OK, so this was really lunch. But it was late in the afternoon, close to dinner. This evening I was emceeing a fundraiser for a school for autistic kids, and it was a (fairly utilitarian) buffet dinner, not much interesting to write home about, so I opted to default back to lunch.
We were out doing some running around most of the day, and starving. The plan was to pick up a couple of slices of pizza at Wicked Wedge, but when traffic got far too difficult to fight, I told Mike to head home and I’d stir up something great I’d just read about.
I was romanced by the idea of this chickpea salad by Molly at Orangette. Molly calls this a salad, (and who am I to argue with Molly?) and I suppose technically it is what with the oil and lemon, but my idea of a salad usually includes a few more base ingredients. I can’t really go so far as to call it a recipe; it’s more like seasoning a can of chickpeas. She once said something along the lines of “one of life’s greatest skills is the ability to doctor up a can of beans”, and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve adapted this a bit, partly because it’s easier around these parts to find a 19 oz can of beans, and partly because I like it with pepper.
It wasn’t as earth-shattering as I hoped, but Mike called it “deeelish“, and I found myself thinking about the leftovers in the fridge. It’s one of those last-second formulas that can round out a meal or create a perfect picnic or lunch at work instantly.
Alongside, some sautéed spinach with garlic. I picked up a bag of local Hotchkiss spinach the other day, thinking about that poached egg on toast with sautéed spinach that was so good so many months ago. The combination was good when you got a bit of garlicky spinach on your fork and anchored it by spearing a few chickpeas.
Chickpeas with Lemon and Parmesan
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil or cold-pressed canola oil
1 Tbsp. lemon juice (about half a lemon)
salt & pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Stir everything together; serve right away or put in the fridge to chill. Can be kept overnight; makes a great portable lunch.
It was a snacking sort of afternoon, and Mike was going out tonight, so I pulled a container of spaghetti pie out of the freezer in order to feed W properly, and I snacked on some leftover lemon bars from a high tea I prepared for donors at the Children’s Hospital yesterday. These are far lower in fat than traditional lemon bars, but you’ll never notice the difference.
When I was testing recipes for One Smart Cookie, one of the trickiest things to trim the fat from was the shortbread that makes the base of so many bars. The thing about shortbread is that it contains butter, sugar and flour (sometimes some cornstarch for mouthfeel, sometimes some rice flour, or icing sugar) and when you start to mess with it, it becomes something other than shortbread. But I discovered something after months of adding everything from strained yogurt to low fat cream cheese: when you remove the fat from a recipe, you don’t necessarily have to replace it with anything. Hallelujah! Now this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s good to know. This shortbread base is a case in point: a typical ratio is 1/2 cup butter to 1 cup flour; I use 1/4 cup butter to 1 (scant) cup flour, and it works out just fine. The mixture will seem too crumbly to work, but just trust me. I wouldn’t serve it on its own as shortbread, but it makes a mighty fine base. If it cracks a little on top when you bake it, it doesn’t matter one bit; you’re pouring a topping over it anyway.
Classic Lemon Bars
Base:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 scant cup all-purpose flour
pinch salt
Topping:
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
1 large egg
1 large egg white
grated zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon (3 Tbsp.)
icing sugar, for sprinkling
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the butter and sugar until creamy. Add flour and salt and stir until well combined and crumbly.
Press into the bottom of an 8” x 8” pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for about 8 minutes, until just barely golden around the edges.
In the same bowl (no need to wash it), stir together the sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. Add egg, egg white, lemon zest and juice and stir until well blended and smooth. Pour over the base.
Return to the oven for 25–30 minutes, until slightly golden on top and bubbly around the edges. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. Sprinkle with icing sugar before cutting into bars.
Makes 12 bars.
Per Bar: 168 calories, 4.4 g fat (2.5 g saturated fat, 1.3 g monounsaturated fat, 0.2 g polyunsaturated fat), 30.8 g carbohydrates, 28.3 mg cholesterol, 2.1 g protein, 0.4 g fiber. 23% calories from fat
Oh, and meet Lou. (Short for Louis, as in the old St Louis blues bar in Calgary, or Louis Armstrong, or Jos. Louis – the cream-filled chocolate cake sandwich, named for the founder’s sons, Joseph and Louis). Thank you for all the fantastic suggestions, but this was one we could all agree on that didn’t have odd connotations or rhyme with anything we didn’t want him confusing his name with (ie. the dog next door). Plus, it’s about as cute as you can get when W says “woo-wee“.
