Ham and cheese divan

If you are a fan of brunch, you will LOVE this dish at any time of day.  Like Chicken Divan, it's a casserole of vegetables and protein layered with a creamy can-o-soup sauce.  I really didn't feel like making my sauce from scratch for this, so I used a can of cheddar cheese soup plus a little milk but you certainly can make your own.  It was ridiculously tasty. 

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to make the stuffed eggs just for this dish again (although it wasn't hard).  But this is absolutely going in my post-holiday meal rotation as a way to deal with leftover deviled eggs.  Plain halved hard-boiled eggs will work fine if you want to save a little work.

Original recipe from my mom's 1970-something Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.

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Chicken Vegetable Croissant Loaf

Another recipe from my new cookbook, Fresh from the Farmer's Market.  I've fiddled just a bit with the recipe to make it a bit more svelte.  The OR calls for mayo, and I'm substituting light sour cream for a lot less fat and fewer calories.  I also skew the ratio of vegetables to chicken more heavily in the vegetable direction than the OR. 

Chicken Croissant Loaf with swiss chard

You can prep this dish ahead in a variety of ways.  Prepare the filling and fridge or freeze it (another benefit of using sour cream over mayo...mayo breaks badly in the freezer) separately from the dough, assembling and baking at the last minute.  You can also assemble the loaf up to the point of brushing the top with egg white and sprinkling with almonds and fridge it, covered in plastic wrap, until ready to bake.  I don't see any reason you couldn't freeze the assembled loaf, but I've not actually tried doing it so that is merely speculation.  If you fridge or freeze prior to baking, transfer the parchment paper and loaf to a room temp baking sheet rather than baking on the chilly sheet on which you stored/thawed the loaf.  You could also bake this off and reheat at 350F for 15 minutes or so.

A note on the croissant/crescent roll dough.  If you're a fantastic baker, by all means, make your own croissant dough.  Or another type of bread dough.  I buy 2 tubes of crescent rolls at the grocery store.  I have occasionally seen tubes of unperforated crescent roll dough...if you find that product, it's perfect for this recipe.  Otherwise you'll need to smoosh the seams on the unrolled crescent rolls to form a more-or-less solid sheet of pastry.

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Dim Sum

If you've ever had an appetizer and said "I could make a meal of that", this is the post for you!  We've got names for this concept from a variety of culinary cultures...Spanish tapas, Italian antipasti, Chinese dim sum...making a meal of several small plates of varying foods. 

These recipes are adapted from the Frugal Gourmet's Three Ancient Cuisines.  In spite of being a meal composed of multiple attention-needing dishes (I don't usually plan to give significant attention to more than 1 dish in a meal), it came together pretty quickly and with a lot fewer swear words than I expected.

Steamer basket workaround

One of the beauties of dim sum is how easily the recipes lend themselves to prepping or making ahead.  I prepped all the sauces the night before (chopped/measured/combined ingredients), made the dumpling dough the night before, formed the dumplings right before dinner (but could have prepped them earlier if the dough was ready) and was able to cook everything in 15 inattentive minutes at the last minute.  All these dishes could have been prepped and frozen ahead as well, or fully cooked ahead and reheated in a steamer.

Speaking of steamers, the stacked bamboo steamer is apparently a staple in a Chinese kitchen.  I don't have one.  I do have a variety of metal steaming baskets, cooling racks, and ceramic ramekins that I assembled into a 3-tier arrangement inside of a large stock pot.  Work with what you've got!

The squid/calamari recipe originally calls for plain, cleaned squid to be stirfried with aromatics and sauce.  My grocery store only had pre-breaded calamari, so I decided to oven-bake the calamari and toss it with the sauce which I prepared using the microwave. 

