrap

Ann and I first encountered crunch wraps at a local vegan food truck, a large flour tortilla folded to completely enclose a vegan filling and then the whole shebang browned on a flat-top. When I tasted Ann's crunch wrap, even though I wasn't enamored of the filling (not a huge fan of vegan cheese; sorry Tony!), I thought that the idea in itself might deserve to be permanently enshrined in the stoner-food hall of fame. 

Recently, Ann asked me to make crunch wraps for dinner so I made sure to get some really big flour tortillas at the store. Then, it was just a matter of making a decent filling (onion, poblano, cilantro stems, garlic, black beans, minced chipotle, cumin, New Mexico ground chile, salt, and Mexican oregano) and rounding up some other filling ingredients (cilantro leaves, sliced green onions, pickled jalapeños, grape tomatoes, and cheese).

The next step was to reverse engineer the fold to encase the fillings, which proved to be trivial. I understand that Taco Bell puts the crunch in the crunch wrap using a tostada that also helps stabilize the whole assembly.  For my part, I merely cut down a piece of flour tortilla to lay on top of the filling to give the large flour tortilla a good surface against which to seal. The whole thing folded naturally into a hexagon as if it were intended that way. I got it on the first try.

I didn't feel like it needed a tostada, but then, I'm not marketing to stoners and I don't need my crunch wraps to be stable for portability.

While my experience was trivial, I'm sure that the food engineers at Taco Bell spent countless hours determining how to fold the tortillas in a cost- and time-efficient manner such that their employees could knock them out profitably and consistently across all their stores. [My limited consulting with a large food manufacturer has shown me first-hand what a huge and involved process this is.] And no doubt, there is probably a patent or two lurking about the PTO to protect their product from commercial imitators.

Taco Bell: thanks for the idea! New trick for the old chef!

These stoner-food gems were so good, I confess to have made them two nights running, albeit with slightly different fillings each time.

Christmas Lima Beans Bourguignon

As I continue to play with the box of dried beans that I got from Rancho Gordo at the beginning of the year, next up on my list was the bag of gorgeous Christmas Lima Beans, huge limas with chestnut-colored mottling.

Christmas Limas After Overnight Soak

These huge beans are reportedly quite meaty, so I decided to treat them like meat. And I was disappointed with the results, truth be told. But not all our dishes can be wins, can they? Not if we're experimenting.

Rummaging through the pantry, I saw my canister of dried porcini and that cued me to braise these limas with bacon, onions, porcini, and red wine, in the manner of boeuf bourguignon. 

Dried Porcini

Mirepoix: Leek, Onion, and Carrot

I cut several strips of bacon into crosswise strips called lardons and then rendered those lardons. The lardons went into the slow cooker with the beans while I poured off most of the bacon grease and sweated the leeks, onions, and carrot in the remaining grease. As the onions became translucent, I sprinkled a couple tablespoons of flour over the vegetables and cooked the mixture for another couple of minutes. Finally, I added a half a bottle of Pinot Noir to the pan and let the sauce thicken for a couple of minutes before pouring it over the beans in the slow cooker.

Christmas Limas with Porcini Liquid, Porcini, Bay, and Thyme

Added Bacon Lardons, Mirepoix Sweated in Bacon Grease, and Pinot Noir

7-1/2 Hours Later: a Big Bowl of Beans

I mentioned above that I wasn't happy with this dish. It was tasty and perfectly edible, but I won't be doing it again for two reasons. First, the melding of the beans with the bourguignon technique yielded something less than the original dish made with beef. The delicious red wine gravy added nothing to the beans. And second, after soaking overnight and then braising for 7-1/2 hours, a full third of the beans were still crunchy and not cooked through. To me, this seems like a quality issue with the beans and not an issue with my cooking of them.

These beans are so beautiful. I'm a bit sad that I'm not jumping for joy after having cooked them (and truth be told, probably will never again do so).

Riding the Proverbial Bicycle: Killer Potato Gnocchi

Here in beautiful Central Oregon in early March, we've endured an extended stretch of snowy weather that continues to influence our dinners, making us crave warm, filling, slow-cooked meals, rather than the light, crisp, and refreshing meals that warm weather will make us desire.

