Cassoulet

Now I'm getting fancy (or not).  I wanted to use my new dutch oven. A cassoulet is basically a bean casserole or bean stew.  It is French, but French peasant cooking. That means it was designed to be flexible like any homemade stew or soup . Many French versions use duck legs. Other regions use lamb shoulder as the primary meat. All use sausages. In the U.S. we have chicken available.  Working off a recipe from Serious Eats, I made my version..

Looking at the procedure list, this seems insanely complicated.  It's not.  I'm just making a pot of baked pork and beans.  I've browned some chicken and sausages to add to the pot.

Jacques Pepin has a recipe for a 30 minute Hurray! Cassoulet  He uses canned beans. I'm  not sure his is a lot easier.  It's not hard to let a pot bake in a slow oven.

Procedure:
*The night before start 8 ounces of beans soaking.  Add 1 tablespoon of kosher salt to 1 quart of water.
* Cook 4 oz of salt pork. Cut it up into small chunks and cook until crispy. Remove from pan.
* Trim excess fat and skin from 4 chicken thighs and brown in the pork fat. This will render a lot of fat from the chicken.
* Remove most of the fat and add 8 to 12 ounces of sausages to pan.  Cook until they are browned.   Seasoning for this dish will come from the meats.  Salt pork will add salt, so be careful of additional salt. Select sausages like garlic and onion, or Italian.

* Remove the sausages and cook one chopped onion until it is soft. Scrape up the brown fond on the bottom of the pan and add a few tablespoons of wine if necessary to deglaze.




* Rinse the beans and add them to the pan.  Add enough chicken stock to cover the beans. If you are not using homemade stock, see the Serious Eats recipe for hints on how to add a bit of unflavored gelatin to add body to the stock.
* Bring the beans to a simmer and cook for 40-45 minutes.




*Add all the meats back to the pan.  Arrange the chicken skin side up.  Bake in a 285 -300 degree oven for 4 hours.  Check every hour or so and add stock or water as necessary.  The beans should just remain covered.

Serve in a shallow bowl

Braised Chicken

Braised Chicken is right at the top of my recipe list. I use the basic recipe so often I was a bit surprised that I had not done a post on it before. This technique has several things going for it.

It uses the less expensive (cheap) legs, thighs or quarters. These pieces are required. White meat dries out too quickly. Slow cooking the bone-in dark pieces results in a juicy and tender piece of chicken, with the added advantage that the bone-in pieces contribute to a great tasting pan sauce.


The entire dish is cooked in one pan for easy clean up. It can be cooked on the stove top on hot summer days. On cold winter days it can be cooked in a slow (300 degree) oven. It still only requires one pan, but the oven can accommodate some homemade bread or a nice rustic tart.

Recipe #43 Braised Chicken Quarters
2 (or more) chicken quarters, thighs or legs
1 chopped onion
1 chopped carrot
1 chopped celery stalk
½ cww wine (cheap white wine) or red wine or stock or any braising liquid.
½ cup water
salt
pepper
herbs (see notes at end)

Start with a covered saute pan or a dutch oven. The pan pictured in a 3 quart pan. Brown the chicken pieces, skin side down. Turn and briefly brown the flip side. Remove the chicken to a plate. Add chopped vegetables. Stir the vegetables until the brown bits left in the pan begins to loosen. Add braising liquid. For more information see the post: Mirepoix



Return the chicken to the pan and nestle it down in the liquid and vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. At this point almost any additional seasoning can be added. I keep a small container of Herbes de Provence on the kitchen counter. It is a packaged mix of thyme, basil, savory, fennel seeds, and lavender flowers. It's always easy to add a few pinches. In the summer we have rosemary, parsley, sage and other herbs growing in the garden.

Bring the pot to a slow simmer and cook 45 min to an hour. A slow simmer can extend the cooking time without ruining the meal. Sometimes extra time is needed for the social graces.

That's the basic recipe. What makes this so versatile is the many variations in seasoning/herbs and accompanying side dishes. I'll post some of my favorites and some of my experiments. Once you get the idea, the variations are almost endless.

Wood fired smoker - roast chicken

A galvanized trash can (never used for trash) is my repurposed large smoker. A fire built with several large chunks of wood will bun for a couple of hours and provide plenty of smoke and heat.

Step 1 is building the fire.

One the fire settled down, I added chicken and some wrapped potatoes.  The grill is easily large enough to hold several chickens, but only one was used for the first try.

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The chicken was rotated a quarter turn every 15 minutes. A spatchcocked chicken or ribs would not need to be turned so often.

