How did yours turn out?
They are definitely more crunchy than flaky š«¤
Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans
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Paul Hollywood is a smug git, but this recipe of his is a good'un
Lardy cake recipe
This recipe has a generous amount of dried fruit in a rich dough thatās lighter and less sweet than most shop-bought lardy cakes.
www.bbc.co.uk
Jacks' cakes were never going to have the right layered consistency because all the lard goes in at once and is evenly worked through all the flour, so you don't get the layers/lamination.
Hollywood (the smug git) has the proper instructions to make a dough, then place 1/3 of the fat atop that dough, and fold, roll and repeat, so you get variation of dough, lard, dough, lard, etc, and it cooks to produce the lovely flaky layers.
Takes a bit longer, and takes a bit more practise, but Hollywoods' method definitely makes a better end result (the smug git).
made no-cook pasta from TCC. When Jack is travelling for work and has no access to cooking facilities (or if she is feeling sad) this is what Jack makes, apparently.
The recipe. Not sure if the spoilers have worked[
ISPOILER]
Mostly when I stay places there is either a restaurant, or at least a vending machine that sells pot noodles. But, let's pretend there isn't
[/ISPOILER]
The ingredients and cooking conditions
Because Jack used this recipe for travelling, I tried to replicate hotel conditions.
I had a freezer bag (free) but I had to WALK to Lidl to buy some pasta because we only had fancy wholemeal pasta, and I didn't think I that was in the spirit of things. So pasta 69 pence, plus the bamboo bathmat I bought while I was there, Ā£10.68. I carefully, gently weighed out 75 grams of pasta to put in the freezer bag.
Jack said you could add anything, so I gathered all the sachets I could find, including one marked 'do not eat'. I could not find any dried cheese, so I used a slice of processed cheese painstakingly cut in to little pieces.
I had a kettle and spoon. The largest mug I could find was problematic, as most hotels do not give you a choice of mugs. I found a mug that replicated the size of mugs I would expect to find in a hotel room
The recipe
Simplicity itself. I put the pasta in the cup, boiled the kettle, added water, stirred carefully. and quickly popped a saucer over the top.
I waited ten minutes.
Hmm, raw pasta.
Still, Jack did say it may take more time. Jack said to top up the boiling water so I did this, I drained the cooling water first. Jack didn't say to do this, but I thought I'd better.
I waited another ten minutes. I ate the peanut butter. I uncovered the pasta. Still raw. Maybe I hadn't stirred carefully enough, or I didn't cover the pasta quickly enough. Who knows?
I rinsed and repeated, ate the cheese, got distracted for 20 minutes.
Result! It was cooked. I added the marmite and stirred and consumed it like a greedy slop goblin.
The conclusion, an overall 2. It was edible, but not nice, the portion you could fit in to a hotel cup wouldn't fill you up, and it took ages to make. In fact My husband came home before I could hide the evidence.
Conversation as follows.
H: you have bought pasta. Why have you bought pasta, we already have some nice pasta. This doesn't look like nice pasta.
Me: It was for an experiment, I was making pasta in a mug.
H 'sniggers' are you trying to write a book of stupid ideas?
Me: No, it was a recipe from that Tin Can Cook book.
H:But there aren't any tins in it
The recipe. Not sure if the spoilers have worked[
ISPOILER]
Mostly when I stay places there is either a restaurant, or at least a vending machine that sells pot noodles. But, let's pretend there isn't
[/ISPOILER]
The ingredients and cooking conditions
Because Jack used this recipe for travelling, I tried to replicate hotel conditions.
I had a freezer bag (free) but I had to WALK to Lidl to buy some pasta because we only had fancy wholemeal pasta, and I didn't think I that was in the spirit of things. So pasta 69 pence, plus the bamboo bathmat I bought while I was there, Ā£10.68. I carefully, gently weighed out 75 grams of pasta to put in the freezer bag.
Jack said you could add anything, so I gathered all the sachets I could find, including one marked 'do not eat'. I could not find any dried cheese, so I used a slice of processed cheese painstakingly cut in to little pieces.
I had a kettle and spoon. The largest mug I could find was problematic, as most hotels do not give you a choice of mugs. I found a mug that replicated the size of mugs I would expect to find in a hotel room
The recipe
Simplicity itself. I put the pasta in the cup, boiled the kettle, added water, stirred carefully. and quickly popped a saucer over the top.
I waited ten minutes.
Hmm, raw pasta.
Still, Jack did say it may take more time. Jack said to top up the boiling water so I did this, I drained the cooling water first. Jack didn't say to do this, but I thought I'd better.
