Totally Leftover Stroganoff

I had some leftover meat, rice, half a packet of mushrooms, and half an onion. I even had an open box of soy milk. All that was missing was the flashing neon sign: “Make Beef Stroganoff!”

Leftovers!

Ingredients: (for 1 person)

About 1 tbsp canola oil
1/2 onion (or few slices leek), chopped
~100-150 gr champignon mushrooms (about 1/2 a packet), sliced
~100-150 gr leftover meat (I had turkey and beef cubes), sliced
1/2 cup soy milk
1 tsp cornflour (or Conditor gluten-free flour)
Fresh nutmeg
Salt
One portion leftover rice in a microwaveable bowl

Instructions:

Saute the onion or leek in the oil until getting transparent. Add the mushrooms and salt, saute until you can smell them. Add the meat, mix. Put the rice in the microwave for 1 minute (or less depending on your microwave). Add the soy milk, a couple dashes of freshly ground nutmeg, and the cornflour. Mix a bit until thickened. Pour over rice and eat! (If you really want to, you can photograph it first 😉 )

Bon apetit!

 

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Curry-less Curry

Since Insightful and Investigator were diagnosed celiac, I got rid of all my spices and bought new ones. I had a bunch of leftovers and I thought a curry would be great, and I forgot that I didn’t buy curry when everything was already bubbling nicely 😦 What to do?

Improvise! (though really, if you have curry just use curry 🙂 )

I found that Hawaij for soup, which is a Yemenite spice, has cumin, turmeric, cardamom and cloves. I added more turmeric and ginger, and it turned out surprisingly good. So I present to you (*drum roll*): Curry-less curry!

Ingredients (2 large servings)

about 1 tbsp oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, diced (or minced if you like)
1-2 slices fresh ginger (I peel, slice it and keep it in the freezer in a bag)
5-6 large champignon mushrooms, quartered or sliced
canned peas (or any leftover you might have, chickpeas, lentils, other beans, and nothing at all also work)
leftover meat (optional) cut up if you wish
about 1/2 cup of coconut cream (or however much you have leftover)
2 tsp Hawaij for soup
1 tsp turmeric
about 1/2 dried chili pepper, if desired
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion in the oil. Add the garlic and ginger, fry until fragrant. Add the mushrooms, the meat, the coconut cream, the peas,and the spices. Taste and adjust seasonings if desired.

Bubble bubble

Let simmer until bubbling (or until rice is ready 🙂 ). Serve over rice or couscous.

Yummy!

Bon Apetit!

 

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Officially not picky

When my daughter was younger (below 1 year old), she refused to eat a bunch of stuff: milk products, some types of meat, soups, rice, seemingly at random as she ate all of these things at other times and places (except milk products, which she refuses to touch). So she was considered “picky”.

However, over the holidays I needed a meat dish and found that I had no raw meat to cook in any way. Going to the store was a bother. I found some frozen entrecôte steaks, from a BBQ (we looove BBQs!). I also had fresh mushrooms, so I had an aha! moment: strips of entrecôte  with succulent mushrooms in wine and soy (I would have added fresh ginger if I had it. Or alternatively, soy-based  cream instead of soy sauce in order to get a kosher “stroganoff”, but I don’t usually have it in the house).

I did that, and it was a hit with everyone… including my 1 and a bit year old daughter, who practically inhaled it mixed with white rice. So therefore it is now official: my daughter is NOT picky!

Leftover Steak “Stroganoff”

3-4 leftover entrecôte (rib, rib-eye or sirloin) steaks, fat removed and cut into strips
250-500 gr. champignon (button) mushrooms, sliced
1-2 cloves garlic or to taste, minced
1 large onion, minced or diced
1-2 cups red wine (leftover, of course 😉 )
2-3 tbsp soy sauce, or to taste
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Heat oil in non-stick skillet. Saute the onions until clear. Add garlic, saute until garlic is fragrant. Add mushrooms, stir fry for 3-5 minutes, until lightly browned but still firm. Add steak strips, mix, and add wine and soy sauce. Let simmer for 10-15 minutes. Taste. If wine is still sharp, simmer for 10 minutes more. Serve over rice, couscous or burgul.

