I've been blessed with so many food gifts that I'm pacing my consumption. Christmas Day should be a riot in Bulacan as always so I'm not even thinking of saving any of these lovely gifts for Christmas Day itself. My family has an odd tradition of celebrating Noche Buena at the Peninsula Lobby (shows you how much my parents love to cook, haha) so I won't need to save anything for that night either.
Instead, we are celebrating every night we have an opportunity to all be together, like tonight! Surprisingly, none of us had plans this Saturday night. So my sister Goldee whipped up a Moroccan chicken recipe inspired by her latest issue of Martha Stewart's magazine.
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| Goldee's Moro-Moro-ccan Chicken from Martha Stewart recipe |
Meanwhile, I couldn't wait to open Dr. Teyet's Pascual gift to me: Cassoulet de Canard, described at this site like so: "a homemade cassoulet is a labor of love, and many hours (Julia Child recommends two to three days!)". My first problem, though, was how to open the jar. You would think it was easy enough to open this flip top but it's not! There's this darn orange vacuum seal that is effing impossible to penetrate! I tried the instructions on this site which actually had a picture of this very product. It said to snip off the tongue of that orange seal, which I did. Still, no success in opening the bottle. I proceeded to the next step: "If it does not, insert a small knife or screwdriver at the point where you snipped off the tongue and twist gently. I tried a small knife, nada. I tried the scissors that I used to clip the tongue - it broke! Finally, my dad found his old reliable screwdriver from his toolbox. And finally, after an HOUR, we were on our way to having this duck for dinner!
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| Straight from the jar |
The instructions were simple enough, once you get past this French: "versez le cassoulet dans un plat allant au four traditionnel le plus large possible de facon a l'etaler en couche moyennement epaisse, Degagez les morceaux de viande au-dessus des haricots. Prechauffez le four (th.6), laissez chauffer le cassoulet 15 a 20 mn. Terminez sous le gril 5 mn. Servez-le tres chaud." Thank God for google translate, which showed this: "Pour the stew into a baking dish traditional broadest possible so as to moderately thick into a layer, release the meat over beans. Preheat the oven (gas mark 6), let the cassoulet heat 15 to 20 minutes. Finish under the broiler 5 minutes. Serve very hot."
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| Cooked version |
The duck was amazingly soft once you get past that crust which I believe is a result of pre-heating the oven for too long (the 30 mins became an hour because we couldn't open the darn bottle!). The sausage was ... ok lang.
I think like good callos, this is the kind of dish that MUST be labored over and not just appreciated straight from the jar.
Honestly, I'd have pochero over this baby any day. But I was grateful for the educational experience!
