Date I made this recipe:
January 10, 2016 – Cold Weather food
The One-Dish Cookbook
by Robert Ackart
Published by: Grosset
& Dunlap Publishers
© 1975
Purchased at Falling Rock Cafe, Munising , Michigan
Recipe: Ground Meat and Bean Cassoulet (read: fancy chili) – p. 165
"I thought we were having chili," said Andy. "Well...we are, it's just "fancy
chili."
Slight misnomer, that.
This recipe is called "cassoulet" and a cassoulet is a (fancy)
French term for "bean bake."
Missing from this particular "cassoulet" though, are pretty
much most of the ingredients that make
it a cassoulet: duck, pork sausages, and
the like.
And so we're back to "fancy" chili.
Going into the home stretch on Sunday, I had no intention of
making chili. But when the weather
turned nippy, I abandoned my plans to make a lighter, Asian menu in favor of
something substantial. Chili came to
mind to match the chilly weather but it's not like I have a whole lot of
"chili" cookbooks sitting around and so finding a recipe for that required
a bit of thinking and searching.
So I pulled up the spreadsheet I used to track all my
cookbooks and searched for "one pot" and "casserole" and
sure enough, I found this book and this recipe.
Make that two recipes.
The main recipe – the one I made – was for Ground Meat and Bean Cassoulet - but
right below that was another recipe was Chili
Pie that used some of the same ingredients.
The "cassoulet" used thyme and thyme is not what we are used
to in a chili recipe. The Chili Pie used traditional chili powder
and was topped with a corn-bread topping making it more of the chili we
Americans are used to but I wasn't all that interested in the topping. And so at the last minute, I erred on the
side of the fancy baked bean... chili and left the Chili Pie for another
day. Don't cry though, as below are both
recipes for your reading and cooking enjoyment.
This cookbook has a wide variety of meals that will likely
satisfy whatever craving you have. The
cover promises it contains "over 250
delicious and economical meals to please family or guests, featuring less
expensive cuts of meat, poultry, fish" and (and I love this) "suitable side dishes."
Well I would so love to know what an "unsuitable"
side dish is but we don't have time.
The author includes quite a few recipes by country of
origin, e.g. France , Germany ,
etc. although I'm not too sure that they are all the real deal. In 1975, when this book was written, let's
just say that Americans more or less winged a lot of foreign dishes,
substituting local ingredients for those that would require a trip oversees and
through customs. Hilariously though,
there is a French recipe for tripe on p.
227. I passed on that one. You're welcome. (Do note that tripe is a dish favored almost
everywhere else in the world except here...and if you ask me, there's a reason
for that!)
At any rate, because you will use canned beans for this
recipe instead of soaking them overnight, this is a pretty easy dish to
make. You just brown the meat, mix it
with the beans and spices and bake. And
it was tasty to boot. But it definitely
failed Andy's "chili" test, to wit:
"Shouldn't a chili be a little bit more...soupy?"
Yes, it should, and it would have been had I not made a
fancy chili masquerading as a cassoulet masquerading as fancy baked beans!
Ground Meat and Bean
Casserole – serves 6 generously (Doubles/Refrigerates/Freezes)
6 slices bacon, diced
1 ½ pounds meat-loaf mix (beef, pork, veal)
1 20-ounce can red kidney beans
1 20-ounce can white kidney beans (Cannellini)
1 1-pound can stewed tomatoes
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Reserved bacon bits
In a flameproof casserole, cook the bacon until it is golden
but not fully crisp; remove it to absorbent paper and reserve it.
In the remaining fat, brown the meat; discard the drippings.
In a colander, drain the beans; rinse them with cold
water. Add them to the meat, together
with the tomatoes, parsley, and seasonings.
Gently stir the mixture to blend it.
Over the top, sprinkle the reserved bacon.
Bake the casserole, covered, at 350F for 1 hour.
Bonus recipe: Chili Pie
6 slices bacon
1 ½ pounds meat-loaf mix
2 onions, chopped
1 20-ounce can red kidney beans
1 1-pound can stewed tomatoes
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Reserved bacon bits
1 8 ½-ounce package corn-bread mix (prepare as directed)
In a flameproof casserole, cook the bacon until it is golden
but not fully crisp; remove it to absorbent paper and reserve it.
In the remaining fat, brown the meat and the onions. Discard the drippings.
In a colander, drain the can of kidney beans; rinse them
with cold water. Add them to the meat
and onions, together with the tomatoes, parsley and spices. Simmer the meat mixture for 15 minutes.
Over the top arrange the dough from an 8 ½-ounce package of
corn-bread mix, prepared as directed on the packet.
Bake the chili pie at 450F for 20 minutes, or until the corn
bread is golden brown.
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