DIY Tapas Plate

It’s Monday, it’s lunchtime, and you’re lunch-less and hungry. Odds are, you’re stuck going to the nearest faux-healthy restaurant. (Ever looked at the ingredients in a Panera sandwich? If you print out what’s in the Turkey Artichoke Panini, it’ll take up almost a full 8 1/2″ x 11″ page. But hey, I guess that’s better than Jimmy John’s — they refuse to disclose what’s in their sandwiches. If anyone ever does succeed in breaching their corporate “we won’t tell you what you’re eating” wall, I’d love to hear about it.)

While you might be up the prandial creek without a fork on Monday, take heart! The rest of the week can be much tastier and healthier. All you’ll need to do clean out your fridge, pantry, and fruit bowl by enjoying a midday assortment of odds and ends. If you were in Spain, you’d be calling the idea tapas; if you were in Greece, you’d be lunching on mezze. And your truly tasty and healthy meal will cost you under $10 (mine was $5).  So don’t be afraid to explore the corners of your fridge!

Suggestions for your Tapas Plate

Fruit
Cheese, preferably made from grass-fed milk
Nuts
Olives
Deli meats from pastured animals (such as Applegate Farms and Niman Ranch products)
Hard-boiled eggs
Pickles
Whole-grain bread
Any leftovers that need to be eaten

Remember, simplicity is your most delicious ingredient! Not throwing away money is probably the second most delicious one…which is what you’ll achieve by tossing some tasty leftovers into a bag and taking them to work with you rather than throwing them away and going out to eat.

For this plate, I went with what I had on hand:

Wedge of Prairie Fruits Moonglo raw goat cheese $2.10
Wedge of ricotta salata cheese made of sheep’s milk (I love cheeses made with sheep and goat milk) $1.00, garnished with sweet paprika
Satsuma mandarin orange $0.58
Half an organic Gala apple $0.30
Olives $1.36
For the heck of it, I threw in an anchovy-wrapped caper $0.20

Total: a very delicious $5.54 (Prairie Fruits cheeses are amazing!)

In other words, an adult version of Lunchables…except much more health- and cost-effective.

Enjoy exploring your fridge and cupboards!

Red Rice with Roasted Kale & Onions

Roasted kale and popcorn are probably my two favorite snacks (or dinners, for that matter). They’re both crispy-crunchy and can be tossed with a variety of spices and umami-rich flavors: kale with tamari and sesame and popcorn with anything from Ethiopian berbere spice blends to Indian curry powders. My only problem is that I tend to overshoot on how much I make and then wind up with more than I can eat. Popcorn is simple enough to keep as leftovers — it readily keeps its crunch — but day-old roasted kale loses its crunch and becomes pretty chewy. (Still tastes great, though.)

Recently, I came up with the perfect way to repurpose my leftover roasted kale chips. You could use fresh kale, too, but you’ll get maximum yum if you use already-seasoned kale chips that have been steeped in flavor for a few days. And if you know you’ll have a delicious way to use leftovers, you’ll probably be more likely to roast the kale in the first place. Either the chips or the repurposed chips would be great additions to a holiday dinner!

Red Rice with Roasted Kale & Onions
I purposely left out exact measurements here because you’ll be using whatever leftover kale you have on hand. If you are more of a fan of rice than kale, make more rice than kale; if you prefer kale, go easy on the rice. A general rule of thumb, though, is that 1/2 pound of kale (raw or roasted) and 1 cup raw rice will make a meal plenty big enough for two.

Yellow onions, sliced
Roasted kale chips (see recipe)*
Dash of tamari or soy sauce (choose wheat-free tamari if you’re making a gluten-free dish)
Sprinkling of powdered ginger
Cooked red rice OR cooked brown rice (gently simmer 1 part rice in 2 parts water/broth in a covered pot for 35-40 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed)**
Rice wine vinegar (optional)
Toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Heat a drizzle of unrefined peanut oil OR a pat of ghee/butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sautée, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Stir in roasted kale chips, the tamari, and the ginger. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to sautée for another 10 minutes, again stirring once in a while. Stir in cooked rice and taste to see if you’d like to add any more tamari or ginger. If you’d like your creation to be more moist but you don’t want to keep adding tamari/soy — it can get awfully salty — then spritz on some rice wine vinegar instead.

Garnish with sesame seed if you like. Is this a great use of leftovers or what? The combination of whole-grain rice + hearty kale makes this a surprisingly filling dish.

Enjoy!

