Archive for the 'leftovers' Category
I went for elevenses today; real elevenses – not reheated coffee with coffee skin and stale peanut butter toast. Pierre made me crumpets. I know! For real! Crumpets! Only the very best butter transport system ever created!
OK, they might not have been exclusively for me. He was testing them for what I hope will be a book someday. (Just now it’s an idea. A really great idea that I must keep to myself like a juicy secret.)
Crumpets are made out of a wet, yeasty batter – thicker than pancake batter but thinner than bread dough – cooked in a hot skillet in crumpet rings (or cookie cutters, or cleaned-out tuna tins opened on both ends) until they’re set enough to flip and cook until crusty gold on the other side. Why pancakes and waffles are so commonly made on Sunday mornings but crumpets aren’t I have no idea. It’s totally unfair. Maybe I’ll go to the UK and ask them. Over crumpets.
The recipe isn’t quite done yet. Pierre deemed the batter too sticky. They were quite fabulous, even without the holey moon-surface typical of a true crumpet.
This recipe, from Tea and Crumpets by Margaret Johnson, looks promising. I am such a huge fan of crumpets – with butter and honey, or Lyle’s Golden Syrup – now that the seed has been planted I’ll have to give them a whirl one weekend.
These were washed down with tea, and adorned with marmalade, jelly and lemon curd. Also – macarons made by Candace, evidence of new skill honed by their macaron class in Paris last month. Chocolate and cherry. Spiffy, non?
I move that we bring back elevenses. Anyone second the motion?
March 11 2010 | leftovers | 27 Comments »
Hey, I made dinner today. Kind of. I assembled it – but I did have a pan to wash, so it counts. Right? When mixes came out on the market it was decided that if people had at least three steps of instructions to follow, they’d feel satisfied that they had made whatever it was themselves.
It’s not like I haven’t been in the kitchen – I’ve been testing dog treat recipes for Dogs in Canada and prepping food to take pictures of for Swerve and Parents Canada and doing stuff for CBC. But actual meals have been largely oatmeal and eggs on toast.
But. I had this red Thai curry meal kit I acquired from a new company called Thai Manna who sells their wares at The Hidden Chef in McKenzie Towne (also Millarville Market in the summer, and if you spend $100 or more they will deliver anywhere in Calgary or within a 30 minute radius of South Calgary), where today they started serving up Thai lunches as well. I met the (really nice) owners at a food event awhile ago – they had spent months in Thailand honing their cooking skills, and now have this fabulous fresh Thai curry paste they make from scratch and then include in these adorable little kits that come packed in a Chinese takeout container – fresh chilies, the paste, fish sauce, a can of coconut milk, raw sugar, jasmine rice… all you do is brown some meat and/or veg while your rice cooks (I used shrimp from the freezer and some fresh cauliflower and asparagus – more than they said to, but it worked just fine), add all the little packets and simmer and you have this fabulous, multi-dimensional curry that fed three grown-ups very well. (For $15. I love seeing real fast-food takeout options. And people passionate about opening their own businesses doing what they’re best at.)
They even teach Thai cooking classes! Which I might just have to do. They hold them monthly at the Hidden Chef, or they do private classes – you choose the guest list, time, place, menu and spice level and they provide the equipment, paste, ingredients and all the instruction you can handle, and you all sit down to dinner at the end. Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool too.
March 10 2010 | leftovers | 7 Comments »
Reduce, reuse, recycle, right? Does that count toward recipes for Spaghetti Pie?
Because when I identified the bag of frozen-solid mystery meat as chunks of crumbled meatloaf (and the bag? it was a bread bag from a new line of grainy breads I’m currently enjoying – Silver Hills – I bought mine at Co-Op)
it triggered a memory of spaghetti pie, which fit my dinner profile perfectly considering I also had frozen spinach and a container of freshly made ricotta and half a can of diced tomatoes in the fridge. Will you forgive me if I recycle the photos from two years ago? Because it looked EXACTLY THE SAME.
I’ve seen many versions of spaghetti pie, some in which the pasta is tossed with the sauce and cheese, then baked, others that have the crust par-baked first to crisp it up, and others with layers of cottage cheese between the noodles and sauce.
So I improvised: tossed the leftover spaghetti with some beaten egg, a bit of grated Parmesan, a grinding of pepper and a big spoonful of pesto, just because there was some open in the fridge and W is such a fan, then spread the spaghetti into an oiled pie plate, pushing it up the sides a bit to make a sort of crust.
Then I proceeded as if it were a lasagna – I crumbled some ricotta and thawed, squeezed-out spinach over the crust,
topped it with crumbled meatloaf, diced tomatoes and some leftover sauce…
and a little extra Parmesan with the grated part-skim mozzarella, and baked it at 350F for about half an hour, until all was golden, crispy-edged and bubbly. A Big Green Salad to go with.
This isn’t the first time I’ve planned something like this poorly; my Freezer Week* (*sadly not as exciting as Fleet Week) is coming to an abrupt end after two days. Or perhaps we’ll just put it on pause? Because looking at my calendar I have our Forage dinner tomorrow, Avenue mag’s 7th Annual Food Awards and then CHARCUT on Thursday, and I’m in Banff on Friday to do an event on Saturday. Sunday I’ll be back in the kitchen.
