Home cassoulet - first attempt

Cassoulet looks like it has a lot of potential as a healthy recipe.  A small amount of meat can add a strong flavor while the beans give a lot of high quality fiber and protein.  The beans should be fairly cheap.

Some recipes seem to try and be "too authentic" given that basically it should be a straight forward rustic dish.  Not everyone can get hold of duck confit, nor particularly wants to.  This Australian recipe seems to have a good balance of reasonable authenticity and practicality.  This video is worth a look as well.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (215g) dried cannelini beans
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 500g pork belly, cut into 2cm pieces
• 200g speck, cut into batons
• 2 (about 150g) garlic sausages
• 2 duck marylands or breast fillets
• 2 brown onions, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 sprig thyme
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 400g can chopped tomatoes
• 4 cups (1L) chicken stock
• 1 1/2 cups (105g) fresh breadcrumbs (made from day-old bread)
• 30g butter, melted

Recipe

1. Place beans in a medium bowl and cover with plenty of cold water. Set aside overnight to soak.
2. Step 2
   Preheat oven to 140°C. Heat oil in a large casserole pan over high heat. Add one-third of the pork and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until browned. Transfer to a bowl. Repeat in 2 more batches.
3. Step 3
   Add speck to the pan and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until brown. Transfer to bowl. Add sausages and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until brown all over. Slice thickly diagonally.
4. Step 4
   Add duck and cook for 4-5 minutes each side or until browned. Transfer to the bowl. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until soft. Add pork, speck, sausage and duck, thyme and rosemary. Drain beans. Add beans, tomato and stock. Remove from heat.
5. Step 5
   Bake in preheated oven, covered, for 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Remove the duck marylands. Use forks to coarsely flake and return to the cassoulet. Combine breadcrumbs and butter in a bowl. Sprinkle breadcrumb mixture over cassoulet. Bake, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes or until top is crisp and golden. Remove from oven and serve.

Tips for next time

Process wise this was a bit of a disaster - but I also wonder about the recipe.  Fortunately we recovered well and the taste was really good.

Probably I used too few beans  - i.e. 200g or so soaked over night for well over8-10 hours.

The browning went very well as I had checked out the advice on this Youtube video first - in particular use an oil that can heat to a high temperature and a heavy based pan, dry off the meat and chicken and add some salt.  Don't worry about sticking - if you are doing it right it should come unstuck.

The onions also cooked well but looked rather disgusting given their cooking in the browned oil. This, though, was critical to the success of the dish.

The problem was that the liquid part was too great and even after around an hour of boiling was still there.  However after stronger boiling on top it reduced OK, was transferred to a flat dish and then put on some breadcrumbs.

Costs

Enough for six no problem

• Pretty cost effective:
• JPY1,000 or so for the pork belly
• JPY450 or so for sausages
• JPY450 or so for four chicken legs
• Same as pork belly for the speck
• Can of cut up tomates
• Pack of beans
• Splash of red wine

Accompanying

• Boiled long beans
• Potatoes, steamed and roasted
• Carrots steamed
• Salad - avocado, tomato, mozarella

Spanish chickpea, spinach and chorizo soup - first attempt

Chickpean and chorizo soup

Basics

This has got two key, healthy ingredients - spinach and chickpeas - plus very little meat, but enough to add some taste.  In particular the chorizo adds a real spanish flavor.

The recipe is a Jamie Oliver one but this looks like a very traditional soup and well worth trying a few alternatives.

It went down pretty well with the family.  One problem though is the color isn't so great.  The boiled egg should help but difficult to avoid.

Unlike the Saag paneer this looks like it would be best made with fresh spinach rather than frozen spinach and another key point is making sure that a third of it is put through the food processor.

Ingredient list

• olive oil
• 150 g iberico chorizo sausage, finely chopped
• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 sticks celery, finely chopped
• 500 g fresh spinach, washed and chopped
• 8 fresh tomatoes, deseeded and roughly chopped- I used tinned tomatoes
• 410 g good-quality tinned cooked chickpeas, drained
• 1.3 litres organic chicken stock - used a frozen version
•  salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 55 g quality pata negra, Spanish ham or prosciutto, finely chopped
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 free-range eggs, hard-boiled

Recipe

The original recipe comes from Jamie Oliver here.  The process is as follows:

• Put the chorizo in the oil first to sweat it a little.
• Add the onion and celery - cook slowly covered to have the chorizo sausage taste develop in the onion.
• Add the wet stuff - spinach, tomatoes, chickpeas and chicken stock; boil and then simmer for 40 minutes.
• When done put a third through the food processor
• Season for salt and pepper
• Stir in the ham and a little more olive oil at the end

Tips for next time

• Need to make sure you have enough chorizo sausage!  Tried to substitute using salami and adding paprika but it didn't really work.
• Taking one third of the mixture and putting through a blender really helped at the end make the soup thick.
• Boiled egg probably helps the color - it is kind of a not so nice color.
• Try using the dried chick peas - but needs six hours soaking. Check whether it would be more cost effective.
• The ham didn't seem to add that much to the flavor.
• Is the celery really necessary?  Expensive in Japan - only used half the amount here.
• Using tinned tomatoes was no problem

Palak saag or saag paneer - first attempt

Palak Saag, otherwise known as Saag Paneer

Basics 

The basic spinach and paneer curry, but looks like it comes with three different names.  The recipe I chose seems to be one of the simpler ones.

I used 450g of frozen spinach which was fine but really produced more than was needed.  Also I used  a block of frozen paneer which was fine but was actually too much paneer for spinach, although not so bad.  The paneer was a little tough - home made would surely be softer.  Also I didn't have any fresh chili which would have helped the flavor - I used cayenne pepper instead. Also only a tiny bit of ginger.  Blending in a mixer was also critical, so was the cream.

Basic idea is sauté chopped onions in oil, add garlic, ginger, turmeric, green chillies for a few minutes, then add tomato and sauté some more.  The spinach only really needs to be heated through rather than any vigorous cooking.  The salt, garam masala and cream go in second last and paneer last as it may break in any case.

Ingredients list

• finely chopped onion
• four cloves of garlic chopped
• oil
• grated ginger
• tomato pulp
• tumeric powder
• 450g frozen spinach
• 400g frozen paneer
• punjabi garam masala
• fresh cream
• salt

Recipe

• The recipe for the first attempt came from this specialist punjab cooking site.  It looks a little on the plain side, but that's OK for a first attempt.
• I put in too much paneer for the amount of spinach - about 300g for 450g of frozen stuff

Tips for next time

• Putting in a food processor is very important - it tasted much more authentic.
• How about trying with ghee?
• Can you get a more fresh garam masala

Do

• Add more ginger and fresh chillies
• Try fresh paneer

Don't 

• worry about the frozen spinach
• worry too much about the amounts of ingredients - not so critical in a curry