MacGyver gnocchi

The pace of work and home life this week continued to dictate yet again the need for dinner solutions that could be produced on a short turnaround. Gnocchi in the pantry and leftover sausage and kale in the fridge came to the rescue to help produce this cheesy gnocchi bake when MacGyver night rolled around on Thursday. 

It’s still a work in progress, but the basic infrastructure involves preheating the oven to 425F/210C; browning gnocchi in butter and bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop, then mixing in chopped, cooked kale and Italian sausage. I then added about 1 cup of stock and milk mixed together, and slid the whole thing into the now-hot oven to let it heat through for about 10 minutes. Then I mixed in somewhere around 1.5 cups of cream cheese, grated cheddar cheese, and grated pecorino romano, and put it back in for another 5 minutes or so. The sauce isn’t quite right yet, so I’ll be continuing to fiddle with it, but even as is, it was still pretty tasty and hit the spot at the end of a long, busy day. And since I'm on a short turnaround yet again, that's all from me for today.

Day 15

If I didn’t think it was possible to focus more on food than I already do, living in quarantine-lite has taught me differently. Starting with panic buying, which hit my part of Northern Virginia just as we started this episode, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and watching as other people have too:

• Wondering how people are going to use up all those canned goods they bought (I suspect they are too, judging by articles I’ve been seeing)
• Seeing lots of jokes about “the Covid 19” (this year’s variation on the Freshman 15)
• Getting really annoyed when I realized that my local grocery store had run out of flour, which normally I seem to be the only person buying
• Mentally mulling over the contents of my fridge regularly to make sure there’s enough for every meal (now that everyone's here for every. single. meal), and that everything’s getting used
• Meeting a higher-than-usual demand for goodies, from me as much as anyone else (more on that later)

I’ve written so much about my interest in creatively repurposing leftovers that they have their own tag here. And I wrote a very long time ago about the Soup Spec that I developed to accommodate pretty much any soup-making situation.

Back of the Fridge Soup

This is Miss B’s accurate, if unflattering, name for the meal that is a regular leftover-transformation mechanism in our house. I have learned that if you puree it, mix in a good-sized dollop of sour cream at the end, and serve it with cheese and homemade bread alongside, it is likely to get consumed with gusto. This week’s iteration went as follows:

1. Heat up a good-sized lump (maybe a heaping teaspoon?) of bacon fat and butter (or whatever other fat you’ve got on hand).
2. Throw in a couple of anchovies, if you’ve got them and you eat them. (This is all to add some umami to a mostly veggie soup.)
3. Add a soffrito of carrot, celery, and red onion (probably half a carrot, half an onion and 2 small celery sticks, chopped impatiently in my mini processor, not lovingly by hand) and cook gently for 5-7 minutes.
4. Dump in the leftovers of a large batch (2+ cups) of broccoli that you had steamed for Monday night’s dinner, then mixed with salt, garlic, and olive oil.
5. Add in a few odds and ends that need to be used up: the last of a batch of roasted asparagus, 4 oven fries also left over from Monday night’s dinner, the last tablespoons of a recent batch of rice, a couple of lettuce leaves that were too unstable for lettuce wraps, the hard end of a piece gruyere. (I have mentioned how much I hate to waste food, right?)
6. Ladle in chicken stock made from a recent roast chicken carcass (this makes five meals from one chicken!) until all of the solids are just submerged.
7. Bring everything just to a boil, and let simmer for 15-20 minutes (everything in here is already cooked, so you’re just making sure it’s all hot enough).
8. Puree with your stick blender (or other mechanism of choice), then check to see if the soup is the right consistency for you. If too thick, you can thin with a little more chicken stock (or milk or water). If too thin, you can simmer it a little longer, or up the amount of sour cream that you’re about to add.
9. Stir a hearty dollop (bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a volleyball) of sour cream until fully dissolved.
10. Taste and adjust seasonings - this usually means add a bit more salt. (I also have been known to add things like sriracha, tomato paste, or pesto at this point, both for taste and to adjust the color of the soup if I felt it was looking a little on the sludgy side. This soup, as the photo up top may not show, was just green enough on its own to achieve aesthetic presentability.)

Serve with accompaniments - in my house, this is always homemade rolls and wedges of cheese, as well as homemade croutons if I've got the wherewithal. 

This produced about 6 servings of soup - so, one dinner and a couple of random lunches for this household of 3. (Our fourth member isn't much of a soup eater.)

Day 12

Since we’ve officially been in social isolation mode, that is. Here’s the update from our version of this strange new world where most of us find ourselves these days.