It is important to test the temperature of the cooked chicken with an instant read thermometer.  Cooking temperatures are too uncertain to rely solely on time.

Cooking outside

Simple food, nothing fancy, but the nice weather is good reason to fire up the grill.  Being outside and paying attention to life is a good alternative to the news.

First up,  steak on a budget.  The local grocery store had boneless chuck pot roast on "sale" for $2.99 per pound.  I picked one about 1.5 pounds.  Chuck has great flavor, but can be a little tough.

A good technique is to make a dry rub with plenty of kosher salt, pepper, paprika, garlic and a bit of sugar. Rub it in and let it sit for several hours. The salt dissolves and makes a brine which tenderizes the meat as well as adding flavor.  You may want to wipe the surface with a paper towel to remove excess salt before grilling.  (I skip this step) Thin slices across the grain adds to tenderness.

Next Tandoori chicken - Indian style chicken marinated in yogurt and seasoned with a spice mixture. I used one container of plain yogurt. I added spices: 2 teaspoons each of salt, cayenne pepper, ginger, and a packaged garam masala mix.
Mix all together and put the mix in a large plastic bag.  I added a dozen chicken legs.  The package marinated in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

The chicken is typically cooked in a tandoor. A tandoor is a clay oven - charcoal grill. I used a little Weber.

A little chopped salad and a scoop of rice and peas made it a meal.  Note the new blue plates.

Indian food

I know what your first thought was - Colorado - buffalo -rabbit - maybe a little pemmican.

No, my wife likes the East Indian curries.  Spicy hot chunks of meat in spicy hot sauces.  I admit I like them too, but they are hard to cook.  Tikka Masala is a complicated dish. I like simple and easy.

Last week we put together a Chicken Curry from the recipes of the Hairy Bikers.  The Hairy Bikers are a couple of guys who have a food show on BBC and lots of recipe books.  I don't know why the British conflate weird characters with good food, but they often do.  Ever see the show

The ladies were fat and they rode around on a motorcycle, preparing recipes in exotic locales all over the United Kingdom.

This week we tried a dish we both like: Tikka Masala.  Chicken ṭikka masala (Hindi: चिकन टिक्का मसाला;Bengali: চিচ্কেন টিক্কা মসলা) is a dish of roasted chicken chunks (tikka) in a spicy (masala) sauce. The sauce is usually creamy, spiced and orange-colored. Chicken tikka masala has been said to be the most popular dish in British restaurants and it has been called "a true British national dish". The origin of the dish is unclear.

We started by marinating chunks of boneless-skinless chicken thighs in one cup of yogurt spiced with two T. lime juice, two t. cumin,  two t.cayenne pepper, two t. black pepper, one t. cinnamon, one t. minced ginger and a good pinch of salt.







The masala sauce is a combination of spices, cream tomato sauce.  To make it start by  melting two T. butter and sautéing chopped pepper (I used a poblano ) two t. cumin, two t. paprika and one minced clove of garlic.  Add one cup of tomato sauce and one cup of cream. Salt to taste.

 Meanwhile, put the chunks of chicken on skewers and grill over hot coals.  When the chicken is done - about 5 minutes on each side remove, from grill.  Remove the chicken from the skewers and simmer in the masala sauce for about 10 minutes. Serve over rice.  I forgot to mention - cook some of that while you are doing all the other stuff.  Sprinkle with fresh chopped cilantro.



Told you it was complicated.  It's good.  It's spicy hot.  If you are a curry beginner you might use less cayenne and less chopped pepper.  Here is the recipe I modified mine from: Chicken Tikka Masala.

The site has all the ingredients and procedures neatly organized and laid out. Remember there are no recipe police and you are free to modify and experiment.

Slow smoke-roasted herb brined chicken

The title says it all.


If you watch the TV cooking shows, you've heard talk about brine. If you haven't tried it, you should. A basic brine is a 5% salt solution. Sugar and aromatic herbs are often added to flavor the brine.

Brining was first developed as a method of curing and preserving meat. Corned beef is a brisket soaked in salt water and spices. Even a short brining can be an effective flavor enhancer. The salt changes the nature of the meat proteins and acts a a flavor transport. Flavors will be carried into the meat and the meat will remain juicier after cooking.