Potato Gnocchi with Pork Ragù

The other day with snow streaming out of the sky, Ann and I were nestled under blankets on the sofa opposite the fire when she mentioned seemingly out of nowhere that pasta with pork ragù would make an awesome dinner. She was thinking of the bag of ragù that I had stashed in the freezer from the last time that I made a big batch. And no doubt she was thinking that we'd spend some together-time in the kitchen knocking out a batch of fresh pasta.

A few minutes later, I was walking through the kitchen where I spied three big russet potatoes starting to sprout on the counter. These unfortunate-looking spuds sat unused from one of our planned dinners back at the end of the year, a dinner that we cancelled on account of illness. Those potatoes prompted me to ask Ann if gnocchi would scratch her itch, rather than fresh pasta. We agreed on gnocchi to go with the ragù.

It's been a good long time since I made potato gnocchi. At least for the last decade and probably longer, I have been making ricotta gnocchi almost exclusively. But I am no stranger to making potato gnocchi, having made countless of the little dumplings in my life.

In fact, I remember on a dark day at my restaurant spending a majority of the day making a huge batch of potato gnocchi with my friend Frank, a typically brusque New York Italian and a hell of a baker, to serve at a big charity event. That batch started with five 50-pound cases of russet potatoes and a 50-pound sack of flour! So yeah, I have some experience making potato gnocchi.

Making potato gnocchi for the first time in ages was like riding the proverbial bicycle for me. Once you know how to ride, even if years have elapsed since the last time you rode, you can hop right on and pedal away. Like riding a bike, making gnocchi is something that you have to do for yourself to learn. I can write you all the instructions in the world for riding a bike, but that is in no way going to help know what it feels like to maintain your balance. Ditto for gnocchi. Learning what a proper gnocchi dough feels like is 100% a hands-on experience. Fortunately, learning to make gnocchi is much simpler than learning to bicycle.

Two final thoughts on potato gnocchi. First, ideal gnocchi should be light little pillows that remind you of mashed potatoes. The wetter the potatoes, the more flour you have to add to the dough to be able to handle it. The more flour you have to add, the denser and more leaden the gnocchi are and the further away from the ideal they become.

So, a lot of people recommend that you bake your potatoes rather than boil them, the thought being that baked potatoes do not absorb water as boiled potatoes do. While that is true, the gnocchi end up tasting of baked potatoes rather than of good mashed potatoes. For me, baking potatoes results in less than ideal gnocchi, even if they are easier to make and clean up. So I boil them exclusively.

Second, the type of potato that you use for gnocchi really matters. Gnocchi are not the place to showcase fancy potatoes. Save your cute waxy potatoes for potato salad and salade niçoise. What you want for gnocchi is a starchy, dry potato. Fortunately, the ideal gnocchi potato is one that we grow here in Oregon and next door in Idaho. This potato is the most common potato in the US, the russet that you can find at any grocer.

Making Potato Gnocchi

To start, peel the potatoes, cut them into large cubes (I will cut a typical 70-count Idaho into 16 pieces), put them in cold salted water, and boil them until you can pierce them easily. Drain the potatoes well.

While the potatoes are hot, put them through a ricer (at the restaurant, we used a large manual food mill) as in the photo below. Using a large spoon, turn the steaming riced potatoes over a few times while they cool to the point that you can touch them. This will allow some of the steam (and hence the water) to evaporate further.

At this point, start heating the water that you're going to poach the gnocchi in. You want to cook them soon after you shape them. This time, I ladled the potatoes out of the boiling water and added more fresh water to the already hot water in order to conserve both water and time.

Ricing the Boiled Potatoes

My Ricer Has Taken a Beating over 35 Years

Add a sprinkle of salt and some flour to the riced potatoes. I like to start with a large kitchen spoon of flour per large potato, knowing that it will probably take more later.

Add Flour and Salt

Mix the flour in well with your hands, kneading really gently. Taste for salt and adjust as necessary. You want a dough that just barely holds together. I ended up adding a fourth large kitchen spoon of flour to yield the dough that you see in the bowl below.

This is the finesse step of making gnocchi. If you've never made them before, add flour sparingly, knead sparingly so as not to develop the gluten in the flour, and test cook a lone gnoccho or two to see if it holds together during poaching. If so, you're golden. If not, add a bit more flour and retest. Soon enough, your hands will be able to feel when the dough is correct.

