Cassoulet

As I was poking around this blog, looking for stew recipes, I realized that over the years I had written not one, but four different recipes for cassoulet. Go look at other popular blogs and tell me how many cassoulet recipes they include--I'll wait here.

Ok, back? I think you probably found a lot of variations of what we think of as a classic cassoulet, a combination of duck, fatty pork, and beans. Food writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt referred to it as Southern French Beanee Weenees. "What?!" you say, aghast. "Cassoulet is some fancy-ass dish that Julia Childs might make! Please don't compare it to all-Amurican hot dogs and beans!" Wrong! For one thing, it's Julia Child. No S. For another, cassoulet is just a casserole of beans and meat--oftentimes sausage, but also other fatty cuts of pork--with whatever other meat that happens to be around. It's a hearty peasant dish that requires a few slow hours of cooking time and is perfect for the dark winter season. 

While the French use white beans, fatty pork, and game birds in their cassoulet, there's absolutely no reason not to make substitutions. Yes, there is a Cassoulet Academy in France that will tell you there are three official variants of the dish, a Holy Trinity of sorts: the original, or father, recipe for cassoulet de Castelnaudary; the cassoulet de Carcassonne, thought of as the son; and the cassoulet de Toulouse, or the Holy Spirit. There are subtle variations between the three, in the types of pork products and other meats used as well as in cooking method (on stovetop or in oven), but they are essentially the same dish much as bourbon, rye, and scotch are all whiskeys. 

I do enjoy a cassoulet made with duck, but chicken thighs are just as tasty and much easier to find. I'm  not picky about beans, either, and am quite content to use canned cannellinis rather than tracking down the traditional tarbais beans. (However, I have purchased tarbais from Rancho Gordo, purveyor of all sorts of delicious bean varieties.) The pork element is also pot luck. I usually use some kind of sausage, even chicken sausage, and have not made a bad cassoulet yet.  

it's totally possible that these Chinese plates have lead in the glaze, which may explain some things

Chinese Cassoulet - duck legs, Chinese sausage, and canned beans make a tasty cassoulet.

Deconstructed Cassoulet is definitely fancy pork and beans with some duck on top.

Jerk Chicken Cassoulet - seems like a stretch, but works really well!

Southwest Cassoulet involves soaking black beans, but you could use canned beans and skip adding them to the chicken mixture until the last 20 minutes of cooking.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!
Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Deconstructed Cassoulet

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on February 6, 2014.

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There's a new Asian grocery store in Catonsville called Great Wall. It caters to a largely Chinese clientele, and while I'm not Chinese, I find myself cooking more Chinese-style food than anything from other Asian cultures. That made Great Wall right up my alley, especially when I discovered the selection of duck parts, including whole ducks, duck tongues, and duck legs. On our first exploratory trip to the store, I grabbed a pack of two duck legs to keep in the freezer until inspiration struck.

Inspiration struck pretty quickly.

I had never cooked duck legs on their own before, but after doing some research found that confitting them (cooking them in their own fat) was a pretty simple proposition. Ordinarily, a confit involves extra duck fat in addition to the fat on the legs, but I didn't have that. (I did have a cup or so of bacon grease, left over from making a quadruple batch of bacon jam, but that wasn't going to work. Or maybe it would, but I didn't want bacon-flavored duck. I wanted duck-flavored duck.) Instead, I just went ahead and cooked the legs as is, figuring nothing could go terribly wrong.

Ok, I know you're now expecting me to relate a disaster story. But really--nothing went wrong. As the duck cooked low and slow, its fat was rendered, the meat cooked, and the skin got crisp. Exactly the results I wanted.

While the duck was in the oven, I threw together some white beans seasoned with sausage. In my mind, duck + white beans + sausage = cassoulet, and rather than going through the whole somewhat complicated process of making a real cassoulet, I cooked my components separately. I even toasted some plain bread crumbs in olive oil to mimic cassoulet's customary crusty surface.

The beans were an experiment. I found two lonely links of andouille sausage in the freezer, and added them, with a handful of carrot and onion, to a couple cans of cannellini beans. I didn't have all of the proper fresh herbs to make a bouquet garni for the pot, but I did have a little jar of bouquet garni seasoning that I got from Penzey's as a free gift the last time I placed an order. Their spice mix is a combination of savory, rosemary, thyme, Turkish oregano, basil, dill weed, marjoram, sage, and tarragon; it packed the perfect herbal punch for the bland beans. You, of course, can use an actual bouquet garni (fresh parsley, thyme, rosemary, and a bay leaf tied up in a bundle with twine), just make sure to remove it before serving.