* If you’re using fresh kale, rinse and chop the leaves and sautée them over medium heat for 5 minutes before adding the onions. Proceed with the recipe as written, adding extra tamari and ginger to taste.

** Cooked whole-grain rice (red, brown, black, purple) can be refrigerated for up to a week, so feel free to make a big batch and then use it whenever you like.

Twice-Baked Potatoes

The next time you bake potatoes, you might want to toss a few extra spuds in the oven, because you can do a lot with the leftovers.  And you don’t have to slather your taters with canned mushroom soup to make them flavorful, either — you can combine the mashed innards with a quick vegetable sautée instead, then re-bake the entire potato and enjoy it inside and out.  (I think the twice-baked skin is the best part!)  Another way to use the leftover baked potato would be to cut it into cubes and then fold it into omelets…or cut it into long strips, then brush them with spiced melted butter or extra-virgin olive oil and make your own oven fries.  (I would spice the butter with a hint of cayenne or chili powder.)  And if you have more filling than skins, you can enjoy the filling all on its own as a quick breakfast, the way I’ve done below.

Twice-Baked Potatoes

Pre-baked potatoes*
Onions, diced
Bell peppers, diced
Garlic, minced
White beans, drained
Dried Italian herbs such as rosemary, thyme, or basil
Sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Scoop out the potato innards from the skins and place in a large mixing bowl.

In a large pan, sautée the onions and peppers in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until onions are translucent. Add garlic, reduce heat to medium-low, and sautée for another 2-3 minutes or until garlic is soft and fragrant (but not brown and burnt!). Stir in beans and a sprinkling of herbs and salt. (I like a lot of herbs, but you might prefer a pinch. Simply season and taste, season and taste, and stop adding herbs and salt when you’ve hit your personal sweet spot.)

Stir onion mixture into the potato innards, then stuff the mixture into the skins. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the tops are barely golden brown. If you’d like, you could stir some cheese into the mixture before stuffing the skins. Hard, aged cheeses like Cheddar, Parmesan, or Manchego would be ideal. Frankly, I think Feta would be divine, too!

Leftover potatoes can be reheated the next day. Leftover stuffing can be reheated, too, or added to another dish.

Enjoy!

* To bake your potatoes the first time around, scrub them well, pierce them several times with a fork (to keep them from exploding when heated), and place them directly on the center oven rack.  Bake average-sized potatoes at 400F for an hour.  Small potatoes may only take 40 minutes; extra-large potatoes may need more than an hour to get tender.   Your best bet is to poke a fork into them before taking them out of the oven — if the fork meets much resistance, keep baking the potatoes for another 10 minutes before test-poking them again.

Leftover Stuffing Breakfast

Indian Pilaf with Poached Egg

I know not everyone is going to be with me on this one, but poached eggs have always been my favorite.  Scrambled eggs are nice, and so are hard-boiled eggs, but for me, the creamy poached-ness is where it’s at.  Poached eggs are easy to make, too: just crack an egg into boiling water, set the timer for 3 minutes, reduce the heat to medium, and let the egg gently bob about in the pot.  Skim off the foam that rises to the top — if you don’t, it’ll run down the sides of the pot and onto the stove — and then gently lift out the poached egg with a slotted spoon.  A snap.

But you know what’s even easier?  Cracking an egg onto a leftover stir-fry or pilaf, covering the pan, and just stepping back for 3 minutes.  Just be sure to turn down the heat to medium-low to avoid overcooking the egg.  It’s a simple, delicious way to use up leftovers.  It’s also an amazing way to make breakfast in 5 minutes flat.

You can use whatever leftover pilaf or stir-fry you have on hand to make this recipe — just skip to the part where you start to re-warm your leftovers and go from there!

Indian Pilaf with Quick-Poached Egg
The starting pilaf serves about 4 for dinner, so if you have 2 diners, you’ll have plenty of leftover pilaf for the next day’s breakfast.

1/2 cup long-grain brown rice (basmati is best, jasmine is another good choice)
1 cup mung beans OR brown lentils
Ghee or butter for sautéeing (ghee is a traditional Indian cooking fat — it’s just clarified butter — so if you want maximum authenticity, stick with ghee)
1 small onion, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons canned jalapeño pepper OR 1 fresh jalapeño pepper, chopped
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. turmeric
Eggs for poaching

Note: If you’re not such a fan of spices, only use 1 tsp. of each spice.  If you don’t like spicy foods, cut the amount of jalapeño in half, too.

