Beach house

Apologies for my unexplained absence - we disappeared to Jervis Bay for our annual beach holiday, and this year I did not take my computer, making for my first unplugged vacation in a frighteningly long time. I had hoped to put a post up before we left, but between frantically trying to finish up work projects and making sure that I packed enough (but not too much) in the way of kid, reading, and food supplies, I ran out of time.

I also hadn't factored my upcoming vacation into my plans for DIY January, so that sort of went out the window for a week or so. When you're trying to figure out how to work the tiny oven in a strange (and slightly mildewy) kitchen, you can't also start trying to make your own yogurt and expect to have an actual relaxing vacation. Or at least I can't, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. So I shamelessly ate supermarket potato chips and hummus and pickles. (I also brought along supplies to make homemade bread, waffles, popcorn, and salad dressing, so there was still a fair amount of DIY going on.)

And in the spirit of DIY January, I concocted a salad to bring to a friend's bbq on our last night of holiday - using up stuff we still had in the fridge and working around what we had run out of.

Beach house salad
I concocted this salad based around knowing that I had a fair amount of vegetables left in the fridge, but had run out of olive oil to make dressing. The rendered fat from the bacon cooked in the first step stands in for the olive oil.

1. Chop 2 pieces bacon into small pieces and put in a skillet over low-medium heat to cook.

2. Chop half a red onion into small pieces and add to skillet with bacon.

3. Once bacon and onions are more or less cooked, add 2-3 cups chopped greens (I used kale and a mystery green I bought at the greengrocer last week, and promptly forgot the name of. It was kind of spinach-esque) to the skillet to wilt. (At this stage, I also added about a quarter cup of white wine to deglaze the pan and keep the ingredients from sticking.)

4. Thinly slice 1 large carrot (I do this with a vegetable peeler) and add to skillet. (Keep the cores to nibble on while you finish the salad.) Toss with the other ingredients to wilt a bit, then remove the skillet from the heat.

5. Peel and chop a small cucumber, then chop a handful of grape tomatoes, and add to the skillet. Toss with the other ingredients until mixed thoroughly.

6. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add a teaspoon or so of balsamic vinegar. (I also added a handful of shredded parmigiano reggiano.)

Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 4+ as a side, or a large group (we had 10 in ours) as part of a bbq spread.

Beach food

How can it be January 31^st already? I’m so in the weeds. My vacation at the beach already seems like it was months ago, and yet I still haven’t managed to post about it.

When I go to the beach on Cape Cod with my sisters and the kids, there are anywhere from six to twenty of us sharing a house, depending on which combination of brothers-in-law, parents, and passing friends is in residence. Hardly a day passes that someone doesn’t have to make a run to the grocery store, usually involving at least 2 bags of food. Since there were only going to be three of us on our recent beach vacation, I decided to plan ahead and try and avoid grocery store trips if I could. The area where we are staying has one very small and expensive grocery store/café, and the closest supermarket is a 15-minute drive. I knew we’d be heading into town for dinner at least once, and I could tack a quick grocery run onto that if need be; but for the most part I attempted to go prepared.

I brought staples and condiments from home, and mixed up batches of dry ingredients for bread, pancakes, and cake at home, so I could minimize the amount of packages and equipment I was transporting. I did a pre-trip grocery shop for things I knew we would need. I made a basic meal plan. And on the way out of Canberra on Saturday morning, we stopped at the farmers’ market so I could stock up on fresh meat and produce, which we piled into a cool bag already filled with ice and stuff from the fridge.

And it worked! I only had to use the beach café for sliced bread and milk, pretty much. And we got some pretty yummy, seasonal dishes out of the farmers’ market haul, including the following (please excuse photo quality; phone camera alert!):

  

Corn salad: the last of my first corn purchase of the summer. We ate it on the cob the first night; on the second night, I cut the remaining corn off the cobs, warmed it in some olive oil, and mixed through some chopped tomatoes and basil. Summer in a bowl.

