 "Photo: SANJAYACHARYA")
Cassoulet.
Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? It’s foreign, it’s gourmet. It’s French. It sounds like you need a culinary degree to master it.
It’s actually bean stew.
Granted, a traditional French cassoulet is made with white beans and smoked pork, but a bean stew by any other name is still easy, cheap and tasty comfort food.
Growing up, one of the most anticipated meals in my Filipino household was a mung bean stew served over rice. My mother always made it with the traditional Filipino ingredients – sautéed tomato, onion, dried shrimp, ground pork, fish sauce and choi sum.
It was simple and delicious. It didn’t have a fancy French name, but compared to the classical French cassoulet, the delivery was similar: Brown the aromatics and meat, add beans, and take it through enough cooking time to make the beans so tender they invite your mouth to break them apart.
Cassoulet-type applications have a lot of different incarnations, encompassing everything from baked beans to chili. But what they all have in common is that you can get a lot of nutritional bang for a relatively small investment of money and prep time, though cooking beans requires a good deal of patience. Tossing everything you need into a Crock Pot before leaving for class and coming back to a delicious slow-cooked dinner is a more realistic option for students pressed for cash and time.
It’s very hard to mess up something as simple as a cassoulet, but it can happen if you add something sour like wine or tomato before the beans are cooked through. Beans can simmer all day long in an acidic broth without softening, so use water or stock instead to cook your beans.
Once the beans are tender, however, feel free to add away. Almost anything from leafy greens to fresh onion to chopped parsley work as additions. For people making meatless versions of cassoulet, however, the real key is to add something like rice or corn to the meal in order to make the dish into a complete protein.
Caramelized Carrot and Mung Bean Cassoulet
6 ounces cubed chuck
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt
6 ounces split mung beans (regular mung beans can be used)
1/2 pound minced carrots
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cups water
Hardware: 4 quart slow cooker, sauté pan, wooden spoon or heat-proof spatula
1) Rinse the dry beans in a strainer and add them to the pot of a 4-quart slow cooker.
2) Toss cubed chuck in oil and salt until well-coated and sear on all sides in a skillet over high heat, then add to slow cooker. Sear meat in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
3) Add minced carrot and a pinch of salt to the fat in the pan and reduce the heat to medium. Stir constantly until carrots darken, then deglaze by adding soy sauce and water. Bring heat back up to high, scraping the bottom of the pan, and bring to a boil before adding to the slow cooker.
4) Top off slow cooker with additional water if necessary. Cook overnight or for at least eight hours. Serve over rice, if desired.
Serves two
Hearty Spicy Sausage Mung Bean Cassoulet
1 pound spicy smoked sausage, minced fine
6 ounces dry mung beans
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
1 teaspoon ‘alae salt
4 tablespoons toasted rice flour*
Water
Hardware: A 3-cup, nonstick rice cooker, a sauté pan, and either a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula
1) Wash and drain beans, then add to the rice cooker with enough water go halfway up the pot. Add ‘alae salt and set to “cook,” letting it come to a boil.
2) Brown sausage in sauté pan, then, if needed, deglaze the pan with about a cup of water, scraping up the brown bits and adding them to the rice cooker. Cook until beans are tender, adding additional water as necessary.
3) Add chipotle and toasted rice flour, stirring to combine. Cook for another 20 minutes before serving.
*You can make toasted rice flour by browning uncooked rice in a skillet over medium heat, shaking or stirring constantly until the rice turns tan, but not dark brown. Let cool for a few minutes and then grind in a food processor or mortar and pestle until powdered.
Serves two
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