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Braised Lamb Shanks

One of my favorite dishes, especially for company, is braised lamb shanks. Rich, meaty, with plenty of vegetables, it pleads for a hearty bread (such as the easy and wonderful no-knead bread you can make yourself) to sop up the complex sauce. Guests won't guess how easy this dish is. And the leftovers are even better.

The Art of the Braise

Braising — long cooking in a moist environment, in a lidded vessel at a low temperature — is a magical form of cooking. The long-simmer, multiple ingredients, and tight quarters develop complex, overlaid flavors that make you look like a master chef! It's the simplest way to layers of richness without relying on fat and calories. You can usually do it in one pot. It's just about foolproof, hard to overcook and tolerant of wide variation in ingredients. While a braise generally takes hours, they are unattended hours: The stove and the pot do all the work. You do need to spend an hour or two browning and preparing ingredients. This is best done ahead of time (the day before or that morning).

You already know braising, even if you don't know the word: Pot roast, coq au vin, osso bucco, most stews, corned beef and cabbage, pulled pork (bbq pork shoulder), many curried dishes, cioppino, chicken cacciatore are all braises. It's not all meat — you can braise sturdy vegetables as well.

Braising works its magic on some of the least desirable cuts of meat and toughest vegetables. The long, moist cooking melts down connective tissue into gelatine. The slow heat breaks down fibers and makes the tough tender. But more important, it develops complex flavors from otherwise inedible or uninteresting elements.

Lamb Shank

The shank, the portion of the leg between knee and ankle, is one of the best cuts for the braise. It has a good combination of meat, bone, and lots of very accessible connective tissue. Shanks are generally inexpensive.

Lamb is one of the best shanks because it's so flavorful. The sometimes-gamy flavor that some people don't like in lamb is mellowed away by the braise.

It's become one of my favorites.

Method

Here's how to make braised lamb shanks. There is enormous latitude in this recipe and I'll talk about what's important and where you can play. The basic steps are:

1. The night before or that morning, brown the meat, then the onions and some of the vegetables on the stovetop.
2. Use broth or wine to liberate the browned bits from the bottom of the pan and form the foundation for the sauce.
3. Add the vegetables that can cook a long time and long-cooking flavor ingredients such as garlic and herbs
4. Cover and place in the oven.
5. An hour or so later, add the rest of the vegetables and herbs that need short cooking. Cook 15 minutes.
6. Lift meat to the top and cook uncovered for 10-20 minutes, to re-brown the meat. Turn the meat to expose the other side and cook uncovered for 10-20 minutes more.
7. Removes from oven, cover and rest 15 minutes or more. It's non-critical so you can take your time preparing the rest of the meal, your table, and your guests.

Recipe

Lamb Shanks
Serves 6 (with plenty of leftovers)

• 6 lamb shanks
• 2 onions
• 2-3 leeks
• 3 carrots
• 3 stalks celery
• 6 cloves garlic
• 6 shallots
• Other root vegetables. Rutabaga is excellent. Artichoke hearts and olives. Beets do well (but use golden beets to avoid too much color). Fennel.
• 6-12 small (2-inch) red or Yukon Gold potatoes, or 4 medium potatoes.
• Green vegetables, such as broccoli, frozen peas.
• 1-2 cup red wine
• 2-4 cups chicken broth: Low-sodium canned chicken stock is fine (Swanson's recommended)
• 2-4 tablespoons tomato paste
• Your choice of herbs. You must use 6 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 T dried — rosemary and lamb are naturals. Highly recommended: 6 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 T dried, 1 T marjoram. You almost can't mess up.

1. Remove fat from shanks and cut away the papery outer covering, the "fell," if present. You don't need to remove it completely.
2. Choose a heavy pot with lid, deep enough to accommodate the whole dish in the oven (about a 6-8 quart pot). Cast iron is a good choice. You can use an unlidded pot and use foil when it comes time to cover.
3. Brown the shanks in the pot. Don't crowd the pot. You probably need to do this in two batches. I brown it fairly slowly, to build as much browned crust as I can. Place three shanks in the pan, cook over medium heat without turning or moving the shanks at all, until they release from the pan and are nicely browned. Turn and repeat for the other side. Take your time.
   
