One idea for leftover cranberry sauce

We didn't get around to making anything with cranberries for Thanksgiving, but my friend bestowed a bag (12 ounces) of fresh cranberries upon me.

I roasted them in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes until they started to shrivel up. Then into the food processor with the juice and zest of one orange and probably about 1/4 cup of brown sugar. The resulting paste was stirred into a sweetened, butter-enhanced biscuit dough to make cranberry-orange scones. They were delicious, but they looked like raw hamburger. Next time I would reduce the fruit:dough ratio. Then they would likely rise better and not look so meat-y.

I think that this idea would work with leftover cranberry sauce, too. Just be careful that the resulting dough isn't too wet.

Could also use the sauce in a coffee cake!

No Accounting for Taste

This morning Z asked if she could have 'doubled eggs' for breakfast. Last night we had sliced hard-boiled eggs on the salad, and there were two extras that she helped me peel and knew were in the fridge. She sliced them, popped the yolks into a bowl, watched me add the condiments, then attacked them with a fork. Then she announced that she was going to fill the white parts and lick the moosh out of them because she doesn't like the white and only wants the moosh. I suggested she eat the moosh with a spoon instead and let me take the whites for lunch. Happiness for all except J who had to leave the table. It was too early for him to watch and smell Z eating 'doubled' egg moosh for breakfast.

Eating the sub-continent: part 2

Raita, Rice, and Curry

With the goal of cooling the potentially warm curry, I made simple raita - inspired by this recipe from the recent issue of bon appetit magazine.

It started with about 3/4 of a 1qt container of plain yogurt. I drained it in a towel lined strainer for a couple of hours and then mixed in a peeled, chopped cucumber, 1t or so of salt, and a handful of chopped cilantro. That's it.

I cooked 2 cups of basmati rice in the rice cooker and then dumped in about a cup of frozen peas at the end of the cooking time and let the heat from the rice defrost and heat the peas.

The curry began with leftover cooked veggies - carrots, celery, onion, and broccoli stems (we ate the florets the other day and I saved the stems for this). I put about 2 cups of cooked vegetables in a saucier with a couple of tablespoons of oil and 1 T of madras curry powder and stirred in about 2 peeled, chopped potatoes over medium heat until everything was nicely coated with spices. Then I added about a cup of red lentils and 3 cups of chicken broth and let everything simmer for a while until the lentils and potatoes were cooked. That was the curry. I used the stick blender to smooth it out a bit. I followed the instructions about how much curry powder to use, but we could have had it hotter.

BTW - I made another small pot of soup without the spices but with everything else for Q. He is now 9 months old, has one partial tooth and loves soup. I blended his with the stick blender before blending the one with spice.

Pierogi

Clearing out the last of the drafts...

For Christmas Eve we had pierogi and sausages, following my husband's family tradition. Also in that spirit, I spent about 7 hours in the kitchen making the pierogi. They turned out great though, and I have been glad several times over the past few weeks to have extra frozen pierogi on hand to round out other dinners. The best filling was a sauerkraut one. Dough was Martha Stewart's. Apparently she is of Polish heritage.

Cook once, eat twice

Platitude, platitude, platitude.

I know that you have all heard the suggestion about cooking once and eating twice to improve your kitchen efficiency. It sounds great, but here's the thing - we don't like leftovers in our house. That's why I try to transform leftovers into something else. It's a whole new challenge.

Yesterday, however, I had a small helper for scrubbing potatoes, so I decided to boil 9 potatoes instead of the 3-4 that we actually needed. We'd eat some for dinner and keep the rest for inclusion in a fritatta or something later in the week. But then I thought, wait a minute, one needs boiled potatoes for potato salad, too, and we always like that, and it is better if it sits for a day.

So that's what I did - served a smaller amount of the boiled potatoes tossed with butter, parsley and thyme for dinner, and used the rest to make a dilly potato salad for tonight.

Hence I also boiled some eggs. I have a small helper who likes to help peel them, too. We had some deviled for dinner last night, and some went into today's potato salad. The gut munchkin in me really likes deviled eggs, and we are eating them frequently this winter.

Almost Spring Salad

In honor of the fact that it is almost spring I made a yummy entree salad for our dinner party last Saturday (forgot to take photos). I ate the leftover bits for lunch yesterday, and they were great.

The entree salad included the following: roasted asparagus (in season somewhere b/c it was $1.49 a pound at the grocery), pickled beets (home-canned last summer!), crumbled goat cheese, sliced raw red pepper, sliced raw carrot, grilled sirloin (1.75 pounds distributed between 6 adult servings), atop a bed of greens. The dressing was an adaptation of my favorite Macedonian Salad Dressing (it is in Moosewood or referenced elsewhere on this blog): 2 cloves garlic, juice of a lemon, red wine vinegar, a bit of salt, pinch or two of dry thyme, and then olive oil in an approximately 3:1 ratio with the acid ingredients.

My lunch leftovers were the rest of the asparagus, pickled beets, and some goat cheese with the remaining dressing.

We don't tend to use a lot of salt in my house, but during this pregnancy I have really been craving it and adding salt to my plate a lot of the time. Tip for house with toddlers who want their meal just like mommy's - add the salt to your plate in the kitchen rather than at the table where the 2 and 3/4 year old can see you do it. She will want to do it herself and is probably not that adept yet at sprinkling...

A thought about leftovers - it's not mine, but I Iike it

http://quietrest.blogspot.com/2009/01/luscious-leftover-buffet.html

Bearing linked this a while ago, and it is a nice inspiration. Step 1 - cook something so that you have leftovers!

Polenta in about 5 minutes -- not instant!