Calamari, dumplings and meatballs

The dumpling filling calls for using leftover Chinese BBQ pork and a bit of napa cabbage, but you could use any combination of cooked meat and vegetable you want (or go totally vegetarian and skip the meat).  If you've got a small serving of leftover steamed veg of any type, I'd use that rather than cooking additional vegetables for the filling.  Also, if you have a premade stirfry sauce, you can use about 3 tbsp of that rather than measuring half-teaspoons of all the ingredients listed below.  Just add a bit of cornstarch if necessary to thicken the mixture.  Again, I made use of the microwave to deal with what is really a small bit of filling.

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Broccoli packets for roasting or grilling

Blackberries, lemon-thyme salmon
and broccoli packet

This doesn't have to be done with broccoli or Boursin.  It's just a framework for an easy make-ahead/freezable side dish.  You could do carrot slices, cauliflower, asparagus, squash or zucchini and any kind of soft, flavored cheese.  To make it freezer-friendly, use pre-frozen vegetables and omit the extra liquid. 

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Teriyaki Tofu and Roasted Pineapple

I make my own teriyaki sauce for this dish because the sauce is so prominent in this recipe and store-bought teriyaki sauce is just foul.  I make up the sauce a day before I'm going to use it, so I'll start pressing the tofu and make the sauce the night before Dinner Day, strain out the garlic cloves and ginger chunks and start marinating the cubed tofu the morning of, and then drain off the marinade to roast that night.  If you make this as a freezer kit, I'd freeze the teriyaki sauce separately from the pressed but uncut tofu block.  When you thaw it, cube the tofu and marinate at least an hour before roasting.

You can substitute just about any protein you want in this dish...marinate chunks of chicken breast or pork loin and roast for the same amount of time and at the same temperature.  It's a great way to accomodate vegetarians and non-vegetarians at the same meal without making completely separate main dishes.  If you do use tofu however, you can strain, freeze and reuse the marinate once more (if you marinate chicken or pork, chuck the remaining marinade).

I nearly always serve this with broccoli, steamed or roasted.  Tonight, I'm roasting broccolini on the same sheet pan with the fruit to save creating more heat with the stovetop.  And tonight's oven-use three-fer (#1 tofu/pineapple, #2 broccolini side dish)...a blind-baked crust for strawberry pie! 


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Broccoli Salad

This is a creature I had not encountered before moving to the Midwest.  I am not going to engage in culinary anthropology and draw the sweeping conclusion that this is therefore a Midwestern dish (as my lack of exposure may derive merely from a vegetable-deficient upbringing rather than geographical particulars), though there is clearly a link between the Midwest love of mayonnaise-covered fruit and most broccoli salad recipes.

I have discovered a superior dressing recipe (originally for pasta salad, thanks again Cooking Light!) that is ideally suited to a vegetable salad such as this.  It doesn't break (as many a typical mayo-and-vinegar broccoli salad dressing does), but stays creamy even when made a full day in advance.  It also employs buttermilk which significantly reduces the fat content of the dressing versus a full mayo dressing.  And it's got a little zing from chili (or chile) powder.  This dressing works well for other vegetable salads as well, including coleslaw.

I am using chive flowers right now b/c 1) I'm just so tickled you can eat them, 2) they've got only another couple of days before they dry up in the garden, and 3) they're really pretty in the salad.  Use 1/4 cup chopped chives or red onion instead, if you want.

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Broccoli Rice Salad

I spent part of a summer in France many, many moons ago, and to be expected, my culinary world was transformed by the exposure to French foods and French cooks.  However, not so expectedly, my favorite foods from this trip are the French gastronomic equivalents of PB&J (which they do NOT have in France)...ham and butter sandwiches, grilled sausage served in split baguettes instead of hot dog buns, salads made of a single perfectly ripe and lightly dressed vegetable, fresh-picked plums (oh the plums!), and rice salads. 

I was one of about a dozen volunteers, both French and de l'étranger , and we took it in turns to cook for the group.  Several times we had salads composed of rice mixed with leftover meats, black olives, chopped fresh onion and peppers, summer corn, and just about anything else that needed using up.  Like I said, it's not fancy food, but it was revelatory for me.  I had no idea leftovers could be, well, delicious!  It holds at room temperature very well, too, so it's an excellent potluck/pitch-in/picnic dish.

