Cassoulet

I thought French cooking was difficult, but with the right ingredients we achieved an authentic tasting cassoulet without any hassle.

Right or wrong, I think the success of the cassoulet depends two things. The confit duck and the beans. Admittedly there aren't too many other ingredients in a cassoulet.

For the confit duck we used Succes Gourmand tinned duck confit. At £10 for the tin it seemed like a bargain as it contained 4 pieces - which turned out to be 5 when we opened the tin! Using tinned makes life a lot easier than having to make your own confit duck, and means you get a lot of the all important duck fat. Cassoulet starts with a generous portion of duck fat.

This recipe cooked a cassoulet that fed the two of us very well. You'll need:

2 pieces confit duck
Duck fat
2 handfuls or dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight (it might seem like a pain to use dried beans which need soaking, but the taste is much better than tinned)
1 chopped onion
4 cloves of garlic,chopped
2 sausages - use what you like, straight pork, Lincolnshire or Cumberland will work fine
Pork - you could use 4 rashers of bacon, but we used some pre-cooked ham hock, about 170g
Herbs - we used dried bay, thyme and sage.

Put the oven onto 180c, and on the hob melt a generous amount duck fat in a big pan that can go in the oven, or a casserole. Add the chopped onion and garlic and soften over a medium heat, you don't want them to brown. 

When the onions and garlic are soft add the soaked beans and herbs, cover with water and bring to the boil Boil for 10 minutes or so, skim off any scum. After 10 minutes put the pan in the oven for an hour.

Just before the hour is up melt some more duck fat and brown your sausages. Fry the bacon as well, if that's what you're using.

Remove the pan from the oven. Add the sausage, bacon or ham and the confit duck. Put the pan back in the oven for another 45 minutes or so. You want the beans soft and you might get a golden crust as well.

I thought cassoulet was going to be a lot harder than this. The hardest part is probably getting hold of duck confit, but you can buy that from Amazon! I think this is going to be one of those dishes that we end up cooking again and again.

Braised Pig Cheeks with Apple Risotto

This is Autumn on a plate. Succulent, falling apart, pig cheeks with a seasonal apple risotto.

This dish came about through a couple of things. One of those things was a great lunch at the Pony & Trap in Chew Magna. I had pig cheeks with pigeon breast and lentils, never having had pig cheeks before, and after eating them once I was hooked. Slowly cooked these morsels of meat become melt-in-the-mouth tender and have a richer pork taste than most other cuts. They're a bit like the the dark thigh meat on a chicken.

The apple risotto part of the dish was inspired by watching the Hairy Bikers. They put theirs with guinea fowl, which I'm sure tasted amazing, but I was keen on pairing it up with pig cheeks. I don't often put meat with risotto because the texture of vegetables of fish works much better. But when meat is as tender as pig cheeks get after 4 hours in the oven there's no problem.

So, pig cheeks first. You'll need to go to a butcher to get these, and not all butchers will have them in, but a good butcher will get them in for you. You'll want at least 3 per portion and they shouldn't cost any more than 60p each.

Dust them in seasoned flour and fry them on a medium high heat so they get a crispy coating. Remove from the pan and then add finely chopped stock veg. When that's soft, add about a pint of liquid which can be stock or water, or a mix of both with, possibly, a slosh of booze. Calvados would work a treat. Add dried herbs, bay leaf and sage mandatory but anything else you particularly favour could go in. Pop the pig cheeks back in and then put the pan (or pot) into a pre-heated oven set at 140 Celsius. Leave it for 4 hours.

Towards the end of the cooking time of the pig cheeks, make your risotto. A simple white risotto will do. Soften finely chopped onion in butter - how much onion you use will depend on how many you're cooking for. Add your risotto rice when the onion is soft and fry for a couple of minutes before adding a small glass of dry white wine or vermouth. Let this evaporate whilst you stir. You should notice the rice start to release some of its starch.

Then add hot stock (chicken or veg) a ladle or so at a time, and stir this into the rice.

