Lamb Shank Confit & Cassoulet - First Daring Cook's Challenge in 2011

January Daring Cook's Challenge was hosted by Jenni from The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley Sage, Dessert and Line Drives, it's a cook off of a Confit and a Cassoulet.  Recipe is here.

I decided to do lamb shanks, and only 2 of them because it's summer here and we are not really keen on big pots of winter food.

However, the effort worth it, it's a very tasty dish, and we will do it a lot when winter comes.

It's a 3-4 day cooking process, and I started with rubbing the salt to the lamb shanks, leave it over night, in my case, in the fridge.

The next day, I added rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and cracked black peppers.   Added duck fat (from the roast ducks I did before) and cooked the confit in 180C oven for an hour.

Mean while, soaked the great northern beans in pot.

The third day, I took most of the duck fat out of the pot, lined the pot with bacon (I didn't use pork rind, just bacon with rind),

added pan fried Italian sausages, onions and beans, and some stock to cover.

Cook the cassoulet in 180C oven for an hour, and then 120C oven for another hour.

I must admit that it wasn't pleasant cooking that day as it was a hot 35C day!



The fourth day, it was cooler and the time to enjoy our cassoulet.  I cooked it again, took the whole pot out of fridge, wait till it warm to room temperature and cooked it in 180C oven for another hour.

Serve with home made sourdough bread....