Place the rice and 1 cup water in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover the pot, and cook the rice for about 30-40 minutes or until the rice has absorbed the water and is fluffy. In another pot, simmer the beans with 2 cups water for about 15 minutes or until the beans have reached the tenderness you like. Drain and set aside.  Note that you can use leftover cooked rice in this dish if you have some on hand!

Heat the ghee over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add onion and rice and cook for about 5 minutes or until rice is turning golden brown and onion is almost translucent. Stir in beans, jalapeño, and spices. Reduce heat to low and cook for 3 minutes or so to let the flavors mingle.

At this point, you can serve the pilaf for dinner or keep on going and poach an egg over individual servings…or serve half and keep half for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Place an individual serving of leftover pilaf in a small saucepan with a small pat of ghee or butter. Cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes or until pilaf has warmed through. Crack an egg on top of the pilaf, cover the pan, and reduce heat to medium-low. Let cook for 3 minutes undisturbed.

Serve immediately. If you like, garnish with a bit of freshly chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!

Baba Ghanoush with Lentils

Dips are fantastically fabulous: you can make them out of nearly any ingredients that you can purée, you can serve them with a variety of dippers (crackers, tortilla chips, raw veggies, etc.), and if you make the dip less thick, it becomes a sauce for pasta, a marinade for meats, even a spread for sandwiches.  Dips aren’t just party snacks — they can be main meals!

For this version of baba ghanoush, I included lentils to give it more body.  (I love dipping into dinner!)  And seeing as the dip will keep for at least four days in the fridge, I’ll probably re-blend it with some extra-virgin olive oil tomorrow night and then toss it with some pasta or brown rice.  Ain’t leftovers grand?  In fact, let’s call them “refreshed meals,” both because the dishes themselves are given new culinary life and because it’s darned refreshing for us to have a delicious dinner in ten minutes flat.

Baba Ghanoush with Lentils & Cilantro

1 medium eggplant, cut into 1″-thick slices
1 medium onion, cut into 1″-thick slices
3/4 cup raw lentils
1 tablespoon tahini
Juice of one small lemon (or a medium or large lemon, if you’re a big lemon fan)
1 tsp. cumin
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. fenugreek (optional, but adds a welcome tangy earthiness)
Sea salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cover a baking tray with aluminum foil or parchment paper and place eggplant and onion slices on tray. (Space them out a bit.) Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt, then bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until the onions are brown and caramelized and the eggplant is also golden brown. (You may have to remove the onions from the pan and continue roasting the eggplant — onions usually cook faster.) Cook lentils according to package instructions.

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until you have a chunky-but-blended dip. Serve with tortilla chips, crackers, bread, raw veggies, cooked veggies…you name it! (I enjoyed mine with tortilla chips, raw peppers, and roasted tomatoes.)  Garnish with additional chopped cilantro if you like.

Enjoy!

Shrimp & Salmon Salad

What do shrimp, salmon, avocado, and Boston lettuce have in common?  They’re all smooth — in the case of avocado, downright creamy — and full-flavored, and when you put them together, you get a very tasty, quick, well-balanced meal.  (And since the salad is served cold, it’s also a great way to use leftover cooked salmon and shrimp.)  All these elements need is a bit of sharpness to highlight their smooth nature, and for that you can turn to lemon juice, lime juice, or a soft vinegar like white balsamic or cider.  You  might also wish to add a briny/salty element — here, I’ve included artichoke hearts, but olives or a few sliced/minced dill pickles would also work.

Shrimp & Salmon Salad

On a plate, arrange rinsed-and-dried Boston lettuce (or Bibb, which is another soft, buttery lettuce), sliced avocado, chunked cooked wild salmon (you could also use canned), cooked cold shrimp, and quartered artichoke hearts.  Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and lime or lemon juice, then sprinkle on a few shakes of sea salt and a few grinds of freshly-cracked pepper.  It’s that easy!

Note:  if your salmon and/or shrimp is pre-seasoned — perhaps you made an Asian-themed meal the night before and used a soy glaze, or maybe you made garlicky Shrimp Scampi — then choose your salad accents accordingly.  An Asian salad would do well with sesame or peanut oil and rice wine vinegar (you could even make a more formal dressing by mixing them in a small bowl with a bit of fish sauce, curry sauce, or fermented bean paste if you have any); likewise, an Italian salad would be delicious served with balsamic vinegar and a nutty oil like walnut or pinenut.  You could also extend pesto into dressing by whisking in enough extra-virgin olive oil to make it pourable.

Enjoy!