Both elements of the dish were highly successful. And the beans were amazing. If you cook beans long enough, stirring regularly, they get dreamily creamy and taste really fattening. While my dish used pork sausages, I'm betting that if one used chicken andouille sausage, the result would be just as delicious but practically a diet delight.

Deconstructed Cassoulet

For duck confit:
2 duck legs
salt

For the beans:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup carrot, cut into small dice
1/2 medium onion, diced
pinch salt
2 andouille sausage, cut into small dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 - 1 teaspoon Penzey's Bouquet Garni seasoning
2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup chicken stock
additional salt and pepper to taste

To serve:
minced parsley
toasted bread crumbs

To make the duck: Prick the skin all over with a needle or tip of a sharp knife. Salt generously on both sides and allow to rest for at least an hour.

Wipe salt off of duck and place in a pan or baking dish into which they fit somewhat snugly. Place baking dish in a cold oven and turn oven to 285°F. Cook for 90 minutes to 2 hours, until fat has rendered and duck is tender.

Raise oven temperature to 375°F and cook duck for an additional 15 minutes to brown skin. Remove from oven and allow to rest for about 15 minutes.

To make the beans: Heat the oil in a 3-quart stock pot. Add the carrots and onion and pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until vegetables start to soften. Stir in the sausage and cook an additional 3-4 minutes before adding the garlic and herbs. Add the beans and stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer beans for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until quite soft, stirring frequently.

To serve: Either pull the duck meat from the bones or serve legs whole on top of beans. Garnish with minced parsley and toasted bread crumbs.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Jerk Chicken Cassoulet

There are some foods that I consider blank canvases: pizza, tacos, pasta. You have to admit, pretty much anything tastes good in those applications. Pulled pork and hmmm...smoked gouda...would work equally well on pizza, in tacos, or on pasta. At least I think so. I have come to think of cassoulet in much the same way. A classic French dish of white beans enriched with fatty garlic sausage and even fattier duck, cassoulet is seasoned with herbs like bay leaves and thyme. Thyme is also a main constituent of Jamaican jerk seasoning, commonly used on chicken. I've made cassoulet with Chinese sausage and black vinegar before, so why couldn't I make it with jerk seasoning and chicken?

I could and I did. It was a fine activity for a windy Sunday afternoon.

A friend brought us some fairly mild jerk seasoning as a souvenir from Jamaica. We'd been using it for a while so there wasn't much left, but definitely enough for this dish. You could use a spicier commercial seasoning or make your own. You could also add more than I call for. Since there's no real standard spice mix, and I used a non-commercial blend, it's one of those things that should be up to individual taste. My final dish didn't taste exactly like jerk chicken - it wasn't nearly hot enough - but it was really delicious. The beans with their savory, lightly sweet, and vinegary cooking liquid would have been lovely on their own, even without the crisp-skinned chicken. Maybe even without the sausage, although as a carnivore, I really liked the sausage part.

Jerk Chicken "Cassoulet"

2 leeks
2 stalks celery
Olive oil
Salt
1/2 pound cured garlic sausage (like Hickory Farms kielbasa), diced
Jerk seasoning
2 (15-oz) cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
Fresh thyme
6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
Hot sauce
Butter
Panko
Chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 325°.

Trim the ends off the leeks, cut a deep slit from top to bottom and rinse the inside layers very well to remove any sand. Cut leeks into quarters and slice thinly. Trim the celery stalks and dice. Cook leeks and celery in a large skillet with a small glug of olive oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat until wilted. Add the kielbasa and cook until it starts to render out a bit of fat, 3-4 minutes. Season with a couple teaspoons of jerk seasoning and remove from heat. Stir in the beans.

Pour the bean mixture into a 9x13-inch baking pan. Top with 6 sprigs of fresh thyme. Set aside while you cook the chicken.

