Chulent and Cassoulet

We got a little stewy this week.  Big, hearty one pot meals to feed us several days over. 



All in one pot before the long hours of slow cooking



Early yesterday morning, Dan took a turn, reached into his Jewish roots and made chulent.  The basic chulent is a long cooked stew containing meat, beans and barley.  The meat for it this time around was that rump roast we bought last week.  After browning it on all sides, he simply threw it into the crockpot with all the veggies and herbs and turned it on to cook all day.  Sometime in the afternoon, he added the beans and then later the barley.  He even threw in some red cabbage this time to make it more nutritionally balanced.  Heh, well maybe not so much.  But it didn't hurt it!



Breakfast!



So I had a big plate for dinner and I woke up wanting more so I ate some for breakfast.  I love this stuff.  Rich, slow cooked pots of stuff where all the flavors have had time to really come out and come together.  It's hard to say no to those.  This batch was actually a little more tomatoey then he's done in the past.  But that didn't hurt it any either.  It'll feed us several meals for sure.  Haven't done the math yet.  But will get to it before the end of the night.

Normally, we eat chulent with kishka when we make it.  As if beans and barley weren't enough, kishka is more carbo loading goodness in the essential form of a big dumpling - matzo meal, rendered fat and spices traditionally stuffed into a beef intestine.  It's like a big, seasoned matzo ball sausage.  The next time we get one, and we will get one, I'll talk more about it.

Earlier in the week, I'd mentioned that I had also made a cassoulet.  Cassoulet is heaven.  Another one pot meal, it's from southern France and mainly consists of beans and meat. Variation on theme really this week.  And it does vary!  It's amazing how different such basic ingredients can become totally different meals.

Ingredients for a cassoulet will vary, but traditionally, the bean will be the white bean (haricot blanc), the meats would be any combination of duck or goose, pork rind, pork, pork sausage, and mutton.  It is then further enriched with the flavors of some simple herbs, classic mirepoix, garlic and tomato.  You have another slow cooked meal that will feed an army and have them asking for more.

Mine was a variation on the theme, of course.  The meats used were half a chicken and some locally produced smoked sausage and bacon.  And I used the same dry bean mix, Dan used for the chulent instead of the traditional white bean.  Had a little bit of everything, lima, kidney, black-eyed peas, lentils, split peas, etc.  Towards the end it was covered with bread crumbs and then tossed back into the oven until those formed a browned, crunchy top.  When all is said and done we ended up with a bean filled pot of smoky goodness.  Those sausages and bacon. . . .*drools*

So, two big pots of food that we have been and will continue to eat throughout the rest of the week, with some other smaller meals made to help break up the delicious monoteny.  Costwise, the cassoulet turned out to be a whole $8.06, and we got about 6 meals out of it so that's $1.34 a portion.  I haven't done the numbers on the chulent yet, but I'll get to it before tonight.  Tonight marks the completion of one week!  So we'll do the math and see if we went over the $44+ we said we'd try to live on.