Once Harira, Now Lasagna

The next time you have a big pot of chili or stew — in this case, I had made a batch of Moroccan harira — try creating a quick lasagna/casserole with your tasty leftovers.  All you have to do is cook some noodles (anything from penne to ziti to linguini), layer the noodles and stew in a greased baking pan, top with a cheese of your choice, and bake.  If you’d like to get really fancy, you can make a cheese sauce by beginning with a roux and adding enough cheese to it to make it a velvety consistency.  If you’re not inclined to whip up a cheese sauce, however, simply sprinkle or crumble your cheese of choice on top of the sauced noodles.  Bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until the top is bubbly and golden brown.

Some combination ideas:

Mexican:  corn pasta with chili and jalapeño Monterrey Jack cheese

Mediterranean:  wheat pasta with harira and a blend of Kasseri and Feta cheeses

Coastal:  rice pasta with chunky fish stew and farmer’s cheese

French:  semolina pasta with ratatouille and Brie

British Isles:  wheat pasta with Irish stew and mature Cheddar

Just poke around your fridge and pantry to see what you can find — no doubt you’ll be surprised at the quick dinner possibilities you already have in your kitchen!

Refreshed Asian Stir-Fry with Salmon

Just before I slipped off to sleep last night — a surprisingly sound one considering that I’d just watched another two episodes of my new favorite show, True Blood — I had a culinary ephiphany:  the term “leftover” needs to be revamped.  (Pun intended.)

“Leftover”  sounds distinctly unappealing, doesn’t it?  I mean, who wants what’s left over?  Even dedicated garage-sale shoppers like to get there at the crack of dawn to get first dibs on what’s laid out in the garage or scattered across the lawn.  Calling something a “leftover”  doesn’t do it justice at all, especially when that leftover can be re-purposed and used to create something totally new and innovative.  Leftovers aren’t leftovers at all — they’re founts of inspiration.  They’re tasty ways to save money.  They can be the ultimate convenience food, particularly if we go with the well-nigh-forgotten definition of “convenient”:  affording accommodation or advantage.  (Which commercial “convenience”  foods most certainly do not — they afford poor health, strained economies, and overburdened health-care systems.)  It’s time to re-create the concept of leftovers!

Henceforth, leftovers won’t be leftovers in this e-kitchen:  they’ll be “refreshed” foods.  And to usher in the new era, here’s how I made Monday”s dinner into Wednesday’s lunch by pairing it with Tuesday’s dinner!

Refreshed Asian Stir-Fry with Salmon & Noodles

As the name implies, I simply added salmon and noodles to Monday’s stir-fry (two posts down).  I’d baked the salmon the night before for dinner and had saved half of it, so all I had to do was use a fork to break it into chunks while I boiled water for the brown rice noodles.  As soon as the noodles had finished cooking, I drained them, added the already-cooked stir-fry to the noodle pot, slid the drained noodles back into it, added the chunked salmon, stirred it, and put the whole thing back on the stove for a minute or two to heat it all through.  Right before serving, I drizzled on a bit of extra sesame oil and soy sauce.

There you have it!  A fantastic lunch in 7 minutes.  (Or however many minutes it takes to cook whatever kind of pasta you choose to use.)  How’s that for refreshing?

Enjoy!

Moroccan Pizza

One day a pot of simmered and marinated vegetables, the next day a cold gazpacho soup, then finally a luscious pizza topping…it’s just a few days in the life of a leftover.  It’s like kitchen magic!

Remember the Moroccan caponata?  I’d made such a big batch that I wound up freezing a bowl of it.  When I defrosted it, I threw it into the blender and turned it into bright, fresh gazpacho.  When I served it to the same person who’d sampled it as caponata, she absolutely loved it–and couldn’t believe it when I told her its secret origins.  “But it tastes totally different now!” she said.  Isn’t it amazing what texture can do for the tastebuds?

But that wasn’t the end of the caponata–two days after the cross-cuisine gazpacho, I topped a half a pita with the remaining gazpacho, added some blue cheese, and stuck it in my toaster oven for five minutes.  Voilá!  I had yet another dish:  caponata-gazpacho Moroccan-French pizza.

In other words, a leftover with a makeover.  What creative dishes do you have hanging out in your refrigerator?

Roasted Red Pepper with Chicken & Noodles

Leftovers can be magic–especially versatile leftovers like roasted red pepper and chicken.  Just add a bit of pasta and olive oil, sprinkle with parsley, and poof! you have a delicious meal.  With a bit of purposeful overproduction, in fact, you can create your own healthy freezer meals/leftovers.  (But be sure to stick with your original plan and actually save the extra portions.  Eating them all at one sitting defeats the whole scheme!)

