Archive for March, 2008
I spelunked into the depths of my freezer today in order to pull out the bacon I knew was in there, as well as the kataifi (Greek shredded filo/phyllo pastry) I picked up at the Italian Supermarket last week to make teeny sugared birds’ nests out of for our Easter brunch and egg hunt tomorrow. I know, it’s very Martha of me, but it costs less than $5, and it’s fun.
But the real question here is: Why?? Do I continue to put so many unmarked baggies and yogurt containers in the freezer? For some reason I always believe I’m going to be able to identify it 3 months later when it has formed an icy exterior and spots of freezer burn.
During my inventory I came across: beef, bison, pork tenderloin, ground lamb, stewing beef and 2 giant packages of corn tortillas I forgot I had, on top of freezer bags of chokecherries I picked last summer and a plethora of chopped rhubarb. (Can someone please explain to me the expression “more than you could shake a stick at”? Wouldn’t it conceivably be possible to shake a stick at any quantity of something?) My plan for years has been to pick up a magnetized dry erase board on which I could list the contents of the freezer, and add to/wipe off the list as I add too/use up its contents. But you know it will end up with funny/dirty things written all over it by visitors to my kitchen, anyway.
So my mission, should I choose to actually accept it, is to chip away at the contents of my freezer. But first, there’s the small matter of leftover chicken to deal with.
Everyone knows that the best reason for roasting a chicken in the first place is to make cold roast chicken sandwiches. Surprisingly though, I rarely make them, instead opting to transform leftover chicken into fried rice, quesadillas, curries and the like. I think this is because I always want cranberry sauce on my chicken sandwiches, and usually there isn’t any on hand, unless it’s leftover turkey we’re dealing with. This morning though, I came across 2 1/4 bags of frozen cranberries, so I dumped the quarter bag into a small pot with some water and sugar and let them simmer and pop while we assembled the sandwiches. I baked a crusty loaf of no-knead bread this morning, so all the stars fell into allignment.
Seriously. What’s better than a roasted chicken sandwich?
Even though this wasn’t part of dinner, I made the nests today, so I’ll post the recipe in case you might want to make them this weekend. Kataifi is easy to find at most ethnic grocery stores: Kalamata and the Italian markets in Calgary, for sure. Otherwise you could buy phyllo and slice it thinly while it’s still rolled up. I’ve often wondered if a healthier version would work using shredded wheat. I think it would need to somehow be softened though, in order to be able to press it into the tins.
Phyllo Nests
After you make these, your kitchen counter and floor will be covered with shredded kataifi bits. Don’t worry about it; they sweep up easily.
1/2 pkg. kataifi, thawed if frozen (pre-shredded phyllo; sold frozen at Greek grocers and large supermarkets.)
3 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 Tbsp. sugar
pinch cinnamon (optional)
chocolate eggs, jelly beans or those pastel candied almonds you get wrapped in tuille at weddings
Preheat oven to 375°F. Pull the kataifi apart with your fingers or with scissors, tearing it into chunks a couple inches long. Toss it in a bowl with the butter, sugar and cinnamon.
Press into mini muffin cups, pressing the mixture loosely into the bottom and up the sides, to form a nest. Bake for about 10 minutes, until pale golden. Let cool and then fill with chocolate eggs or jelly beans.
Makes about 2 1/2 dozen nests.
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March 21 2008 | sweet stuff | 1 Comment »
My friend Nicole Schon, owner of tnik, is a tea genius. She knows everything there is to know about tea. To be honest, I didn’t realize there was so much to know until I met her.
A few points of note: did you know that in order to get all the antioxidant benefits from your green tea you need to steep it three times? That’s right: steep, drink. Steep again, drink. Steep yet again (it’s kind of weak by now); drink. This can occur over a 24 hour period; no need to guzzle it all at once. It’s good news for those who are >ahem< frugal. Like me.
Also, if you pour boiled water over your tea and then instantly pour it off, you naturally get rid of the majority of the caffeine.
A few months ago she mentioned that she sometimes kept her used tea leaves and stuffed them under the skin of a chicken before roasting it. Brilliant! I have done this with rosemary, and thyme, and butter and garlic, so why not tea? Lubricated with a little soft butter or oil, if you like. As the chicken roasts the skin becomes more transparent, so you can see the tea leaves through it, and it subtly flavors the meat underneath as well as the juices, which may or may not end up as gravy. The only varieties I have right now are Belgian chocolate, a few chais, berry berry, creme caramel and matcha (which is powdered, so wouldn’t work), so I decided to use the rough green tea another friend brought back from Hong Kong. (Speaking of matcha: one of the reasons it’s particularly great for you is that you ingest the whole leaf, rather than straining it out as you do with other green teas. This is another advantage of using steeped green tea leaves in your chicken – you end up eating the whole leaf, so it’s a great antioxidant boost.)
