Archive for the 'leftovers' Category
Who remembers this?
Sturdy Danny McGee was up his fifty-ninth tree; he said “I work as fast as I can” when he suddenly saw two scoops of raisins in a package of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran! Well he rushed to the ground ’cause ol’ Danny had found what’s important to a raisin fan, ’cause Kellogg’s puts two scoops of raisins in those nutritious flakes of bran! When he got to the truck Danny sure was in luck, he was one happy man ’cause only Kellogg’s puts two scoops of raisins in a package of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran!
This is the (completely unedited) self portrait W took as I was trying to photograph the bowl of cereal we were sharing.
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June 22 2008 | leftovers | 3 Comments »
If this wet, grey, hail-y weather continues, we are in for a whole year’s worth of cold weather comfort food. The smell of this shepherd’s pie bubbling made me crave crunchy leaves and Halloween.
To be honest shepherd’s pie isn’t normally in my repertoire, but as I was pondering what to do with this leftover roast lamb (hash was my first thought… my mom used to make the crispiest hash with leftover roast beef, potatoes and onions - like a wedge of burger and fries all crisped up and smothered in ketchup) I was simultaneously working on an article on meals you can freeze ahead. Shepherd’s pie is traditionally made with lamb, and I saw it as another opportunity to chip away at my stash of sweet potatoes while making it healthier in the process. Typically SP is made with raw ground meat, but it can just as easily be done with finely chopped leftover roast. Honestly, you could make a shepherd’s pie out of anything - a panful of veggies, even, or robust mushrooms with onions and garlic - then sprinkle a spoonful of flour overtop and add a cup of stock; bring it to a simmer to thicken and scrape up the browned bits from the pan, and pour into a baking dish and top with mashed potatoes. You really don’t need a recipe here, just a basic formula.
Come to think of it - a vegetarian version made with meaty portobello mushrooms, onions and garlic, and Guinness in place of the stock, would be just fab. More appropriate in October though, I think. Under normal circumstances, anyway.
Shepherd’s Pie with Sweet Potatoes
2 largeish sweet potatoes or 3 largeish russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 lb. ground lamb, lean beef or bison (or 2-3 cups chopped leftover roast)
1 cup sliced mushrooms (optional)
1 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. chopped fresh or dry rosemary (optional)
1 cup beef, veggie, onion or chicken broth
2 Tbsp. tomato paste or ketchup
1 cup frozen peas
2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 cup(ish) milk
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 375°F. To cook the potatoes you can either roast them in their skins in the oven for about an hour, microwave them whole in their skins (poke them with a fork first) or peel, chop and boil them until soft.
In a large pan, heat a drizzle of oil and sauté the onion and carrot over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until soft; add the garlic and meat and cook for another 5 minutes, until the meat is cooked through and the veg are starting to brown a little.
If you want to add mushrooms, set the meat mixture aside (transfer it to a bowl or something), heat a little more oil and sauté the mushrooms until they release their moisture and then the moisture cooks off and they start to brown. Return the meat mixture to the pan. Sprinkle the flour overtop and stir it around until it coats the meat a little, then add the rosemary, stock and tomato paste and stir until the mixture bubbles and thickens, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Stir in the peas.
Pour into a baking dish, making sure it only fills it half full, so there is room for the potatoes.
Peel (if necessary) and mash the potatoes with the butter, milk and salt and pepper. Spread over the meat mixture and bake for about 45 minutes, until bubbly.
Serves 6.
Per serving: 270 calories, 9.6 g total fat (2.8 g saturated fat, 4.4 g monounsaturated fat, 1 g polyunsaturated fat), 27.8 g protein, 17.9 g carbohydrate, 74.8 mg cholesterol, 2.5 g fiber. 32% calories from fat.
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June 11 2008 | freezable and lamb and leftovers and one dish | 2 Comments »
Forget advertising junk food to kids; it should be illegal to advertise Wendy’s triple cheeseburgers and Vanilla Caramel Latte Häagen-Dazs on the TVs at the gym.
I nearly chewed my arm off on the way home at 5pm. When I got here, I scarfed down enough bites of lentil-barley salad straight from the bowl to probably make up for the 600 calories the elliptical trainer told me I burned. I completely understand the French wish of bon appetit; ravenous hunger makes even lentils and barley taste like food straight from the gods. Not that I don’t love lentils and barley under normal circumstances - just maybe not quite as much as a double cheeseburger and a pint of Häagen-Dazs.