   
4. While these brown, cut up the vegetables, except the potatoes, into large pieces. You can quarter the onions (or, if large, cut the quarters in half), cut celery and carrots into 1-2-inch chunks, cut root vegetables into  1-1/2 to 2-inch pieces.
5. Remove the shanks to a plate and add the onions, shallots, and carrots. Brown those. If the browned bits on the bottom of the pot begin to burn, stop. It's OK to have them become a deep brown but stop short of a burn.
6. Toward the end, add leeks and garlic. Leeks and garlic burn easily so don't expect much browning, but they should soften some.
7. Drain excess fat.
8. Add a cup of red wine and use it to dissolve the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. You don't need to do this perfectly. Whatever is left will release during the long braise.
9. Return the lamb shanks to the pan. Add the rest of the vegetables, except for the potatoes and the green vegetables — reserve those for later.
10. Add the herbs. If you are using fresh, delicate herbs like marjoram and parsley, don't add these now. But the rest, including fresh thyme and rosemary, should go in now.
    
    
    
    
11. I don't usually add salt since the chicken stock will have plenty. If using homemade, unsalted stock, you will need to add some salt.
12. Add the chicken stock. The liquid should not cover the other ingredients, it should come 2/3 - 3/4 of the way up.
13. Cover and place in a 350-degree oven.
14. Cook for 1-1/4 hours. Add potatoes, cook 15 minutes more.
15. Uncover and lift shanks to surface so they can brown. Cook 10-15 minutes.
16. Turn the shanks so the browned surfaces are down, cook 10-15 minutes more.
17. Remove from oven. Add green vegetables and delicate herbs. Cover and rest 30 minutes.
18. Serve with good, hearty bread such as sourdough or rustic-style french or Italian bread. The  no-knead bread is perfect.

References

• "Braising Lamb Shanks," Cook's Illustrated: Number 12, January 1995, p. 18
• "Braising Meat So It's Meltingly Tender," Fine Cooking: Number 49, March 2002, p. 56
• All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. This is the ultimate resource on braising!

Proper Popcorn

The very idea of a recipe for popcorn may seem preposterous but there’s popcorn — and then there’s popcorn! It’s not just gourmet popcorn snobbery. Try this once and your microwave and hot-air popcorn days will be over.

Wave Goodbye to the Microwave

Let’s start with the worst. Disassemble an unpopped bag of microwave popcorn and you will discover popcorn kernels embedded in what looks like a bar of plastic, hard and waxy.

Eat this?

That is your popcorn oil. Hydrogenated palm oil, saturated fat. Best for shelf life, but it’s like eating candles, and not so good for your arteries, either.

What looks like orange soap is concentrated food chemistry intended to imply butter. I’m not against chemicals in food but butter flavor just does not taste like butter.

Microwave popcorn tastes fatty (and not in a good way) and tongue-numbingly salty, with little corn flavor. Some are better than others, but you won't find excellence in these bags.

Foiled Again

Who doesn’t love the novelty of Jiffy Pop’s mushrooming foil pan? It really is cool. But slice open that pan and there’s that orange brick of super-saturated, flavorized, shelf-stable fat.

The Taste of Air

The hot-air popper’s big advantage is that it’s as low-fat and low-salt as you want it to be. It's unadulterated corn and while that sounds pure, it can’t be gourmet because the hot air dries the corn. By itself, it lacks the supporting players a flavorful pop demands.

Hot Oil

Which brings us back to popcorn as it must be: kernels sizzled in oil and augmented with butter and salt. You knew that was where we were headed, but there are still critical considerations that separate the excellent from the merely good.

The Gear

You can use various stovetop gear. The Whirley Pop (whirleypop.com), a pot with a crank that stirs the corn as it cooks, looks like a good gadget and I have seen favorable reviews, but I favor the more traditional countertop appliance, the electric hot oil popper, mainly because it’s foolproof.