(Of course all of you know that his real name is John Cusack. Whenever Mike isn’t around, that’s what he’ll go by. Louis can be his alias.)
The final resting place for any chicken that has been roasted in my house is a pot on the stove. When it would appear that most of the meat has been used up in salads, quesadillas and fried rice, there is always more to be coaxed off by a stint in the hot tub. Yesterday I covered the last of two chickens with water and added a handful of chives from the garden, a few peppercorns, and that was it. (And always add any chicken gel that might be left in the bottom of the roasting pan or container you stored it in in the fridge.) You could add any kind of vegetable trimmings you like – onion skins to make it darker and richer – or roast the carcass in the oven first, which is akin to browning meat; it caramelizes any natural sugars in there, adding flavour to the resulting stock.
Contrary to popular belief, stock does not have to simmer for hours on end, nor must you boil an entire chicken to rubber in order to make stock. A half-hour simmer is fine, then turn the heat off and let it all cool down – sort of like steeping a big pot of chicken tea. When it’s cool enough, pull out the bones and help the bits of meat fall off into the stock – a perfect base for soup.
I’ve had a jar of alphabet noodles on my shelf for at least a year – something I thought I should have when I became a mum, but not the sort of thing I often think of cooking with. W likes to play with them, but I have yet to actually add them to anything. Today I thought I’d reheat my chickeny stock, along with some chopped carrots and alphabet noodles. It seemed boring.
Then I remembered a soup Mike used to be addicted to when he worked in a deli decades ago – it was called Italian wedding soup; a basic chicken soup made with teeny meatballs, greens and tiny pasta stars. (I’m pretty sure Campbell’s makes a version of it in one of their hoity toity varieties.) I had greens. I had meatballs, even if they weren’t teeny. I cut them in half. I did a quick internet search to see if I was missing anything, and noticed Giada makes a version (with endive or escarole) in which she whisks together egg and Parmesan cheese and dribbles it into the hot broth, creating a cloudy soup with ribbons of egg, reminiscent of egg drop soup.
Alphabet Wedding Soup
I’d love to try this with sausage meatballs; squeeze lean Italian sausage out of their casings at about 1/2″ intervals to make small meatball-sized pieces that will hold together as they simmer in the soup.
3-4 cups chicken stock, preferrably with pieces of chicken in it
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/3 cup alphabet or other small pasta
about a dozen marble-sized meatballs, or small bits of sausage (uncooked)
1-2 eggs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
a couple handfuls of fresh baby spinach, chard or escarole
Bring the stock to a simmer in a pot on the stove. Add the carrot, pasta and meatballs and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through and the pasta is tender.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and Parmesan cheese; drizzle into the hot soup, stirring gently so that it doesn’t completely blend in, but cooks in strands. Throw in the spinach and cook for another minute or two, until it wilts.
Season with salt and pepper, and serve with extra Parmesan cheese on top.
I was a complete walking disaster today, making a complete mess of everything in my path. Except dinner, miraculously, most likely because I was starving. Hunger is great motivation.
The chickens had been too picked over for Caesar salad, so we stretched the chopped bits into three quesadillas along with a few sautéed mushrooms. Making quesadillas is exactly the same as making a grilled cheese sandwich, only you use flour tortillas (whole wheat, always) and put more stuff in it, using cheese as the glue that holds them together.
My cast iron skillet doesn’t quite accommodate a full-size quesadilla, so I do the ones made out of one tortilla, folded in half. Because there was no salsa, I spread a bit of sun dried tomato pesto onto the base of each one before adding the mushrooms, chopped chicken and a bit of grated old cheddar. Black beans would have fit in nicely, too. I am a fan of old cheddar, much more so than the light stuff, which you need twice as much of to really taste it… I’d rather use the old stuff, and less of it.
Cook them in a dry skillet – no need for oil – until toasty and melted. Quesadillas are one of the fastest and easiest meals I can think of; like frittata or fried rice, you can get away with using up bits of anything, and stretching it into dinner.
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