Unfinished Dad

Living The Dream: Cassoulet Finale

When this project started last Friday, I had little idea of where it would take me. I knew I wanted to make a cassoulet. I didn't know the many paths down which the cassoulet led. The intrigue, for me, came from the decadent combination of cured meats. For others better versed in French cooking, the cassoulet is nothing short of a lifelong romance. When Etienne Rousselot, the champion cassoulet maker (not kidding) from southwestern France, was asked when he would retire, his answer was simple. "Never. My dream is to die with an oven full of cassoulet."

With that in mind, I set my first cassoulet on the table in front of our dinner guests. They were kind enough to bring a bottle of Pegau Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a wine that complimented the meaty dish more perfectly than someone with my limited wine experience could have guessed. Their wine, and especially their presence, made the night more memorable. We looked at the steaming dutch oven before us as one looks at a Monet. All hushed tones and reverie to match the warmth and honesty of the meal ahead.

I was asked to present my dish "Top Chef" style and fought down the nervousness associated with facing the judges for the first time. I then waxed poetic about the layers of ham, duck, sausages and creamy beans. I'm not sure my dish had the mythical crust that the best cassoulets have, but it was there for me to break.  And I didn't fall prey to the two biggest traps a home cook can be caught in, namely excess fat and salt, because I kept the salt to a minimum throughout the planning process and I skimmed off a lot of fat (more than a cup) during baking. Ultimately, this was the most satisfying meal I have ever prepared. An hour later, when we were all sated, the planning for the next great meal began. We had to push ourselves further next time.

So I find myself asking, what could make my next cassoulet better? How good would the duck taste if it cured for 48 hours? And again how much better had it sat in its own fat for two months?  What if I use garlic sausage instead of generic Italian pork sausage? Next time should I use breadcrumbs for a more substantial crust? What if I had an authentic cassole from France in which to cook my next cassoulet? Do they have nice preschools in Castelnaudary, France?

For those at home following this through the the climax, here are the final steps for baking:

Remove the cassoulet from refrigerator and allow to warm to room temperature for an hour. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for one hour. When cassoulet begins to simmer, break crust and add enough warm water or reserved bean liquid to cover top layer of beans. (With the fat I had to skim off throughout the day, this step was never necessary. I think that had I let the confit of duck sit at room temperature for a half hour, thus letting the solidified fat run off, I would have had much less of an issue with this) Reduce heat to 250 and bake, breaking crust and adding water as needed, for three hours. Remove cassoulet from oven and allow to rest for 20 minutes. Serve from the pot, breaking crust at the table.

Others Who Dare To Live The Dream

Before we get to my final post on the culinary beast that is cassoulet, I thought it would be an interesting break to hear someone else's story about the dish.  Katherine Lanpher wrote in Slate last February that you should distract yourself from the recession by making a cassoulet. 

The wind is howling, the tax man will soon be at the door, and the economic indicators are the worst in generations: Who doesn't need comfort food right now? While this might be the winter of our discontent, it is also a damn good time to make cassoulet.

Continue reading here, and check in later today for my final thoughts on what it was like to eat something that took the better part of a week to cook.

Living The Dream: Cassoulet, Part I

About a year ago I came across a recipe on Saveur's website for Cassoulet. I was instantly drawn to the list of ingredients, especially the combination of ham hocks, pork rind, ham bones, pork sausages and duck legs. Catch your breath and read that list again.  Really, what could go wrong?

I'm not much of a researcher and often jump headlong into things without knowing the their full scope. In this case, when my wife finally did the reading that I should have done, it was already too late. Take this quote for example, from Cook's Illustrated, "While this classic French dish can be replicated at restaurants, it is definitely not a dish for the casual home cook. The time investment alone is impractical, and it can be difficult to achieve a perfect balance of flavor." Hmm. While somewhat intimidated, I still couldn't see how, with all that meat, things could go awry. The main concern seems to be an overly fatty dish or an overly salty one.

Nevertheless, we proceed.

Ingredients:

4 cups dried cannellini beans

4 fresh ham hocks (about 1 lb. each)

3 large yellow onions, peeled and quartered

5 sprigs thyme

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/3 pound fresh pork rind, cubed

1 ham bone

1 tbsp. duck fat (I had some reserved from the duck confit)

1 lb. unseasoned fresh pork sausage, cut into 2" pieces

1 large head garlic, separated into cloves and peeled

4 confited duck legs

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Rinse the beans and set them aside. Okay, the challenges of this dish begin here. Nothing in my recipe says to soak the beans. You might say anyone who cooks beans would know to soak them, but like I said, it was the meat I was attracted to. Needless to say, not doing so set me back a bit.

