Category Archives: leftovers

Boxing Day

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I have titled this entry not to call your attention to the boxes containing presents to be returned, or the boxes full of old newspaper snippets waiting to re-enclose ornaments and decorations for next year, but to the kind that hold leftovers safe in the fridge until you have room in your belly enough to think about eating again.

N.’s family does a big Christmas dinner, and I mean big: think Thanksgiving.  There’s a turkey, there’s stuffing, Christmas would be ruined without mashed potatoes, and there’s N.’s dad’s specialty: an ambrosia fruit salad complete with miniature marshmallows.

So on December 26th, while we listen to new music and test out our new toys and break in our new clothes, there are also new dishes to be considered.  After all, you can only re-eat Christmas dinner so many times in its original form before you long for a pizza.  On my work-off-Mom-in-law’s-chocolate-fudge walk this morning, through the deer-infested, hill dotted neighborhood in the Sierra Nevada foothills with the smell of fire and pine in my nose, I thought of a few tasty ways of working through the leftovers that I wanted to share.

For breakfast, or mid-morning, or mid-afternoon snack: toast a piece of whole-grain bread, with lots of nuts and seeds sprinkled along the top.  Spread it thick with cream cheese, then drape some whole berry cranberry sauce atop that.  Fold the bread over, or approach it open-face, and rejoice in the creamy rich sweet tart flavor.

As a dinner time side dish, take your leftover mashed potatoes and sprinkle with a hefty helping of black pepper and garlic powder.  Spread out on a plate or in an oven-safe dish, then cascade on a blizzard of parmesan or extra sharp cheddar cheese.  Microwave or bake in the oven until the potatoes are burbling hot and the cheese has melted into a gushy thick layer of melted awesome.  Eat.

For the turkey, there are a billion recipes out there.  This Turkey Pot Pie might be my favorite.  It’s rich, it’s homey and comforting, and as an extra bonus, it can take care of your leftover gravy too!

Hope your holiday was joyful and delicious.

Turkey Pot Pie

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I have discovered that, much as I enjoy baking, I am not and may never be a master of the finicky, temperamental beast that is homemade pie crust.  Fortunately, this did not hinder me when I embarked on my major repurposing-Thanksgiving-leftovers meal last week.  No, I shamelessly bought a package of pre-made pie crusts to lovingly enclose a turkey pot pie.

We had a big turkey this year, and after stripping off the meat and making stock from the bones, I decided both could be put to good use in a pie.  Since the weather has been so chilly, baking is a good way of warming up the house and therefore a good way of choosing dinners.  Never having attempted pot pie before, I surveyed a few likely looking sources for potential recipes before scrapping them all and making it up myself.  Here’s how it went down:

I chopped up three or four cloves of garlic, about ¼ cup of onion, and five or six cremini mushrooms, which I sweated down in olive oil until they were soft.  While this was happening, I chopped up a couple of carrots and a handful of fingerling potatoes into small pieces.  I tossed these into the pot with the aromatics along with some poultry seasoning and a splash of white wine, and then added about 2 cups of turkey stock and heavy cream stirred briefly together.  In a flash of genius, I realized this was an opportunity to use up the mushroom gravy my mom had made for the big Thanksgiving meal.  Everyone seems to stress about gravy – avoiding lumps, getting the right consistency, producing a good flavor without drowning the sauce in salt, and then it doesn’t get used up.  It coagulates into a strange, meaty jelly in the refrigerator and just doesn’t microwave right.  Most years we throw the leftovers away.  But mixed into my pot pie filling, it melted back into a slightly thickened liquid, bringing all its flavor with it.  I added some extra poultry seasoning and slapped the lid of my pot on to let the vegetables cook.

In the mean time, I assessed the crust situation.  Thanks to one of my cookbooks, I had decided to do a lattice top crust.  I’ve never made a lattice top crust before.  It looked daunting.  Helpfully, I found a diagram of how to do it, so while the potatoes and carrots slowly softened I cut my top crust into about twelve strips of semi-even thickness with the tip of one of my sharper knives.

When the potatoes and carrots were almost done, I added a handful of green beans to the filling, probably around a cup of frozen peas, and about two tablespoons of cornstarch mixed with water.  That way the filling could thicken while the green beans cooked.  When things were thickened up nicely, I carefully slopped the steaming filling into the bottom pie crust, which I had carefully laid into my pie plate.

I carefully completed the lattice-work top (I don’t think I can explain without step-by-step pictures, which I unfortunately neglected to take, but it’s not quite as complicated as it looks) and then brushed it with an egg wash.  There was a little bit of filling and a few strips of crust left, so I made two mini-pot pies in tiny corningware dishes to use up the remainders before putting everything into the oven.

After 40 minutes or so at 425F, the pot pie was done.

The crust was golden and crunchy, the insides smelled delicious, and even though the whole first piece I cut fell completely apart, it was glorious.  Though N. enjoys my cooking, he is usually demure about his compliments, but not this time.  He proclaimed “I think I love this,” after only a bite or two, which I interpreted as ultimate triumph.  The veggies were tender but not mushy, the sauce had bubbled up on the sides and had a rich, meaty flavor, and the turkey itself was as delicious as it had been fresh off the bird.  I used only dark meat, which I think kept things moist and extra flavorful.  We glutted ourselves on turkey pot pie, and life was good.

