Chana Masala

A pretty good vegetarian dish. It came together pretty quickly and I added more spice and an only one Thai chilie.

So, um wow. This was fantastic. I had some guanciale that I had dropped in the freezer quite a bit ago (Red Table Meats). I cut off about half of it and then cut them into small pieces. I used part of a segment of hot Italian sausage from Crooked Gap. I made a bit of adjustments, I added a bit more tomato sauce, since I couldn’t find tomato pasta, and used a whole pound of rigatoni. This tasted really good, highlighting the guanciale, and just making a really good dish as a whole.

Macaroni and Cheese with Kielbasa and Mustard

Since I was using Kielbasa later in the week, I thought this would also make sense. I know mac & cheese is always popular in this house, so this seems like a good variation. I was trying to finish something and AMS was going to start, so I had to rush and get this done, so I ended up using two pots, instead of one so I could cut the time down. I got it in the oven, baked off and served with plenty of time to watch Man on Fire.

It was pretty good, I think adding some dash of hot sauce makes it even better.

Simplified Cassoulet with Pork and Kielbasa

So I had a plan to make something like this for a Movie night, years ago. The directions were long, and not divided up into enough steps, which is a common problem with Cooks Illustrated, but they had you mostly constantly working during the entire set. I had the rest of the pound of Kielbasa, some CostCo chicken, a Lucky George pork roast, from the freezer. I had bought a bag of flageolet beans from the internet to make the dish.

I started the chicken brining, thinking I’d end up with one pot, I put the beans in my pretty pot to heat. I made the bread crumbs…where I was supposed to make croutons. But that didn’t work out cause I didn’t read that well, and the mac & cheese earlier in the week, it sounds like the same thing so I basically did that.

The rest of it I followed pretty closely. I had to make some adjustments on the herbs, but not too much. But it kept me up and working until the end where the beans were finishing their cooking and the meat and stock were finishing there’s.

Once combined and in the stove, is when Ir really noticed that I should’ve made croutons, but in the oven for a bit, then rested. I started just a little after one and finished a little before 5.

This was worth the effort. I served with the rest of the wine that I used in the dish, and also a surprisingly dry and delightful Prosecco (yes really).