Meatless Cassoulet

This recipe from Gourmet for a vegetarian cassoulet (a hearty casual french stew-like dish traditionally compromised of meats and/or sausage and white beans cooked to delicious oblivion and topped with breadcrumbs) was recently featured on the kitchn, where it caught my eye. I was fresh out of my first night of  French cooking classes, and but 6 words into the recipe's description was a new word I had learned only that night. I looked at the word and felt such pride in myself. Mirapoix! I know what that is! How sophisticated it sounds; how french!

There was yet another draw to this recipe for me, besides its french name, simple ingredient list, and use of the word "mirapoix" in the description: this was likely to be a dirt cheap meal. And I am the kind of girl who really appreciates a cheap meal. Does that sound bad? Well, it's true. My trip to the grocery store for the ingredients for this meal totaled at $6 (at Whole Foods, even!). I will likely be eating this for lunch for a week. Time to pat myself on the back for being so frugal.

I made a few changes to the recipe as I cooked. First, though leeks may just be my favorite vegetable, I replaced them with onions to keep my costs low.  I prefer to cook instinctively: taste and add and taste and add, rather than actually sticking to a recipe. In this way I ended up adding butter, a couple tablespoons of red wine, rosemary, and chicken stock (oops, no longer vegetarian! oh well.). I made the bread crumbs using 2 types of bread I had on hand: 7 grain sandwich bread, and some of the spinach-herb bread I made earlier in the week.

What comfort food this is, a hot garlicky stew with tender cooked onion, carrot and celery (that's the mirapoix, by the way) fresh and dried herbs and white beans. It is filling and hearty, yet gives a person the distinct feeling that they are eating something healthful and nutritious. My final product used quite a lot of butter, so I knew that the sense of healthfulness from the vegetables and white beans was certainly a  ruse (not to be confused with a roux, if we are talking basics of french cooking).

Danielle's $2 tuna

First off, I like this dish because I like alliteration. Two-dollar tuna. It's those t's that get me. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to think of a perfect 3rd t-word to stick in there. Unfortunately the only t-words that come to me are entirely unrelated to this dish. Oh well, I am sure one will strike me next week, and I may go as far as to edit this post to stick that final t-word in its place...

The other night while I was busying myself with cauliflower and such, my roommate Danielle was also cooking in our kitchen, making a large batch of a tuna pasta salad of her invention to be eaten for a handful of lunches or dinners. After agreeing to be featured in a blog post,Danielle made not a single complaint as I buzzed around her taking pictures. When I said "wait, stop chopping, your hand looks blurry...just pretend to chop for a bit!" she did so without so much as an annoyed glance in my direction. Now there is a good sport, right? Well, she even agreed to photograph my process as I went on to cook dinner myself (the photographs of this entry should be credited to her), and above all of that, she allowed me to share the bottle of wine she had bought. Excellent. After all of this, she certainly deserves a glowing endorsement.