Place the same pan that you cooked the leeks in over high heat. Add the chicken, skin side-down, and cover pan to prevent splattering. Cook until skin is browned, 3-4 minutes. Turn chicken and sprinkle chicken skin with a teaspoon or so of jerk seasoning. Cook until bottoms of thighs are browned. Using tongs, remove chicken and place on top of the bean mixture in the baking pan.

If there seems to be a lot of chicken fat in the frying pan, blot it up with paper towels, being careful to leave any bits of chicken that are adhering to the bottom. Turn the heat to high and add the chicken stock, scraping up those browned chicken bits with a wooden spoon. Add the dark brown sugar, vinegar, and hot sauce to taste. Season with a few teaspoons of jerk seasoning. The sauce should be piquant, spicy, and have a nice thyme/allspice flavor. Feel free to add more ground allspice and ginger if you feel the seasoning needs to be kicked up a bit. Remove liquid from heat and pour over the beans in the pan, trying not to soak the chicken skin.

Cover the pan with foil and place in the preheated oven. Cook for 1 hour. Remove foil, turn oven down to 300°F and cook for an additional hour, until beans have absorbed most of the liquid and chicken is very tender.

While the chicken is cooking, melt a pat of butter in a small skillet. Stir in half a cup or so of panko and cook over medium heat until the panko is coated with the butter and nicely crispy. Season with a pinch of salt. Remove from heat and spread on a plate to cool. When cool, stir in a few tablespoons of finely chopped parsley.

To serve, mound beans in a shallow bowl and top with a piece of chicken. Garnish with some of the panko/crumb mixture. Serves 4-6.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Chinese Cassoulet?

A while back, we tasted a seafood cassoulet made by B&O American Brasserie's new chef, Mike Ransom. While it had multiple proteins and white beans, I suggested that it could do with a bit of sausage, perhaps Spanish chorizo. Of course Spanish chorizo wouldn't be typically used in cassoulet, which is a French dish, but I am no traditionalist. (Neither is the chef, it seems.) That got me to thinking about what other sausages would work with beans. As I was nibbling on leftover dim sum, Chinese sausages came to mind. Cold weather was afoot; why not warm up the house with a cassoulet-style dish of duck and beans and...Chinese sausage?

I've decided that it's a fine idea to keep a package of duck legs in the freezer. We get them at Great Wall, a Chinese grocery store in Catonsville, but you can pick them up at most Asian grocers or a fancy supermarket. They're not cheap, but they take up far less room in the freezer than a whole duck, with the added benefit that they thaw more quickly and are less hassle to roast. Roasting duck really makes the house smell great. Great, that is, to a carnivore. Not sure how vegetarians would feel about the fatty aromas that emanated from my oven not too long ago, but I was a happy camper.

I had originally wanted to try the type of Chinese sausage we normally buy, the long, slender, and wrinkled type that are cured, dried, and lightly smoked, but we were out. Mr Minx popped over to Asia Foods on York Road but could only find stubby, fat, uncured sausages. Fortunately, they turned out to be absolutely perfect for this dish.

While the duck got a head start on roasting, I opened up a couple cans of cannelini beans and added a bit of flavoring. I didn't want to overdo it, so started with equal parts doubanjian (a spicy Chinese bean paste), soy sauce, and black vinegar. If you've never used black vinegar, you're missing out on some amazing caramelized goodness. One tablespoon of each was perfect - the beans were spicy, salty, and tangy, with that lovely molasses-y flavor of the black vinegar. Then I added a bit of sugar to round everything out. Mixed with sauteed onions and scallions, the beans, studded with chunks of Chinese pork sausage, made a tasty bed for the duck legs as they finished roasting to a brown crispness.

Cassoulet with Asian Flavors

2 duck legs
1/2 cup duck or bacon fat
Kosher salt
1/2 pound Chinese pork sausages, preferably xiang chang--small, fat, uncured sausages
1 medium onion, chopped
6 scallions, chopped
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup chicken stock
2-15 1/2 ounce cans of cannelini beans, drained and rinsed
1-2 tablespoons doubanjian
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
Pinch sugar
Cilantro

Preheat the oven to 300°F.

Pour the duck or bacon fat into the bottom of an 8" or 9" baking pan. Put the legs on top, rolling them around in the fat to get them coated. Sprinkle with salt, cover the pan with foil, and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the foil from the pan. Pour out a tablespoon of fat and reserve; prick the duck skin all over with the point of a knife to help render out more fat. Add the Chinese sausages to the pan. Turn oven temperature up to 350° and put duck and sausages into the oven. Bake for an additional 15 minutes.