Recipe # 42 Herb-brined Cornish Game Hens

2 game hens (or one small chicken)
2 quarts of water
1 ½ ounces of kosher salt (about 3 tablespoons)
½ ounce sugar (about 1 tablespoon)
2 garlic cloves
4 rosemary sprigs
1 cut lemon (or tablespoon lemon juice)

Heat about a quart of water with the salt, sugar and aromatics until all the salt is dissolved. Add another quart of ice/cold water to cool the brine. The brine must be heated to dissolve the salt and infuse the solution with the herb flavors.

The brine must be cold before the chicken is added. Put the brine in the refrigerator for a while if necessary.

Butterfly (spatchcock) the chickens by cutting along the backbone. Put the chickens in a gallon zip lock bag. Add the brine mixture. Seal the bag with as much air removed as possible. Wait 3 to 4 hours. Brining longer than that for chicken may make the meat too salty.

Remove chicken from the brine. Blot dry with paper towels and let them rest/dry in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Letting them rest is essential for two reasons:
1) the salt will equalize in the meat. After the chicken is removed from the brine salt concentrations will be highest on the surface layers.
2) smoke flavor will "stick" better to the dry skin.

When you are ready to BBQ, arrange the coals for an indirect heat. Cook low and slow, 250 degrees for a couple of hours will result in juicy flavorful chicken. Add a glaze of favorite sauce during the last 1/2 hour.

Roast Chicken

Roast chicken is one of my favorite meals. It's one of those simple, comfort-food dishes. It's inexpensive and it's easy to do.

One of the advantages of cooking is that you can have it just the way you like it. The other two big reasons include saving money and avoiding a ton of chemicals that come in processed food. A search for recipes and techniques for roast chicken will yield hundreds of results. Some call for a steady heat. Some direct a high heat start followed by a lower roasting temperature. Some techniques call for a slow start followed by high heat at the end. They all work. I've tried many methods and have been most satisfied with this one.


Recipe # 36 Roast Chicken
1 pound chicken (3 or 4 pounds)
1 onion
1 celery stick
1 carrot
1 empty pop can
½ cup wine
1 cup water
salt & pepper

Pre-heat oven to 375. Remove excess fat from the chicken and blot it dry with paper towels. Removing water helps crisp the skin. Rub the chicken with oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and any other spice. For this chicken I added a little bit of cayenne pepper.

Fill the can about half way with water. Insert the can in the chicken. The can will hold the chicken upright so that even browning occurs. It also helps keep the chicken moist.

Add wine and water to the pan. Put the chicken in the oven until nicely browned, about 1 -1½ hours.

As long as the chicken is in the oven, roast some vegetables or potatoes. Pan juices make great gravy. Skim off fat and thicken.

Green Chiles

Roasted green chiles are available now from the local farm stands. Yesterday afternoon the good folks at Mt Garfield roaste a half bushel of Anaheim peppers for us. The peppers steamed in the plastic bag on the way home and filled the car with the wonderful aroma of chiles.

The steaming makes peeling the skin a snap. The chiles should also be seeded. Roasted chiles freeze well and provide the opportunity for bowls of chile later in the winter. The half bushel resulted in slightly more than 6 pounds of seeded and peeled chiles.

I kept one package out of the freezer for dinner last night. There are thousands of recipes and variations for green chile. In fact, I think I seldom do it the exactly same way twice, but here is my basic recipe from August 2007 .

Recipe #9 Chile verde

4 -6 chicken thighs - bone in (or use a whole chicken)
4-8 seeded and peeled roasted Anaheim green chiles
5 or 6 fresh tomatoes - chopped (use canned in the winter)
2 cloves garlic
2 or 3 corn tortillas cut into strips
salt, black pepper, cumin, cilantro, orengano
additional/optional
potato chunks
tomitillas
cheese on top

Brown chicken and cook onions until soft. Add water or stock. Home made chicken stock is easy, but add a couple of cans of chicken broth if you are short of time. Roughly chop chilies and add them to the stew. Before serving, tear tortillas into small bits and add them to the stew. The tortillas will dissolve and thicken the broth. They also add a distinctive and authentic taste to the green chili. Serve with a cheese on top.


This recipe was cross posted at Living The Grand Life. An anonymous reader left this yummy recipe in the comment section.

Anonymous said...
Try this with your roasted chilies.
Remove seeds and skins. Flatten enough chilies to cover the bottom of a greased 9x13 inch pan.
Cover with a thick layer of sharp cheddar cheese, and a layer of Monterey Jack cheese.
Beat 4 eggs,with 1 TBS flour, 1 tsp salt and one can of evaporated milk.
Pour over the chilies and cheese.
Bake @375 for about 35 minutes until set.