Casual Cassoulet

These rainy fall days have me craving one of my favorite comfort dishes - cassoulet. This traditional French dish is a hearty mix of duck confit, pork and beans that warmed farmer’s bellies for the late season harvest and will keep you going through fall’s chilly nights as well.

This is a great dish for a crowd and makes good leftovers as well, but traditional cassoulet is complicated, time consuming and requires a few special ingredients like duck fat and duck confit. Since I haven’t yet gotten around to putting up my duck confit for the winter, this is generally not a dish that is going to happen on a random Sunday night after work.

So I looked in my pantry for a few alternative ingredients to throw into a lighter, more casual Cassoulet. I’ve had half a bag of lentils languishing in the cupboard for awhile and these seemed like the perfect substitute for the traditional white beans. Add to that some bacon and sausage from the freezer along with some vegetable stock that’s been taking up precious freezer door-space, some garlic, carrots and celery from the crisper and voila, “Cassualet!” 

“Cassualet”

1 heavy, oven-safe pot

1 large saute pan

2 cups lentils (I recommend those lovely French “Lentils du Puy” but I only had a few of them and had previously dumped them into a bag of orange lentils so I just went with the Halloween-themed lentil mix.)

4 ½ cups stock of choice or water

3 strips of bacon

4 sausages (I think any kind of sausage would do depending on what flavor profiles you’d like the dish to have--nice garlicky sausages for a traditional flavor, spicy Merguez for a North African bent or spicy Italian if that’s all you happen to have in your fridge because your husband is Italian and that’s what’s always in your fridge.)

1 leafy heart of a celery stalk cut in half

1 large carrot cut into a medium dice

1 large, separate ¼ of the onion and cut the rest  into a medium dice

1 cup of crushed tomatoes

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 bay leaf

¼  cup white wine

Panko or other breadcrumbs mixed with 4 tbs melted butter and 2 tbs chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

• In a pot, combine stock, bay leaf, celery, ¼ onion and bacon and simmer covered for 30 minutes (or until you are done preparing your sausage and vegetables). This pork-enhanced stock will create an incredibly rich and delicious base for your entire dish so don’t skip this step!

• Add a tablespoon of grapeseed oil to a separate pan and brown sausages. Remove sausages and set aside.
• In the same pan, saute carrots until lightly browned. And onion and saute.

• While onions saute, remove bacon, onion, celery stalk and bay leaf from stock. Add lentils, 1 tsp of salt and simmer until tender (about 15 minutes).
• Discard vegetables and slice bacon into ¼ inch wide strips. Add bacon to onion and continue to saute until onions begin to brown. Season liberally with salt and pepper.
• Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Deglaze pan with a splash of white wine. Add tomatoes and cook 5 minutes.

• When lentils are tender, strain, reserving liquid, and add to vegetables along with enough reserved liquid create a loose stew. Stir to combine and either return to pot or put in a heavy, oven safe baking dish.

• Nestle sausages into lentils, top with breadcrumbs and bake covered until bubbly. Remove cover and bake an additional 10 minutes until breadcrumbs are golden brown.

You’ll never miss the duck (or the five additional hours you could have spent making a traditional cassoulet) and you’ll truly be amazed by the complex, porky flavor and silken texture of the lentils. Pair this with a light, Provencal Red like The Chopping Block's Mas de Gourgonnier (learn more about this red blend in our Sommelier’s post  What's in a Red Blend?)

For more flavors of fall sign up for one of our soup, stew or braising focused hands-on classes like:

• French Bistro on Wednesday, October 25th at Lincoln Square or Tuesday, November 21st at Merchandise Mart to learn how to make a classic Beef Bourguignon; 
• The Perfect Pair: Soup and Bread Workshop on Sunday, October 29th at Lincoln Square to learn how to make Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Gumbo.
• Autumn Soups and Stews on Saturday, November 4th at Lincoln Square to learn how to make Minestrone with Farro, Chickpeas and Kale; Tuscan Beef Ragout with Red Wine, Tomatoes and Rosemary; Tom Kha Gai (Spicy Shrimp, Coconut Milk and Lemongrass Soup). This class also includes traditional Cassoulet if you want to learn how it's made.