Leftovers Love them or leave Them

Leftovers, love them or hate them but they are a part of the holiday season.  My refrigerator looked like Leftover city.  I knew my family would not be happy with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy again.  So I did reconnaissance in my fridge and found some, onion, celery and carrots and decided to make turkey croquettes .  If you want to get fancy, this combination of vegetables is known as mirepoix to the French.  They dice these three ingredients, sauté them in butter and use it as a base for soups and stews.  If you don't want to make mirepoix, Trader Joe's sells it as well as many of your local grocery stores.  Anyway I made mine with my handy dandy Kuhn Rikon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technically the vegetables are diced but my family is kind of funny when it comes to veggies so I chopped them a little finer so they would blend in better. I also added some green onions because if I did not use them quickly they would go bad. I had a box of unmade stuffing that I combined with the mirepoix and the turkey (cubed) and then I added two eggs lightly beaten. I also put about 1/4th of a cup of flour.  Every year when I attempt to make these they fall apart when you go to cook them. They look like a mess and my family looks at me like why are you serving this to me?  I think it is because I usually only use bread crumbs.  That is why I used the stuffing and some flour to hold the croquette together better.  By George I think I got it. 

Aside from the seasonings in the stuffing, I added garlic powder, pepper, cumin and coriander to taste.  Flavoring with herbs is very personal.  Some like more herbs some less.  I will let you decide.  I did not add more salt because the stuffing had enough in it for my family.  I try to lightly with the salt shaker. I put the mix in the refrigerator until I was ready to make the croquettes.  I then put some canola oil in a skillet and cooked the croquettes and served them.  My family liked them.  Success! 

Appetizers From your Pantry

I have discussed preparing appetizers before.  For me they are a very important when I entertain friends because I always have a cocktail hour before I serve dinner.  Quite often I only serve appetizers.  This year for New Years I was searching for some good appetizers and I found this link that I am sharing with you Appetizers prepared from pantry items.  It fits in with my whole mission to use things in my pantry.  It just so happens that I have caramel sauce and nuts in my pantry, brie in my fridge.  White beans are also in my pantry and I always have rosemary as art of my spice rack. 

After New Year's I will let you know what I served.  I would also love to hear what you are planning to serve on New Year's. 

 

Bagels in A Casserole? Why not!

 

I grew up in New York where the bagel was a staple item in our house.  Instead of a teething ring, my Mom gave me a piece of bagel and I would gum it to death.  There are pictures proving this fact.  So of course my favorite breakfast is a toasted bagel although lately to eat healthier I have substituted an English Muffin that is high fiber.  But on the weekend it is still the bagel.  To keep things "fresh" I vary what I put on as a topping.  If I still lived in NY it would be lox, cream cheese and a slice of red onion all the time but I no longer live in NY and I like a little variety in my life after all I am a Gemini.  So peanut butter, melted cheeses or flavored cream cheese are a good change.  I think you all get it, bagels are really their own food group for me.  That is why the recipe I will share with you was so appealing to me.  It is a bagel casserole.

Many of you have tasted some of my breakfast casseroles.  They usually have eggs, milk some type of bread and either fresh veggies or perhaps bacon or sausage.  Sometimes I do a combination meat and veggie.  Sometimes I do a French Toast casserole. It all depends on my mood.  The wonderful thing about an breakfast casserole is that you don't need to follow a recipe to the letter, there is wiggle room.  Ever since I took my cooking without a recipe class I have been improvising a lot more.  The only thing I don't usually change is the ratio of eggs to milk because that is what gives the casserole its consistency.  Once I find the consistency that I like I use it in other things.

While I was browsing the online catalog for my county library I found The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman.  One of the first recipes I  came across was This Bagel Casserole I am going to share with you.  One of the Nice things about the recipes in this book is the ingredients are in both the American standard measures as well as those found Internationally.  So those of my friends that follow me outside of the United States, you can follow along as well with one assumption, you can find bagels.  But if you can't substitute your favorite bread.  Remember it is a casserole.

So here it is:

8 cups of bagels cut into 1 inch cubes (570 grams)
8 ounces (225gm) of cream cheese
1/4 medium onion sliced thinly
1 pint grape tomatoes cut in half or quartered
8 large eggs
2 1/3 cup milk (555 ml) or half and half
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
Capers for serving
Lox or bacon for serving

In a pan 9x 13 pan spread a third of the bagel cubes. Dot with a third of the cream cheese bits and mix in the red onion and tomatoes.  Repeat in two more alternating layers.

Whisk eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Pour over bagel mixture.  Refrigerate over night.

Preheat oven to 350.  Bake until it is puffed.