In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the onion and scallions in the reserved tablespoon of duck fat. When they are translucent, stir in the garlic. Add the stock, beans, doubanjian, soy, vinegar, and sugar. Bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat.

After the duck has been in the oven for the additional 15 minutes, remove sausages and duck from the pan. Pour out the fat and discard (or, reserve for a later use). Cut sausages into thick diagonal slices and stir into the bean mixture. Pour the bean mixture into the pan, then top with the duck legs. Put pan back into the oven and cook for an additional 45 minutes or so. The duck will get crispy and brown, as will the exposed areas of beans. If you want a saucier cassoulet, you can add more chicken stock. Personally, I like the beans on the dry side.

Serve 1 leg per person, with some of the beans. Garnish with cilantro.

Serves 2, with extra beans for lunch.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

B&O Brasserie's New Menu is Both Exotic and Familiar

The menu at B&O Brasserie has seen an evolution over the years as each chef has brought with him a slightly different style of cuisine. The newest addition to the restaurant's kitchen is executive chef Mike Ransom, a native of Michigan who has worked in Chicago and San Francisco before coming to Baltimore.

The Minx and I were invited to a media dinner to sample the latest incarnation of B&O's fare. At first glance, the new menu might make you think the dishes are fairly straight-forward, but Chef Mike Ransom brings a great deal of finesse and creativity to standard favorites. The result is a dining experience that is at once familiar and unlike anything you've ever eaten before.

One of Chef Ransom's goals was to integrate the restaurant with the bar. To that effect, he's created food that pairs well with the extraordinary selection of specialty cocktails on head bartender Brendan Dorr's drink menu. I started with The Galavanter and the Minx chose the Grove Tipple. The Glavanter is an exotic blend of rye, elderflower liqueur, grapefruit bitters, and dry vermouth that the Minx described as tasting like the "men's department at Bergdorf Goodman's." She meant that in a good way. Her Grove Tipple--another mad scientist's concoction of pear brandy, amaro, apple butter, lemon, ginger, and sage--was pleasantly fruity and lightly sweet. We enjoyed our drinks with a selection of olives and spiced nuts.

Chef Ransom was particularly eager for us to try some of the new appetizers, and the first to arrive at our table was sweet potato gnocchi. Talk about Thanksgiving on a plate! I was concerned that the sweet potato would be too sweet, but incorporating it into gnocchi dough mitigated any cloying quality. It was slightly sweet and hearty with the fall-ish quality of sage and a nice crunch thanks to pumpkin seeds.

Next up was pastrami-cured salmon, served with a savory beet pickle, slivers of cured orange rind, a dill raita, and rye crisps. If you pile a little bit of each element onto a rye crisp, the combination is a balanced bite of tangy, spicy, and crunchy, with that bite of orange bringing all of the flavors together. The Minx, who really doesn't appreciate the texture of raw or cured salmon, loved it in this application, which, while not really tasting like pastrami, was probably her favorite dish of the evening.

Calamari is an appetizer staple and many places do not do the poor squids justice. Not so at B&O where theirs is slow cooked until it is meltingly tender and served with confit tomato and preserved lemon. The garlicky chile broth had Asian overtones; what we thought might be coconut milk was, according to chef Ransom, a yuzu compound butter. You definitely need the toasted baguette to soak up all of that delicious sauce.

The red-eye riblets, coffee-brined and coated in a bourbon barbeque sauce, are more refined than the typical sweet-sauced baby backs. A kimchee with Asian pear and honeycrisp apple added the proper amount of tang to cut the richness of the meat and sauce.

After four appetizers, we were ready to move onto our entrees, but Chef Ransom offered a palate cleanser in the form of a beet salad. Nice balance was at play here with the slightly sweet beets and orange peel paired with briny cerignola olives and a light dusting of manchego cheese. A beet puree vinaigrette, mizuna greens, and some crunchy sunflower seeds round out the dish.

Onto the entrees, starting with a short rib pot roast. As you would expect from a pot roast, the meat was delectably fork tender, with a richly flavored jus. The bed of buttermilk mashed potatoes underneath was creamy, yet not without some texture. Baby turnips, beets, and carrots added a pleasant earthiness in keeping with a fall dish.