Meanwhile, blanche some peeled and sliced apples in acidulated water. Towards the end of the cooking of the risotto, add the blanched apples. Then add either Parmesan, butter or mascarpone. Philadelphia works as well. But Parmesan or butter would be best to prevent the overall dish from being too sweet.

Then its just a matter of plating up. Put a ladle-full of risotto into each dish, then add your pig cheeks adding a good spoonful of the cooking liquor over each cheek. If you want you could garnish with some further apple slices that have been fried in butter, or maybe some fried sage leaves.

This is nice alternative to Sunday lunch, but one which will still fill the house with wonderful cooking smells, and which will satisfy the most demanding appetites.

Pork in Dandelion and Burdock

The idea for cooking pork in dandelion & burdock came to my while I was sitting on a park bench eating a bag of chips. I nearly always have a can of dandelion & burdock with fish and chips, and for whatever reason this time it occurred to me that the sweet aniseed taste would make a good sauce to go with pork.

I'd heard about a South African dish of chicken cooked in coca cola. So pork in dandelion & burdock didn't seem too outrageous. And on the most recent series of Masterchef the winner, Tim Anderson, had done a dish of belly pork braised in coca cola. It was his recipe that I referred to for the technique for my recipe.

I started of by browning a 600g piece of belly pork in a frying pan and heated the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Whilst doing that I made up my braising liquor:

450ml dandelion & burdock
100ml rice wine vinegar
100ml soy sauce
2 star anise
1 heaped teaspoon Chinese 5 spice powder
1 hot chilli (pierced and left whole)
1 cinnamon stick

With the pork browned on all sides I poured the liquid into the frying pan and brought it to a boil. Then I gave the meat a quick baste and put it in the oven to cook for a couple of hours, basting every 20 minutes. After cooking I let the meat rest for 15 minutes whilst cooking some rice and spring greens. I also reduced the braising liquor to a thick sauce.

I hesitate to use the word triumph, but it did taste really good. The meat was juicy and tender and the sweet and spicy sauce went really nicely with it. The plain rice and greens were a good, bland, accompaniment.

In terms of technique I wouldn't change anything, but I would use less cooking liquid, 1 can of dandelion and burdock would be enough. And the sauce could have done with being a bit more savoury. Worcestershire sauce would have helped, or some light stock, or a mixture of the two.

If you give it a go, let me know what you think.

Chorizo and Butterbean Soup

This is a real winner - quick, simple, cheap and tasty. Chorizo and butterbeans is a classic combination, the sweetish blandness of the butterbeans seems to accentuate the rich spiciness of the chorizo.

I usually make this soup for two but if you're cooking for more just add extra ingredients as required. To start, finely chop a red onion and soften it in olive oil. Add some chopped garlic, you can be generous with this, or not, depending on your preference for garlic. Put a couple of sprigs of thyme in if you have them. If you don't have thyme you could use bay 2 or 3 bay leaves, oregano would be nice as well.

When the onions and garlic have softened and have started to give off that wonderful aroma that cooking onions always do turn up the heat and add some chopped chorizo. There's no need to be shy here, if you like chorizo put plenty in. The better the chorizo the better the taste of the soup, so use as good as you can get.

When the red oil is coming out of the chorizo add a tin of drained butterbeans, if cooking for two, and pour on enough boiling water to cover the beans. A bit extra won't hurt, but make sure you use enough water or there won't be a lot of liquid to your soup. Cook for about 10 minutes.

Before serving add a good amount of fresh parsley and a squeeze of lemon, then season and serve.

It's something I cook again and again because its easy and very tasty. You can use it as the basis for some other dishes as well. You could use chick peas instead of butterbeans and add some squid for something a bit fancier. Or some chicken for a more filling soup. Merguez sausages could be used instead of chorizo and you could pep things up with a dollop of harissa and a stir of sour cream. Mmm, I'm going to have to get hold of some merguez sausages and give that a go myself.