(Thread title acknowledgement to sirquack ; thanks!)

Listening to Radio Paradise - good indie Internet radio - on M3's upstairs and M60's downstairs, while I cook this fantastically complicated duck 'n beans recipe.

I eat to live, but I love to cook. I have been working on an extended version of the French classic cassoulet, the cooking of which seems to cause more emotions than football .

The recipe I'm starting out with is the classic four day version, but as I am an impatient fellow I'm trying to compress it down to just three days.

Day one

Soak the beans... classic says 24 hours, I say 2 oughta do it;

Replace water, simmer the beans with some extra bits... I combined this step with the ham hocks (which I didn't have, see below);

Season and marinate the duck 24 hours before making the confit... classic says another day, I say I can't wait that long, let's just confit the quacker right now!

Simmer the duck in (lots of) duck fat four hours: check (oops, that was too long; next time let's try two hours).

Brown and simmer salted pork, ham hock, onions, carrot, bouquet garni etc. for an hour... well, OK, forgot to buy the pork and ham, but I do have a couple of lamb shanks; let's try those. But don't have time to do this according to Hoyle, so let's just brown the veggies in some duck fat and then throw them in with the lamb shanks and the beans - add some water, turn on the gas for a couple of hours and see what happens. (Note to self: buy more thyme, you cannot make a decent bouquet garni without it).

End of day one: we have some boiled beans and lamb shank, as well as a nice duck confit, well preserved in a ton of duck fat (oh, yeah, this is key: I did have about 1 litre / quart of duck fat in the freezer which I saved from the duck which I cooked last week. You can never have enough duck fat when you're going to confit a duck. )

Ditch the carrot, onions, etc. from the beans. Remove duck confit to a clean container and cool everything (it helps that it is about 35 below C outside, so even though I've been cooking all night it is a decently cool 10 above C in the pantry).

Let the cat in (again). Bank the fire. Go to bed, reflecting on a job well done.

Day two

Classic says to warm up some pork fat to smoking hot, then brown onions (translating from French, but sometimes I get it wrong). Don't have pork fat, but I do have plenty of duck fat, so...

Classic next step is to brown a couple of ham hocks, which (d'oh) I forgot to buy, but I do have a pound of good organic bacon from Rowe Farms so let's brown that. Brown some onions - oops, out of onions but here we have some shallots, close enough.

Add some "plain homemade pork sausage" (a la nature)... well, I forgot to off the pig this year but I have some lamb sausage with mint in the fridge so let's use that.

Put two diced tomatoes into the saucepan... Yeah, I could do that, but I only have one tomatoe (you say tomato, I say something else). I think I'll use some nice Italian pressed tomatoes from a bottle - way better than winter tomatoes in Toronto.

Add some garlic cloves, bay leaves, more thyme (woo hoo, these I have).

"In an special earthenware cassoulet dish"... well, what do you know, I have to improvise here. I do have a nice iron/ceramic dutch oven, I'll use that.

...layer the meats, sauce and beans with a good dusting of ground pepper over each layer.

Pepper I have. In fact - because I love pepper, I have a selection of peppers and grinders. Let's see, should I use Tellicherry, Red Sechuan, Cubebe, White Vietnamese? The ceramic grinder, the Peugot, the plastic deli-issue twister? I opt for the grocery store "gourmet pepper mix": this dish takes a lot of pepper.

Finish with a dusting of rough black breadcrumbs on the top... OK, I gotta admit, I faked this one. For some reason, I'm out of rough black breadcumbs, so I use the fine white ones. So, sue me.

Place in pre-heated slow (300 F) oven three hours. Break the crust which forms three times - no, six times - no, don't use breadcrumbs and don't break crust - depends on which classic recipe we're using - so I decide to break it four times. I hope the soundstage is wide and the highs are not too bright when we finally get to eat this dish.

So, that's what I'm cooking tonight (since yesterday). I'll let you know whether my tweaks are good (well, they have to be: they're tweaks) on the weekend, when we finally:

Day three

Classic... Serve at the table and break the crust in front of the assembled company.

... and serve the appropriate wine: inexpensive, unheralded, and high-alcohol like a good plebian Minervois. No shortage of these wines in the cellar (hello, wine thread) so we're good to go.