I waited another ten minutes. I ate the peanut butter. I uncovered the pasta. Still raw. Maybe I hadn't stirred carefully enough, or I didn't cover the pasta quickly enough. Who knows?
I rinsed and repeated, ate the cheese, got distracted for 20 minutes.
Result! It was cooked. I added the marmite and stirred and consumed it like a greedy slop goblin.
The conclusion, an overall 2. It was edible, but not nice, the portion you could fit in to a hotel cup wouldn't fill you up, and it took ages to make. In fact My husband came home before I could hide the evidence.
Conversation as follows.
H: you have bought pasta. Why have you bought pasta, we already have some nice pasta. This doesn't look like nice pasta.
Me: It was for an experiment, I was making pasta in a mug.
H 'sniggers' are you trying to write a book of stupid ideas?
Me: No, it was a recipe from that Tin Can Cook book.
H:But there aren't any tins in it
Is that you thumberlina Peapod? Masquerading as-a Frau? Thereās a bit missing:
it probably. Tookā¦ā¦..?
did the excess sugar burn?
@FrumpyCat your OH is a very wise man.
I'm actually surprised that the pasta cooked at all. I would have thought the water would cool too quickly to soften the pasta, even with multiple glogs of hot water from the kettle.
I'm actually surprised that the pasta cooked at all. I would have thought the water would cool too quickly to soften the pasta, even with multiple glogs of hot water from the kettle.
It was quite strange, soggy on the outside and al dente in the middle. Tbh after 40 minutes of sitting in cooling water I think it had disolved rather than cooked.
Well, no wonder your pasta didn't cook! If you added that Silica gel packet in the bottom right corner to the pasta mug, it would have sucked up all the hot water! Silly @FrumpyCat !Jack said you could add anything, so I gathered all the sachets I could find, including one marked 'do not eat'.
@lurkerfrau dissecting the bun is the most menacing thing I've seen since the pudding with the chainsaw massacre in the background.
Made a few improvements to the wiki slop goblins.
First the recipe links are now in the Source column because there's often multiple sources, was making the Recipe column very messy. Some of the book versions aren't linked because we don't have a copy of them yet (request from @Notmycat if desired).
All the online recipes are archived in case Jack decides todelete them spoil our fun.
I've been through and checked if online ones are in a book and also if book ones are on her website, and if so added them in.
e.g. unf*ckupable pizza dough I found on the website but turns out it's also in COAB.
Second is all the recipes we plan to do or have done are ticked off in the book recipes spoilers/drop downs.
So we can see at a glance which we've tried when selecting new slops, rather than having to scour the massive table
I'll keep both of these things up to date as we go now.
Also there is a total for slops completed (rated) and donations at the bottom of the table.
Here's a graph update, terrible is having notions.
Also a few duplicates I noticed in the list, it's fine but I thought I should point them out:
@Madonna_Claws Mince and onions with notions has been slopped by EllaEm87.
@KweanOfMean Red Lentil and Mandarin Curry has been slopped by heastlanda.
@Bugger13 and @Justacatindisguise you are both down to do Yorkies.
@StatusWoe and @BlossomKil you are both down to do Get up and go smoothie.
First the recipe links are now in the Source column because there's often multiple sources, was making the Recipe column very messy. Some of the book versions aren't linked because we don't have a copy of them yet (request from @Notmycat if desired).
All the online recipes are archived in case Jack decides to
I've been through and checked if online ones are in a book and also if book ones are on her website, and if so added them in.
e.g. unf*ckupable pizza dough I found on the website but turns out it's also in COAB.
Second is all the recipes we plan to do or have done are ticked off in the book recipes spoilers/drop downs.
So we can see at a glance which we've tried when selecting new slops, rather than having to scour the massive table
I'll keep both of these things up to date as we go now.
Also there is a total for slops completed (rated) and donations at the bottom of the table.
Here's a graph update, terrible is having notions.
Also a few duplicates I noticed in the list, it's fine but I thought I should point them out:
@Madonna_Claws Mince and onions with notions has been slopped by EllaEm87.
@KweanOfMean Red Lentil and Mandarin Curry has been slopped by heastlanda.
@Bugger13 and @Justacatindisguise you are both down to do Yorkies.
@StatusWoe and @BlossomKil you are both down to do Get up and go smoothie.
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Dear
SmollyP, I thought you had an etchasketch stood behind your ingredients until I realised was your microwave ! XJust posting some more book recipes for the wiki table.