I steeped a pot of it while I put the chicken in its vessel, loosened the skin from the breast meat by shoving my fingers underneath, then scooped out the soggy, spent leaves and stuffed them underneath. OK, I also added a tiny bit of butter. On the outside, I patted the skin dry (to ensure a crispy crust) then slicked it with canola oil and sprinkled it with salt and pepper. Then I put it in the oven at 350 and went back to work until I could smell it roasting and the joints wiggled loosely in their sockets. W prepped some asparagus for me, deftly breaking it as he has obviously seen me do, and rubbing them all down with oil to slide onto the oven rack underneath.
As it turned out, it was serendipidous that I happened on this particular day to use my green tea leaves for stuffing chicken – odd, actually, because I have roasted many chickens since hearing the idea – because when I lifted the strainer basket from the mouth of the teapot in order to more easily scoop out the leaves, having already poured myself a mug of tea, I caught a fleeting glimpse of something three-dimensional in the teapot. AAA batteries, which had clearly been stored there earlier, and now had been steeping in my green tea. Oh the perils of having a toddler in the house.
March 20 2008 | chicken & turkey | 8 Comments »
I know, I know. What sane person makes cannelloni from scratch for dinner on a regular Wednesday night?
Someone who became frustrated with the bulky stack of fresh pasta sheets congesting her deep freeze and hastily pulled them out yesterday, thinking she’d come up with some brilliant use for them.
I’ve never actually made cannelloni. When I assisted at a pasta class with Lina several months ago, she left a whack of pasta sheets behind, which they didn’t want to store in the fridge at the Cookbook Company, so I took home. Since then, they have been taking up valuable space in the frozen food section. About a month ago I taught another class with her, at which she demonstrated how to make cannelloni. Seemed easy enough – in the class we stirred together ricotta and thawed frozen spinach, spooned it down the long edge of a pasta sheet, rolled it up, cut it and baked it with pasta sauce poured overtop. I dug around the fridge and voila! A half container of ricotta; luckily it has a lengthy shelf life. I consulted a few websites and noticed that most didn’t bother adding an egg to stabilize their cheese fillings, so I didn’t. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything green – spinach or chard – in the fridge or freezer, but I did dig out a baggie of frozen roasted red pepper (roasted red pepper freezes beautifully, and is perfect to stash in baggies for emergency pizza toppings, salads, and dips), which I chopped and added to the ricotta along with salt and pepper, amusedly imagining how totally gourmet my slap-together dinner was going to sound when I posted it. It’s funny how everything sounds fancier when you spell it out.
I also pulled out two small Italian sausages that weren’t substantial enough for much else than pasta sauce. After thawing them I mildly regretted having bothered, but they were already thawed so I quickly cooked them up and poured the tomato sauce over top.
So the rolled cannelloni, which I filled, rolled up, didn’t use anything to seal, then trimmed and cut widthwise into thirds (I trimmed because it seemed to be I didn’t want the pasta to be three-ply…) and set in a baking dish in a puddle of tomato sauce to keep them from sticking, then poured the rest of the sauce overtop. Although most cannelloni appears to be baked at that point, I saw it as an opportunity for a cheesy mozzarella top; the kind that gets the crusty corners and dark bits. So I scattered the top with cheese and baked it at 375 for about half an hour, until it was bubbly and the pasta was soft. Yum.
March 19 2008 | pasta | No Comments »
If I were to be completely honest here, I would probably have to report the handful of Hershey’s kisses I had in the pocket of my pea coat and ate during a board of trustees meeting at 6:30 as technically my dinner.
However. I did make something for late lunch, which is why I found myself at said meeting at 6:30 having not eaten anything for a few hours. Mid-afternoon was pizza, made my very favorite way: by spreading a container of roasted peppers, zucchini, eggplant and garlic, glossy with olive oil and with a bit of spicy bite, which I picked up for $5 from the Italian Supermarket (on the corner of 20th Avenue and Edmonton Trail NE), over a stretched-out foundation of No-Knead bread dough, scattering with part-skim mozarella and a grating of Parmesan, and baking at 400F for about 20 minutes. You don’t even need to bother with tomato sauce; those containers of roasted veg are like instant, made from scratch pizza. If you don’t want to bother making pizza dough, they sell frozen blobs of that too for 75 cents. 75 cents! What’s 75 cents anymore? Not even chocolate bars.
