Quick cassoulet

I wanted to have some bread with my supper tonight, but I was a bit too lazy to head out in search of a nice loaf (what a shocker :-). Generally this would result in a bread-less supper, but while surfing some food blogs this morning I came across a recipe for bread and it got me thinking. It's still early enough in the day, why not bake a loaf?

I used the faster no-knead bread recipe from the NY Times, but used 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose and 1/2 cup of whole-wheat flour. For some reason my dough was still a bit dry after adding the water, so I added another 1/4 cup or so (although it still didn't look very "shaggy" to me). I don't have a feel for bread making, but luckily this recipe is quite forgiving. I coated the loaf with poppy seeds to prevent it from sticking to the dutch oven -- and much like my previous attempt at this, I ended up with poppy seeds bouncing all over my kitchen. Fun!

And now for the main event... cassoulet!

Although the Bitten recipe had the cassoulet down to 40 minutes, I modified the recipe a bit. Total prep and cooking time was probably 2 1/2 hours (excluding the beans that I cooked yesterday :-). Maybe not speedy, but compared to the days required for a real cassoulet recipe, it's still pretty streamlined.
 
Quick Cassoulet
adapted from this recipe from the NY Times Bitten blog

olive oil
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 c diced tomatoes
4 c white beans, nearly fully cooked
1 c red wine + 1/3 c for deglazing
1 tsp thyme
Italian parsley, chopped
1 bay leaf
3 hot Hungarian sausages
1 pork tenderloin, cut into 3 pieces
1 duck breast

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven, and saute the onion and garlic until they start to get some colour. Add the tomatoes and beans to the pan, along with 1 cup of the red wine. Sprinkle in the thyme and parsley, tuck in the bay leaf, and add some freshly ground black pepper. Place in a hot oven (approx. 425 to start).

Now start on the meat. Cook the sausages on medium-high heat to give them some colour, then cut each sausage in half. Remove the dish from the oven, and nestle the sausages into the tomato/bean mixture. Deglaze the pan and pour the pan scrapings in as well, before placing the dish back in the oven. (The mixture in the oven should be starting to bubble -- if not, turn up the heat a bit.)

Season the pork tenderloin, and repeat the above step with the pork.

Now cut a 1/2-inch cross-hatch pattern in the skin side of duck breast. (I took it right down to the meat.) Add the duck breast, skin side down, in the hot pan and let it sizzle away. A lot of fat will be released, and this can be added into the mixture simmering in the Dutch oven. (I took the dish out of the oven twice to add some of the duck fat.) Turn the duck to let the meat side brown. (The skin side had some nice colour, but it still looked quite fatty.) Once the meat side was seared, flip the duck breast back over and let it cook a bit more. Take the Dutch oven out, and add the duck breast and remaining fat into the mixture. Deglaze the pan for the last time, and pour that in as well. The tomato/bean mixture should be bubbling nicely now. Season with French grey sea salt and freshly ground black peper, and make sure that all the meaty bits are mostly submerged. Turn the oven down to 300 and put back in the oven. Leave in the oven for about 2 hours, checking every now and then to make sure that the cassoulet isn't getting dry.

Once it is out of the oven, divide the duck breast and the pork tenderloin into individual servings. Then place some of the tomato/bean mixture on a plate, and top with some sausage, tenderloin, and duck. Sprinkle some parsley on top for a garnish and serve with some crusty bread.

This was really quite tasty. Not as delicious as I'd hoped for, but I shouldn't have expected a rich cassoulet experience based on a few hours effort. And although the sausages had a nice texture, they could've been a lot spicier. If I made this again, I'd definitely try a different sausage. And maybe some lamb... :-)

ps As for the bread, it had a great crust and a good texture, but the flavour wasn't all that (not enough salt?). I'll keep working on it, and maybe try a different recipe next time.