I have found that during the course of making gnocchi in a hot (restaurant) kitchen, the later batches of dough seems to take more flour compared to the earlier batches. It seems that as the dough sits, it can require more flour, so the goal is to shape them as quickly as possible. In any case, go easy on the flour and trust your feel.

Gnocchi Dough Ready to Roll

To start shaping gnocchi, cut a long piece of dough. For example, I cut the disk above into four long slices. On a lightly floured board or counter, using flat palms, roll out the dough into a long rope as you did in kindergarten with clay. I like my gnocchi rope to be slightly less than an inch (call it 2cm) in diameter, but the size is up to you. Then with a scraper or bench knife, cut the gnocchi rope into pieces. I like mine just slightly longer than wide, as you can see Ann cutting below with a plastic scraper.

Cutting the Gnocchi Rope into Pieces

Once they have cut the dumplings, a lot of people will roll the gnocchi on the back of the tines of a fork to give them little ridges that will help capture the sauce. I do that sometimes, but this time, I used a technique that I've seen a lot of nonne use: dimple each one with a thumb as you see in the photo below. These dimples are also pretty effective at capturing a bit of the sauce.

Gnocchi, Dimpled with my Thumb

Transfer the Gnocchi to a Lightly Oiled Sheet Tray

Once your gnocchi are ready to poach, adjust your cooking water so that it is lightly simmering. Drop the gnocchi into the water batch by batch taking care not to overcrowd the pan. You will see that they drop immediately to the bottom. And when they're done, they will float to top of the water. Actually, I give the little dumplings 30 extra seconds once they float. The process is quick; these gnocchi floated in about two minutes, give or take.

Gnocchi Just Dropped in Simmering Water

Gnocchi are Cooked When They Float

Scoop the gnocchi onto a well-oiled sheet tray as each batch finishes. If you will be using them later in the day, let them cool completely and then cover them with film such that they do not dry out. If you are using them later, I recommend reheating them one of two ways. First, you can reheat them in butter (or olive oil) in a skillet on the stove top. You can even brown them if you like; this is definitely non-traditional in Italy, but it is damned good. Or second, you can mix them with their sauce in a shallow ovenproof dish and bake them in the oven for 15 minutes or so.

But really what I recommend is to toss the hot gnocchi with their sauce and serve them immediately.

Poached Gnocchi, Ready to Sauce or to Cool

Even though it's probably been longer than a decade since I last made potato gnocchi, it was as easy as getting back on a bike and riding off down the street! This batch of gnocchi was killer and the perfect antidote to a cold, stormy, snowy day.

Crunchy Fish Tacos

I've recently revived an old technique for fish tacos and Annie loves the results. Here's how I turned a couple of Pacific Cod fillets into fish tacos.

Pacific Cod Fish Tacos

In recent years, I have been coating fish fillets for tacos with a spice rub and roasting them in the oven. This is certainly a healthy way to eat fish, but many people will miss the crunchy crust of fried fish in their tacos. That got me asking myself how I can get a crispy crust on fish for tacos using a minimum of oil.

Thinking back many decades to when I was just learning how to cook Chinese food (as if there is but a single Chinese cuisine, ha!), I remember using cornstarch not only to thicken sauces and soups, but as a way to coat meat for wok frying. And so I decided to use a bit of cornstarch on fish fillets and to fry them in as little oil as possible.

I cut the cod fillets into pieces that will fit into my pan and then sprinkle both sides with seasonings (sometimes my fish rub, link above). For this particular batch of fish, rather than use a rub, I merely sprinkled both sides with salt, ground New Mexican chile, and a touch of granulated garlic. Then I put a thin coat of cornstarch on both sides.

Pan-Searing Pacific Cod Using Almost No Oil

We eat a lot of tacos at our house because they are quick, tasty, and who doesn't love finger food? One way that I make them quick to prepare is by keeping a lot of garnishes on hand in the refrigerator on a regular basis. These include pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, romaine bottoms, and a squeeze bottle of thinned chipotle sour cream. By planning ahead, tacos take less than ten minutes to bring to the table, just what I want on a busy day or on a day when I don't have the energy or desire to cook an involved meal.