But wait… it appears I haven’t posted my lentil-barley salad recipe! The one with feta and tomatoes? I can’t seem to find it… I suppose we generally eat it for lunch. Soon. I’d post it now, but I ate it all - there’s nothing left for a photo.
I asked Mike to mix up a batch of pizza dough while I was gone, and we made a pizza, topped with crumbled up spinach meatballs and some sautéed red pepper because that’s what was in the fridge. When it stops raining, I’ll start doing pizza on the grill again, but it’s wet and cold enough out that I didn’t mind turning on the oven. If you want to crisp up the bottom of your pizza, slide it off of the cookie sheet, directly onto the oven rack, as soon as it’s stable enough to do so. This dough recipe makes enough for two round pizzas, or one big rectangular one about the size of a large rimmed cookie sheet. I get the heavy-duty ones at Costo: they used to come in packs of 2 for $20.
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May 21 2008 | leftovers | 1 Comment »
I had a request a few weeks ago to post a photo of my kitchen, so that readers could get an idea of the space this blog is really all about. Since then I have been waiting for a moment during which my kitchen is spanking clean to take a photo. Since it hasn’t happened yet, I finally got over myself, gave the counters a wipe and just took some.
I really love my kitchen. It has a nook/booth (nooth?) and lots of sunny windows, which in the summer open up to the patio, so I can cook while people sit outside and chat. It has old countertops salvaged from the UofC science lab (who knows what has been dissected and exploded on them before they even reached me?) and a really cool sink that fills up fast, always looks dirty and drips constantly, but I don’t care. I had always envisioned myself in a sunny kitchen with lots of windows and a big white porcelain sink. Usually I was baking pies for my husband John (Cusack) and had a 29 inch waist, but this will do.
I made a quick frittata for breakfast/lunch this morning - quickly sautéed the last chunk of purple onion (from the Greek salad), a few sliced mushrooms and a chopped tomato until the moisture cooked off and the veggies started to brown. Then I tossed in a handful of spinach, cooked it until it wilted, and poured over 4 whisked eggs. When the whole thing was close to set, I sprinkled it with grated cheddar and ran it under the broiler for a minute to melt the cheese.
Leftover wedges make great sandwiches served on toast or open-faced on half a bagel, but since I had neither I wrapped it in half a whole wheat flour tortilla. Mike is in Edmonton tonight, so W and I grazed on this, some leftover chicken, and the last of the brown and wild rice salad.
(I should mention here, if I haven’t before, that wraps are not the low-carb, low-calorie bread option they are often made out to be. I’m not sure who started this trend, but a wrap is simply unleavened bread. Imagine if yeast had been added, it would be the same thickness as a slice of bread, but just as large in diameter. Or conversely imagine rolling a slice of bread with a rolling pin until it flattens to the thickness of a wrap. No fewer carbs or calories in it.)
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May 10 2008 | leftovers | 2 Comments »
It is a good day when I realize it’s 5:45, I have no idea what’s for dinner, and there’s a bowl of leftover rice and peas in the fridge.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my favorite 5 minute dinner is fried rice. You can make it out of anything. (So long as you have rice.)
Here’s what you do:
Heat up a skillet with a drizzle of canola oil (and sesame oil, if you have some).
Throw in the cold rice, some frozen peas if they aren’t already in with the rice, and a little blob of curry paste or powder. Break in an egg and scramble it up off to one side. Toss in some raw or cooked shrimp - I keep a bag in the freezer and run a handful under the tap to thaw. Pork, chicken or tofu also work well (I wish I had a bit of that tenderloin from last night), but the shrimp-curry combo is a good one.
Season with soy sauce or salt (soy sauce is salty) and pepper. Done.
W is not yet a curry fan, so he ate some chicken tortellini I had boiled at lunchtime, tossed with pesto. Hey, at least it’s green.
I had a few bites of each of their dinners to tide me over until 8, when I’m meeting my friend J for cider and wings.
In other news: the Empty Bowl Benefit Online Auction has begun!