Most countertop electric poppers will do fine. My favorite is the somewhat hard-to-find (but available at Amazon) West Bend Stir Crazy which has one critical technological edge: rotating arms to stir the kernels as they heat.

Stirring means the kernels can't burn and the heating element can be hotter, so you can pop a much large batch (6 quarts) in much less time, with very few unpopped kernels. You can also use less oil than a non-stirring popper would allow.

(They have a red one now. Mmm, I want that.)

In addition to the popper, you need two massive bowls (you can use large pots) and a big spoon.

Ingredients

Any brand of popcorn will work well, as long as it's fresh. The "gourmet" varieties (Orville Redenbacher, for instance) pop up bigger. For an interesting and different taste, try the exotic varieties such as the blue, black, or red. They lose their colors when they pop (darn) but most of these make a smaller, chewier kernel than the puffy white or yellow kernels we’re used to. You can find a variety of corns in many groceries now. I buy Whirley Pop Amish Country popcorn from popcornpopper.com. My favorites are their Baby White, which is tender and flavorful, and their Blue, which is a bit more toothsome and a tad sweeter. They have a variety bag which mixes the colors but I find it weird to have non-uniform popcorn.

Any vegetable oil will do. Canola, peanut, and corn oil have high smoke points and are lower in saturated fats.

Use a fine salt such as popcorn salt or fine sea salt. This is pretty important since fine salt sticks to the corn instead of bouncing its way to the bottom of the bowl. Go easy on the salt, even if it tastes bland at first. Once you get used to a lighter salting, you will enjoy more corn taste. But you have to use some -- our taste buds are half asleep without a salt perk.

And finally: Butter. It's not low fat, but butter makes popcorn great.

Plain buttered popcorn is fabulous in its simplicity and the perfect blend of butter and corn, steamy and crunchy, with just enough salt to make it sing. But you can add some variety with seasonings. Some of my favorites:

• Garlic salt
• Grated cheese
• Herb blends such as Old Bay or Lawry’s — use a light touch.
• Ground ancho chili pepper
• Curry powder
• Penzey’s (penzeys.com) Fox Point seasoning. I also like their Sandwich Sprinkle or Crouton Seasoning, but use these lightly.
• Very finely grated Parmesan-Reggiano — the really good stuff — is fantastic. I really like to use this and Penzey’s Fox Point together.

When using a seasoning, remember that many contain salt already.

Kettle Corn

I saw a suggestion to make kettle corn at home by adding 1/3 cup sugar to a full batch of popcorn and oil right before the first kernel pops. I tried it once and it was mediocre. Let me know if you have a better method that does not require you buy a 300-gallon kettle and a jet engine. (Not that I would not want an excuse to buy a jet engine.)

Method

You know how to make popcorn, of course. But there are a few refinements. Most important are amounts and the fine technique of evenly distributing the butter.

Here’s my recipe. I give ranges for the amounts so you can decide whether you want to pretend you’re on a diet or you want a big butter blast. It’s your popcorn.

Proper Popcorn

Makes 6 quarts: Adjust amounts if your popper makes less.

2-3 tablespoons canola or corn oil

3/4-1 cup of popcorn or 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 c small-kernel popcorn

Fine salt to taste

2-4 tablespoons fresh unsalted butter

Gear

Popcorn popper, preferably a Stir Crazy

Two very big bowls or pots, preferably the same diameter so you can clap them together and shake the contents without sacrificing too much to the dog

Method

The butter is the biggest trick. I have two methods. One is to melt the butter in the microwave and drizzle it into the popcorn bit by bit as you transfer the corn into your bowl.

The way I use now is to melt half the butter in each of the big bowls and just before introducing the corn, tilting the bowl to coat the bowl. Keep everything warm and work fast so the butter does not harden and stick to the bowl.

A neater method is to use the holes in the Stir Crazy top. You're supposed to put the butter up there and let the popping heat melt it but that doesn't work. What does work is to pour the melted butter in there after popping is underway. Seems to work but I am still experimenting.

