February 14, 2011
Sometimes I love Daring Cooks’ challenges, and sometimes I’m just “meh” about them. This month, however, I knew right away that it was going to be a lot of fun. We often make soba noodles in our house since we learned where to find 100% buckwheat noodles, and both of us love tempura (deep fried anything is usually a winner with most people).
I originally had a lot of commentary to say (I always have lots of commentary), but today I am going to keep things short. I had a crazy busy trip to Zürich last week, and did a lot of deep thinking that I still have to process in my head a bit. So instead, I will leave you with some photos of beautiful Zürich and the lake – Zürich really has nothing to do with the dish of this Daring Cooks’ post, other than the fact that I did have sushi one night while I was there, and well, that’s Japanese too, haha…. yeah a bit of a stretch eh? Well sometimes we are stretched a bit thin – a bit like these soba noodles (ok, that was a terrible connection I know!) – so you’ll have to bear with me for the moment and just admire some pretty photos, and I’ll leave my comments on the recipe version I made below as well….
January 14, 2011
A dish that flies in the face of 90% of New Year’s resolutions made and broken every January, cassoulet is essentially an intense and rich French version of good old pork & beans. This challenge had two techniques to learn – the art of making a confit (the ages-old preservation method of slow-cooking meat immersed in fat) and creating a version of the famed several-days-to-prepare dish from the Southwest of France, cassoulet. I had never really known what confit exactly was before, and was really excited to learn yet another new method thanks to the wonderful Daring Cooks. Unfortunately, I think I confited (is that a word?) my entire cassoulet!