Roast Chicken, part III

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With one delicious dinner out of the way and several quarts of stock safely frozen, I used the remaining chicken (the bits I could save; N. kept snacking on succulent pieces straight from the refrigerator!) to make one of my all time favorite summer dinners.  With two more big heirlooms ready on the vine, I made a simple chicken salad from the roasted leftovers.  I shredded up the chicken into bite-sized chunks with my fingers, then added just the necessities.  Well, mostly just the necessities.  A creamy spoonful of mayonnaise.  Finely chopped dill.  Julienned yellow pole beans from our garden that I’d lightly steamed.  A handful of mixed chives and green onions, diced up.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the tomatoes ¾ of the way through so that eight thick, juicy slices hang together by half an inch or so at the bottom, but begin to pull apart, leaving a perfectly ripe, red vessel for the chicken salad.

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Pile it up good and high.

Sometimes for presentation’s sake, I place the tomato atop a ruffled piece of butter lettuce.  Sometimes I don’t.

Then I eat it.

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Roast Chicken, part II

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With the falling temperatures and rising rains of autumn comes another unfortunate event.  Well, it’s unfortunate in the sense that it interrupts me from my otherwise regularly schedule internet time.  So that means it’s unfortunate for the regular updating of this blog, because I stop posting.

School.

We’re in the middle of the third week now, and this is the first time I’ve really had the chance to sit down and get back to the story.  It’s all being sitting on the back burner up until now.  Which is oddly appropriate, given our current topic.

You’ll remember that when last we met, my first roast chicken had been liberated of meat.  The carcass itself I lowered into my gigantic gleaming aluminum pasta pot.  I added roughly chopped red onion chunks and quartered carrots.  Then I tossed in a liberal mix of herbs: thyme, sage, parsley, rosemary, dill, two or three bay leaves, and a small cupped handful of black peppercorns.  I finished by cracking a head of garlic and strewing several cloves, paper wrapped still, around the carcass.  I added probably twelve cups of water, and lidded the whole pot up to simmer for two and a half hours.

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When I strained out the bones and wasted vegetables, I was able to pour ten cups of rich, buttery-colored stock into my largest Tupperware.  At Ina Garten’s helpful suggestion courtesy of the Food Network website, I stowed the container in the fridge overnight, and was rewarded the next morning by a thick layer of fat across the top of the broth, which I scooped off before portioning out the golden liquid into smaller amounts in freezable containers.  Though I will not use it for everyday applications that only call for a cup or half a cup of broth, now I will have homemade chicken broth for clear soups and risottos.  You can bet that if this roast chicken obsession continues, I will need to start saving every lidded container that goes through my kitchen.  Scrubbed and labeled, yogurt and cottage cheese containers alike will be homes to ice-crystalled, rock hard pints of lovingly simmered stock.  C’mon, winter cold, I dare you to take on my broth base.

Cheese, please!

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Once upon a time ago, N.’s parents bought him a quesadilla maker.  I’m not sure what this was in response to, but my first reaction might have been a giggle.  I can make a quesadilla, you just fold a tortilla in a frying pan!  I resisted the quesadilla maker.  I begrudged it the space it took up in our moving boxes when we moved in together.  I glowered at its awkward shape in our cabinets.

Since those early days, the quesadilla maker and I have become good friends.  I still use a skillet for plain cheese quesadillas, but when I want to go all out and add other vegetables, the dual surface cooking mechanism is helpful in preventing flip-related spills and leaks.  In fact, we’re down to a fairly standard recipe that one of us employs once every month or two.

Tonight, inspired by the need to use up some vegetables, I dug out the trusty quesadilla maker and layered in the standards plus a few additions.  I usually fry some sliced mushrooms and defrosted corn in olive oil until the mushrooms are soft and the corn has just started to caramelize against the bottom of the pan.  Then I layer Monterey jack cheese, baby spinach, the mushroom and corn mixture, and a little bit more cheese onto the bottom tortilla before slapping on the top.  Today, since I’ve been reading everywhere to eat a rainbow of colors in your fruit and veggie diet, I added some chopped radicchio that I had hanging around in my crisper drawer.

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While I was waiting for the mushrooms and corn to do their thing, I addressed several aging avocadoes in our fruit baskets.  I’ve recently made a few alterations to my old standard guacamole thanks to a shortage, and am pleased enough with my new strategy to share it.  I’m not calling this a recipe, because I still adjust things every time I make a batch.  Tonight’s avocado-and-a-half was joined by four or five strips of julienne cut sundried tomatoes, chopped cilantro and garlic scapes from the back garden, lime juice, sea salt, one finely chopped miniature pickled jalapeño, sea salt and black pepper.  Sometimes I use garlic powder and some green onions instead of the garlic shoots, but the key ingredient, the fundamental change, is the move from fresh tomatoes to sundried.  There’s a pleasant textural difference, and I like the intensity of the flavor profile that the dried tomatoes lend.  Tonight’s spice from the pickled jalapeño was a bright change as well, that cut nicely through the thick cheesiness of the quesadilla itself.  I cleansed my cheesy palate with a Hornsby’s hard cider, but I suspect any pilsner or lager would have done the trick just as nicely.  A crisp pinot grigio or some other fruity white wine would have paired well too.

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Post Thanksgiving Paradise

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You can only have turkey so many days in a row.  The mistake that I think gets made with Thanksgiving leftovers is trying to reheat and re-eat the whole menu at once.  Of course two or three days of turkey-with-stuffing-and-potatoes-and-a-side-of-something-green is going to get old.  And so, I turned away from the tupperware and found perfection: pb2902041

The finest fish sandwich from Cornucopia and my mom’s whole berry cranberry sauce made a glorious Saturday lunch.  Crispy batter around flaky white fish, a chewy, yeasty roll holding the whole sandwich together, and of course that most deletable, most seasonal of sides, the tart-sweet taste of cranberries that have burst open their skins into a thick, rich syrup.  I like mine straight out of the refrigerator, as cold as I can stand them.