Fake Cassoulet

January kinda kicked my butt. And February looks like it's well on the way to doing the same. So lots of comfort food is going on in our house - all things squishy and soft and not requiring much chewing are making their way to the top of the menu plan. Fortunately for me, we have a lot of good comfort food options so it's not immediately obvious that we're self-medicating with food these days.

This particular recipe (originally from Real Simple magazine) has been a favorite for years. An actual French person would probably be rendered speechless with horror that we dare to call this a cassoulet - nary a Toulouse sausage or duck confit to be found - but it can put together without a lot of forethought and it's great for cloudy, grim Sunday afternoons when it feels that winter is going to last forever. We haven't actually tried making this in the crockpot but I imagine it would work just fine; or you can do all your browning and chopping in advance to speed up a weeknight preparation, or cook the whole thing in advance and just heat it up.

Fake Cassoulet

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian sausage (turkey is fine, but the pork version is much tastier in this), removed from the casings
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 onion, thinly sliced
3-4 carrots, peeled and diced
3-4 parsnips, peeled and diced
1 8-oz can chopped tomatoes,drained (fine to skip if you're avoiding tomatoes)
3 15-oz cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
5 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
salt and pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup plain breadcrumbs, preferably fresh (grind up the crusts of your GF bread and keep them in the freezer)
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons melted butter

In a large Dutch oven, brown the sausage in the olive oil. Drain off the extra fat if you're feeling motivated to do so; there's typically not enough fat rendered from the meat for me to think it's worth the bother.

Add the next 8 ingredients (through "salt and pepper") and about a third of the garlic and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for about an hour or until the vegetables are very soft and your house smells incredibly good (these things reliably happen around the same time so I feel very comfortable using this as an actual cooking instruction).

This next step is optional, but makes the dish a little nicer: Mix the remaining garlic, butter, breadcrumbs, and parsley together and sprinkle over the top of the casserole. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes or until the topping is crispy and golden brown. If you used fresh thyme sprigs, it'll look like there are little twigs in the pot; warn your kids or they'll try to eat them. Or maybe that's just my kids.