This is a great recipe that even my littlest boy likes.  He’s 8 and we had this last night when I made this vid and he said “This is stupid good”.  And he claims to not like curry or lamb.

So this is just a basic curry, nothing fancy, but then again, we rarely have time for fancy huh?  So putting this together shouldn’t be all that taxing.  I start you again, with building a sauce the right way and then thicken it with veggies like we did on the other roast beef.  Watch the vid and learn how to bone a leg of lamb and build it into a great stew.  And on that topic for a minute… I could have chosen a lamb leg that’s boneless, but I needed the bone for stock.  Don’t be fooled though.  In the store the bone-in leg will be slightly cheaper most of the time and you’re thinking, hey, it cheaper so I’m saving money… but that’s not the case.  You’re not buying a leg of lamb, you’re buying a weighted portion of meat.  And if that weighted meat contains a portion that you have to throw away then that money you saved is going out the window.  So keep that in mind.  Bone-in may be cheaper, but you typically throw part of it away which raises your food cost again.  However, we’re at least using the bone to build a sauce.  We still don’t get to eat it, but at least we get to use it to our advantage.  So we’ve got a slightly higher food cost on this dish, but we did it on purpose.  And in the kitchen you can do almost anything you want as long as it’s on purpose.

Now, for the curry.  I’m using a very nice Thai red curry paste.  I love this stuff and I can’t recommend it enough.  But you could use any type of curry you like, even curry powder.  I’ve linked to the paste I use below.  Give it a try.  And their other flavors are excellent as well.  We live on their yellow curry paste when we’re making Thai curry chicken.  We’ve used this brand for years.  And while some may consider it a little expensive, if that’s true for you then just use Mae Ploy instead.  It’s another good brand of curry that’s more affordable for every day use.  There’s a definite difference between the 2 brands, but Mae Ploy is still a good curry.  Like I said, it’s more of an every day curry and less of a gourmet curry.  Mae Ploy is the one a LOT of Thai restaurants use.  If you order the good stuff though, on the site they have this lovely black box pictured. They’ve changed the box so don’t be alarmed when you get your order and it doesn’t look the same.  It’s the same curry.  The box actually looks like the yellow curry at the bottom of that page.

So what is a cassoulet?  Basically it’s a French bean soup with meat in it.  They usually use white beans or flageolets, but officially I think any bean would qualify.  The way it’s typically done is we put 4-6 types of meat in a big pot with beans and cook them together.  All the flavors meld together and it’s just this wonderful taste of lamb, and beef, and sausage, and pork, and ox tail, and chicken, etc.  It’s quite lovely.  And this is definitely a cassoulet only we’re concentrating on just a single meat.

Ingredients:

1 leg of lamb, bone-in
1.5 c. dried white beans
3 T. red curry paste, here’s the link: http://importfood.com/cphb5001.html
3 cloves garlic
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
1 bunch thyme, or 2 t. dried thyme
1 large onion
2 large carrots
1 celery stalk

Method:

1. Bone the lamb leg.
2. Roast the bone until dark brown.
3. Cube half of the lamb leg wrapping the rest up for use some other time.
4. Season the cubes with salt/black pepper.
5. Sear the cubes in a very hot pan with oil until dark brown.
6. In a large pot, put the cubes and all the rest of the ingredients together and put water about to the top of the pot.
7. Bake covered at 300-F for 1-2hrs.  Don’t remove it until the meat is fork tender and the beans are done.
8. Remove the veggies from the stew.  If you’re going to reduce the sauce, then remove the meat too, but keep it in a separate bowl than the veggies.
9. Go ahead and throw the celery away if you didn’t peel it.  I don’t like the strings.  However, if you don’t mind the strings or if you peeled it then leave the celery in there.
10. Bring the soup to a full boil and reduce it as much as you like.  If you like a really soupy bowl of beans then you won’t really need to reduce much.  I like mine thicker so I had to reduce for about 10-20mins.  Watch the vid for guidelines on this.
11. Adjust your seasonings if you need to.

Notes:

1. We’re again thickening with veggies and a few beans too this time.  This is a great substitution for adding flour another other starches to your soup.  Beans have plenty of matter so there’s just no need for roux or cornstarch.
2. You can make the lamb cubes any size you like.  I went with medium cubes because I didn’t want to take 5hrs to cook this thing.  So in a house where you don’t have tons of time you’ll always opt for the faster cooking time.
3. You could add tomatoes to this and it would be great.
4. You could augment the sauce with coconut milk or even cream if you like a richer sauce.  Since we’re using a Thai curry paste then coconut milk is quite good here.
5. If you want to add richness another way you can also put a dab of butter in each bowl as you’re serving it.
6. We always eat stuff like this with baguette.  The kids insist on it.