  

Fridge-Clearing Frittata: we had a beach picnic dinner on Friday night, and I took the opportunity to mix up a bunch of leftover bits and pieces into a tasty, chunky frittata (this one includes chunks of grilled sausage, roasted potato cubes, the end of a batch of ratatouille, and some feta cheese). We ate it with a tomato and roasted green bean salad and some rolls, and shared it with any wildlife that happened to be passing (a friendly lizard and some relatively polite seagulls).

Cake!: because, for the first time ever, I got to spend my January birthday at the beach. Baking my own cake in a cottage kitchen was totally worth it. (I did get taken out for Thai food for dinner, also.)

Puff pastry

Is there anything that you can't improve by wrapping it in puff pastry?

We're coming to the end of the Australian school year, and that means that in the canteen we're cutting down on ordering fresh food, and trying to use up what's already there - EDF on a large scale. Puff pastry does an excellent job of packaging up odds and ends of food, and makes them look great - and easy to eat out of hand - in the process. We've been serving up lots of "puff" specials for morning tea, and after watching hordes of schoolkids scarf them up, I've been inspired to come home and scavenge in my own fridge.

Some things I've wrapped in puff pastry lately:

- leftover sausage (either alone, or with spicy mustard and cheddar cheese - see above)
- leftover chocolate ganache
- blackberry-apple butter
- leftover meat and veg
- leftover apple pie filling (or any pie filling, or jam, or...)

I'll stop there, but I think you get the picture. Please feel free to share your puff-pastry excesses with the rest of us.

EDF practice

There's another Eating Down the Fridge Challenge running this week. I really would have liked to participate again; I had a lot of fun with the one I did in March, and surprised myself with some of the things I came up with. But I'm in the opposite mode this week: I'm going to Singapore for a work conference on Saturday, so I'm focusing on Stocking Up the Fridge with stuff for DP and Miss B to eat next week while the chief cook is out of the kitchen. I did an impromptu mini-EDF exercise on Sunday though, after our plans for the day changed for the third time and I found myself with a) an afternoon at home alone to get through a mountain of chores and work, and b) nothing planned for dinner, since I had been expecting that we'd be out.

I didn't want to waste any of my precious afternoon going to the supermarket, so I resolved to work with what I had in the house. Running true to form, I started off thinking that the cupboard was bare, but when I made a list of "proteins," "starches," and "vegetables," I found that I had six or seven items on hand. In each category. After fantasizing about several ridiculously elaborate, seasonally inappropriate, or ultimately unappetizing possibilities, I settled on a meal that was nutritionally complete*, appealing on yet another chilly, rainy day (unlike the all-salad meal I flirted with briefly), likely to be consumed by everyone present (ditto), and doable within the hour of prep time I had allotted.

Creamy broccoli soup
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium carrot
1 medium red onion
2 heads broccoli
4-6 cups water
1-2 tsp salt
¼-½ tsp cayenne pepper**
½-1 cup Greek yogurt***

Heat oil in a large stockpot. Chop all vegetables and add to the pot as you chop them in the order listed. Saute briefly. Add just enough water to cover the vegetables. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until all vegetables are completely softened.

Remove pan from heat and puree soup using a stick blender**** (or in batches using a regular blender*****). When soup is pureed to your satisfaction, return to low heat and season to desired taste and consistency with salt, cayenne pepper, and yogurt.

Probably enough to serve 4-6 people as a main course.

* We had this with a cheese plate and homemade bread. I also topped the soup with croutons and pieces of fried prosciutto.
** This is really according to taste. I didn't want it spicy, but with just enough cayenne to give it some depth of flavor.
*** You could probably substitute any other kind of dairy, but you'll probably need more of anything else as Greek yogurt is so thick.
**** At this stage, you could remove some of the cooking liquid, and then add it back in if the puree is too thick. (I always forget to do this, and then scramble to thicken up the soup.)
***** Be careful not to burn yourself doing this, as I always do—yet another reason I love my stick blender.

Roving blogger

Hey everybody....

Guess who's an EDF Challenge guest blogger today on A Mighty Appetite at The Washington Post?