Optional: Add 1-2 tsps flour mixed with 1-2 tbsp water to the sauce at the end, it will thicken into a gravy.

Inhaled it!

Bon Apetit!

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More leftover chicken

Lately we’ve had guests for at least one meal every weekend. So I’ve been making more chicken than usual. When we don’t have guests I rarely do it as my husband doesn’t like chicken. He likes chicken breast or schnitzel, but not chicken as is. Odd, isn’t it?

Anyway, as I’ve been doing more chicken lately leftovers are more of a problem. Don’t get me wrong, I like chicken. I just don’t like it the same way every day. On the other hand, making something new when I’ve got perfectly good chicken in the fridge is a bit pointless as well. So this time I made sauce with the chicken, and ate it over pasta. It turned out delectable.

I didn’t photograph it as my baby grew pretty insistent that she wanted to eat as well, so I didn’t have time to savour it properly, and even less time to photograph. But it’s still worth remembering.

The base for the sauce was the chicken gravy and tomatoes. As I’ve already mentioned, a delectable tomato sauce can be made pretty easily in the microwave. Adding the chicken gravy to it made it richer and smoother. I removed fat from the gravy before using it, so it wasn’t too fat, either 🙂 To top it off, I added chopped leftover chicken and chopped leftover grilled fennel, and some dried basil.  The result was a rich sauce with a surprising depth of flavor because of the chicken and fennel.

Definitely something to remember.

Ingredients:

One quarter chicken, cooked
Chicken gravy
About 15 large cherry tomatoes, halved if large
About 1 1/2 chopped grilled fennels
Dried basil to taste
One portion pasta (or rice, couscous, burgul, whatever)

Put the tomatoes in a microwave safe dish. Cook on high for 3 minutes. If tomatoes remain whole, crush them until they pop (carefully! it sprays!) and cook on high for another minute. Add chicken gravy and chicken, fennel and basil. Cook on high for another two minutes. If using pasta, add to sauce and cook for another minute on high or until pasta is warm. Otherwise serve over rice or couscous (or whatever).

Bon Apetit!

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Leftover Chicken Pockets

Obviously, if I’m reading Nora Roberts books at the rate of one a day, and taking care of all my kids in the summer vacation (G-d bless my husband, who takes part or all of them and arranges all kinds of projects. Otherwise I would already be nuts by now), I don’t have much time for cooking. But before all the kids were here, I had a hankering to do something special with leftover chicken. I wanted something with dough, as well. So I chose chicken pockets.

I admit, I debated with myself a bit on this one. On the one hand, I really felt like making something interesting and special with dough and chicken. On the other hand, time is limited, and the recipe stated that it took an hour. And the first time you make a recipe it always takes longer than you expect. In the end I went for it. 🙂

I based on this recipe (Hebrew). The dough turned out delectable, and so easy to make. I completely changed the filling to fit my leftover chicken, and did the simplest filling I could think of to save time and effort. Also, I made only half the amount.

Leftover Chicken Pockets

Dough:

75 gr spelt flour (or all purpose)
75 gr all purpose flour
100 ml boiling water
2 tbsp vegetable oil (I used canola)
1 tbsp cornflour

Filling:

chicken from a quarter chicken, cooked and cubed
two handfuls olives, chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 egg
Dried oregano to taste

Dipping sauce (optional):

2 tbsp rice vinegar
Dried chilli
Soy sauce to taste

 

To make the dough:

Sift the flour into the bowl of a food processor fitted with bread hooks, add the boiling water and mix on low. Add the oil and mix again. Add the cornflour and knead for 5 minutes. (See? Easy!) Put more cornflour on your workspace and make a fat sausage from the dough. Cut dough into 10 equal parts. Roll each part into a circle.

To make the filling:

Mix all the ingredients.

Putting it together:

Put one tbsp of filling in the center of each circle. With an egg brush, put water on the edge of half a circle. Fold the circle in half, using the water as “glue”.