I am not inclined to follow the recipe to the letter of the law.  Like I said it is a casserole and casseroles are forgiving.  I made some changes.

 



I used three types of bagels: garlic, sesame and everything. I added the lox into the casserole rather than serving it on the side. 

I bumped up the veggie content and added a whole red onion, 3 mini red peppers and 3 cloves of fresh garlic.

This is what the first layer looked like:

The top layer looks pretty much like this one. One thing you do want to do is prepare overnight to allow the bagel to absorb some of the egg.  The outside of this casserole is like a warm roasted bagel and the inside is nice and soft.

Hope you enjoy it!

Got My Creative Juices Flowing, my Dish Chicken with apples and onions

I decided to bake holiday cookies this year.  I must admit, I am not the best baker so the cookies I baked are very very simple.  Chocolate chip, White chocolate chip, molasses and tonight I was going to try thumbprint cookies.  I think you get my drift.  I can cream together eggs, butter and the dry ingredients but that is the extent of it. 

The cookie baking got my “creative’ juices flowing and I thought I would try to put my cooking without a recipe skills toward preparing dinner.  I started by placing chicken thighs in a skillet with some olive oil so that they would brown.  I seasoned them with garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.  To deglaze the pan, a term I learned in my cooking class I used apple cider.  Deglaze means adding a liquid to a pan to get the particles that have gotten stuck to the bottom of the pan through roasting, sautéing or sweating to release.  Deglazing  adds a great flavor to the dish.  I could have used wine or chicken broth but I chose apple cider because I was going for a sweet and savory combination.  After the thighs were browned I removed them from the pan.  I cut up  a medium onion and two small apples.  I sautéed them in the same pan I cooked the thighs in.  I didn't want to waste the natural juices and seasonings that were still in the pan.

 



I added about 1/4th of a cup of brown sugar, 1/4th of a cup of apple cider( to deglaze again) and a shake of dried basil and some salt and pepper to taste.  Then I poured the apple/onion mixture onto the chicken and baked the dish at 350 degrees for about a half hour to forty five minutes. I served the finished product over Quinoa, my new favorite grain.

Delish! I got good ratings from my resident food critics.  Best part was that is was easy to just throw together.  Hope you like it.

Just to sum things up you will need

4 chicken thighs
1 medium onion
2 small apples (I used gala)
1/2 cup of a full bodied apple cider
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 - 1 tsp. dried basil
Salt and pepper
Olive oil to coat the pan


 

Amazon has a good Deal on the Kuhn Rikon Swiss Pull

A couple of weeks ago I talked about this new toy that I found that made chopping things like onions and grating things like parmesan cheese easy.  FYI Amazon is offering 25% of this week.  Follow this link for more information Kuhn Rikon Swiss Pull. It makes a great holiday gift for a foodie on your list.

Sips and Apps not Boots and Pants

Tis the Season for entertaining.  Ho Ho Ho.  I love having friends and family over especially this time of year.  It is so festive. During this time I like to serve what I “heavy appetizers” and along with these you need to serve adult beverages a.k.a alcohol .  The problem is I do the same stuff over and over.  Blah, Blah, Blah, Boring, Boring.  That is why this book caught my attention.

She starts out with advice on how to stock your bar, which spirits and which liqueurs.  Then she turns it up a notch by suggesting different ways to incorporate fruits, veggies and herbs.  She then talks about garnishes, barware and equipment.  I made the ultimate mistake a few weeks ago when I had friends over and my martini maker refused to make apple martinis because I didn’t have martini glasses. She was right of course but I thought tumblers would do.  Am I clueless or what!

I also liked her chapter on Techniques and Tricks of the Trade.  And then comes the recipes for all these wonderful cocktails.  One that caught my eye was Hot Mango Love made with a fresh jalapeno pepper and Finlandia mango vodka.  Who would ever think to put a jalapeno in a drink?  Her Grapefruit Cosmo did not look to shabby either.  Oh and did I mention the Fresh Apple Mojito?  That’s just three there are more including the old standards. 

If all this wasn’t enough, there is the second half of the book that contain the recipes for the Apps. By Apps I do not mean software you load on a computer or tablet although this book is available in digital format.  A couple that looked good were: The Bollywood Chicken Skewers with Spiced Yogurt Dip and the Chipolte Deviled Eggs.  One other that caught my eye was the Mini Scallion Biscuits with Smoked Salmon Spread.  Yum! All the recipes seem manageable to make which is a must for me.  I need things that I can put together in a finite amount or time.

Once again this year I have added this book onto my Holiday gift list for some of my recipients who are hard to buy for.  I think this will do nicely. For more information check out this link Sips and Apps