EDF, Down Under

Check it out!

(Eeeeeeee!)

Volcanic pasta

AKA EDF, Day Four. Last week I made Chicken Vesuvio for the first time, after receiving clear instructions from the universe to do so. One day, someone was raving about it on a blog, and I had no idea what they were talking about. So I googled it and thought it sounded kind of interesting, although not necessarily earth-shattering, and that maybe I should get hold of a good recipe and try it out. The next day, I picked up an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, looking for ideas of what to cook for a company dinner Tuesday night. The second recipe was for Chicken Vesuvio. Okay, message received.

For anyone who doesn’t already know this dish, it is apparently an Italian-American concoction, involving sautéed chicken, potato wedges, and a tasty pan sauce of white wine, lots of garlic, fresh herbs, and lemon juice. We all gave it the thumbs up, and I stashed the leftover chicken and sauce in the fridge for another use.

Flash forward to this week: looking for dinner ideas….How about some pasta? Always a good vehicle for random things in the fridge that might not constitute dinner on their own. Often, in traditional Italian meals, the primo piatto is pasta, dressed with the sauce used to cook the secondo piatto, the meat. I decided to reverse the procedure: I warmed up the Chicken Vesuvio sauce (boosted with some of the cream still lurking in the fridge) and chopped up the leftover chicken. I also chopped up some broccoli, and cooked it quickly in the (salted) pasta water. Cooked some penne al dente and drained it (reserving a cup of the cooking water too); back into the hot pan with some olive oil to keep it from sticking, and a few grinds of black pepper too. Added the cooked broccoli, the chicken, and the sauce, along with more pepper, some grated cheese, a splash of cooking water, and a fresh squeeze of lemon juice.

I’ve been trying to come up with a pasta-chicken-broccoli recipe for years to satisfy my chronic craving for the Bertucci’s version. This, put together entirely by accident, might finally be it.

Fridge reincarnation

Eating Down the Fridge has got me engaging in some serious lateral food thinking. Rooting through the fridge on Monday afternoon, I found some stale bread. (No, not that stale bread. Although I'm still working on that.) Two brioches that I had bought on a whim a couple of weeks ago, put in the fridge (so they wouldn't get stale, ha ha), and promptly forgotten about. Also two (!) half-empty containers of cream, bought to serve with two recent company desserts.

I was reminded of a very rich dessert recipe that Nigella Lawson devised in Nigella Express to use up two stale croissants. Following her lead, I came up with:

Brioche Bread Pudding

2 stale brioches

125ml/5oz heavy cream

2 eggs

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1. Grease an ovenproof baking dish. Chop up the brioches into small chunks and place in the dish.

2. Mix together remaining ingredients and pour over brioche chunks.

3. You can bake this immediately, but I covered it, weighted it with some cans, and let it soak for a couple of hours, then baked it at 180C/350F until it looked set and was brown on top.

Oh, and guess what I did for a topping?

I warmed up some Fail Jam (yes, I finally took it out of the pickle jar) with some water and a little cinnamon sugar, and turned it into Fail Jam Sauce.

Brioche Bread Pudding with Fail Jam Sauce. It was goooood. So good I wish I could convince someone else in my house to eat it so I'm not the only person on earth who knows how good it is. So good I might have to make it again on purpose.

(Still a lot of Fail Jam left.)

The stockpile

What is all that stuff?

My kitchen always seems to be filled to bursting point. I plan meals, I don’t overbuy quantities, and I make a concerted effort to eat leftovers. Despite this, every time I go to the grocery store, I have to rearrange everything to fit the new food in.

So I was thrilled to read about A Mighty Appetite’s Eating Down the Fridge challenge. For the week of March 9-16, I (along with a whole bunch of others) have committed to not going to the grocery store at all and eating only what’s in the fridge, freezer, and cupboards. I’ll be keeping track of the weird and wonderful meals I come up with from what’s lurking in my kitchen, and posting about some of them here for your entertainment. And maybe asking for suggestions too....