Before frying

 

Fry each pocket for ~5 minutes on both sides or until brown. It is also possible to steam them for 7-8 minutes instead. Eat with dipping sauce of your choice (I ate without, it was good!).

5 pockets before eating

Bon Apetit!

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Chicken Mushroom Pasta Sauce from Leftovers

As usual, by the end of the week we’re left with a bit of this and a bit of that in the fridge. One of the things we had were grilled chicken breasts that had dried out a bit in the fridge. They were still soft enough to cut with a knife, but not pleasant to eat as is. So I decided to cook them in a sauce, and serve over pasta.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 small onion
1 tsp minced garlic
5-6 champignon mushrooms, sliced
About 1/2 cup cooked green beans
3 small cooked chicken breasts, sliced thinly so they absorb liquid efficiently
One cm fresh ginger, peeled and grated
About 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce, or to taste
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp spelt flour or other flour, for thickening

(I told my husband that he was lucky I made apricot jam the day before, other we would have had apricots in the sauce as well 😉 )

Heat olive oil. Fry onion until translucent, add garlic and continue frying til fragrant. Add mushrooms, cook until browned. Add chicken, green beans, ginger, stock and soy sauce. Cook for 5-10 minutes on a low fire, so chicken absorbs some liquid. If there isn’t enough liquid, add water or white wine. Add flour and mix. Cook for 2-3 minutes more or until thickened. If not thick enough, add more flour. Serve over pasta.

My mom dropped by to pick something up and said the scent was overpowering, even outside the building, and said (hint, hint, wink, wink) that she wasn’t in a hurry and that my father was out of town for dinner. So we invited her for dinner as  well 🙂 By the time I thought to photograph the excellent sauce, only this was left:

Umm… Mushroom Chicken Sauce?

😆 😆 😆

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Love Food – Don’t Waste!

I’m joining the blog event Love food – Don’t Waste here.  I already sent some of my blog posts (such as crumbles and jam for fruit, etc.), but I wanted to add some concentrated tips for not wasting food. I hate throwing away food.

Bread:

Four things to do with leftover bread:

1. Freeze. Defrost using a microwave or at room temperature. To defrost in the microwave, wrap with thin cloth towel and microwave 10-20 seconds (depending on how much bread). Some trial and error is needed, but the bread usually comes out as if it was just baked :).
2. French toast: That standby of old bread everywhere. Beat 1-2 eggs (depending on how much bread). Add a splash of milk or water. Dip bread slices in egg, both sides. Fry in a frying pan both sides until brown. Serve with jam, peanut butter, sprinkle sugar on top, chocolate syrup, maple syrup…

Quick Real Chocolate Syrup:

Ingredients:

4 squares good chocolate of your choice
few drops vegetable oil

Put chocolate in microwave safe glass, and microwave 30 seconds at a time until melted (chocolate doesn’t loose its shape in the microwave, so you need to actually mix with a spoon to see if it melted) . Add a few drops vegetable oil and mix. Serve.

Note: Never add water to melted chocolate, it causes it to seize (become gritty).

3. Breadcrumbs: Put bread in a straw bowl or plastic box with holes (such as what mushrooms are bought in) and let dry a few days. Once dry, process in food processor until you get crumbs. Excellent home-made breadcrumbs.

4. SemulKneidl: Literally: breadballs. This is a recipe of my MIL which we usually use just before Passover to get rid of all our bread. Basically you mix bread (typically at least a loaf) with one cup of milk, and mix until becomes a dough-like. If you need more liquids, add more water. Form into balls and boil for 20 minutes. Serve with sour cream or mushroom sauce.

Dairy Products:

Milk: Use up in chocolate milk or cornflakes, or make blintzes. Also, milk makes a great heavy cream substitute to use in sauces:

Heavy cream substitute:

One cup heavy cream = 1 cup less 2 tbsp milk+2 tbsp milk mixed with 2 tsp flour. You need to mix the flour with a small amount of milk first to prevent it from lumping. Then add the milk and the flour-milk mixture to your pan (or pot, or whatever). Heat until thickened to your liking. You can also add some butter for taste.

