OK that’s a misleading title.

It’s traditional in that I was trying to use up things I had in the fridge, and as ridiculous as that sounds, confit ducks legs was one of those things. I made a batch a while back and even gave some out as gifts (something I’m horrified by now) and when my wife, and I went to eat a bag (i made them using Thomas Keller’s SV recipe) they were inedibly salty, which is odd because I’ve made that recipe a number of times before and it was flawless.

So, I’ve got two bags (with two duck leg quarters each) of inedibly salty confit, which I didn’t want to go to waste (duck fat doesn’t grow on trees you know), so I figured I’d use them up in a cassoulet just like in the southwest of France would use up the duck they had (confit so it wouldn’t spoil then canned cassoulet).

Of course, I couldn’t just leave it at that, and I had to go get the toulouse sausage from Surfas, and beans from the store and chicken thighs (see why on this excellent article from Serious Eats Food lab http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/10/how-to-make-cassoulet-chicken-food-lab-french-casserole.html).

I warmed up the legs and broke the meat apart and added hot water to reconstitute and pull some of the salt from the meat (which I then used to brine the beans). Then used the bones and some browned roast chicken bits to make a pressure cooked stock, which I used for the cassoulet. After frying up some lardons from the danish bacon we have in the freezer (we buy by the slab), I added it all together.

I never really got that crust, whether the reason being that I didn’t have enough gelatin (though the cassoulet did gelatinized when it was in the fridge), or because the oven went on the fritz when the power went out in our neighborhood. Alas, crusty it was not, but tasty it still was (and a bit salty if I’m honest…stupid confit duck quarters)…

Cor

[Note: this is from a draft started in November 2014 and I am trying to finish it now the best I can]

Well the canelé madness has continued. I read the entirety of this crazy chowhound thread (multi-thread, multi page http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/738446), and then Paula Wolfert’s recipe (egullet member) from her book (http://www.paula-wolfert.com/recipes/canele.html), Pim from (http://chezpim.com/bake/canele-recipe-method). I also did multi-variations and combined techniques for each of these. The paula wolfert version was a bit eggy for my taste though I did like the refined bakers sugar since it requires less stirring to incorporate, and the Pim version uses powdered sugar, which contains cornstarch and I didn’t like the way it affected the texture of the “custard” – made it set more flanish.

I’ve roped in my friends from culinary school, Joanna of http://www.chefjoannas.com/, who was in France with me, to go on a tasting to Bouchon Bakery (this is actually where she first told me about her energy bars that I am dying to try). Of course they were near perfect (called ahead and got them about an hour after baking so they crust was set but not starting to soften…sugar is hygroscopic you know). The crust was perfect, bitter, crunchy– perhaps using wax (look in the divot on the dome). The interior was the texture that I’ve been hearing described but not really sure what it meant having never had a good one. It was almost like just underdone cake batter. Moist but not springy, which is what I think the flannish texture comes from (too much overworking of the gluten in mixing or egg protein). Could have been a bit more boozy, which is strange because I’m not a rum fan, but these somehow need them.

Finally, after a lot more variants: recipes, temperature, and cook time, I decided to try the version my friend, Amanda, gave me when she let me borrow her molds in the first place. Amanda used to be the head pastry chef of a very well known bakery in NYC that has closed (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say which). Of course they were damn near perfect and I can’t believe that I’ve been sitting on it this whole time.  ugh.

Expect a post specifically about them in the future, but in the meantime here is the canele from la boulange, which has a pretty decent one if you ask for it not to be re-heated and order it before 10am before the crusts can start to get chewy…

Cor

I just read this article:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/05/05/harvard-class-cooks-ultimate-bbq-smoker/0O4fLQ0rbt9qMGsllPoTjK/story.html?p1=Article_Trending_Most_Viewed

and found it to be really interesting idea. I’m curious because all of the historical bbq joints (I’m reading aaron franklin’s book right now *) seem to use side fireboxes where you do full combustion of wood which is supposed to achieve a much cleaner smoke and then the amount of “heat” allowed in the cook chamber is controlled in various ways vs. these upright drum smoker variants where the heat and smoke are the same area as the meat and you have to control the heat in the smoking chamber by controlling combustion which results in smoking via smoldering (supposedly a dirtier tasting smoke flavor).

I wonder if the nerds (my highest commendation) who took this, the greatest class in history, were thinking in terms of flavor or mostly temperature control from a scientific standpoint (like i have been since basically about two weeks ago).