The one thing you never want to do is dump the butter and salt in and them mix. It makes even distribution impossible and is generally artless.

1. Put popcorn and oil in the popper and plug it in. The instructions all say to heat the oil until a test kernel pops but I just dump it all in at the start — I see no difference.
2. Alton Brown says to add the salt to the oil and corn before popping -- hmm, good idea. I need to try that.
3. Put the butter in the bowls and place in microwave. Set microwave for 1 minute and start.
4. When popping slows to about once every two seconds, turn off popper and pour popcorn into bowl in small batches, a cup or so at a time, salting lightly and mixing as you add each portion.
5. Clap the two big bowls together and shake to make sure everything is well mixed.
6. Serve while still warm, you can clean up later.

Serve with napkins — and get this, it's important — give everyone a soup spoon. It's geeky, I know, but once you eat popcorn with a spoon, you'll be hooked.

Food and Cooking Magazines

Here are my favorite magazines on food and cooking, listed with their special strengths:

Cook's Illustrated

If I could only have one, this would be it. It's for food geeks.

Their primary strength is that they take a dish -- meat loaf, lasagna, pound cake, whatever -- and develop the perfect recipe and methods. They study dozens or hundreds of recipes, test countless variations, and tweak absolutely everything. They might cook something dozens of times as they home is on perfection. They also test shortcuts (do you really have to cream the butter and the sugar? How long do you really have to marinate? Can inexpensive olive oil work in this dish?), so they are not just optimizing the dish, they also have efficiency in mind.

They also do excellent reviews of ingredients and equipment and carry plenty of technique articles.

Rating: A+, must-have. http://www.cooksillustrated.com/

Fine Cooking

Fine Cooking is much like Cook's Illustrated but they are not as exhaustive in their testing. But they have beautiful color photography (Cook's is mostly monochrome), ads, and a different creative slant.

Rating: A, I would miss this if it were gone. http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/index.asp

Cooking Light

Fat, shiny magazine with good photography and very clear recipes, plus good technique articles, with a unique benefit: The recipes here are healthy. Not bean-sprout, fat-free, tastes like negative-nothing, healthy, though -- these articles strike a balance between taste and health. They do a great job.

Rating: A, Very good at what they do. http://www.cookinglight.com/cooking/

Everyday Food

Do you hate Martha Stewart? I understand but even critics have to acknowledge she does a very good job and this new magazine from her empire is excellent. The size of a paperback novel, this monthly keeps it fast and easy. Each recipe is presented on one or two pages — no long articles here — and always with a color photo. The recipes are very well-developed and never complex. The dishes are flavorful and surprisingly refined, given their simplicity.

Not a lot of technique, not a lot of detail, nothing technical — but that's not what this one is for.

Rating: A-, Simple and practical, for real food that real people would make. http://www.marthastewart.com/everydayfood/

Gourmet and Bon Appetit

Two magazines in one review? Well, these two sister magazines (from the same publisher) are just so similar! Fat and glossy, these are the higher-end of my spectrum. The articles are very good, often great, but I find fewer items here I would actually want to make. A lot I would want to eat — if someone made them for me. High-class appeal. Dare I say snobby? A little.

Rating: B+. Grand and refined, but maybe too grand for me. http://www.epicurious.com/gourmet/ ; http://www.epicurious.com/bonappetit/

Cooking Without Recipes: Carrot Soup Case Study

Sometimes the best way to cook without a recipe is to start with many recipes. Today's case in point: Carrot Soup.

I had a bag of nice, fresh carrots and a Sunday afternoon. I have made some vegetable soups I really enjoy -- such as vichyssoise and, most recently, the creamy celery soup that has no cream -- but never carrot. So I went online (see the article here, "Finding Recipes Online") and found 25,000 recipes for carrot soup. That's useful.