Last week I was one of many who had the opportunity to paint a bowl to auction off to benefit the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. All the bowls are being auctioned off at the Food Bank website, and can be viewed in all their glory at various downtown locations.
You can bid on my fabulous hand-painted fish bowl here! (I’ll deliver it myself if you live anywhere near Calgary, along with a bag of CBC swag, and of course filled with bacon caramel corn!)
It took me about 4 hours to paint. Seriously. (There are little fish swimming around the base of the bowl too, but you can’t see them at this angle!)
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April 30 2008 | leftovers and one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
This afternoon was K’s baby shower, so from 2-5 W and I grazed on party snacks: crispy, deeply toasted sesame and caraway crackers with cheese, grapes and pineapple from the fruit plate, sliced sausages on little colored sticks (mostly W’s department), cookies and chocolate covered peanut butter balls. By 6 we weren’t much in the mood for dinner. By 7 I realized Mike was about to make eggs and toast for himself, and although I likely ingested enough calories to count as dinner, I still wanted something warm and dinner-like, and W probably needed a bit of a nutritional boost.
I evaluated the contents of my fridge and came up uninspired, so decided to chip away at the contents of my freezer by boldly grabbing the first frozen-solid yogurt container within reach and thawing it for dinner.
Although it was labelled ‘pesto chicken’, it was in fact antipasto.
The second, however, was marked ‘beans: march 1/08′. (Mike gets full credit for labeling it.) It went into the pot to work its way back to its former state.
I grabbed a couple of Yukon gold potatoes, still on the counter from last night’s trip to Lethbridge, diced them small (so that they would cook more quickly without boiling) and threw them in my skillet with a little olive oil. While the potatoes cooked the beans thawed, and in about 20 minutes we had something warm that resembled a meal.
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March 30 2008 | beans and leftovers and vegetarian | No Comments »
In Lethbridge, in the dark to honour Earth Hour.
It was fantastic. I was in Lethbridge to cook and eat with the wonderful folks who were the highest bidders on a private dinner/cooking class with me that was auctioned off for the CBC Petro-Canada Food Bank Drive at Christmas. I asked what they would like to make and they were interested in learning to make fresh mozzarella - something I hadn’t done before. The process was simple but we tiptoed through it, skeptical that it was actually going to turn into cheese in the end, and it did! Although we were shocked at how little 2 L of milk produced; one handful-sized ball, which we managed to squeeze enough slices out of to make this salad layered with tomatoes and fresh basil:
Here’s how you do it:
Dissolve 1 tsp. citric acid into 2 L of cold milk (we used homo), briskly stirring it with a whisk in a largish pot. Set it over medium-low heat and warm until it reaches 100F, or just slightly warmer than body temperature. Remove from heat.
Crush 1/8 of a rennet tablet and dissolve into 2 Tbsp. cool water. Add this in a thin stream, whisking constantly, to the warmed milk. Stir for about a minute, then stop. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the curds into a small microwave-safe bowl, pressing out as much of the whey as you can.
Microwave for 1 minute (this will coax out a little more whey; just pour it off) and then plop it out onto a clean countertop and start to fold and stretch it. It will be almost too hot to handle, but will cool to warm quickly. Pull and stretch it until it’s smooth, then shape into a ball and put in a bowl of cold water until firm.
Pavlova
Whether you choose one big Pavlova or individual Pavlovas, they are simpler than you’d think to make, yet elaborate enough to make an impressive dessert, if that’s the reaction you’re going for.
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
6 large egg whites
1 tsp. white vinegar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup whipping cream
Fresh raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and/or sliced strawberries, peaches, plums, apricots, kiwi or whatever fruit you like
Additional sugar for tossing with fruit (optional)
Preheat oven to 250° F and line a large baking sheet with foil or parchment. Set aside about a tablespoon of the sugar, and stir the cornstarch into the rest.
In a large bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar mixture, beating until the mixture holds stiff, glossy peaks. Beat in vinegar and vanilla.
To make one large Pavlova, spoon the meringue onto the baking sheet and spread out with the bottom of a spoon to form a 9”-10” circle with a slight indent in the middle and raised edges, like a nest. To make individual Pavlovas, spoon 8-10 mounds of meringue about an inch apart on the baking sheet. Bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until crisp but still soft inside. If the meringues aren’t crisp, turn the oven off and leave them inside for another hour.
