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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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!!