RECYCLING WORKS: with meals, too, sometimes . . .

Saturday night, feeling lazy, I threw together a kind of ratatouille/puttanesca sauce mixture -- sauteed onions, red bell peppers, zucchini and chopped tomatoes, plus olives, capers, thyme, and red chile flakes -- to eat with garlic mashed potatoes. It wasn't amazing -- the flavors were a bit rough, but it was satisfying comfort food.

Sunday lunchtime, I pureed what was left of the ratatouille, and added it to a skillet in which I'd sauteed garlic and more red chile flakes & thyme in olive oil, then added and simmered down 1/2 a cup of white wine. Cooked the whole mixture together for 5 minutes until it was the right thickness and we ate it over spaghetti. Yum -- much more subtle flavors than the night before.

Sunday night, I wanted to make a kind of cassoulet with flageolet beans, those very small greenish-white French dried beans. I used a cross between Elizabeth David's recipe (from "French Provincial Cooking," p. 448) for Cassoulet Colombié (minus the many kinds of meat) and a Deborah Madison recipe for Flageolet Beans with Tomatoes ("Veg. Cooking for Everyone," p. 322). I didn't have any tomatoes, but there was still a little sauce left from lunch time. So it went like this:

I cup flageolet beans, quick soaked (boil for one minute in 6 cups water then let sit for an hour and drain). Bring soaked beans to boil in fresh water (to cover by 2 ins.) and boil hard for 10 mins. Add generous number of parsley branches and thyme sprigs, plus a couple of bay leaves and 2 cloves lightly crushed garlic and cook for 45 mins. Add 1 tsp. salt, then cook for another 15-30 mins or until tender. Remove parsley, thyme & bay leaves, and drain, reserving cooking liquid.

Sautee 1/2 onion in olive oil until soft, add 1/3 cup white wine and cook unril most of the wine has evaporated. Mix with the drained beans and 3 chopped tomatoes (this is where I used my leftover sauce) and enough reserved broth to moisten the mixture. Season with salt & black pepper and turn into a shallow overproof dish. Scatter breadcrumbs over the top and drizzle or spray olive oil over the breadcrumbs. Bake in 375-degree oven until heated though and browned on top (about 25 minutes. Fantastic.