Place your ham hocks in a large pot. Add one of the onions, thyme, and salt and pepper. Cover with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, for two hours. Remove from heat, cool for 15 minutes, then drain, discarding the onion and thyme. Cut meat from each ham hock into two pieces. Discard the bones and set the meat aside.

We now arrive at challenge number two, albeit a "small" one. The ratio of bone and fat to meat on a ham hock is somewhere around 1,000 to 1. I know people often use them to flavor soups, in the case of this recipe though, they are only here for the meat. I'll let you know if the 15 morsels I spelunked for are worth it.

That's a paring knife. 

Meanwhile, place pork rind, ham bone, and one onion in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until pork rind is rendered, about 20 minutes. Add beans and enough water to cover by 1/2" and season with salt. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low and cook until beans are tender, about 45 minutes. Adjust salt, if necessary, then set beans aside to cool.

Don't get me started on this step. First off, living in a major metropolitan area, I was surprised at the difficulty in finding both the pork rind and ham bone. The butcher at Balducci's was kind enough to give me the fatty ends of some fresh bacon he was cutting to replace the pork rind. And he gave me some pork chop bones to replace the ham bone. Not having butchered before, I hope these will do. Secondly, the original recipe called for great northern beans, which are considerably smaller than my cannellini beans. The tastes are similar, but without the overnight soaking they needed, my cannellini beans were on the stove top for the better part of five hours before they were tender. Ouch.

Heat duck fat in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausages and cook, turning to brown all sides, for about 10 minutes. Place garlic, remaining onion, and 1/2 cup of water in a blender and puree until smooth. Add garlic paste to sausages and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, turning sausages occasionally, for 10 minutes.

Sausage, meet pureed garlic and onion.  Mingle.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a slotted spoon, remove and discard pork bones and onion from the beans. If your beans cook for as long as mine there will be nothing left of the onion. Using a slotted spoon transfer about half the beans with pork rind to a dutch oven or earthenware pot, reserving the liquid for later.

Place the meat from the ham hocks on top of the beans.

Layer on the sausages with garlic puree.

Arrange duck pieces on top of sausages. I chose to split my legs from thighs, giving me eight pieces. While doing so I realized that I need to learn how to butcher. My cuts were not pretty.

Spoon the remaining beans over the top and cover with your reserved bean liquid.

Bake uncovered for one hour. Reduce heat to 250 degrees and cook for three hours, checking every hour or so to make sure the cassoulet is barely simmering (a little liquid should bubble around the edges). If cassoulet looks dry, break the crust and add more bean liquid or warm water. Because of my bean delay, this last step didn't start until 9 o'clock. I stayed up through the reduction in temperature and the first hourly check, and then went to bed with my alarm set for 1 A.M. to remove the cassoulet and set out to cool completely before refrigerating "overnight." The refrigeration didn't happen until 4:30 A.M. when I awoke with a start, worried sick about what, in my mind, is no less than our third child.

See you tomorrow for the final steps in which we rebake the whole thing for another four hours and discover more about the mysterious crust that makes cassoulet the dish it is.

Oh, and we eat!

   

Living The Dream: Duck Confit, Part I

If you're like me, you have a few unfulfilled dreams bouncing around in your head now that the ball has dropped on the aughts.  It is the time of year for self reflection and improvement after all.  Maybe you want to make more money in 2010, or banish those muffin tops, or travel to a far away place.  Me, I want to confit duck legs.  Sometime near the beginning of the decade, I had a life changing meal at Le Gigot in lower Manhattan, in which duck confit first melted in my mouth.  My fate was thus sealed as an avid hunter of this most welcoming of dishes.  Duck confit is my go-to meal whenever I find myself at a purveyor of yumminess and warmth.  Sadly, none have lived up to the first time.  Maybe it was the chef's recipe, though I suspect it was the new love that simmered in the dark recesses of that wonderfully quaint Le Gigot.

It's time.  It's time to live the dream.