The way I like to treat online recipes is to use then to draw a consensus. I opened up each interesting recipe link in a separate tab (command-click (Mac) or control-click (Windows) the links). I went to a favorite site (epicurious.com), searched there and sorted by "fork rating." I opened up the most interesting recipes in tabs.

Now I had a dozen or so tabs. I clicked across them, scanning the ingredients for commonalities — that tells me what cooks like with carrots. Potatoes — interesting thought, since that makes the soup not so carroty. Many recipes include ginger, thyme, or curry powder. Cumin — reminds me of a favorite carrot dish I make, so I know cumin and carrots are flavor buddies. Leeks: I happen to have some all cut and trimmed (extras from a lamb braise I made yesterday), so will definitely include those. Toasted pecans — I make a note to use nuts as a garnish.

I discarded recipes that did not appeal to me today, such as the one with the cream and cheese (too fatty), the one that uses a base of canned cream-of-something soup, and the one that calls for (ack) boullion cubes. Then I review the rest until a mental picture materializes. Here is my no-recipe soup, followed by the recipe for what I made today.

No-Recipe Pureed Vegetable Soup

This is a creamy puree-style vegetable soup. You can use root vegetables such as carrots, rutabaga, and potatoes. You can also use squash. One hint, though: Pay attention to color. If you use orange vegetables, avoid green ones because green and orange make gray. Tastes fine but doesn't look so nice.

Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a heavy 4-8 qt pot. Add aromatic vegetables like onion, leeks, shallots. Cook to brown lightly and add garlic  at the end so it won't brown much (because browned garlic is bitter). Add chicken or vegetable stock and cut up vegetables. Add compatible herbs and flavorful liquids like sherry. Simmer for 30 minutes and puree. Add salt and pepper to taste (you want to barley be able to taste the salt). Serve with a garnish of toasted nuts or curls of cheese or very thin slices of whatever vegetables are in the stock.

Today's Carrot Soup

Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a heavy 4-8 qt pot. Add

1/2  c. onion, chopped
1 c. leeks, using only the white and pale portions, chopped into 1-inch pieces

Saute until tender.

Add

5 carrots, peeled and chopped into 1/2 to 1-inch pieces
1 potato, chopped into 1/2 to 1-inch pieces
1/2 c. chopped fennel
1 tbsp. finely grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp. toasted and ground cumin seeds

2 c. chicken stock

Simmer 30 minutes, puree. Add milk, water, or chicken stock to desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste (so you can barely taste the salt). 

This "Cocoa Syrup" is the Best Chocolate Syrup You Have Ever Tasted

Homemade cocoa syrup is far superior to anything you can buy and it takes minutes to make. Here is my formula. I started with Alton Brown's cocoa syrup recipe and refined it. It was already excellent — now I think it's perfect! If you want to see what I did and why, read the Notes.

Why "cocoa syrup" rather than the more common term, "chocolate syrup"? "Chocolate syrup" is a misnomer. Chocolate consists of fat (cocoa butter) plus solids (cocoa powder). The syrup is made from cocoa, not chocolate.

Cocoa Syrup

1-1/4 cups water 
2 cups sugar
1-1/2 cups Dutch-processed cocoa — Callebaut highly recommended. See Notes.
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt (or a pinch of table salt)
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients except vanilla in a 2-3 quart pot and bring to a boil. Immediately lower to a simmer and whisk until everything is dissolved. Cook just a few minutes, until slightly thickened (see notes). Stir in vanilla extract at the very end. Cool to room temperature. Strain into squeeze bottles.