Fish Taco Toppings: (L-R) Pickled Jalapenos, Tomatoes,
Salsa Verde, Cilantro, Chipotle Sour Cream, and Romaine

I've published the recipe for salsa verde before, but it's just a bunch of cilantro, a large can of drained tomatillos, a serrano chile, two cloves of garlic, and a pinch of salt, all blended. We use romaine lettuce on our lunch sandwiches and I always keep the bottoms of the bunches in a bag in the fridge. When it's time for tacos, I slice the bottoms thinly for a crunchy garnish. Chipotle sour cream is merely sour cream, water, salt, and chipotle adobo.

February Celebration: The Luckiest Beans on Earth

Let's Celebrate!

Mid-February has become a time to celebrate at our house. Valentine's Day, my birthday, and our anniversary of having moved to Bend, this year our second so-called Bendiversary, all fall within a week of each other. Accordingly, we aim to have a small party each February to mark these events. What better to do in this bitter cold season than have a party?

Another February Cassoulet in the Books

For this year's celebration, Ann asked me to make a cassoulet. If you have never had cassoulet, it is a bean and meat stew with four components: beans, meat, stock, and a mixture of diced aromatic vegetables called mirepoix. If you look back to all my cassoulet posts, I tend to make them in February at the worst of the cold season for good reason. Cassoulet is arguably the greatest cold weather comfort food in the world. Thank you France for this wonderful celebratory concoction!

Prepping for Cassoulet

For the cassoulet that I would serve on Saturday night, I started the prep work early Friday morning, right after shoveling the overnight accumulation of snow, a pretty typical chore on a February morning. The day-before prep for cassoulet is pretty limited: soaking the beans overnight and making some delicious pork stock in which to cook the beans.

The first step in making stock is to roast your bones. For pork stock, I use pork neck bones that are both inexpensive and contain delicious meat. I am guessing that if they are readily available here in Central Oregon, you can find them just about anywhere. The trick with roasting bones is time. Put them on a lightly oiled sheet tray in the oven and roast them until they are golden brown on all sides, turning them as necessary. It's not a process that you can or should rush. Cassoulet is only as good as the stock that you cook the beans in.

Having turned the roasting pork neck bones on the sheet tray and put them back in the oven to continue browning and getting sexier and sexier, I was standing at my cutting board, my nose reveling in the porky goodness of the aroma emanating from the direction of the oven. I remarked to Ann, ensconced on the sofa by the fire and nose down in her phone, "How do think these beans are going to feel, being slowly cooked in all that porky goodness?" And she replied, "They're going to be the luckiest beans on earth!"

While the bones were roasting, I did some pre-prep on the vegetables for the mirepoix: onions, carrots, leeks, and celery. While I would dice the mirepoix vegetables on Saturday morning, I wanted the vegetable scraps today for flavoring the stock. To that end, I peeled the onion, trimmed the ends of the carrots, peeled off the tough outer leek leaves, and trimmed the leafy ends of the celery. Be sure to wash the leek leaves well; they can accumulate a lot of dirt, or worse, sand.

After the pork neck bones browned, I put them in a stock pot with all the peels, ends, and scraps of the mirepoix vegetables. Filled with water, the stock pot simmered gently for several hours before I separated the solids from the stock. The stock went into the refrigerator to congeal so that I could remove the fat from the top. After the solids cooled, I picked all the neck meat from the bones to put into the cassoulet on Saturday.

Last thing before going to bed Friday night, I put two pounds of beans in a bowl and covered them with a lot of salted water to soak overnight. I had been wrestling with the choice of beans for a few weeks. Two weeks prior, I put an order in to Rancho Gordo for a big box of beans including my two potential candidates for the cassoulet: Tarbais and Steuben Yellow Eye beans.

I have made many cassoulets in my life, about half with the traditional bean from from the Tarbes area in the far southwest of France up against the Pyrenees, the Tarbais bean; and about half with a traditional American bean called the Steuben Yellow Eye, purported to be the original bean in Boston baked beans. Heretofore, I have always slightly preferred the yellow-eyed beans.

Both beans are loved because while holding their shape, they become ultra creamy inside, exactly what you want for cassoulet, which is nothing if not a super peasant dish of pork and beans. After waffling for days on the choice, I decided to go with the original beans, the Tarbais. I was not disappointed; the resulting cassoulet could not have been better. And I still have Steubens to craft into some other delicacy!

Cassoulet Assembly

Would Anyone Manage to Get Here for Dinner?