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Jack, people have been putting courgettes in cake since for ever. You just have to look at any Womens' Institute cookbook to go "ah, these ladies really grasp the concept of (1) a glut and (2) children who are deeply suspicious of anything green." Just because you only became aware of it last week doesn't mean it's new, it just means you don't know anything.Just posting some more book recipes for the wiki table.
Ugh. Had the worst heartburn of my life at 4am. Lardy buns, we are not friends.
Hey ninnies
Life is a bit stressful and hectic right now. Nothing dramatic, just that I'm so BUSY I barely have time to count my Cotswolds. Not sure when I'll get to do my slop. Especially I am trying to do it when Old Harold is out of the way. He'll mither (correctly) about wasting good food.
I bet you can't wait to find out how the gram flour pasta will turn out!
I'm catching up on all your adventures - you're definitely encouraging me to give my worktops and hob a proper scrub
In the meantime, I've made a contribution to an excellent charity in Leeds who help homeless people. Keep on slopping dear hearts and tender ones.
Life is a bit stressful and hectic right now. Nothing dramatic, just that I'm so BUSY I barely have time to count my Cotswolds. Not sure when I'll get to do my slop. Especially I am trying to do it when Old Harold is out of the way. He'll mither (correctly) about wasting good food.
I bet you can't wait to find out how the gram flour pasta will turn out!
I'm catching up on all your adventures - you're definitely encouraging me to give my worktops and hob a proper scrub
In the meantime, I've made a contribution to an excellent charity in Leeds who help homeless people. Keep on slopping dear hearts and tender ones.
(Apologies, my angels, my previous post on this had to be deleted due to the worst formatting issues known to man, thank you to the kind mods for removing it and sparing my blushes)
Sausage and BeanCassoulet Stew.
First off, I refuse to call this recipe a Cassoulet. It's a stew, just call it a stew. A cassoulet uses a staggering variety of meats, almost always involving sausage, duck confit, chicken legs, fatty pork/salt pork and pork skin, and the beans are some kind of large, firm ones that will hold their shape even after hours of cooking. And it is cooked in the oven for a long, long period of time so that it forms a crust on top (modern varients use breadcrumb to achieve this).
If you gave this to a Frenchman and called it a cassoulet he'd be singing the Marseillaise and dusting off the guillotine before you could say "rinse yer baked beans".
The French are a wonderful people, aren't they?
Total 10.15, serves 4, so Ā£2.58 per portion. It would be a great deal less if you bought cheap sausages, but I got a *real* good deal on the bacon, so swings and roundabouts, eh?
Jack says to cook the sausages, then let them cool and chop them up, then reheat them in the stew. At the end she says you can reheat the leftovers the next day with pasta, so that's 3 cycles of heating /cooling. Better to not bother cooling the sausages in order to cut them, or just not cut them at all, and make sure they're cooked through before serving.
While you can reheat leftovers a couple of times, I would be very wary of eating sausage meat that has been heated then cooled, then heated then cooled and then reheated once more. It puts it in the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth at least three times over, and that's not something I want to risk, especially with minced meat that has a higher chance of baterial contamination in the first place.
(Confession time: I live less than 5 miles from Wishaw, home to the deadliest outbreak of e coli in the modern age. 21 people died in 1996 because a butcher didn't store meat correctly. I have very strong opinions about this sort of thing, and so do most people here who lived through that dreadful event.)
But wait, there's more! Energy SavingCassoulet Stew
So, I made my dish, and it was average. But in my reading of Jacks' recipes I noticed a funny old thing. For in the Guardian newspaper in 2015 Jack wrote the following recipe:
www.theguardian.com
And it's pretty much the exact same recipe as the Sausage and BeansCassoulet Stew, save for the fact that the following ingredients are also added
Well. Darlings. I had to give it a shot, didn't I?
I had to wait for 3 hours, so I then did my housework and some yoga and felt very virtuous. Then I slumped on the sofa and ate some chocolate buttons whilst watching terrible Channel 5 Christmas movies and felt less virtuous.
And then, it was time!
Sausage and Bean
First off, I refuse to call this recipe a Cassoulet. It's a stew, just call it a stew. A cassoulet uses a staggering variety of meats, almost always involving sausage, duck confit, chicken legs, fatty pork/salt pork and pork skin, and the beans are some kind of large, firm ones that will hold their shape even after hours of cooking. And it is cooked in the oven for a long, long period of time so that it forms a crust on top (modern varients use breadcrumb to achieve this).
If you gave this to a Frenchman and called it a cassoulet he'd be singing the Marseillaise and dusting off the guillotine before you could say "rinse yer baked beans".
The French are a wonderful people, aren't they?