Equally toothsome was the braised pork shoulder with gigante beans and rapini in an aleppo-mustard jus. The texture of the pork reminded us of the riblets, albeit without the bone. The rapini, which had been charred, offered an unusual bitter element to the rich, slightly sweet, sauce and creamy beans.

The big surprise of the night for me was the Bay cassoulet, featuring fresh flounder, squid, and mussels. In addition to the traditional white beans, there was a bit of fennel, and the broth contained similar elements to those in the braised calamari we ate earlier. Cassoulets can sometimes be heavy, but using seafood as the protein and adding citrus to the broth brought a welcomed lightness to the dish.

Dessert is usually not on our minds after such a large meal, but we couldn't turn away the pear pecan tart. The sweet fruit, presented in a light, crisp crust, was topped with whipped creme fraiche and the surprise of sweet and chewy candied fennel.

We were also served a brioche toast with boozy bourbon-macerated dates and almond praline ice cream. A touch of salt really made the dish.

Many times we have encountered menus that push the boundaries of experimentation while neglecting the fundamental elements that make a meal satisfying. We've also eaten in restaurants that stick to classic cuisine to the point where any sense of specialness is lost. Chef Mike Ransom has found that perfect balance between accessible menu options and those that take you to places outside your normal expectations. We can't wait to see what new surprises Chef Ransom will offer in the future.



* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Deconstructed Cassoulet

There's a new Asian grocery store in Catonsville called Great Wall. It caters to a largely Chinese clientele, and while I'm not Chinese, I find myself cooking more Chinese-style food than anything from other Asian cultures. That made Great Wall right up my alley, especially when I discovered the selection of duck parts, including whole ducks, duck tongues, and duck legs. On our first exploratory trip to the store, I grabbed a pack of two duck legs to keep in the freezer until inspiration struck.

Inspiration struck pretty quickly.

I had never cooked duck legs on their own before, but after doing some research found that confitting them (cooking them in their own fat) was a pretty simple proposition. Ordinarily, a confit involves extra duck fat in addition to the fat on the legs, but I didn't have that. (I did have a cup or so of bacon grease, left over from making a quadruple batch of bacon jam, but that wasn't going to work. Or maybe it would, but I didn't want bacon-flavored duck. I wanted duck-flavored duck.) Instead, I just went ahead and cooked the legs as is, figuring nothing could go terribly wrong.

Ok, I know you're now expecting me to relate a disaster story. But really--nothing went wrong. As the duck cooked low and slow, its fat was rendered, the meat cooked, and the skin got crisp. Exactly the results I wanted.

While the duck was in the oven, I threw together some white beans seasoned with sausage. In my mind, duck + white beans + sausage = cassoulet, and rather than going through the whole somewhat complicated process of making a real cassoulet, I cooked my components separately. I even toasted some plain bread crumbs in olive oil to mimic cassoulet's customary crusty surface.

The beans were an experiment. I found two lonely links of andouille sausage in the freezer, and added them, with a handful of carrot and onion, to a couple cans of cannellini beans. I didn't have all of the proper fresh herbs to make a bouquet garni for the pot, but I did have a little jar of bouquet garni seasoning that I got from Penzey's as a free gift the last time I placed an order. Their spice mix is a combination of savory, rosemary, thyme, Turkish oregano, basil, dill weed, marjoram, sage, and tarragon; it packed the perfect herbal punch for the bland beans. You, of course, can use an actual bouquet garni (fresh parsley, thyme, rosemary, and a bay leaf tied up in a bundle with twine), just make sure to remove it before serving.

Both elements of the dish were highly successful. And the beans were amazing. If you cook beans long enough, stirring regularly, they get dreamily creamy and taste really fattening. While my dish used pork sausages, I'm betting that if one used chicken andouille sausage, the result would be just as delicious but practically a diet delight. 

Deconstructed Cassoulet

For duck confit:

2 duck legs

salt

For the beans:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 cup carrot, cut into small dice

1/2 medium onion, diced

pinch salt

2 andouille sausage, cut into small dice

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 - 1 teaspoon Penzey's Bouquet Garni seasoning

2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup chicken stock

additional salt and pepper to taste

To serve:

minced parsley

toasted bread crumbs

To make the duck: Prick the skin all over with a needle or tip of a sharp knife. Salt generously on both sides and allow to rest for at least an hour. 