Family & home We were already more than a week into a 4-week school closure for Miss B when the announcement came on Monday that the governor of Virginia had closed the schools for the remainder of the year. That hit me hard - I already knew it was serious, but that magnitude of serious was a little overwhelming to process. In terms of day to day life, it doesn’t change things dramatically; we had already figured out a schoolwork schedule, and we’ll adjust that as input from the school becomes more consistent. And all of our international moves have helped us build our skills as a self-sufficient unit. Being able to get outside is key, though - Miss B and I both joke about how usually we’d never leave the house if we didn’t have to, but now if I don’t get outside once every day, things start to get on top of me.

Work Since I already work from home and have for more than a decade, I’m pretty much carrying on as normal. Many of the people I work with don’t, of course, so I’ve been watching their adjustment from afar - and anear too, since DP has now shifted from going into DC most days to running online seminars and meetings from the basement. And even as a veteran telecommuter, it’s challenging to carry on as normal when a) there are so many people in your house, and in all the other houses, taking up internet bandwidth; and b) all everyone can think about most of the time is this situation. Sometimes work is a welcome distraction, and sometimes it pushes me around the bend. It’s important to pay attention to the distinction, and adjust accordingly.

Food Yesterday made me realize this forcefully. Still processing the news about schools closing for the year (and acknowledging the attending grief), I was struggling to focus, to keep my patience, to accomplish anything useful. At 4pm I took a break as planned, and went for a walk with DP. We made a familiar circuit on the college campus near our house, including a stop to admire some cherry blossoms (see above). When I came home, I went straight into the kitchen and made a batch of bread dough, another of salsa, and finished off with a batch of Cheesy Potato Gnocchi from Love Your Leftovers that uses up leftover mashed potatoes. And for the moment, anyway, my equilibrium is restored.

Action I’m trying to take some responsible productive action every day; today’s is continuing my effort to repurpose food waste into food production - new lettuce growing from the stump of a head of romaine:

Hope you’re staying well, staying safe, and staying home.

Sunday digest

Hey, it's only been 3 weeks! Here's the latest news from around here:

Work/school We are deep into Term 2 and everyone is working hard. DP has started teaching his intensive master's program; I'm trying to help launch a major organizational initiative which is taking a little longer than planned; and Miss B is into her second round of Year 7 electives - which involves cooking!

Last weekend I helped her with her first Food Tech assignment - designing a recipe for and making a salad. I managed to capture a few action shots; here's Miss B chopping celery:

And here's the final result:

Miss B's personal tweaks to the standard salad recipe included chopped salami and pickles - surprisingly delicious, since guess who ended up eating this salad for lunch all week?

Recreation Hanging around our local places playing cards and board games; streaming lots of movies now that we've finally figured out how to work our cable system (it only took 18 months); and indulging Miss B's renewed interest (not to say fangirling) in Doctor Who.

Food Two sets of dinner guests in the space of a couple of days this week meant thinking of ways to be efficient in the kitchen. For the first round, I made my favorite slow cooker chicken recipe, served with potatoes and peas; then, for today's guests, I used the leftover chicken, sauce, and peas as the base of a chicken pot pie:

I rounded out the filling with sauteed bacon, red onion, carrots, and celery, plus a few porcini mushrooms, then stuck it in the oven to heat through and combine. I made a variation on my Emergency Scone recipe for the topping (swapped out sugar for rosemary salt, and some of the cream for olive oil to make it more savory), cooked it separately (I don't like a soggy bottom on my pot pie topping), and slipped it on just before serving. It made a great and frugal late-autumn Sunday lunch (with bread and salad and brownies for dessert) for four adults and three children.

Weather As I may have already mentioned, it's late autumn here: fall foliage, warm days and cold nights, flannel sheets and hot water bottles. And my latest discovery about this season in Australia - native flora are back in season:

 Hope you're having a lovely weekend wherever you are.

Hands off

Hello! Please insert standard apologies for another long silence here, along with reassurance that I thought often, if not every day, of this blog and how I wished I was posting to it. (Not that that made any visible difference, but maybe it gets me some karmic brownie points for good intentions?)

Anyway, here's a snapshot of what I've been up to since Easter, which may help explain my lack of blog-related focus and posting....

A few months ago, we decided spontaneously to organize a fun mini-break at the beach during Miss B's April school holidays, figuring we'd get some lovely mid-autumn weather. Instead, we timed it perfectly to experience the 'storm of the century' which battered Sydney and the surrounding coastal areas for three days, dumping something like 20 cm/12 in of rain in 48 hours on the town where we were staying. Luckily we had brought lots of videos and we never lost power, unlike a lot of other people. We even managed to sneak out onto the beach between storms a few times to admire the moody skies and gigantic, terrifying surf. (Full disclosure: I am quite likely to find Australian surf terrifying even on a regular beach day.)