- Splash of oil Ā£0.04
- 8 sausages Ā£6.89 (gluten-free from a trusted butchers, I ain't eating Unknown Frozen Pig Product from ASDA, sorry gang, call me a snob if you want, but I can't
- 1 carrot Ā£0.07
- 1 onion Ā£0.33
- 2 cloves garlic Ā£0.40
- 100g chopped bacon (Tesco Finest Back Bacon, UK reared), reduced section, Ā£0.50, what a bargain!
- handful of fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme, whatever) Ā£0.50
- zest and juice of 1 lemon, or 1 tsp of lemon juice (these two things do not seem equivalent in the slightest) Ā£0.09
- 1 chicken stock cube (gluten free) in 400ml boiling water Ā£0.15
- 200g (1/2 can) chopped tomatoes Ā£0.23
- 1x 400g tin of haricot beans, or rinsed baked beans Ā£0.70
Total 10.15, serves 4, so Ā£2.58 per portion. It would be a great deal less if you bought cheap sausages, but I got a *real* good deal on the bacon, so swings and roundabouts, eh?
Mise en place done, I begin with cooking my sausages. These are good sausages. I feel worried for them.
The recipe says to take them out, let them cool and chop them up. I do not do this, because heating & cooling minced pork repeatedly is only for people who do not believe in e-coli.
In goes the carrot, onion, garlic, bacon. No mention of pepper. I am baffled.
In goes the parsley and the miserable spot of lemon juice. I feel dried mixed herbs and a good glug of red wine vinegar would be nicer, as well as cheaper in the long run, as a little goes a long way and they keep well, but hey-ho.
In goes (far too much) stock and (far too little) canned tomato. It is heated for a mere 15 minutes, then the beans are plonked in right at the end and it is heated for 3 minutes. Jack says this will slightly reduce the sauce. Slightly being the operative word.
The recipe says to take them out, let them cool and chop them up. I do not do this, because heating & cooling minced pork repeatedly is only for people who do not believe in e-coli.
In goes the carrot, onion, garlic, bacon. No mention of pepper. I am baffled.
In goes the parsley and the miserable spot of lemon juice. I feel dried mixed herbs and a good glug of red wine vinegar would be nicer, as well as cheaper in the long run, as a little goes a long way and they keep well, but hey-ho.
In goes (far too much) stock and (far too little) canned tomato. It is heated for a mere 15 minutes, then the beans are plonked in right at the end and it is heated for 3 minutes. Jack says this will slightly reduce the sauce. Slightly being the operative word.
The result:
Thoughts
Thoughts
- It's perfectly edible, and with a side of potato would quite nice, and very filling. But Jack. Jack, babes. Pepper is cheap. Cornflour/flour as a thickener is cheap. Salt and sugar are cheap. Mixed herbs are cheap. Hell, a full can of chopped tomatoes is cheap, half a can for 4 people is madness.
- It's not cooked for long enough. Simple fact. It's not a tasty stew, it's items suspended in a liquid that would have become a stew, had you cooked it for 45 minutes longer
- The sauce is miserably watery and the predominent flavour is salt from the stock and the bacon. Even just bunging in baked beans in their sauce would have worked better, you could have got a bit of sugar and starch that would have softened the acidity and harshness of the other ingredients, and thickened the stewing liquid up a little
- The sausages are good, but that's because I bought very good sausage, from happy free-range piggies. God knows what this would be like with bargain sausages that are mostly filler and sadness
Jack says to cook the sausages, then let them cool and chop them up, then reheat them in the stew. At the end she says you can reheat the leftovers the next day with pasta, so that's 3 cycles of heating /cooling. Better to not bother cooling the sausages in order to cut them, or just not cut them at all, and make sure they're cooked through before serving.
While you can reheat leftovers a couple of times, I would be very wary of eating sausage meat that has been heated then cooled, then heated then cooled and then reheated once more. It puts it in the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth at least three times over, and that's not something I want to risk, especially with minced meat that has a higher chance of baterial contamination in the first place.
(Confession time: I live less than 5 miles from Wishaw, home to the deadliest outbreak of e coli in the modern age. 21 people died in 1996 because a butcher didn't store meat correctly. I have very strong opinions about this sort of thing, and so do most people here who lived through that dreadful event.)
Conclusion
Overall 2.5/5
Ingredients: 4/5 These are all genuinely excellent ingredients. But a spoonful of cornflour, some pepper/fennel/mixed herbs, the full can of tomatoes and a good glug of red wine vinegar would have pepped it up significantly, and barely added anything to the price
Taste/Texture: 2.5/5. It was perfectly edible, just a little undercooked and watery.