Transfer Pavlova(s) to a rack and cool completely. Beat the cream with the remaining tablespoon of sugar until soft peaks form. Mound into the middle of the cooled Pavlova(s) and top with fruit.
Serves 8-10.
Crème brulée has an unshakable reputation as the penultimate fancy dessert, one you can guage the quality of a restaurant based on, and one uncommonly made at home. But truly, it is one of the simplest desserts you can make. All you do is whisk together egg yolks, sugar and cream, pour it into cups, and bake it. At Williams-Sonoma they have 1 L tetra packs of crème brulée for something like $22, and I’m constantly gobsmacked every time I go in there and see people buying them by the basketload. That’s the easy part! If there’s any trick to it, it’s baking the custards in a water bath and bruléeing the surface, but even that part is easy - you don’t need to have a torch (although it is fun), all you need to do is scatter the surface with sugar and run it under the broiler for a minute or two. Because they are chilled before this part, this is the ideal make-ahead dessert if you’re making a special dinner.
Crème Brulée
6 large egg yolks
6 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy (whipping) cream or 18% coffee cream
1/2 tsp. good-quality vanilla (I used Madagascar vanilla bean paste, in which you can see the teeny seeds from the vanilla pod)
sugar, for sprinkling on top
In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in the cream and vanilla.
Divide among 6 small ramekins, and put them into a roasting pan or 9″x13″ pan; pour water in so that the water comes about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. This will sort of insulate them so that they cook gently and evenly.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until the custards are set but still just slightly jiggly in the middle (you’ll get a feel for this!). Take them out, let them cool and then refrigerate for a few hours or overnight, until nice and cold.
Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over each dish and caramelize with a torch or transfer to a cookie sheet and place under the broiler in the oven for about 2 minutes, just until the sugar is caramelized and golden. Turn the sheet around if you need to to help them caremelize evenly. Refrigerate again, or just let them sit on the countertop while you eat dinner or make coffee, just until the sugar is set and crackly.
Serves 6.
The drive home was longer than I anticipated, having blithely missed some turn at Fort McLeod and not realized it until I reached Pincher Creek. After turning around, driving back to F.M. and then finding highway #2 North, a snowstorm hit that lasted the entire drive back (almost 2 hours) to Calgary - it was one of those storms that makes you feel like you’re driving through an asteroid field, making it impossible to tell how fast you’re going or how far away that rig is in front of you.
But totally worth it.
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March 30 2008 | cheese and dessert and lamb and leftovers and sweet stuff | 1 Comment »
I was chatting to some other moms yesterday while our kids scrambled for chocolate eggs; on the subject of finicky eaters it became quickly apparent that some of you may be under the misconception that what ever I make for dinner, Willem will happily eat.
Ha. Let me relieve you of that crazy notion right now.
- He will not eat a potato in any form, unless it is a French fry. He will, however, eat falafel, and adores anything containing pesto.
- Anything else that’s green is out. Unless it’s spinach, wilted onto a pizza or whizzed into tomato sauce.
- He refuses to drink juice or even accept a Freezie. Which is not really a problem, just weird.
- Nor, going against all that is sacred to most two year olds, will he eat yogurt, or applesauce, or really anything resembling baby food. He will, however, drink a smoothie.
- He adores ketchup, so I mix it half and half with tomato paste to cut back on the sugar. He never notices. (You do have to refrigerate it though, and it doesn’t last as long.)
- He won’t eat an orange (even a Mandarin) or a carrot, unless it’s to imitate Bugs Bunny (in which case he only bites off the tip anyway) or cooked into Chicken, White Bean & Pesto Stew, which is loaded with veg and was always our saviour on days when we ate Big Salads and other things he won’t touch for dinner. However, in recent weeks it seems to be going the way of Lentil Soup - something he used to adore and now gags at.
We do, however, generally insist that he at least try a bite of things. Kids love repetition in their food as much as in their Disney movies, so it’s easy to fall into the “my kid will only eat chicken fingers and hot dogs” trap. If we let him, W would live on meat, buns, peanut butter spoons and eggs and toast, unless an all-candy and ketchup diet was an option. (What’s a peanut butter spoon? It’s a small spoon, dipped in peanut butter to then be licked off like a puppy. Hey, it has protein and good fats.)