Overnight Friday into Saturday morning saw a considerable amount of additional new snow and the forecast had it snowing all day. Both of the couples we invited live up big hills that the snow could make impassable, so during the day on Saturday we weren't sure if our party would come off or if we would be eating cassoulet by ourselves. Regardless of the weather, cassoulet is pretty much of an all-day affair and I needed to get started on it. After shoveling snow again, naturally.

The first item of business was to get the beans par-cooking. I drained them and placed them in a stock pot with fresh water and a bouquet garni of fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, and fresh sage. These herbs would impart a slight flavor to the beans while making the kitchen smell amazing for the 90 minutes in which the beans par-cooked.

In my past restaurant days, we had all kinds of meat garnishes for the cassoulet, especially after we butchered one of the hogs that we had a local farmer raise for us. In addition to pig's feet for the stock, we had a lot of trimmings from which I would make traditional garlic sausages. And we would cure, roast, and confit the hog bellies which aged under their bath of congealed duck fat in the walk-in next to vast containers of confited Moulard duck legs. In short, our walk-in contained every kind of meat garnish a cassoulet cook could want.

But now post-restaurant at home in a fairly small city a half a day's drive from anywhere, meats are limited to what I can get at the grocery store, especially because the farmers markets are inoperative at the height of winter; you know, snow and all. Having little alternative, I just decided to go with what I could scrounge at the store. I ended up buying a large tray of chicken thighs and a small tray of breakfast sausage links to use along with all the neck meat that I picked from the stock bones.

While the beans were par-cooking, I browned the chicken and sausages in fat I had saved in the refrigerator from my last couple of batches of chicken confit. And while the meats were browning, I diced all the vegetables I pre-prepped yesterday into mirepoix. This finely diced mix of carrots, onions, leeks, and celery, I cooked in the same pan in which I browned the meats, scraping hard to get all the brown meat bits into the vegetables.

While the mirepoix was cooking, I minced and added an entire head of garlic to give a nice garlicky background note to the cassoulet. The reason for so much garlic is because I would typically have made the dish with a garlic sausage instead of the mild breakfast sausage that I used for this cassoulet.

Once the beans were par-cooked, tender but still a bit crunchy, I drained and mixed them with the mirepoix and then seasoned them to taste with salt. No longer working in the restaurant, I do not have a pan big enough to accommodate this amount of beans and meat, so I decided to use two pans. I put a quarter of the beans in each of the two pans and topped them with 4-5 bay leaves each. Then I split the pork neck meat, chicken thighs, and sausages between the two pans and covered them with the remaining beans.

At this point, I should mention the one cheffy thing about this cassoulet. From time to time, I make chicken confit, that is, chicken cured overnight in a salt and herb mix, then rinsed and slowly poached while submerged under olive oil. Then this chicken gets refrigerated submerged under the fat, which congeals and protects it from spoilage.

After the chicken is all consumed, I melt the remaining fat and pour it into a container to keep in the refrigerator where the fat congeals on top of any juices from the chicken. I reuse the fat for the next batch of confit, but the intensely flavored juices go into a soup or stew. For this cassoulet, I browned the meats and cooked the mirepoix in some of this confit fat and I added the congealed juices (a half cup) to the cassoulet along with the pork neck stock.

After removing the layer of fat from the stock that I made on Friday, I warmed it briefly to liquefy it. Into each casserole, I poured enough stock to cover the beans by a good centimeter and put them in a slow (300F) oven to start the process of becoming insanely good. I checked the beans periodically to make sure they had enough liquid. Each time a crust would form on top of the beans, I would mash it back down into the stock, topping off the stock if necessary.

This process of crusting and breaking the crust and re-crusting over hours is essential to cassoulet. I want to say that the beans cooked slowly for about seven hours and I probably broke the crust four to five times during my forays from the fireside into the kitchen.

While this is a good description of the process of making a cassoulet, a more exact recipe follows just below.

Cassoulet in the Oven
Essential to Let it Crust and Re-crust over Several Hours

Cassoulet Cooling after Seven Hours in Oven

February Cassoulet Recipe

This is a cassoulet, beans aside, that you can make from stock items at the grocery store. In fact, despite the lack of duck confit and other great ingredients, the is the single best cassoulet I have ever made. In other words, don't let lack of ingredients deter you from making a cassoulet. As for the beans, great beans are easily available via mail-order from Rancho Gordo (note that they call them Cassoulet Beans, rather than the Tarbais beans that they are).