Visual Appeal: 2/5 Stew never looks very pretty. This was...not a very pretty stew even by stew standards.
Cost: 2/5. This is kind of pricey, mainly because of the snausage, that's on me. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Recipe: 2/5. It's not a cassoulet, it's a stew, stop trying to sound fancy, Jack. Also, it would have been 3/5 because the sausages were browned nicely, the onions, carrots, garlic got sauted correctly...but those instructions regarding the heating/cooling of pork gave me the horrors.
Overall 2.5/5
Ingredients: 4/5 These are all genuinely excellent ingredients. But a spoonful of cornflour, some pepper/fennel/mixed herbs, the full can of tomatoes and a good glug of red wine vinegar would have pepped it up significantly, and barely added anything to the price
Taste/Texture: 2.5/5. It was perfectly edible, just a little undercooked and watery.
Visual Appeal: 2/5 Stew never looks very pretty. This was...not a very pretty stew even by stew standards.
Cost: 2/5. This is kind of pricey, mainly because of the snausage, that's on me. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Recipe: 2/5. It's not a cassoulet, it's a stew, stop trying to sound fancy, Jack. Also, it would have been 3/5 because the sausages were browned nicely, the onions, carrots, garlic got sauted correctly...but those instructions regarding the heating/cooling of pork gave me the horrors.
But wait, there's more! Energy Saving
So, I made my dish, and it was average. But in my reading of Jacks' recipes I noticed a funny old thing. For in the Guardian newspaper in 2015 Jack wrote the following recipe:
Jack Monroeās energy-saving cassoulet ā recipe
Slow-cooked dishes donāt need to sit on the hob or in the oven for hours. After a short blast of heat, they can be tightly wrapped in a towel and left to carry on cooking at no cost
www.theguardian.com
And it's pretty much the exact same recipe as the Sausage and Beans
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 3 stalks rosemary, or 1 tbsp mixed dried herbs
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar or cider vinegar
- 2 slices white bread, grated into breadcrumbs (except I didn't have non-gluten free bread and my fellow taste-tester is celiac, so I made a slurry of cornflour/water and added that as a thickener instead)
Well. Darlings. I had to give it a shot, didn't I?
To the base stew (as detailed in my post above) which was still on the hob, I added the extra herbs and the red wine vinegar. It was very exciting to be adding extra herbs to the dish, I found myself growing quite jolly as I prepared my Dressing Gown Cooking Box as follows, with a blanket, a towel and my trusty Primark dressing gown.
It does look very safe and hygenic, doesn't it?
At this point I whipped out my trusty digital thermometer (so useful if you are a paranoid wreck about cooking temperatures like me) and measured the temp. According the UK Food Standards Agency pork needs to reach an internal temperature of 75 C for 2 minutes, to kill off any harmful bugs. My pork was very comfortably above that at 84C:
Into the Dressing Gown Cooking Box! Night night, little stew! Sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite!
I put the lid on too, to give it the best possible insulation and chance of cooking.
It does look very safe and hygenic, doesn't it?
At this point I whipped out my trusty digital thermometer (so useful if you are a paranoid wreck about cooking temperatures like me) and measured the temp. According the UK Food Standards Agency pork needs to reach an internal temperature of 75 C for 2 minutes, to kill off any harmful bugs. My pork was very comfortably above that at 84C:
Into the Dressing Gown Cooking Box! Night night, little stew! Sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite!
I put the lid on too, to give it the best possible insulation and chance of cooking.
And then, it was time!
I took it out of the Dressing Gown Cooking Box, and the casserole dish was still very toasty warm. The cooking thermometer gave a very respectable temperature too! I am genuinely amazed at how well this thing held the heat!
And this is how it looks:
And gang, I think I have found the Holy Grail, the thing we thought we'd never find. This recipe, this weird, baffling, Dressing Gown Cooking Box Sausage And Bean Energy SavingCassoulet Stew..is really nice.
The extra few ingredients and time spent snug in a well insulated box has worked magic. The tomatoes have become sweeter and have cooked down, the vegetables are soft and blended into the savoury sauce, the beans and cornflour (or breadcrumb if you so wish) have thickened the stew up nicely. And the snausage and beans are good. Maybe a little overcooked and prone to disintegration now, I think this is a recipe that would work better for a tougher and fattier meat like pork belly/shoulder, and some bigger, hardier beans (butterbeans, maybe). But still acceptable.
I fed it to my sister, who had been regarding the Dressing Gown Cooking Box with slight horror, and she confirmed it was perfectly acceptable and something she would not hesitate to make...except she would do it in her slow cooker/oven, because she's not a lunatic who would spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points and to win an imaginary war against some minor celebrity chef who nobody really cares about.