Notes

• After it cools, it thickens, so do not reduce it very far. The first time I made this, I it was too thick and tasted a little cooked (like pudding). The second time, I reduced it for just a few minutes and it was much better. Cook gently and for no more than five minutes.
• I tried this with several brands of cocoa. For the first batch, I used Droste. Very good. The next batch used Perignotti. Better! For the most recent batch, I used Callebaut, the cocoa that won the top ranking in Cook's Illustrated's test. OMG!! This is the best. Unfortunately, Callebaut is hard to find. I bought it by mail from Chocosphere. Ugly website but their service was great. $25 for a 2.2 lb (1 kg) bag.
• You probably know chocolate syrup is a "fat free" food. Well, not when you use premium cocoa. Callebaut is 22-24% fat. That's not very important since you only use a tablespoon or so at a time. A serving probably contains a gram or so of fat, or 1-2% of your daily value.
• Here are the adjustments I made to the original recipe. The original was too sweet and tended to crystallize when stored in the refrigerator, so I cut back on the water (from 1-1/2 to 1-1/4 c) and sugar (from 3 to 2 cups). The corn syrup stayed the same, increasing its percentage in the mixture and that eliminated crystallization. I also halved the salt.

Creamy Celery Soup Without the Cream

"Celery soup?" I thought. Well, why not? Fresh celery flavor in blend so creamy, you'll think it has cream — but this is a healthy, fresh-tasting soup that is good for you. The original recipe is from "Everyday Food" magazine but I substituted chicken broth for half the water. The original recipe said it feeds 4 but it makes 6 servings.

Creamy Celery Soup

Serves 6

2 T butter
1-1/2 lbs celery (12-15 large stalks) sliced into 1/2-1-inch pieces. Save a few leaves for garnish.
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 potato (8-10 ox) in 1/2-inch cubes
3 c chicken broth (optional)
1 T lemon juice

Heat butter in large saucepan and add vegetables. Cook until they start to soften. Add 3 c. water with the chicken broth or, if you want a simpler, fresher taste, use 6 c water. Bring to boil, then lower heat and simmer 20 minutes.

Puree in blender or food processor, or using hand blender. Add lemon juice, season with salt to taste (go light -- you should barely taste the salt.

Garnish with celery leaves.

Duck Confit, Simplified

Confit (pronounced cone-fee, but you scarcely pronounce the n) is a method for preserving meat by salting it, then poaching it for a couple of hours in duck fat. Most of the water sizzles away and what's left is made inhospitable to bacteria by the salt content.

I am posting it here because duck leg confit is a principle ingredient in cassoulet.

I decided to make my own and followed this procedure but in the end, I would not do it again because excellent confit is now available from Grimaud Farms (see the Cassoulet Part 1 article for the details.)

If you are not preserving, you can take several shortcuts and the result will be a flavorful confit, suitable for use in the next day's cassoulet.

Please note that this confit will not keep for months as a real confit will. A preserving confit uses twice as much salt and requires that you wait for water to drain away. It leaves the meat under a layer of an inch or more of fat.

Simplified Confit

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Salt duck with 1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt per pound of duck and sprinkle with a mix of herbs such as cumin, coriander, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, bay, and thyme. Refrigerate for a few hours.

Drain any water that comes out of the meat and place duck legs in the smallest pan that will fit. Add 6 whole, peeled cloves of garlic per leg. Add enough duck fat to cover.

In my case, I used a 1-1/4 tsp of salt on two duck legs (which weighed 0.86 lb) with 12 cloves and a random mix of the herbs.

Bake in oven for a couple of hours, until the cloves are golden. Drain the excess fat and remove to refrigerator overnight.

Heavily adapted from Madeliene Kamman's wonderful book, The New Making of a Cook. Also see: http://www.ochef.com/593.htm

Hammersley's Cassoulet

Related articles:

• Confit
• Adventures in Cassoulet

Hammersley's Cassoulet: A Wisely Simplified Version of the Complex Classic

I always wanted to make cassoulet but the real thing is a multiple day affair and short-cut recipes I found were always too short. This recipe strikes the balance I wanted — easier but not sacrificing the too much of the complexity the dish demands. See the story of my cassoulet adventure.

Here is the recipe I used. This is the recipe as I found it, with a few minor edits, mainly to clarify a step here and there. When I made it in Dec 2005, I halved it.