Wipe salt off of duck and place in a pan or baking dish into which they fit somewhat snugly. Place baking dish in a cold oven and turn oven to 285°F. Cook for 90 minutes to 2 hours, until fat has rendered and duck is tender.

Raise oven temperature to 375°F and cook duck for an additional 15 minutes to brown skin. Remove from oven and allow to rest for about 15 minutes.

To make the beans: Heat the oil in a 3-quart stock pot. Add the carrots and onion and pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until vegetables start to soften. Stir in the sausage and cook an additional 3-4 minutes before adding the garlic and herbs. Add the beans and stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer beans for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until quite soft, stirring frequently.

To serve: Either pull the duck meat from the bones or serve legs whole on top of beans. Garnish with minced parsley and toasted bread crumbs.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Cassoulet

When I can find even the slightest coolness in the air, I automatically think to Fall. And when I'm thinking Fall, I automatically start to crave cold-weather food - even if it is still 85F outside. (I'm sure the availability of pumpkin spice lattés at Starbucks in early September has something to do with this.)

Recently I've been feeling like I'm in a food slump, and what better way to get out of it than to try something completely new? Something with a degree of difficulty. Like maybe...cassoulet. I've only eaten the dish once, at B&O American Brasserie, and I was surprised to find how much I liked it. Cassoulet is a hearty and soul-satisfying French peasant dish of fatty meats and white beans topped with crisped bread crumbs. I'm not a huge fan of beans. Well, I like them ok, but they don't like me all that much. Black beans, however, I have no issues with, so I thought why not make a Southwest twist on cassoulet?

More authentic versions of the dish involve confit duck and saucisson à l'ail - two ingredients not found on many local supermarket shelves. If one can find them, they're el mucho expensivo. (Wegman's and Shop Rite both have D'Argtanan duck confit at like $10 per piece.) Since I was already eschewing tradition with the beans, I decided to use el cheapo chicken thighs and relatively inexpensive and available-everywhere chicken sausages.

The results were, if I say so myself, ah-mayz-ing. The chicken was fall-apart tender but the beans still had lots of texture, the sausages added zing, and the crumb topping offered a much-needed crunch. The flavors were subtle, slightly smoky, and perfect on a chilly Summer evening.

Southwest Cassoulet

1 lb black beans, picked over and rinsed
olive oil
6 chicken thighs, bone-in, with skin
6 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground chipotle (or 2 teaspoons smoked paprika and a pinch of cayenne)
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 lb fully-cooked chipotle-flavored chicken sausage
salt

Crumb topping:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup coarse fresh bread crumbs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Place beans in a large bowl and cover with cold water by 2 inches. Soak at room temperature for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours. You may also use the quick-soak method: in a large pot, cover beans by 2 inches of water. Bring to a boil and cook, uncovered, over medium heat for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and allow beans to soak for one hour. Drain beans well in a colander before using.

In a dutch oven, cook chicken in a bit of olive oil over high heat, turning occasionally, until skin browns and renders its fat. Remove chicken from pot; remove and discard skin. Add sausages to chicken fat/oil in pot and brown on all sides. Remove from heat, cut into 1/2" slices, and refrigerate until ready to use.

Add onions and carrot and a pinch of salt to remaining chicken fat/olive oil in pot and cook over medium heat until onions become translucent. Stir in garlic and spices. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add bay leaf, beans, and chicken stock. Return chicken to pot. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender, about one hour.

When the beans are done, remove bay leaf and chicken from pot. Discard bones and break meat up into coarse chunks. Stir chicken and reserved sausage pieces into beans. Add salt to taste.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour bean and meat mixture into a 13 x 9 baking dish. Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

Cassoulet before crumb topping

While beans are baking, make crumb topping. In a skillet, heat oil over medium heat; add bread crumbs, salt and chipotle, and cook, stirring, until crumbs are crisp and golden, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl and stir in cilantro.

Raise oven temperature to 400°F. Remove casserole from oven. Smash some of the beans with the back of a fork to thicken mixture. Top with crumbs. Return and bake until crust is golden, about 10 minutes.

Cassoulet after crumb topping.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.