Yogurt: I just love putting in muffins. Another great option is freezing it to make frozen yogurt. Be warned, however – home-made frozen yogurt, unless made with an ice cream machine, tends to come out like ice rather than ice-cream.

Cottage cheese – I like to use it in a casserole. Basically mix your leftover pasta, some tomato puree or sauce, cottage cheese, olives if you like them, anything else you have on hand, sprinkle grated cheese on top, and bake covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for another 15 minutes (to get brown). I do this also when I don’t have any leftovers to use up at all :).

Potatoes:

Slice up and fry them. Potatoes don’t freeze well, unfortunately.

Everything

A great leftover food is to slice all the leftovers you have (potatoes, meat, vegeatables, pasta, rice, etc.) and fry it all together. You can add a chopped onion. At the end, pour some beaten egg on top and wait for it to cook. This is my husband’s family spécialité 🙂

There are tons more great ideas out there – like shepherds pie with leftover chicken/meat and potatoes, or leftover meat lasagne, but they will be in another post…

Anther option which are always great is spreading the food around. For example, If I have too much watermelon, I give half to my parents and that way everyone is happy…

Love Food - Don't Waste

 

PS. I’m so sorry for your loss, Tes. My heart goes out to you. May you get strength and courage to face this terrible loss.

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Day after BBQ lasagne

Last week we had a BBQ for my husbands colleagues and some more friends. We splurge on this every once in a while, buying steaks from the best place around (more expensive, but sooo worth it). If we could, we would probably do this once a week, but good meat is expensive. Besides, it’s not so healthy to have BBQs all the time. Last time we had it, we ordered just enough steaks, and one person we were counting didn’t show up in the end. So this time we calculated around the same lines and added 1-2 steaks.

We had 12 steaks left over, 6 of them cooked.

The uncooked ones went into the freezer. I’m not worried about them – we just need an excuse to eat steaks :). But what to do with the cooked ones? Even the best entrecote steaks don’t really taste as good the day after they are made. If I would have had one left over, I would have eaten it next day for lunch with some red wine sauce, but six?

So, I cut the steaks in pieces and used then in a rich tomato sauce, and we had it in lasagne for Shabbat (two days after the BBQ). The six steaks made enough sauce for two lasagnes, so I froze half. The results were awesome. We had my in-laws for dinner, and I also made my never-fail meatloaf, and because everyone was raving over the lasagne, I actually had leftover meatloaf for the first time in ages.

There were two pieces of lasagne left over (what I managed to photograph), and I ate them for lunch on Sunday. On the way home from work, my husband asks me:

“You left me the lasagne for dinner, right?”

and I was “uh no… I ate it…”

“But  I’ve been dreaming about this all day!”

So, I took out the frozen half and made another lasagne. This was gone almost before you could blink.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, cubed
2-3 stalks celery, including the leaves (optional)
6 cooked entrecote steaks, cut up and the fat removed (by far the most tiring part of the process)
1 can crushed tomatoes (800 gr)
about 1 cup red wine
100 gr tomato paste
1/2 cup – 1 cup beef stock (I had some from making beef the week before. I freeze leftover sauce from roasts as I don’t thicken them to make a gravy) or water
2 bay leaves
dried oregano, basil and thyme to taste

Fry onion in olive oil until transparent. Add carrots and celery. Sauté on a low fire until celery leaves look wilted. Add meat and mix, sauté for a few minutes more. Add canned tomatoes, tomato paste, beef stock or water, spices and wine. Simmer for half an hour or until carrots are soft.

This is good in lasagne and over pasta or rice.

Bon apetit!

***********

I found an interesting blog at http://www.squawkfox.com/category/recipes/. She also cooks from scratch and has lots of great tips on cooking cheaply and healthily. And as I’m trying to get my toddler to eat more iron rich foods, I might try some of her 5$ bean based meals. My toddler eats meat only at my mom’s and no where else. I already started making rice and lentils which he likes, but I’m always on the lookout for more tasty easy dishes that might appeal to him. I just hope my toddler will eat it…

Love Food - Don't Waste!

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