(I realize pizza has become a theme here. If it’s any consolation, I’m starting to tire of it. Unfortunately, it will probably only be a few days before I want some again.)
March 19 2008 | cheese and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
“It’s like a small salad, only bigger… with lots of stuff in it.”
– Elaine Bennes
Today was a bit sad and stressful, and at 7pm we realized we had no dinner and no time to make the chicken, white bean and pesto stew I thawed a package of chicken thighs for. No matter. We tore open the tub of organic spring greens ($5 for a giant plastic tub at the Superstore – and like foam stuffing, it seems to expand as you pull it out) and started tossing things in: the last of the deli ham, grape tomatoes, a few shriveling mushrooms, toasted pecans, and the last third of a jar of spiced pickled beets I bought at the market.
The best part was, I used the sweet, spiced brine as a base for a salad dressing, with balsamic vinegar, a squirt of grainy mustard, some canola oil and a drizzle of flax oil (1 tsp. has more omega 3s than a 3 oz. filet of salmon!) – shaking it all up in one of my IKEA oil & vinegar bottles.
After dinner I made hot crossed buns for CBC tomorrow morning – this time I revamped them a bit from the traditional version using those candied fruit bits by adding orange (in the form of grated zest and candied peel) and chocolate chunks. When they come out of the oven, I’ll cross them with chocolate - place a small handful of chopped chocolate or chocolate chips in a ziplock baggie, seal and put in a bowl of warm water until it melts. Snip a small piece off the corner and squeeze the chocolate out onto the buns.
Hot Crossed Buns
1 pkg. (or 2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water, milk or a combination of both
4- 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
pinch allspice
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or non-hydrogenated margarine, melted
1 large egg
1 cup golden raisins, currants or a combination
1/3 cup mixed peel (extremely optional)
Paste for crosses:
3 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. water
Glaze:
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. water
Place the yeast, a bit of the sugar and the milk in a bowl and let it sit for 5 minutes to make sure the yeast is active.Sift the flour with the spices and salt, and add almost all of it to the yeast mixture along with the butter, remaining sugar, egg and dried fruit. Mix until you have a sticky dough.
Take the dough out and place it on a floured surface. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding more flour as you need to if it gets sticky, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Knead for another minute for good measure and an upper-body workout.
Place back in the bowl, cover with a towel and let rise for an hour, or until it’s doubled in size. If you want to bake them fresh in the morning, put the bowl in the fridge overnight to slow the rising.
Divide the dough into 12 balls and place in a 9”x13” baking dish or on a cookie sheet – space them close together if you want them to rise and touch and be soft, pull-apart buns, or space them further away if you want them to have a baked crust all the way around. Cover with a towel or loosely with plastic wrap and put them in a warm place for another half hour to an hour. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Mix the flour and water for the crosses, put the mixture in a zip-lock bag and snip a tiny piece off the corner. Pipe a cross onto the top of each bun and bake them for 25-30 minutes, until golden and well risen. If you want to glaze them, combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves (alternatively you can do this in the microwave). Brush this hot syrup generously over the tops of the buns while they’re still warm.
To make the Orange Chocolate Chunk version: ease up on the cinnamon a bit and omit the allspice; add the grated zest of an orange along with the melted butter and egg; add 1/2 cup chopped candied orange peel and 1 cup chocolate chips or chunks to the dough instead of the raisins and citron. Omit the paste for the crosses and instead bake them, cool them and cross them with chocolate - place a small handful of chopped chocolate or chocolate chips in a ziplock baggie, seal and put in a bowl of warm water until it melts. Snip a small piece off the corner and squeeze the chocolate out onto the buns.
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March 17 2008 | bread | 6 Comments »
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I spelunked into the depths of my freezer today in order to pull out the bacon I knew was in there, as well as the kataifi (Greek shredded filo/phyllo pastry) I picked up at the Italian Supermarket last week to make teeny sugared birds’ nests out of for our Easter brunch and egg hunt tomorrow. I know, it’s very Martha of me, but it costs less than $5, and it’s fun.