I will attempt to confit my duck in a dutch oven as I have had much difficulty with my slow cooker lately.  I'm not really sure how one makes a mistake when using a slow cooker, you just add meat and other goodies and close the freaking lid, but I can't take a chance on this one. So I'm going for the more difficult oven version.  There will be much consternation tomorrow.

The ingredients.

1/3 cup kosher salt

12 thyme sprigs, leaves stripped

4 bay leaves, lightly crushed

1 1/2 tablespoon white peppercorns, lightly crushed

3 teaspoons juniper berries, lightly crushed

4 whole duck legs (about 4 1/2 pounds)

5 1/2 cups duck fat

Strip the thyme, crush the pepper, the juniper berries (without getting sick when you realize this is where gin comes from and you fight to suppress the long lost memories of those weekends when you were 15 and all your brother could find for you and your friends to drink was tanqueray), and bay leaves, and mix them thoroughly with the salt.

Rinse the legs and pat them dry with paper towels.  Coat all sides of the legs with the salt mixture and place them in a baking dish.  Cover and place in the refrigerator (or root cellar if you are so inclined) to cure overnight.  At least twelve hours people, not the six you probably sleep.

Stop back tomorrow morning for Part II in which I heat more duck fat than any one person ever should without supervision.  Then check in Sunday morning to see my grand plans for these confited beauties, you know, other than devouring them.

Global Eggo Crisis?

Woodward!  Bernstein!  Get on this Eggo shortage story, like, today.  Petula Dvorak's article, though entertaining, is not enough.  We need answers.  We need in depth analysis.  Pictures of the closed plants.  Interviews with Kellogs' executives on why they aren't relocating all the little old ladies from the "Tennessee waffle factory" who are making waffles from scratch every day and boxing them up for my large scale consumption needs.  Like Elaine and the Today sponge, I will be stocking up. 

In eight grocery stores across Maryland, Virginia and the District, I found warnings of a dire situation and a tough year ahead. Signs taped to the freezer doors warn of a "shortage" and allude to a "situation." A Giant supermarket in Rockville said it best in two, purple-markered words written next to a column of empty shelves: "Eggo problem."

Get out your hockey gear.  If I see you at Giant today and there is only one family sized box left, it's you or me, and one of us is going into the glass.

Play-Doh!

You are stupid.  Don't worry, I am too.  Yesterday I made Play-Doh! with the kids and had one of those "how will we survive after the apocalypse" moments.  You know, how are we going to continue doing all the important things that man has learned throughout history?

The List:

3 Cups Flour

1.5 Cups Salt

3 Tbs. Alum

3 Cups Water

3 Tbs. Oil

Food Coloring (you'll need a whole dropper full per batch)

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Boil the water and add the oil.

Pour the water in the bowl.

Make your kid add the dye.

Stir it...

Squeeze it...

And you get this!

Kidding! You get this. 

And that's it. Post apocolyptic science questions answered.

I Believe, Tilda, That The Food Goes In Not On

I Believe, Tilda, That The Food Goes In Not On, originally uploaded by unfinished dad.

Ah, Ritz PBJ's. One of life's great joys. Provided you aren't the one who does the laundry.

Beef Stew

Cold, rainy days that bite at your bones are for cuddling on the couch and making warm, rib-sticking meals like beef stew.  When the weather gets to be too much, and the kids haven't been outside in a week, you know it's time for this meal.  This recipe is basically an amateur emulation of a what my mother, a veritable a stew-whisperer, taught me.  I simply adjust her recipe to whatever vegetables I have on hand.  You can pretty much throw anything in and come up with a great result.

Start by dredging your beef in flour and then browning it with a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.  You'll know it's done when you see a little blood poking out.  Turn the beef and brown the other side in the same manner.  Set the meat aside as you work in batches, adding olive oil as needed to keep the pan from drying out.  For this recipe I used a dutch oven, but a skillet will work just fine.  However, if you are using a skillet, and are transferring your ingredients to a slow cooker, you will need to adjust your cooking time (see below).

In the same pan, add one large chopped onion, a little more olive oil, and cook for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.  You're done when the onions are a starting to brown and your spouse yells from the other room, "What smells so good?"  At this point add a can of tomato past and coat the onions.

Some of the brown yummy bits from the bottom of the pan will have come up by now, but just in case, add a cup of red wine and deglaze the pan.  Simply said, when the wine hits the pan and immediately boils, use it to scrub all the flavor off the pan's surface and onto the onions.  This step happened with a freshly wakened Tilda (it was probably the aroma) in my arms, so there is no picture, but trust me, it's very, very easy.