Also, she felt it needed pepper. My sister is right 50% of the time.
And this is how it looks:
And gang, I think I have found the Holy Grail, the thing we thought we'd never find. This recipe, this weird, baffling, Dressing Gown Cooking Box Sausage And Bean Energy Saving
The extra few ingredients and time spent snug in a well insulated box has worked magic. The tomatoes have become sweeter and have cooked down, the vegetables are soft and blended into the savoury sauce, the beans and cornflour (or breadcrumb if you so wish) have thickened the stew up nicely. And the snausage and beans are good. Maybe a little overcooked and prone to disintegration now, I think this is a recipe that would work better for a tougher and fattier meat like pork belly/shoulder, and some bigger, hardier beans (butterbeans, maybe). But still acceptable.
I fed it to my sister, who had been regarding the Dressing Gown Cooking Box with slight horror, and she confirmed it was perfectly acceptable and something she would not hesitate to make...except she would do it in her slow cooker/oven, because she's not a lunatic who would spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points and to win an imaginary war against some minor celebrity chef who nobody really cares about.
Also, she felt it needed pepper. My sister is right 50% of the time.
Ingredients: 4.5/5. The addition of the extra herbs, wine and the breadcrumb/cornflour as a thickener is a great improvement. Half point removed for no mention of pepper. It needed pepper, my sister was right on that point.
Taste/Texture: 4/5. It was tasty! it was savoury and meaty and the herbs were nice. It was a little bit gloppy, and the sausage and beans were definitely overcooked, but still good. We had it with mashed potato and green beans and were extremely full and happy afterwards
Visual Appeal: 3.5/5 It's a nicer looking stew now, I must admit. Not beautiful, but okay.
Recipe: I am conflicted, gang! The recipe worked, and yet...Dressing Gown Cooking Box. It's just...weird. And a little confusing, and now I have to wash my dressing gown because it got garlic on it.
Jack does say you can put it in a low oven instead, and I think that would appeal more to normal people who don't spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points. Also, the breadcrumbs would go all crispy on top via that method if you took the lid off for the last 1/2 hour of cooking in an oven, and that would probably be very tasty indeed.
Overall: 4/5. My shock, you could use it to move mountains.
Taste/Texture: 4/5. It was tasty! it was savoury and meaty and the herbs were nice. It was a little bit gloppy, and the sausage and beans were definitely overcooked, but still good. We had it with mashed potato and green beans and were extremely full and happy afterwards
Visual Appeal: 3.5/5 It's a nicer looking stew now, I must admit. Not beautiful, but okay.
Recipe: I am conflicted, gang! The recipe worked, and yet...Dressing Gown Cooking Box. It's just...weird. And a little confusing, and now I have to wash my dressing gown because it got garlic on it.
Jack does say you can put it in a low oven instead, and I think that would appeal more to normal people who don't spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points. Also, the breadcrumbs would go all crispy on top via that method if you took the lid off for the last 1/2 hour of cooking in an oven, and that would probably be very tasty indeed.
Overall: 4/5. My shock, you could use it to move mountains.
Dear heart, I am not Forensic nor am I a good cook, but your 2nd thermometer reading was 68 but in your post you mentioned pork had to be 75, is it safe to eat? Have I misunderstood?(Apologies, my angels, my previous post on this had to be deleted due to the worst formatting issues known to man, thank you to the kind mods for removing it and sparing my blushes)
Sausage and BeanCassouletStew.
First off, I refuse to call this recipe a Cassoulet. It's a stew, just call it a stew. A cassoulet uses a staggering variety of meats, almost always involving sausage, duck confit, chicken legs, fatty pork/salt pork and pork skin, and the beans are some kind of large, firm ones that will hold their shape even after hours of cooking. And it is cooked in the oven for a long, long period of time so that it forms a crust on top (modern varients use breadcrumb to achieve this).
If you gave this to a Frenchman and called it a cassoulet he'd be singing the Marseillaise and dusting off the guillotine before you could say "rinse yer baked beans".
The French are a wonderful people, aren't they?
View attachment 1743789
- Splash of oil Ā£0.04
- 8 sausages Ā£6.89 (gluten-free from a trusted butchers, I ain't eating Unknown Frozen Pig Product from ASDA, sorry gang, call me a snob if you want, but I can't
- 1 carrot Ā£0.07
- 1 onion Ā£0.33
- 2 cloves garlic Ā£0.40
- 100g chopped bacon (Tesco Finest Back Bacon, UK reared), reduced section, Ā£0.50, what a bargain!