Green Eggs and Ham has actually been quite effective in convincing him to try stuff. He spent the afternoon trying to persuade our chef neighbor to taste an avocado.
Tonight we went for dinner at Mike’s mum’s house, and she made Cornish hens (teeny tiny turkeys: one each, with Stove Top and seasoning salt) and W tore the legs and wings off all of them, and that’s all he would eat. Any onlooker might have thought we were poisoning him with the two bites of peas we managed to convince him to eat by overenthusiastically quoting Green Eggs and Ham: “you will like it, you will see - you will like it in a tree!”, and so when we got home we pulled out the tomato sauced whole wheat rotini we keep in waiting for such occasions, and his beloved (poached) eggs on toast, which has become the standard fare he asks for anytime he’s hungry.
Feel better?
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March 23 2008 | leftovers | 2 Comments »
One of my favorite things to eat in the world are gooey quesadillas. They are also, conveniently, a snap to make, can be done in under 5 minutes, and are the best use of virtually any kind of leftovers; poultry, beef, pork, shrimp, beans, veggies. Roast chicken, of course, is ideal. Since I always have a can of black beans in the cupboard, a few scattered on top always work. I had a few depressed mushrooms in the bottom of the fridge, so those got sauteed and added as well. Any sort of cheese ends you have rattling around make the glue to stick it all together.
My friend Nicole popped by last night to sit at my kitchen table for a quick visit, and told me about the outstanding quesadillas she had eaten at the Post Hotel: three-ply, she called them. I didn’t have the gumption to go for a three-tiered quesadilla, but I love the concept, and even more the comparison to toilet paper.
If you can make a grilled cheese sandwich, you can make a quesadilla. Buy whole wheat flour tortillas; might as well, they taste better and are better for you than plain white ones. While we’re on the subject, I should mention the common misconception that “wraps” are somehow healthier than bread… this began sometime during the Atkins dynasty, at which time “low carb” products made with flatbread were abundant. Now, a flat bread is just an unleavened bread; you would achieve the same result by taking a slice of regular sandwich bread and rolling it with a rolling pin. So tortillas aren’t magically low-calorie: imagine if they had a leavening agent like yeast added, they would be enormous slices of puffy bread.
If you’re brave enough to flip a full size quesadilla, throw a whole tortilla into a dry skillet and scatter with cheese and anything else you have around: beef, pork, shrimp, roasted veg, goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, sauteed spinach or mushrooms, really anything you can think of. Top with a little more cheese (to keep the lid closed) and top with another tortilla. If you’re wary of flipping something that size (really, it’s easy if you just invert it onto a plate and then slide it back in), spread out your fillings on half the tortilla and fold it over like a taco; they are much easier to handle that way.
Cut into wedges and serve straight from the cutting board with some good chunky salsa. My current favorite is the extra-chunky mild from the Superstore - Mike usually adds a few chugs of Tabasco.
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February 21 2008 | appetizers and leftovers and one dish and snacks | 5 Comments »
Remember that day we bundled pork, ginger, garlic and green onions into little wonton (or gyoza) wrapper packages and froze them? Today, I can hardly think of anything I’d rather eat, simmered in a steaming bowl of chicken broth (actually turkey, leftover from Christmas, but who can tell?), spiked with soy sauce and the teensiest squirt of red garlic-chili paste to help lift this fog.
This is like the hot soup version of that party mix you can buy that is made up of bits of cheezies and pretzels and taco chips, that I imagine are the sweepings from the snack food factory floor. You can sweep out your fridge and freezer right into the pot, throwing in mushrooms, frozen shrimp, broccoli, bok choy, pea pods, green onions, carrots, baby corn (you can buy packages of these frozen, which I did thinking W would think they were fab - he did not), bits of leftover roast chicken or pork, noodles (cook or soak them first, then divide among bowls and ladle the soup overtop so that the broth doesn’t get starchy) or any or all or none of the above. The wontons themselves only take 3-4 minutes to cook thrown straight from the freezer straight into the simmering broth; then allow the veggies only a minute or two, so that they blanch and brighten but retain their crispness. This is real fast food.
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February 06 2008 | leftovers and soup | 2 Comments »
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