If you haven't already chopped your vegetables, now would be the time, and fast.  I just do this before hand so that I don't have one of those "I'm trying to make up for not having the super fast, finger keeping knife moves of a pro and now everything is going to Hell right in front of me, because I need fifteen minutes to chop veggies" moments.  

In this case we have about a pound of multi-colored potatoes, three turnips, a few long red radishes for kick, baby carrots, the aforementioned onion, and a few sprigs of fresh thyme.  For proper culinary shout outs, the starch was from Trader Joe's, the thyme was from my garden, and the rest came from the CSA we belong to called Good Fortune Farm.

At this point you need to add your broth.  I used three cups of beef broth and then threw in about a tablespoon of kosher salt and a bay leaf.  No, I have no idea what bay leaves impart on this meal or any other for that matter, but I still use them.  Now I like a sticky, less watery stew, so my dutch oven will soon be covered and transfered to the oven at 350 degrees.  If you like a more soupy stew and plan on transferring your food to a slow cooker, you will only need about two cups of broth.  Oh, go ahead and take that beautiful plate of beef and add it back to the pot, mixing everything into a savory mass of goodness.

You are now ready to "cook" everything.  Cover your dutch oven and bake the whole thing for about three hours.  The slow cooker version will take about four hours on high, or if you did all of this before noon you can cook it on low for, well pretty much forever, but eight hours should do the trick.

When the time is right, take the lid off and stick your head as close to the pot as is reasonably safe, inhale, and voila!  Beef stew with a side of childhood memories.

Ingredients:

3 pounds beef (chuck or bottom round, nothing too lean or fancy)

1 cup flour (maybe more)

1 pound potatoes

3 medium turnips

3 long red radishes

1 large onion

1/2 pound baby carrots

3 sprigs fresh thyme

1 Tbs. kosher salt

1 Bay leaf

3 cups beef broth

1 cup red wine

6 oz. can tomato paste

What's For Dinner At Your House?

It's one of those nights where I don't know what to feed my family.  Sure, the kids will eat leftover tuna casserole (don't knock it until you've tried it) for the third night in a row, but I would call child services on myself for that.  I've already cooked two normal meals (pappardelle with pesto, homemade tacos) this week and one quicky (the aforementioned casserole) and I don't feel like doing anything time consuming tonight.  Tomorrow night is pizza night, and weekends tend to be a free-for-all.  That leaves tonight empty.  So tell me, what are your go-to quick meals?  I'm tired of making the same old standbys every week.

I've never openly invited comments before, but desperately would love to hear what ya'll think.  Please feel free to add a link in the comments to your quick meal idea or type out rudimentary directions to something you make freestyle.

Tilda or Some Like It Hot

As you know, Tilda is allergic to milk.  She has been drinking the vile smelling and expensive Nutramigen for over a year now.  We recently saw an allergist for some direction on where to go next and the decision was soy milk.  This week we have slowly transitioned her over to her new diet and...wait, wtf?...sorry, I had to stop and read that ridiculousness.  So anyway we started her on soy and there seem to be no adverse effects.  We are finally out from under the thumb of Nutramigen.

You didn't think that was it did you?  A quick post about soy milk just to squeeze in some cooky link about soy making people gay?  No, the real reason we are here is because I think Nutramigen did something to Tilda's taste buds.  The intense taste seems to have ruined all typical kid's food for her.  She has been throwing eggs (no matter how I cook them) all week.  She refuses to eat oatmeal.  Vegetables?  Forget it.  I'm at a total loss.  The only thing she seems to enjoy are carbs.  She downs crackers of any sort.  She eats plain bread.  She inhales waffles.

A few weeks ago I stumbled on the other side of T's wonky one-year-old taste buds.  We were settling in for a quick meal of Trader Joe's Indian food when I mistook the palak paneer as the non-spicy dish of the evening.  It was only towards the end of the meal that I realized the spice coming from my jumbled plate of goodness was in fact the only dish Tilda ate the whole time.  She never took notice and suffered no ill effects.

Fast forward to this week when she has refused the bland (green beans, potatoes, turkey) in favor of the spicy (homemade pesto with extra garlic, sausage and peppers).  So I guess the real question is, did the Nutramigen ruin Tilda's taste buds or refine them?