,

Sometime after we had already booked (and paid for) the abovementioned mini-break, another travel opportunity came along that we couldn't (and decided not to) refuse. The good news was that it meant we got to spend a week in London as a family. The bad news was that it came up at pretty short notice, and required that we fly out of Canberra two days after getting back from the coast. Fun! Well, the getting-there part, not so much; but the being-there part was fun - even the parts like this: wandering in Hyde Park on our first evening, trying desperately to stay awake until bedtime and taking in a few sights along the way. Other highlights of the week included taking Miss B to my favorite British museum, the V&A, for the first time (a success) and attempting to take her into a pub to meet some of my colleagues (a failure - they chucked us out on account of no children being allowed in after 5pm!).

Part of the reason that the London trip came together is that I was already scheduled to fly to Europe - when the week was over, DP and Miss B flew back to Australia, while I went on to Greece for a week-plus of work meetings. (Yes, my job is very gruelling.) Here's a view of one of many glorious sunsets I witnessed with the Parthenon looming picturesquely in the middle distance.

Needless to say, with all the travelling and other stuff going on, I haven't done a huge amout of cooking in the last several weeks (although I did eat some pretty amazing food in Greece, particularly at this place down the street from my hotel, where I think I ended up eating at least one meal every day that I was in Athens). But I have still found the time to become enamored of two things new to my kitchen:

1. Fried toast. Inspired by this post on food52, this has become my go-to vehicle for gussying up leftovers. The photo above may not look particularly earth-shattering (have I mentioned winter is coming in Canberra, which means no more natural light for dinner photos for a while?), but any kind of sliced bread fried in a pond of olive oil is the perfect carrier for anything involving sauce or gravy. Also stupendous at breakfast time (and a dramatic improvement on fried bread, which honestly I never saw the point of, probably because there wasn't nearly enough olive oil involved).

2. Hands-off dinners. (Ah, we come to the point of the post name at last! Did you think I was referring to the multiple-week silence here? Let's call it a pun.) I've been doing some experimenting lately with the whole roasting-pan-dinner concept - as in, you put a bunch of stuff in a roasting pan and put it in the oven, and when you take it out, that's dinner. I'm not sure why I haven't picked up on this concept sooner, especially given how long I've been cooking dinner, but I'm kind of loving it, especially on school nights. This is a current favorite (again with the crappy pictures): chop up some carrots and potatoes and toss with olive oil and seasonings, then place in a roasting pan and stick in the oven at about 375F/190C. While those get going, prep these devilled chicken pieces (the original recipe calls for legs, but I use drumsticks) and add to the roasting pan. Roast the whole business for 30-45 minutes (giving you time to clean up the kitchen, supervise homework, maybe answer a few emails from your boss who just came online overseas - oh wait, maybe that's just me), or until everything is cooked to your liking, hopefully with some brown crusty bits here and there.

And that's the news update from here. Hope all is well wherever you are?

Chicken twofer redux

Is it time for coffee break yet?

I didn't manage to take a single picture of anything food-related this week. Probably because I didn't do much cooking. Unlike last week, I didn't have to host or prep any special meals or anything. D was even out a couple of nights, so Miss B and I concentrated on taking care of the leftovers amassed earlier.
My favorite of these was a concoction involving the leftovers from the dinner I had hosted for three rather distinguished visitors. (Definitely teapot people!) For the dinner, I had prepared a recipe from Mark and Bruce's Great American Slow Cooker Book, which involved shredding a bunch of carrots and onions, mixing them with seasonings, balsamic, and worcestershire sauce (I think), and then making them into a sort of chicken bed in the bottom of a slow cooker. On top go multiple chicken breasts, topped with sage leaves and then wrapped in prosciutto, to cook for about 4 hours.

This made for a tasty and, dare I say, elegant main course - very streamlined but still flavorful. I served it with roasted potatoes, a green salad, and homemade bread. We started with some kind of creamy dip and finished with a peach-blueberry galette, and everyone went home happy (as well as, in at least one case, reeling with jet lag).

