Bubble and Squeak - two ways

Bubble and Squeak Two Ways

Nora, there are two kinds of bubble and squeak according to the English cook, Jane Grigson. One is made from leftovers of roast meat. Do you ever have any of those? We don't, so we don't make it. The other is made from potatoes. We usually have some of those around. Both of them also have cabbage.

Bubble and Squeak - first way

Leftover roast meat (beef maybe)
Cabbage
Margarine or oil or bacon fat

1. Boil or steam the cabbage until just tender and then cut it up into square pieces. Drain the water from the cabbage pieces and pat-dry them with a paper towel. Keep these ready.
2. Cut up the leftover roast meat into strips. Cook them in some hot fat in a frying pan, until they are bubbling away. That's the bubble part. Don't cook them very much or they will be tough. Take them out of the pan and keep them ready.
3. Now add the cabbage pieces to the pan and press them down. This is could be the squeak part, because maybe the cabbage will make a squeaking sound while it cooks a bit and gets a bit brown.
4. Serve the meat and cabbage together.
5. Some people cook sausages instead of roast meat.

Bubble and Squeak - second way

Cabbage, cooked the way you do in the first recipe and chopped up
Potatoes, cooked and peeled
1 large onion, chopped
margarine, butter or bacon fat or cut up slices of bacon

1. First mash the potatoes really well. Mix them and the cooked and chopped cabbage together really well.
2. Heat up the magarine (or whatever) in a frying pan big enough for the potatoes and the cabbage together (which means a pretty big pan). Put the chopped onion in and cook it until it is soft and lightly brown (it should smell good). I like starting this off with cut up slices of bacon and leaving the bacon bits in for a bit more taste.
3. Now put the potato-cabbage mixture into the pan and press it down until it is like a cake in the pan. What you are going to do now is to cook it until the underside is nice and crusty brown. You have to guess a little about when that will happen and it takes some time.
4. When the underside of your cake is brown, cut it into pieces and turn the pieces over to do the other sides. This means you don't have to turn the whole thing over, which might not be possible to do without breaking it.
5. Keep on turning over and browning until it looks right. After all, everything is already cooked so you don't have to worry about having to time it just right. What you are doing by browning it this way is making some crunchy tasty bits to make it all taste better. Serve it from the pan onto plates.
6. You could serve this with fried slices of leftover meat or sausages if you want.
7. I am not sure when the bubbling or squeaking happens in this recipe. Maybe the fat bubbles and you squeak if you happen to touch something hot.

Daniel Boulud's Root Vegetable Cassoulet - modified

I am a big fan of Daniel Boulud's recipes, but I didn't think that the vegetarian root vegetable cassoulet which appears in Daniel Boulud's Cafe Cookbook would be all that great. It sounds maybe a bit thin. Anyhow, I was quite wrong. It is exceptionally good even if it is not, as Boulud himself remarks, a real traditional cassoulet. However, when I made it I had to change some things around (because one member of our family is very allergic to fennel as a vegetable, although not to fennel seed; and because tomatoes are out of season; and because I don't do bouquet garni in bags, etc). Here is my modified version.

Root Vegetable Cassoulet - modifed

2 c dried cannellini beans
3 T olive oil
1 small onion, cut in 1/4 inch dice
3 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt, pepper
1 T tomato paste
2 canned (Roma) tomatoes, 1 diced and 1 cut in half
7 c unsalted vegetable stock (actually I used powdered chicken stock)
6 stalks celery, each about 6-8 inches long, peeled and cut into 3 inch lengths
6 small carrots, peeled and trimmed (each was about 3-4 inches long, but thick)
3 large turnips, peeled, trimmed and quartered
1t fennel seeds, ground roughly with a mortar and pestle
3 sprigs Italian parsley
3 sage leaves
2 sprigs fresh thyme

1 c bread crumbs
3 more cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 c more Italian parsley leaves, finely chopped
3 T unsalted margarine, melted

Unusual kitchen item: parchment (bake) paper, which will be used as a supplemental lid for the cooking beans and vegetables.

1. Soak the beans overnight, or do a quick soak. Rinse and drain them and put them into a large (heavy) pan into which you will later put the 7 c of stock and all the vegetables to cook on the stove.
2. In a small saute pan heat 1 T of olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and the first 3 garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion and garlic are tender but not (too) colored. The recipe says 10 minutes, but it took a shorter time for me. Stir in the tomato paste and then the diced tomato. Take the pan off the heat and reserve it for later.
3. Go back to your large pot (the one with the drained beans in it). Add the 7 c of stock and bring it to a boil (warm stock saves a lot of time here). Now add the celery, carrots, turnips, fennel seed, 3 sprigs of parsley, sage leaves and thyme - and bring back to a simmer. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit inside the pot. Put the parchment lid in the pot on top of the vegetables, beans and stock and press it down gently (don't let it get under the stock). Keep the heat as low as you can to maintain a low, steady simmer underneath the paper lid. Stir every now and then (I actually didn't stir at all). Cook about 1 hour or more until the beans are tender. (I simply stopped the cooking after an hour: the beans were a bit al dente which seemed okay). Season with salt and pepper shortly before the beans are cooked through.
4. Remove the pot from the heat, take the parchment lid off and throw it out, and drain the liquid into a bowl or pitcher. I poured the contents into a colander over a bowl to catch the liquid. Keep both the bean/vegetable mixture and the liquid. The recipe has you separating the vegetables from the beans at this point so that you can make separate layers of beans and veggies in the next phase. I didn't do that.
5. Preheat the oven to 400.
6. Make the crust: combine the bread crumbs, the second 3 cloves of garlic and the 1/4 of chopped parsley, then add the melted margarine. Mix up with your fingers until it is crumbly.
7. Get another pot, one that will go into the oven with the beans/vegetables. Probably this has to be a new pot because the previous one has had to be big enough for all the liquid as well. Put the beans/vegetables in the new pot. Gently stir in the reserved onion, garlic tomato mixture (remember it?). Gently stir in the remaining 2 T olive oil. Add just enough liquid to come just below the top of the contents. Sprinkle the crust mixture over all (it can make a fairly thick layer).
8. Bake in your preheated hot oven. The recipe says 12-15 minutes, but I think it could be longer - anyhow, you are looking for an appetizing browned crust.
9. Serves 6.

Note: the leftover liquid tastes great and should be kept as vegetable stock.
Note: this is not a long recipe to make, since pre-preparation (peeling, chopping, etc) is not long. Start to finish for me was about 2 hours, maybe a little over.
Note: fresh herbs (parsley, sage, thyme) are definitely worth it in this dish.