So recently bearing posted about cooking polenta in a slow cooker. I and other commenters expressed skepticism, "What about the endless whisking?". She assured us that it does indeed work and shared this ratio: 1.5 cups polenta (coarse grind cornmeal), 1.5 teaspoons salt, and 7.5 cups of water in the slow cooker on low for 9 hours.

Yesterday I tried it with some modification for the contents of my pantry...

Slow Cooker Polenta with Artichokes, Spiced Tomatoes, and Goat Cheese

1 cup cornmeal (yes, I used the same kind as you would to make corn bread)
1.5 teaspoons salt
5 cups of chicken stock (from the last time I roasted a chicken)

These went into the cooker, and I set it for 10 hours on low and instructed J to stir it a couple of times during the day and dump in about 3/4 cup of dried spiced tomatoes (that we made in the summer with the small tomatoes from our garden) at about 4:00.

I arrived home at 5:45, slightly late, to find the cooker keeping the well-cooked polenta warm. I chopped up a can of artichokes and about 1/4 pound of goat cheese and stirred them into the polenta. We ate it with green salad.

There were some crusty bits that required an overnight soak to clean the crock, but it may have been the result of uneven occasional stirring during the day rather than an inherent feature of this method.

Salad Dressing - Rule of thumb

My basic rule for salad dressing is one I learned from my friend Jen. She learned from her mom. Fat to acid is 3:1 ratio. The corollary is, use good olive oil because you will taste it.

Mostly I eyeball dressings, even the 3:1 part, but I have a couple of recipes that I will find and post.

Z is actually taking a nap. It's weird, so I will use the time here since J is skiing and the laundry is caught up.

The standby at our house is balsamic vinegar and olive oil mixed 1:3. That's it.

This one is the Macedonian Salad from The New Moosewood Cookbook: 4T olive oil, 2 T red wine vinegar, 1 mashed up garlic clove, 1/2 t salt (I usually leave this out), 1/2 t basil, 1/4 t thyme, 1/4 t oregano, 1 T fresh lemon juice, freshly ground black pepper. In the book the dressing is tossed with roasted eggplant cubes and a bunch of chopped veggies. I find that the dressing makes a really nice Greek-type dressing. That's why I don't add the salt, my salad usually has olives and feta that are plenty salty.

The cilantro-lime salad dressing at Cafe Rio is really good, and you can make it at home! In this case the acid is straight lime juice mixed in the 1:3 ratio with olive oil. Clean a bunch of cilantro, I'd say a handful. It's ok to use some stems, so if you are feeling like a shortcut just cut off the top of a bunch. Rough chop it and mix into dressing OR here's a time to use an appliance. Put all 3 ingredients into your blender and blend it up. I use a stick blender - juice the limes into a liquid measuring cup, then you can easily see how much oil to add, add the cilantro and then blend in the cup. If you aren't serving a formal dinner then the dressing can go right to table in the measuring cup - just watch for drips!

I like to make a dijon mustard dressing, too. 1 T dijon mustard and chopped garlic clove added to a basic red wine vinegar and olive oil mix. This is excellent on a salad nicoise - bed of greens with tuna, straight from the can, hard boiled egg slices, blanched and chilled green beans (or leftover roasted green beans - we had some leftover once), cold boiled potatoes, a few capers, sliced or chunked tomato if they are in season and olives. As the name implies, a true salad nicoise would use nicoise olives (the gross black ones in oil). We don't like them, so I use kalamata. I learned this one from Jacques Pepin. He's French.

I tend to buy my kalamata olives in a big jar at Costco. They also have big jars of sun dried tomatoes which I buy. It's nice to dress up a salad when it isn't summer and there aren't any fresh tomatoes worth eating. When you get to the end of the jar of sun dried tomatoes, there is some olive oil left that has basically been infused with the yummy tomato flavor. Try using this instead of regular olive oil as a base for homemade greek pizza or to brush on bread to make a bruschetta. You can also mix the oil with some vinegar (use a mild vinegar) to make a dressing that seems much fancier than it is. Or blend the tomato oil with basil to make an especially interesting pesto - you can freeze it for later in a zip top freezer bag.

If you are drowning in basil or have leftover pesto, you could do a basil dressing by basically thinning out pesto with more olive oil. This isn't so good for salad greens since there isn't any acid to balance out the bitter of the greens, but it is good for a potato salad or to toss with roasted vegetables like zukes and eggplant.

Roasted chicken day 2 - "Pot Pie Chimichangas"

If your mom is like mine, she makes chicken pot-pie with leftover roasted chicken (she also would have made a gravy on day 1). We like Mexican food, and my solution for roast chicken leftovers is faster than making a pie crust.

You will need yesterday's leftovers and then the basic staple items of large flour tortillas (the burrito size), and cheese. Salsa, jalapenos, sour cream, guacamole as desired.

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Grate your cheese. I usually use cheddar just because we always have it on hand.
3. Warm each tortilla in the microwave or on the stove so that it doesn't break when you roll it.
4. Fill each tortilla with a mix of leftover chicken, roasted veg, cheese, and anything else you like such as jalapenos. I don't suggest making the guts too wet, so leave the sauces for table garnish. Roll up, tucking in the ends to make a nice chimichanga-like packet. Place, seam-side down on a baking sheet. Depending on how large you make them and how hungry you are, you may need 2 per adult. Or serve with a nice side dish and plan 1 per adult.
5. Bake 20-25 min until the outside is nice and crispy, and any cheese that has leaked out is molten.
6. Serve with salsa, sour cream, guacamole or more cheese and enjoy. Can eat in hand or using knife and fork. So far this has pleased everyone, even my grandma.

Use all of your leftovers to make these and if they aren't all eaten, take one for lunch the next day.