Where the chicken dish really outdid itself, however, was as leftovers. A couple of days later, I had a packed schedule, and (unusually for me) knew I'd be out of the house from before 9 until after 5. First thing in the morning, while I was doing breakfast and lunch prep, I also chopped up the leftover chicken breasts and put them back in the slow cooker, along with the carrot/onion mix and a bottle of tomato passata. I stirred everything together and left it to cook on low for the day. When we were nearly ready for dinner that night, I went in there with a potato masher to make sure the chicken was falling apart and mixed in (it was); then threw in a package of gnocchi and a handful of grated parmigiano-reggiano. I left that to heat through for about 15 minutes, topped it with a generous dusting of grated pecorino romano, and dinner was served.

This was a smash hit - starchy and comforting but also very savory and hearty. Miss B, who has mixed feelings about gnocchi (mainly due to my habit of toasting them in the oven until crispy for certain dishes), ate this with gusto and took the leftovers to school for lunch more than once. This is another chicken slow cooker dish that I'll be cooking at least as much for the leftovers as for the main event (coming a close second to this one).

Unfortunately I didn't remember to take a picture of it, so instead you get a goofy picture of a t-rex trying to fold a pair of jeans. (Why? Enquiring minds want to know.) However, I am doing some cooking today, of which I promise to take pictures for an update in the near future.

Instant brining

NaBloPoMo, Day 6.

Speaking of incredibly useful throwaway tips from great food writers, here's one I picked up from the most prolific cookbook writing team in the US, Mark Scarborough and Bruce Weinstein (they also blog occasionally): pickle-juice brining.

This is just what it sounds like: when you finish a jar of pickles, save the brine and use it to brine your next pork or chicken dish. (Brining, in case you're not already aware, makes lean meat juicier and tastier.) Thus, you save a step (since you don't have to make your own brine), avoid waste (since you don't pour perfectly good ready-made brine down the drain), and get a better meal at the end of it. And no, your meat won't taste like pickles - I worried about this the first time I fed pickle-juice-brined meat to the pickle-hating DP, but all he noticed was how good it tasted. Try it and see!

Chicken twofer

My friends, I have an important announcement to make: I think I've finally found a slow cooker chicken recipe that I'll make more than once. After years of trying, and numerous mediocre chicken recipes, none of which have been deemed worthy of inclusion (or even a mention) here, I think I've got a keeper.

I got the idea for this out of an Australian Women's Weekly seasonal cookbook that I picked up in a secondhand bookstore a few weeks ago and have been carrying around with me obsessively ever since. Or, to be more accurate, I got the main ingredient combo from there, and then the rest of it just evolved.

Slow cooker chicken with leeks and bacon
Since I didn't actually follow a recipe, I've just documented the procedure that I used. Note that most slow cooker chicken recipes don't recommend cooking the chicken for more than about 4 hours, or else it starts to dry out. I cooked this for 4 hours on low, and the texture was excellent.

1. Turn on the slow cooker to start heating. (I usually turn mine on high to get going and then turn to low after about 30-45 minutes.) Put a medium-sized cast-iron skillet to heat on the stove over low-medium heat, and add 2 Tbsp olive oil to warm up. Add 1 anchovy to oil.
2. Chop up 4 pieces of good-quality bacon and add to skillet. Wash, remove the green top of, and slice 1 leek and add to bacon.
3. Cook mixture in skillet, stirring regularly, for about 5 minutes, until bacon begins to crisp and leek to soften and brown.
4. While mixture in skillet is cooking, sprinkle about 1/2 cup (2 oz/60 g) flour into a shallow bowl, and season with salt and cayenne pepper. Dredge 4-6 chicken thighs in seasoned flour, turning to coat with flour on all sides.
5. Dump contents of skillet in slow cooker, leaving some bacon fat behind. Stuff leek top along with 2 sprigs rosemary into a cheesecloth bag, popsock, or similar, and add to slow cooker also.
6. Put skillet back on burner and add chicken thighs to brown. Cook 3-5 minutes, until beginning to brown, then turn and repeat on the other side. (You may want to use a splatter screen here.)
7. When chicken is browned on both sides, remove from skillet and lay in the slow cooker. 
8. Return skillet to burner and sprinkle in about 2 Tbsp of the seasoned dredging flour. Stir into the fat in the pan until you have a basic roux. 
9. Pour about 1 cup white wine into the skillet. Heat the wine, stirring constantly with a whisk, and use it to deglaze the skillet.
10. Empty the skillet into the slow cooker and decide if you need any additional liquid. (Chicken should be at least halfway submerged in the liquid.) If so, pour hot water from the kettle into the skillet and scrape up any remaining bits. Pour into the slow cooker.
11. Give the contents of the slow cooker a good stir, cover, and leave alone for 3-4 hours.
12. Before serving, taste sauce and adjust seasonings. (I added a bit of salt and pepper, and a scoop of Greek yoghurt to balance out the flavors in the sauce.)
13. I served this with Italian baked potatoes with oil and a green vegetable.