Hammersley's Cassoulet
Serves 10

2	pounds flageolet, Great Northern or cannellini beans, soaked overnight and drained
1-1.5	pounds boneless pork butt (shoulder), cut into pieces about 2 inches square
1	teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4	cup duck fat or vegetable oil
1	medium onion, cut into medium dice
8-10	whole garlic cloves
1	carrot, cut into medium dice
1/2	pound sliced bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (I used twice as much but heavily trimmed the fat, ending up with about the same amount, but all lean. Not because I have an aversion to fat; just that this didn't need any more.)
1	teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1	teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram
1	14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained (about 1 1/2 cups)
2	cups dry white wine
6	cups chicken broth (Recommended: Low-Sodium Swanson's)
1-1.5	pounds sweet Italian sausage
4	duck confit legs, cut at the joint between the thigh and drumstick, skin and excess fat removed (see Note 1)
4	cups coarse bread crumbs (Original recipe called for two cups. I wanted more. Suggestion: Make your own by whirring sourdough bread in the food processor to provide coarse, ragged crumbs. Then dry in the oven for ten minutes while the cassoulet bakes.)
	(Original recipe called for 1 tblsp kosher salt, which I omitted).

Put beans in large pot and add enough water to cover by about 3 inches. Bring to boil. Lower heat to simmer and cook beans, skimming off any foam that comes to surface, 30 minutes. Drain in colander and rinse under cold running water. (Beans will not be cooked through at this point.)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Season pork with pepper. Heat duck fat or vegetable oil over medium-high heat in very large (at least 6 1/2 quarts), ovenproof pot with a heavy base. Add pork and brown well on all sides, about 10 minutes total.

Add onion, garlic, carrot and bacon, and cook, stirring, until bacon has rendered some of its fat but has not colored, about 5 minutes. Add thyme, marjoram, drained beans, tomatoes, white wine and chicken broth. Bring to boil, cover and cook in the oven 1 1/2 hours.

While cassoulet is cooking, put sausages in high-sided saute pan with an inch or two of water. Bring to boil and then lower heat to a simmer. Cook until meat is cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes. Allow sausages to cool and then cut into 1-inch pieces. Refrigerate until ready to use.

After 1 1/2 hours, uncover cassoulet; it should still look quite soupy. Taste and add salt if needed but use a light touch since the salt will concentrate as the liquid evaporates. Continue to cook, uncovered, until pork and beans are very tender, 30 to 45 minutes more. The cassoulet should appear drier and you should see mostly beans, vegetables and meat. If you plan to serve the cassoulet on the same day that you've made it, and there is still a lot of liquid left, bring cassoulet to a boil on stove and let it boil for a few minutes. This is important; if the cassoulet is too wet, the bread-crumb topping will not get crisp. However, if you are making the cassoulet ahead, it's good to have some excess liquid, as the beans will have more time to absorb it and the extra liquid will keep everything moist.

If you are making the cassoulet ahead of time, stop now and see Note 2.

If you are serving the cassoulet on the same day you make it, add duck legs and sausage to the pot and stir gently with wooden spoon so as not to break up the beans and meat. Allow cassoulet to cool for a half hour. (This cooling will allow a thin skin to form on surface of cassoulet, which will help keep the bread crumbs afloat.)

Sprinkle top of cassoulet with a thin layer of bread crumbs. Raise oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook cassoulet, uncovered, until sausage and duck heat through and bread crumbs form a golden brown crust, 20 to 30 minutes.

Note 1: Duck confit is duck poached in duck fat -- learn more about confit, including how to make your own. But happily, excellent confit is now available online, at some upscale grocery stores and at several Bay Area farmers markets. The best is Grimaud Farms, available at Whole Foods and other upscale markets in the Bay Area; or by mail-order from Grimaud. The original recipe called for four duck legs confit; for my half-recipe, I used a pack of 6 Grimaud's Muscovy drumettes. They were great.

Note 2: If you are making the cassoulet ahead by a day or two, allow beans and pork to cool and then refrigerate. The day of serving, remove cassoulet from the fridge a couple of hours before dinner and allow to come closer to room temperature. Heat oven to 350 degrees and bake about 30 minutes to rewarm it, then pick up the recipe instructions at the point that the duck legs and sausage are added.