There are many reasons to create your own next-day delights:  you know EXACTLY what the ingredients are (let’s face it–you’d have to be a chemist to correctly pronounce the ingredients on a typical frozen dinner), your own leftovers are much more fresh than store-bought ones (how long have they been sitting on the shelf? in the warehouse? in a truck?), and you can control the portion size.  Also, since you’ve already tested the meal and you know you like it, you can treat yourself to a potluck-style surprise by simply not labeling your leftover.  It’s like going to your favorite restaurant and just asking for the chef’s special.

To make roasted red peppers for this dish or for any other meal that strikes your fancy:

[Optional:  place a tray or a piece of aluminum foil underneath the center of the main oven rack to catch any possible drips.]  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  When it’s piping hot, place the whole washed pepper directly on the rack.  Roast for about 20 minutes or until the skin of the pepper begins to blacken and blister.  (You may wish to turn it over halfway through the cooking time.)

Remove pepper from oven and IMMEDIATELY place in ziploc bag.  Seal and let the pepper rest until it’s cool enough to handle.  (This could take 30 minutes.)  When you remove it from the bag–which will be foggy with condensation–the skin will be very easy to peel off.  Remove stem, seeds, and all skin.  At this point, you can purée the roasted pepper for dips or smooth sauces, slice it into strips to serve alongside main dishes or on sandwiches/wraps, or cover it with olive oil and save it for later.  (You can refrigerate roasted red pepper for about a week.)  If you’d like to flavor your pepper, add garlic and/or herbs to the oil.  They can be directly added to the dish later on.

Happy roasting!

Nutty Southwestern Turkey Stew

Adding almonds to chili may seem odd, but their smooth character provides an intriguing contrast to the piquancy of the dish.  So does the sesame paste…although you may want to use actual seeds if you’re a big fan of crunchiness.  Cinnamon and chiles combine to form a spicy backdrop to the mellow chicken broth base.

Note:  this recipe makes enough for two, but you may want to double or triple that depending on how much leftover turkey you have and whether or not you’d like stew again the next day.  The good news is that it’s even better after it has sat overnight!

For the stew:

1 T. olive oil

2 medium onions OR 1 large onion, sliced

3 cloves of garlic

1 4-oz. can of green chiles

1 whole cinnamon stick

1 tsp. coriander

1 T. chili powder

Dash of cloves (less than 1/8 tsp.)

2 cups chicken broth

1/2 cup tomato sauce

2 T. sesame paste (tahini)

1 cup leftover turkey, coarsely chopped (or you could use chicken)

1/3 cup sliced almonds

Sauteé onions in oil over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes or until they start to turn translucent.  Add garlic and chiles and continue cooking for another 2 minutes.  Add spices; they should become very fragrant in less than a minute.  Carefully pour in broth.  Add tomato sauce and stir in the sesame paste, mixing it in thoroughly.  Add turkey and almonds.

Turn down heat to a very low setting and cover the pot.  Let it simmer for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better) before serving, being sure to stir it once in a while.  You might need to add more chicken broth if it looks like it’s getting too thick.  Serve with chopped green onions and/or a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Enjoy!

Anatomy of a Leftover

“Fusion cuisine” is the latest trend–it’s innovative, intriguing, and embraces all the foods that the world has to offer. It’s also astonishingly simple to create using leftovers. Don’t think you have anything in the fridge for dinner? Craving flair instead of humdrum? Try mixing and matching what you already have. How’s this idea: chicken satay + leftover BBQ pizza = killer Malaysian-style flavors. (Many Asian dishes are based on peanut sauces and spices.) You never know where fantastic taste combinations are lurking!

The dish above is a conglomerate of fresh (zucchini & onion), my own leftovers (a chicken tandoori dinner I had made) and a restaurant doggie bag (the already-seasoned rice that had accompanied Lebanese chicken shawarma & lamb kebabs). All I did was sauteé the fresh veggies over high heat until they were browned, then de-glazed the pan with some water and the tandoori sauce (which included the red peppers). The final step was to add the rice and cook for about 5 minutes, until the sauce had been absorbed into the rice and the ingredients were heated through.

I have to say, the result was pretty spectacular: not only did the Indian spices (turmeric, ginger, coriander) compliment the Lebanese emphasis on garlic and lemon, but dinner was done in ten minutes flat…and with a considerable amount of flair.

Be brave and try your own concoctions–you never know which odd couples will make good bedfellows!