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).