This recipe is based on two pounds or a kilo of beans, enough to feed 8-10 hungry people. You'll want to attack a cassoulet over two days, the first given to making the stock and soaking the beans, and the second to cooking the cassoulet itself.

Pork Stock

This stock is made from inexpensive pork neck bones plus the trimmings from all the vegetables that you will use in the cassoulet. If you have a choice, try to select the meatier bones; the meat will go into the cassoulet. This recipe makes a good gallon/4 quarts/4 liters of stock, enough for two pounds or a kilogram of beans.

oil to coat a sheet tray

5 pounds pork neck bones

5 quarts/liters water

tough outer leaves from one large leek, washed well

ends and trimmings from 3 medium carrots

peel of one medium onion

hearts and leafy ends of one bunch celery

Coat a sheet tray with oil and spread the bones out in a single layer on the tray, then place in a moderate to hot oven. Roast until the upper surface is golden brown then rotate the bones to brown another surface. Continue in this fashion until the bones are brown on all sides.

Remove the bones from the sheet tray to a stock pot. Pour enough water onto the hot sheet tray to cover it. With a scraper or spatula, deglaze all the brown bits from the bottom of the sheet tray and pour into the stock pot. Repeat as necessary to get all the brown bits into the stock pot.

Add the remaining water and vegetables to the stock pot and bring to a simmer for a minimum of two hours. I cooked mine for four hours. At the restaurant, we kept stock pots going all the time.

Strain the solids from the stock. When the stock cools, refrigerate it overnight so that any fat in the stock congeals and can be removed easily from the top of the stock. When the solids cool, pick all the meat from the bones and save for the cassoulet.

Cassoulet

This makes a large quantity of beans, enough to feed 8-10 people. Make sure that you have a deep pan or casserole large enough to hold the beans and all the meats. Or use two, as I did. No longer do I work in a restaurant where we had a braiser (called by its French name rondeau) large enough to hold 5kg of beans! When browning the meats, take your time and do it correctly. This is a key step in building flavor.

2 pounds/1 kilogram of Tarbais or other white beans, soaked overnight in salted water

bouquet garni of 1 large sprig each of fresh sage, fresh thyme, and fresh rosemary

1/2 cup oil/lard/duck fat for browning meats

10 chicken thighs, bone-in and skin-on, 5-6 pounds

1 12-ounce tray breakfast sausages

reserved pork neck meat from stock recipe above

1 large leek, in small dice

3 medium carrots, in small dice

2 large stalks celery, in small dice

1 medium yellow onion, in small dice

1 head of garlic, minced

10 bay leaves

salt to taste

1 gallon/4 liters pork stock from recipe above

Drain the beans and cook them in fresh water with the bouquet garni (the fresh herbs, tied together with a string) until tender, but not cooked all the way through. This will take about 90 minutes give or take.

While the beans are cooking, brown the chicken and the sausage thoroughly on all sides. Remove the meats to a platter while you cook the vegetables.

When the meats are browned, in the same pan, add the vegetables and garlic and cook gently until the vegetables are soft and the onions are translucent. Scrape the bottom well to incorporate all the brown bits from the meats into the vegetables.

When the beans are cooked, drain them and mix them with the cooked mirepoix. Season to taste with salt.

Place half the beans in the bottom of your casserole (or a quarter of the beans, if you are using two pans like me).

Give the beans a sprinkle of salt (there's no salt in the chicken, pork neck meat, or stock) and spread the bay leaves on top of the beans.

Next spread the meats over the beans and then top everything with the remaining beans and a final sprinkle of salt.

Pour the defatted, melted stock over the beans to cover by a centimeter or so.

Place the cassoulet uncovered in a slow oven (say 300F) and let it cook slowly. Mine was in the oven for seven hours, so you should get it cooking in the morning to eat at dinner time.

Keep an eye on the cassoulet from time to time. Cassoulet needs to crust, have the crust mixed back into the broth, and re-crust several times. Keep an eye on the stock level and add more as needed. I believe that I broke my crust four times during seven hours and added a bit more stock twice.

The Rest of Our Celebratory Dinner

Cassoulet in the oven, my thoughts turned to an appetizer, something easy and delicious for a cold winter day. We just recently got an order of pantry items in from Amazon (here in Central Oregon, access to less common grocery items is extremely limited), including a tin of fennel pollen, a couple liters of Sherry vinegar, and a couple jars of Calabrian chile paste. Yes, Virginia, these are stock items in a retired chef's pantry and spice drawer.