And tomorrow! I’ll take lots of pictures at Forage. Can’t wait! There are a couple tickets left if anyone wants to join us! Call Forage at 403-269-6551.
One Year Ago: I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Pie
February 23 2010 | leftovers | 16 Comments »
(Drum roll please) and the contents of this morning’s mystery freezer bag: strips of chicken for satay! Flavoured with West African Citrus Spice blend created by our friends/neighbours who opened a spice company called The Silk Road Spice Merchant and who -by the way- are opening up a hip little shop by Caffe Rosso in Ramsay in a few months. So after you grab your latte you can pick up some true cinnamon, or ras-el-hanout, or fennel pollen, or berbere, or Cubeb berries, or Turkish baharat.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: on Halloween they dressed up as Han Solo and Princes Leia, and their toddler daughter as an Ewok. Their homemade costumes were brilliant. When we went trick-or-treating and rang the bell at their house, K answered the door as Leia (and she totally pulled it off, by the way) a few springs in Mike’s head popped loose and he blurted out something along the lines of “what is this, Christmas? My teenage fantasies are coming true?” at which point she opened the door an inch wider and said, “Mike, I’d like you to meet my Mom and Dad…”
The West African citrus blend has a base of mustard and paprika with nutmeg and allspice for sweetness, ginger and chiles for heat and dried orange peel for tartness and flavour. How delicious does that sound? It’s killer on fish and grilled chicken, which is likely why I shook some into my baggie of chicken strips and squished it around before tossing it in the freezer to marinate as it sat in wait. Any meat cut into strips thaws much more quickly than a big lump, so it’s easy to pull out, thaw, thread onto bamboo skewers and cook in about 5 minutes under the broiler. The grill would have been better, but it was cold and I was lazy.
Because in other news: I’m sick. Snotty, phlegmy, sore throat, sore head. Sneezes that feel like they just might blow my head off my body. It could be that over the past few days my defenses were knocked down while every last reserve of energy was channeled toward digesting.
Alison brought soup. Creamy broccoli with chunks of unpeeled new potatoes and grated cheese melted in. She makes it like so: dumps a 1L carton of chicken stock into a pot, brings it to a simmer with a bunch of chopped broccoli and halved baby potatoes. When the veggies are tender she throws in a handful of grated old cheddar and a couple cups of half & half. If it needs thickening, she adds a quick slurry of flour and water and lets it bubble.
Soup always tastes so much better when someone else makes it for you. Even better yet while watching The Office online, on your laptop in bed, and coming across one you haven’t seen yet.
February 22 2010 | leftovers | 21 Comments »
a.k.a. Kitchen Sink Strata or Whatever-Might-Go-Stinky Strata. This was my method of using up the last of the stale buns, veg, milk and eggs before we take off for the weekend, with a chunk of ham from the freezer and some grated cheese for good measure.
Strata is easy. Fill a baking dish with torn or cubed stale bread and handfuls of leftover cooked veg, meat and grated cheese. Measurements don’t matter. Whisk together eggs and milk – about 8 eggs per cup of milk – I added a big spoonful of jarred pesto, too. Pour over the bread-meat-veg mixture and top with grated cheese. Stash in the fridge overnight or through the day, and ask whomever is home before you to pop it into the oven for half an hour or forty-five, until bubbly and golden.
W took it upon himself to prepare his own dinner as we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies. He brought his plate in exactly like this. Three pieces of popcorn, copious amounts of ketchup for dipping, a pear, and a water. It reminded me of something you might see on an 80s diet plate – alongside the bunless burger patty topped with a scoop of cottage cheese and a wedge of cantaloupe. He was perfectly happy.
(My favourite part is the detached Venom claw reaching out from under the newspaper.)
We’re taking off for the weekend, heading to the BC interior (crazy, yes, in tandem with the start of the Olympics) to visit friends. (Of course y’all are coming with me.) I need to get away for a bit; Mike needs some non-crazy and sleep deprived Julie time (if there is such a thing) so our solution is to drive for six hours, stop at Tim’s and for ice cream and cow-petting on the way, and if all goes according to my master plan, get cooked for. The very best kind of therapy.
And although you may be getting tired of hearing it, I have one final Blog Aid update – we’ve reached the end of our run, wrapping it up to coincide with the end of the government’s match program (and the start of the Olympics) and I’m proud to report 1818 books sold, with a total of $47,166.00 (including the Canadian government’s matching donation) going to Haiti relief. (That’s almost 50 grand you guys! in a little over a week!) At the risk of repeating myself, I’m just totally blown away by everyone’s generosity. Thank you so much.
And of course thanks to West Canadian Graphics, Blurb and Cathryn Ironside, who spent countless hours turning the piles of recipes and photos into something we could all keep on our kitchen shelves and use to feed our families and friends. What wonderful evidence of what good can come from a single thought, when so many generous people work together to bring an idea to fruition. Thanks as well to all twenty-seven food bloggers – you know who you are – who donated recipes and images and tweeted and facebooked to help spread the word. It wouldn’t have happened without you, either.
And of course, THANKS to all of you who bought a copy! Or two. Or four.
My biggest, deepest thanks to all. There is so much good in the world, isn’t there?
One Year Ago: BBQ Buffalo Chicken Strips with Blue Cheese Dip
February 12 2010 | leftovers | 17 Comments »
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