---

From: "Bistro Cooking at Home,'' by Gordon Hammersley (Broadway)

Gourmet Beanie Weenies

Don't ask me why I thought this would be a good idea.

You know Beanie Weenies? It's a childhood food, like macaroni and cheese, that kids like. It's canned baked beans with slices of hot dogs in it. That's it. And as if that's not easy enough, you can actually buy it, ready to go, for those who find slicing hot dogs too much work.

I was going to a pot luck -- a guy's party -- and thought it might be cool to do a tasty gourmet version. Plus, I had bought two packs of dogs and already had two packs, so needed to clear the freezer of excess sausageness.

I didn't expect much but you know what? It's good.

Gourmet Beanie Weenies
Serves 6

3 high-quality hot dogs (e.g. Nathan's, Boar's Head)
3 sausages (e.g. Aidell's)
1 can white beans
1 can red kidney beans
1/4 c finely chopped green onion
4 strips cooked bacon

Sauce (see note):
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c dijon mustard
1-1/2 tsp finely grated fresh ginger  (Microplane grater is a good way to do this)
1 tsp horseradish

Note: I didn't measure. These amounts are a guess. You want the brown sugar and mustard to form a thick paste, adjust other ingredients to taste. You want it distinctly mustardy and the horseradish and ginger should be noticeable but not strong.

1. Cook the dogs (boil for 1 minute, turn off heat, let it sit).

2. Cook the bacon. (Easy way: Place on rack over a pan and bake at 400 degrees until very crispy, about 15 minutes). After it cools, crumble coarsely.

3. Drain and rinse beans, salt them lightly, and add to a 9x9 glass baking dish. I used a bench scraper to arrange the beans in stripes -- a stripe of white beans, a stripe of red ones, repeating to make a total of six stripes. Just because it was pretty. Sprinkle green onions over the top.

4. Mix the sauce incredients.

5. If you will not be serving it today, you can refrigerate everything and assemble before serving. Place sauce in a zip-top bag. Then when you are ready:

6. Cut dogs and sausages into 1/2-3/4-inch slices. Heat in microwave.

7. Snip corner off bag and squirt sauce over beans in pretty pattern. Use quite a lot of sauce. Cover with plastic wrap and heat in microwave.

8. Add dogs and squirt more sauce. Sprinkle bacon over top.

The only thing I did not like was that the dogs hide the pretty arrangement of the beans. If people are there when you mix it all in, they see it but I am thinking it would be better to arrange the dog slices on the bottom, then lay in the beans. Or use a larger pan (9 by 13) and put the dogs in rows, along with the beans, or maybe the dogs around the edge and the beans in stripes in the middle area.

This would be a cool fourth of July dish if you do the white and red beans as flag stripes and the dogs as the star field. Of course, the dogs are not exactly blue. Hopefully.

If you're Canadian, you could put the dogs around the edge and make your beans in the shape of a maple leaf.

Couscous Salad

This is easy and gets rave reviews. With its very nice blend of flavors, this illustrates how slight additions make flavors work together. Taste it before and after you add the salt and the vinegar. The difference is very clear, yet you can't really identify salt or vinegar flavors.

I put this dish together after having something similar at someone else's house. The amounts are approximate -- this is a dish to taste and tweak as you go!

Couscous Salad

2 cups of cooked couscous

1/4-1/2 c of roughly chopped dried apricots
2-4T of raisins
1/4-1/2 c. chopped parsley (cilantro would be good, but different).
1/4-1/2 c pine nuts. (Toast the pine nuts lightly in a dry pan to add flavor)
2T or so olive oil -- enough to add flavor and keep grains from sticking together

Combine all ingredients. . Add salt to taste (enough to bring up the flavor, not enough to taste salt) and a dash of wine vinegar (enough to brighten the flavor, not so much that you taste vinegar).

Refrigerate overnight (this lets the flavors meld and lets the apricots and raisins hydrate). It's best to bring to room temperature before serving.