- handful of fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme, whatever) Ā£0.50
- zest and juice of 1 lemon, or 1 tsp of lemon juice (these two things do not seem equivalent in the slightest) Ā£0.09
- 1 chicken stock cube (gluten free) in 400ml boiling water Ā£0.15
- 200g (1/2 can) chopped tomatoes Ā£0.23
- 1x 400g tin of haricot beans, or rinsed baked beans Ā£0.70
Total 10.15, serves 4, so Ā£2.58 per portion. It would be a great deal less if you bought cheap sausages, but I got a *real* good deal on the bacon, so swings and roundabouts, eh?
Mise en place done, I begin with cooking my sausages. These are good sausages. I feel worried for them.
The recipe says to take them out, let them cool and chop them up. I do not do this, because heating & cooling minced pork repeatedly is only for people who do not believe in e-coli.
In goes the carrot, onion, garlic, bacon. No mention of pepper. I am baffled.
In goes the parsley and the miserable spot of lemon juice. I feel dried mixed herbs and a good glug of red wine vinegar would be nicer, as well as cheaper in the long run, as a little goes a long way and they keep well, but hey-ho.
In goes (far too much) stock and (far too little) canned tomato. It is heated for a mere 15 minutes, then the beans are plonked in right at the end and it is heated for 3 minutes. Jack says this will slightly reduce the sauce. Slightly being the operative word.
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The result:
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Thoughts
- It's perfectly edible, and with a side of potato would quite nice, and very filling. But Jack. Jack, babes. Pepper is cheap. Cornflour/flour as a thickener is cheap. Salt and sugar are cheap. Mixed herbs are cheap. Hell, a full can of chopped tomatoes is cheap, half a can for 4 people is madness.
- It's not cooked for long enough. Simple fact. It's not a tasty stew, it's items suspended in a liquid that would have become a stew, had you cooked it for 45 minutes longer
- The sauce is miserably watery and the predominent flavour is salt from the stock and the bacon. Even just bunging in baked beans in their sauce would have worked better, you could have got a bit of sugar and starch that would have softened the acidity and harshness of the other ingredients, and thickened the stewing liquid up a little
- The sausages are good, but that's because I bought very good sausage, from happy free-range piggies. God knows what this would be like with bargain sausages that are mostly filler and sadness
Massive Honking Safety Concerns I am not putting in a spoiler because it's important:
Jack says to cook the sausages, then let them cool and chop them up, then reheat them in the stew. At the end she says you can reheat the leftovers the next day with pasta, so that's 3 cycles of heating /cooling. Better to not bother cooling the sausages in order to cut them, or just not cut them at all, and make sure they're cooked through before serving.
While you can reheat leftovers a couple of times, I would be very wary of eating sausage meat that has been heated then cooled, then heated then cooled and then reheated once more. It puts it in the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth at least three times over, and that's not something I want to risk, especially with minced meat that has a higher chance of baterial contamination in the first place.
(Confession time: I live less than 5 miles from Wishaw, home to the deadliest outbreak of e coli in the modern age. 21 people died in 1996 because a butcher didn't store meat correctly. I have very strong opinions about this sort of thing, and so do most people here who lived through that dreadful event.)
Conclusion
Overall 2.5/5
Ingredients: 4/5 These are all genuinely excellent ingredients. But a spoonful of cornflour, some pepper/fennel/mixed herbs, the full can of tomatoes and a good glug of red wine vinegar would have pepped it up significantly, and barely added anything to the price
Taste/Texture: 2.5/5. It was perfectly edible, just a little undercooked and watery.
Visual Appeal: 2/5 Stew never looks very pretty. This was...not a very pretty stew even by stew standards.
Cost: 2/5. This is kind of pricey, mainly because of the snausage, that's on me. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Recipe: 2/5. It's not a cassoulet, it's a stew, stop trying to sound fancy, Jack. Also, it would have been 3/5 because the sausages were browned nicely, the onions, carrots, garlic got sauted correctly...but those instructions regarding the heating/cooling of pork gave me the horrors.
But wait, there's more! Energy SavingCassouletStew
So, I made my dish, and it was average. But in my reading of Jacks' recipes I noticed a funny old thing. For in the Guardian newspaper in 2015 Jack wrote the following recipe:
Jack Monroeās energy-saving cassoulet ā recipe
Slow-cooked dishes donāt need to sit on the hob or in the oven for hours. After a short blast of heat, they can be tightly wrapped in a towel and left to carry on cooking at no cost
And it's pretty much the exact same recipe as the Sausage and BeansCassouletStew, save for the fact that the following ingredients are also added
And after being cooked on the hob, it is placed for 3 hours in an oven, or wrapped tightly in a towel/dressing gown and placed in a box for 3 hours. The towel/dressing gown will conserve the heat, allowing your cassoulet to carry on cooking at no extra cost, Jack says.
