French Duck Casoulet, Malaysian Curry Puffs and Fried Soy Bean Curd

French Duck Cassoulet

I was invited by a colleague to a two-family potluck at her home in Vancouver. Her husband prepared the duck cassoulet for the potluck. As for our part, my wife and I only contributed the Malaysian curry puff, fried chicken wings, and fried soybean curd. Ours looked so much more simpler than the duck cassoulet. Anyway, that was the first time we have tried the cassoulet. The cuisine was really tasty and flavourful. Everyone of us took a second helping. French cassoulet is basically cooked in a cassole (traditional French cooking vessel) of white beans mixed with sausages, duck, pork bacon and carrots. The duck cassoulet was a changed from our usual cuisine.

Malaysian Curry Puffs

During our dinner conversation, I learned that cooking cassoulet was not as complicated as the cuisine looked. But it took my colleague and her husband more than five hours to prepare and cook this particular cuisine. After mixing the white beans with the different meats, the cassole was covered and left in the oven to slowly cook most of the time. My wife and I took several hours too. We spent most of the time hand kneading flour and wrapping the curry potato stuffing in the curry puffs. The rest was quick.

Soybean Curd Wrappings and Curry Puffs

The frying part was easy. We not only fried the curry puffs but went on with fried chicken wings and soybean curd. Since, there were already a pot of hot cooking oil on the stove, we thought it was a good idea to continue with the frying. We had earlier, marinated some chicken wings. So, why not fry some chicken wings. After that, we fried some soybean curd sheet. We wrapped fish paste in the soybean curd sheet. We put everything into a huge plater and took with us for the potluck.