With these items in mind, I started building the menu. For the Calabrian chiles, Ann had been talking about spicy honey for days and I spent some time musing on what would taste really good with that sweet and spicy sauce. In fairly short order, I came up with using the sauce on some fennel-spiced meatballs that our guests could graze on before dinner. Who doesn't like a good meatball?

I wanted to keep the meatballs fairly plain to let the Calabrian chile honey be the star of the show, but I did want to incorporate the fennel pollen that had just arrived at the house. The seasoning of the meatballs, made from ground pork, is simple: salt, dried basil, fennel pollen, garlic, and red wine. I mixed this all up in the afternoon and fried a quick test piece to check the seasoning. After adjusting the seasoning to our liking, into the refrigerator went the meatball mix to sit and infuse the seasoning throughout the meat.

After washing up from the meatballs, I made a quick salad dressing for the pound of baby arugula that I had brought home for the store, which is where the Sherry vinegar comes in. I started with one part of sherry vinegar and two parts oil (a splash of French hazelnut oil and the rest extra virgin olive oil) and tweaked it to taste with salt and agave nectar. When I was happy with the taste and acid balance of the dressing, I added a finely minced shallot to the dressing and left it on the counter to be mixed with arugula and thin slivers of pecorino at dinner time.

About a half an hour before our guests were to arrive (still no weather cancellations at this point!), Ann and I rolled the 2-1/2 pounds of meatball mix into small 1" (2.5cm) balls. For ease of cooking, I decided to bake them rather than fry or braise them. The meatballs went in the bottom of the oven under the still cooking cassoulet, which I topped with a bit more stock.

Fennel Pollen Meatballs Ready to Bake

When the meatballs came out of the oven 20 minutes later, I sprinkled them with flaky salt and more fennel pollen, then transferred them to a bowl for serving while Ann made final tweaks to the table, glassware, and so forth. I decided to serve the Calabrian chile honey on the side in case one or more of our guests was not a fan.

Fennel Pollen Meatballs, Calabrian Chile Honey

Just about the time appointed time for our guests to arrive (and knowing full well that the trip to our house would be slow on account of the still pouring snow), Ann cracked a bottle of wine for us to start pre-gaming it . While she was doing this, I went outside to remove the 2.5 inches of snow that had fallen in the the last hour from the sidewalk and to try to clear some space at the curb so that car doors could open without getting stuck in snow mounds.

Cassoulet Wine Pairings 

You've heard the saying, "What grows together, goes together"? It's a philosophy that I have always ascribed to in wine pairings. In other words, a good rule of thumb in wine pairing would be to go with the wine from the area from which the dish originates (when possible).

Living in Oregon, our wine coolers are stuffed with our local wine (Pinot Noir) and are sadly bereft of wines from Southwestern France where cassoulet originates. Unfortunately, these relatively obscure French wines are hard enough to source in major metropolitan areas and pretty much impossible to find out here in the boonies. But still, while Ann was out at her exercise class in the morning, I asked her if she would go by the store near her studio and pick up some French wine for dinner.

Cassoulet is a hearty dish that can pair with a wide variety of reds, anywhere from a light Gamay to a heavy Cabernet. My preference is to match the weight of the dish and the wine, opting for heavier rather than lighter wines. For heavier wines, I really like Cahors (Malbec) or Madiran (Tannat), both sturdy reds, with cassoulet.

Knowing the likelihood of finding such a wine was about nil, plan B was to have Ann grab some southern Rhônes, which are what we call GSMs, being made from any combination of the grapes Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre. She came home with three wines, a Châteauneuf du Pape, a Lirac, and a Gigondas. All were delicious. Alternatively, we could have opened some of our GSMs from Walla Walla and the Rocks District from just north of us along the Columbia River.

Three Southern Rhône Reds for Dinner

Celebrating February

I am afraid that I was so intent on our guests that I forgot to take pictures. Rob and Dyce, sorry! What few I did manage are below.

Pre-Gaming it in Front of the Fire

Ann's Simple Tablescape
with Valentine's Gift Boxes for Guests

Andreas and Michelle

Cassoulet and Arugula Salad

Another cassoulet, my best ever, is in the books. I'm so thankful to have great friends with whom to share it.