Posted by johngl
What do you do when you’ve spent the better part of a holiday weekend preparing for Paella Fest, have some leftover beans, rabbit, and Spanish chorizo sausage, and don’t feel like spending a lot of time cooking?
Well, when your in this house, you’ve created a perfect excuse for having cassoulet.
In this case, it’s a purely assembled dish taking either leftovers from the Paella Fest (beans, rabbit, Spanish chorizo) and combining it with pantry items (roasted garlic, caramelized onion) and baking it.
On the top right are the pantry items: roasted garlic and caramelized onions. Going on around down is the Spanish chorizo (Spanish chorizo, unlike Mexican chorizo, is a dry sausage), then to the lower left to the leftover bunny meat. I think everyone can see the beans.
And the assembly begins:
Butter the inside of the ramekin…
and put down a layer of beans to get good coverage of the bottom. Cover that with rabbit meat as shown above. Sprinkle with salt and pepper if you want.
Schmear on a good coating of caramelized onion and roasted garlic (I keep both of these on hand nearly all the time).
Cut up the chorizo and then chop it up in a food processor…
then spread it evenly over the onions and garlic. Get another layer of rabbit on top of that, then top with more beans.
Now, just take some stock — mine was chicken, duck, and rabbit stock (another paella leftover) — and top it off.
All you’ve got to do is just pop this into a 350° oven for a couple of hours. That’s it.
The rabbit was used up, the beans, too. All you had to do was assemble, and it was food for you!
All the flavors kinda blend together: the spicy chorizo, the sweet caramelized onion and garlic, the tasty rabbit and creamy beans, topped with some crunchy stuff.
So, what wine goes with this concoction? Hmmm.
How about a 2007 Rothschild White Bordeaux? This 60% Semillon and 40% Sauvignon Blanc blend was just about perfect. Well-balanced with crisp acidity, this amazingly inexpensive wine was crystal-clear and a wheat-straw yellow color. Giving off an initial citrus scent punctuated by lychee, the palate is then hit with grapefruit and lime as it finishes.
Both the most glorious spousal unit and I were surprised at just how well the dinner and the wine paired. The brightness off the wine offset the fats and spicy sausage very nicely.
I’ll take these leftovers any time!
