Sunday, July 7, 2013

The Afterglow, or Adventures in Leftovers

Mamaw was nothing, if not frugal.  She could stretch out a dish like no body's business.  Now, that's not to say that she could convert a pot of beans into a classical cassoulet.  No, but she could transform something like meatloaf into a sandwich or little cubes to put in some spaghetti sauce and serve over pasta.  Her leftover action was more practical. 

Me, being a major food snob, I'm not a huge leftover fan, but with cooking for two not exactly our long suit, we need to do something fun with leftovers so we don't have any more mammoth food wasteage than necessary.  I'm working on getting my leftover mojo going, and so far, I've been doing OK.  Here is a story about a couple of things I did just this weekend, while my Mom was here for a visit.

When Mom is here, we go out to eat a lot. Mainly, this is because she doesn't get much of any food variety where she lives.  Secondly, this is because my Mom is the woman who taught me to be a food snob.  I thank her for that every day.  So, first thing we did when she arrived for her holiday visit was head over to Chimichurri's in Kingwood for some delicious meat action.  This lead to us coming home with about 6 large Frenched lamb chops.  Also, my husband made a rib sticking breakfast for us on Friday morning.  This included some nice bacon and some really good home made venison and pork country sausage.  Those ingredients lurked around the fridge a little while and my brain percolated on them.  Then, when the inspirations hit me, I pounced to make the best use of them I could think of.

Use #1: Yellow squash, bacon, sausage frittata
So, the father-in-law owns some land and a nice flock of Rhode Island Red hens.  This means we can get our paws on some fresh, delicious eggs that are actually laid by free range birds.  They peck bugs and plants as they run around his land, living the good life.  We ended up with a whole lot of them recently.  So while watching Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel and seeing their frittata, I had a brainwave.  I knew I had some yellow summer squash and the left over breakfast meats.  I also had beautiful red peppers and herbs from our garden and onion.  It was time to make my own frittata.

3 small yellow summer squash, washed thoroughly and sliced thinly
1/2 of a red onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 medium heat pepper of your choice or a red jalapeno, minced
1/2 tsp to 1 tsp fresh thyme
1/2 tsp fresh oregano
1 tbsp. fresh chives, minced up finely
2 fresh sage leaves very thinly cut into chiffonade 
2-3 oz of a nice hard cheese like aged pecorino Romano, Grana Padano, or Parmesan
5-6 eggs
salt
pepper

To keep your frittata from being waaay too moist, you need to get the moisture out of the veggies, especially those squash.  To do this, you should sautee them.  I put my squash on a lightly oiled griddle and got them going first.  When I saw that they were shrinking and there was browning on the one side, I stirred them up and redistributed them on the griddle to sear and brown on that side.  I then added my onion spicy pepper, and bell pepper.  While this was going on, my Mother and Hub were doing the prep work on the herbs and the eggs.  Hub cracked the eggs into my big bowl, added the thyme, sage, oregano, salt, pepper, 2/3 of the cheese and half the chives and whipped em up to a frothy goodness. 
Once the veggies were nearly ready, I threw the garlic on the griddle with them and briefly sautéed that, probably about 30 seconds more.  Then, I took all those ingredients and put them into the pan I planned on cooking the frittata in.  Why did I use two pans?  Well, I wanted to be sure that the veggies went into a moisture free pan.  May not make a real difference, but that's what I did.

Once the veggies were in the new pan, I took the left over bacon and sausage and crumbled those in the pan with them.  I turned on the heat and got the pan hot.  When the pan was hot enough that I heard the bacon and sausage sizzle, I poured in my egg mixture.  I made sure that the eggs and other ingredients were distributed evenly, then I put the lid on the pan, reduced the heat to medium low and walked away for a few minutes.  The pan must be lidded to allow for the accumulation of steam to cook the top of your frittata, especially if you're using a stove top method, as I was.  After a few minutes, I checked the frittata and sprinkled on the rest of the cheese and a few more chives.  I reserved a few chives for plating. 

I kept checking the frittata every few minutes till I saw that the top was set.  When the top is set to a slight jiggle, the dish is done.  You will know when it's done enough for you.  The egg jiggle factor is something all cooks start to recognize and know when it's done enough for them.

To serve the frittata, you just turn it out on a large platter and then slice it like a pizza.  It is a great breakfast, or any time meal.  Dinner comes to mind as delicious with a nice salad done with a zippy vinegar dressing. 
A slice of delicious fresh frittata and  some iced tea
So, that's the first of my adventures with the delicious leavings from a wonderful meal. My next installment will be the report on what we did with those cold lamb chops.
Cold, left over lamb chops, transformation to come
in the next installment of Afterglow, Adventures in Leftovers!

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