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 3 stalks rosemary, or 1 tbsp mixed dried herbs
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar or cider vinegar
- 2 slices white bread, grated into breadcrumbs (except I didn't have non-gluten free bread and my fellow taste-tester is celiac, so I made a slurry of cornflour/water and added that as a thickener instead)
Well. Darlings. I had to give it a shot, didn't I?
I had to wait for 3 hours, so I then did my housework and some yoga and felt very virtuous. Then I slumped on the sofa and ate some chocolate buttons whilst watching terrible Channel 5 Christmas movies and felt less virtuous.To the base stew (as detailed in my post above) which was still on the hob, I added the extra herbs and the red wine vinegar. It was very exciting to be adding extra herbs to the dish, I found myself growing quite jolly as I prepared my Dressing Gown Cooking Box as follows, with a blanket, a towel and my trusty Primark dressing gown.
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It does look very safe and hygenic, doesn't it?
At this point I whipped out my trusty digital thermometer (so useful if you are a paranoid wreck about cooking temperatures like me) and measured the temp. According the UK Food Standards Agency pork needs to reach an internal temperature of 75 C for 2 minutes, to kill off any harmful bugs. My pork was very comfortably above that at 84C:
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Into the Dressing Gown Cooking Box! Night night, little stew! Sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite!
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I put the lid on too, to give it the best possible insulation and chance of cooking.
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And then, it was time!
I took it out of the Dressing Gown Cooking Box, and the casserole dish was still very toasty warm. The cooking thermometer gave a very respectable temperature too! I am genuinely amazed at how well this thing held the heat!
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And this is how it looks:
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And gang, I think I have found the Holy Grail, the thing we thought we'd never find. This recipe, this weird, baffling, Dressing Gown Cooking Box Sausage And Bean Energy SavingCassouletStew..is really nice.
The extra few ingredients and time spent snug in a well insulated box has worked magic. The tomatoes have become sweeter and have cooked down, the vegetables are soft and blended into the savoury sauce, the beans and cornflour (or breadcrumb if you so wish) have thickened the stew up nicely. And the snausage and beans are good. Maybe a little overcooked and prone to disintegration now, I think this is a recipe that would work better for a tougher and fattier meat like pork belly/shoulder, and some bigger, hardier beans (butterbeans, maybe). But still acceptable.
I fed it to my sister, who had been regarding the Dressing Gown Cooking Box with slight horror, and she confirmed it was perfectly acceptable and something she would not hesitate to make...except she would do it in her slow cooker/oven, because she's not a lunatic who would spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points and to win an imaginary war against some minor celebrity chef who nobody really cares about.
Also, she felt it needed pepper. My sister is right 50% of the time.Ingredients: 4.5/5. The addition of the extra herbs, wine and the breadcrumb/cornflour as a thickener is a great improvement. Half point removed for no mention of pepper. It needed pepper, my sister was right on that point.
Taste/Texture: 4/5. It was tasty! it was savoury and meaty and the herbs were nice. It was a little bit gloppy, and the sausage and beans were definitely overcooked, but still good. We had it with mashed potato and green beans and were extremely full and happy afterwards
Visual Appeal: 3.5/5 It's a nicer looking stew now, I must admit. Not beautiful, but okay.
Recipe: I am conflicted, gang! The recipe worked, and yet...Dressing Gown Cooking Box. It's just...weird. And a little confusing, and now I have to wash my dressing gown because it got garlic on it.
Jack does say you can put it in a low oven instead, and I think that would appeal more to normal people who don't spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points. Also, the breadcrumbs would go all crispy on top via that method if you took the lid off for the last 1/2 hour of cooking in an oven, and that would probably be very tasty indeed.
Overall: 4/5. My shock, you could use it to move mountains.
Nope, I should have been clearer in the post. The pork has to be heated up to at least 75C to be safe, and it reached that on the hob, it was at 84C for at least 10 minutes.
The reading of 68C was after several hours in the insulated Dressing Gown Cooking Box and upon transferral to a bowl to eat, perfectly safe! It was actually still a bit too warm to eat at that point.
They were very solid. Like bricks
I assumed I had messed up the recipe. But now Iām less sure.
Would I be allowed to make the Georgia Suppers Ham Ball for slopalong?
