Cassoulet

I know you've all been on the edge of your desk chairs for the past two weeks awaiting the follow-up to my duck confit and duck quarters posts. Well, here it is folks! I made the cassoulet last Sunday for my family and served it with a simple salad and crusty bread. There are a gazillion variations on cassoulet; this one from Fine Cooking uses white beans and has pork, pork sausage, pancetta, and duck in it. I think that's the most meat I've ever eaten in one dish, and it was very very good. A lot of work, but very good. I found it funny that during the cooking process, I had to defat this broth and dump that fat, but then the next directions said to add more duck fat. I suppose duck fat is the tastiest of all the fats in the dish. Rather than post the entire lengthy recipe here, I'm going to just link to it since I didn't change anything. For a timeline and pics, read more!

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Chile Rellenos with a Healthy Twist

Typical chile rellenos are poblano peppers that have been stuffed with cheese and sometimes meat, then battered and fried. They are delicious but incredibly unhealthy like many of the standard TexMex fare tend to be. This recipe takes the idea of a chile relleno and makes it completely new and healthier by using quinoa, veggies, ground turkey instead of beef, and is drizzled with a light pecan cream sauce instead of cheese. It can easily by made vegetarian by omitting the turkey. It's not fried at all, but that's okay because the unique combination of flavors works on its own! You don't need cheese and butter to make things taste good!

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Smashed Chickpea Salad

fancy office paper plate

I can't believe I haven't shared my favorite sandwich yet! This is a Smitten Kitchen recipe, of course, and it's extremely versatile. I like to make a big tupperware of it over the weekend so I have a week's worth of lunches. It goes great on toasted bread, in a wrap, or just over a bed of lettuce in salad form. On this particular day, I ate it on toasted ciabatta with some turkey, greens, and goddess dressing. It totally doesn't need turkey, I was just in a non-vegetarian mood.

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Pad Thai

I love Pad Thai, but I never order it at restaurants because I feel like it's so... touristy to get when you are at a good Thai place. To remedy my desire for that unique flavor, I found a recipe from the NY Times and went for it at home. All the ingredients should be relatively easy to find at your supermarket except for the tamarind paste, and unfortunately it's a really important ingredient. I ended up going to three different stores, which was annoying but led to me finding two new ethnic markets in our area! I finally found tamarind at an Indian market in Rockville, and have already been back to the Mediterranean market for awesome cheese (no paste, though).

Once you have the ingredients on hand, the Pad Thai is incredibly easy to put together, as stir fries are wont to be. I cooked mine with chicken instead of shrimp.

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Curried Chicken Salad Sandwich

After a late day at work followed by a late evening at the gym*, I had no interest in a long, involved dinner and so I made this healthy chicken salad recipe and made a quick sandwich out of it. I was surprised with just how tasty it was!

*Yes, I started going to a gym! Aren't you proud? And now that I announced it in the blogosphere, I can't possibly ever quit lest I seem like a failure. Oy.

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Duck Confit Recipe

As an afterthought to the other day's post on duck quarters, I realized that perhaps I should provide you with the recipe I used to make Duck Confit (which is what that whole thing was). This is a recipe website, after all. I apologize for being overly mysterious.

Duck confit is one of the most important ingredients in a traditional cassoulet, from what I read, and should not be omitted. It's easy to make once you are able to actually locate duck fat (Balducci's has it in their freezer section). It does take time for the duck to properly preserve itself in the fat, so be sure to plan ahead. The recipe I used recommends that you make it 2-3 weeks early.

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I've Got Duck Quarters

Duck quarters from Kam Sam, "marinating" in shallots, garlic, and thyme

...in my fridge, right now, preserving themselves in an extremely large vat of duck fat. The same duck fat in which the quarters simmered for 3 hours. This is gonna be healthy.

Simmah Dannah!

My parents are coming to visit and I'm tackling a traditional cassoulet, the ingredients of which need to be prepared starting 3 weeks prior. This is the big time.

Faaaaaat

More to come in the next few weeks!!

Ghoulish Pasta

I'm posting this recipe not because it's anything innovative or out-of-this world, but more because the pasta shape I used is very apropo for the time of year. I didn't realize it when I bought the interesting-looking little guys at Whole Foods, but when we put the dish together, Don noticed that they were quite alien/ghoulish.

Look at 'em!!

Regardless of the funky pasta, the name of which I of course can't remember, this Chicken Florentine Arthicoke bake was easy and tasty. I am a huge fan of casseroles due to their one-pot nature. I especially love them now that I have my 4-qt Staub pot. It's the greatest!! Saute everything in it, assemble in it, bake in it!

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