And the twofer part? You can see that in the photo above. The next night, I warmed up the leftovers (one chicken thigh, chopped up, and a couple cups of chunky sauce) and served them mixed into gnocchi and sauteed kale for a speedy dinner that was just as good as the original. Next time I make this (and there will be a next time), I'll make sure there's enough to do this part again too.

Unplanned detours

My recently formed small department (four people) has been going through some major upheaval in the last few weeks. And when I say “upheaval,” imagine me cruising along a smooth highway in my little car, only to find I have suddenly been diverted into a game of bumper cars (dodgems?). Not disastrous, but somewhat unnerving. More on that later, I hope, when the dust settles.

Meanwhile, it’s midway through autumn in Canberra: dark not long after six o’clock, temperatures dropping down into the single digits (Celsius) at night, trying to hold off on turning the heat on until ANZAC Day (25 April), in accordance with Canberra tradition. Put the two together and the need for starchy comfort food becomes self-evident.

Short rib risotto

This is more of a suggestion than a recipe; I made my favorite short rib recipe for dinner a few nights ago, and hit upon this as a good way to use up some leftovers. I started the risotto in the usual way – soffrito, rice, wine – and heated up several cups of the short rib cooking liquid, thinned with hot water, to use as stock. I shredded a couple short ribs’ worth of beef to stir in at the end, along with the leftover braised kale I had made to serve with it the first time around. Finished with butter, pecorino romano, salt & pepper.

Top with more grated pecorino romano. Serve in your old bunny dish if necessary.

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.

MacGyver pilaf

When DP goes away, I cook differently. I do a lot of MacGyvering, and focus on using up leftovers. I can concoct a meal for two of us out of a bit of this and a bit of that, that wouldn't really stretch to feed three of us comfortably. And I can make one-dish meals, which Miss B and I will eat quite happily, but which often provoke a "Where's the rest of dinner?" expression on DP's face. (Unlike Miss B and me, DP is one of those people who 'forgets' to eat lunch, so he generally arrives home like a ravening something or other, and enjoys a bit of variety in his ravening.)

Because of this, one-dish meals are often a page-turner for me, as when I came across a recipe for a pilaf recently. But it got me thinking about pilaf as a concept, and how, like fried rice or risotto, it is really an adaptable vehicle for using rice to build a few key ingredients into a complete meal.

So, with that in mind, here's how I made my first MacGyver pilaf earlier this week:

1. Put the kettle on. (If I'd had any stock, I would have heated that instead.)
2. Put a medium saucepan on the stove over low heat, poured in a couple Tbsp (~30 ml/1 oz) of olive oil.
3. Chopped half a red onion and two cloves of garlic, added to the saucepan, let cook gently.
4. Added half a cup (~120 g/4 oz) long-grain white rice to the saucepan, stirred it to coat completely in the warmed oil.
5. Poured in 1 cup (240 ml/8 oz) hot water, added a healthy sprinkle of salt. Stirred thoroughly, clamped on the lid, and left to cook for 12-15 minutes or until all nearly the water was absorbed.
6 While the rice was cooking, I extracted from the refrigerator several containers: one containing about 2 servings of leftover grilled zucchini, one containing about 2 servings of leftover lemon-mustard chicken, and one containing quite a lot of leftover basil-cashew-parmesan dip. I chopped the chicken into bite-sized pieces.
7. When the rice was nearly done, I stirred the zucchini, the chicken chunks, and a heaping spoonful of the dip into the hot rice.
8. I dished it up into two bowls, and dinner was served! With some bread to mop up, and some carrot sticks I had chopped for us to nibble on while dinner was cooking, we were both satisfied and there was just enough left for a thermos lunch for Miss B next day.

Notes: I chose these particular leftovers to go together because they all had a fairly similar Mediterranean flavor profile (lemons/garlic/herbs/olive oil etc) which I thought would harmonize with each other, and with the dish. They did - it really worked, even better than I had hoped; plus it came together really quickly (and with much less stirring than either fried rice or risotto!). I'm now contemplating a variation for dinner this weekend involving brown rice, leftover steak with red wine sauce, and leftover green beans. The permutations are endless once you start thinking about it. The only question is: does it really qualify as a pilaf? Or is there some other catchall term that's better? Wikipedia has a whole list of 'mixed rice dishes' in the pilaf entry; the term is clunky, but the list opens up even more possibilities....