The transition between the tough, outer
layers and the tender, light green "meat"
is clearly delineated.

As implied, you can make a rice salad out of just about anything on hand.  A few cups of rice (even that can be a leftover), a couple cups of cooked chicken, beef, pork, canned tuna, salmon mixed with a couple cups of vegetables (fresh or leftover), any herbs that are handy, some olives or pimiento and a little bit of salad dressing is all you need. 

The following salad uses up raw broccoli stems and is a vegetarian/vegan (depending on the exact ingredients of your salad dressing) dish.  To peel the broccoli, cut the bottom inch or so of stem off.  Stand the stem on its "floret" end (after removing the florets for another use), and use a knife to slice the woody peel away.  Then shred the broccoli using a food processor or hand grater. 

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Twice Baked Broccoli Potatoes

I do love a Bennigan's/TGIF/Buffalo Wild Wings type of potato skin, but it's one of those recipes that I'll only make if I do up a bunch all at once to freeze ahead.  Baking, then scooping, then mixing, then refilling isn't hard exactly, but it is fussier than I am willing to do usually...unless I can load the work on the front end and do next to nothing on the back end.

If you make these to freeze, be sure to freeze the potato halves on a tray first, then bag them.  You can pull out the whole batch if you want or just cook a couple.  If you cook these from their frozen state, put a small pat of butter or margarine on the top before baking.  The freezer tends to dry food out, so you need a bit of food moisturizer (i.e. butter) when you bake.

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Easy-easier-easiest sides: Broccoli

I think broccoli has gotten type-cast.  It's quite likely the most stir-fryed vegetable in this country, the most often smothered in cheese sauce, and the most often served steamed without embellishment.  All good methods, but here are three super-easy and super-tasty new ways to do it up. 

Easiest: Blanched Broccoli with dip

Crudité is not just for appetizers!  My kids prefer a lot of vegetables in their raw (or nearly raw) state anyway.  The dip can be as simple as some prepared salad dressing, equal parts mustard and mayonnaise, or a quick oil, vinegar, salt and pepper shake-up.

1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
1 cup dip of your choosing

To blanch broccoli, heat a large pot of water to boiling.  Add broccoli and set a timer for 2 minutes once the water is back up to a boil.  Drain and rinse under very cold water.  Drain well and serve.

Easier: Braised Broccolini

You can get a lot of interest with very little work just by using something a little different.  The novelty of trying a close relative of a familiar vegetable can go a long way in cutting down on the need for increasingly elaborate preparation for the same old stuff. 

1 bunch broccolini (or broccoli rabe)

1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup vermouth or white wine

Heat olive oil over medium-high in a skillet.  Add broccolini and saute 2-3 minutes, unless slightly browned.  Add vermouth and cover.  Reduce heat to medium and braise 5-7 minutes, until tender.

Easy: Roasted Broccoli

Roasting takes a little more time than other cooking methods, but the results are jaw-droppingly good.  Really, you have never tasted broccoli like this!  I also like roasting because it's a no-attention cooking method.  You literally stick the food in, set a timer and go do something else.

1 head broccoli, cut into florets (include chopped, peeled stems if you like)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp lemon pepper

Toss broccoli with oil and pepper.  Roast for 20 minutes at 375F.



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Stay-In Take-Out: Spicy Orange Beef & Broccoli edition

I just got the Argo Cornstarch product cookbook in the mail (free with $2 S&H), and I am drooling over the many stirfry recipes.  But I am genetically incapable of leaving well-enough alone, so I already have tweaks to report.

The original recipe calls for just 12 oz of beef.  I'm sure it's very authentically Asian to use less protein and more veg, but I live in the Midwest and there's no grocery store in a 100-mile radius that sells meat in such piddly quantities.  So I'm using 1.25 lbs of flank steak.  I could have bought a full 1.5 pounds and split it to make dinner tonight and freeze a kit of the same recipe, but I didn't want to commit a kit to a totally untried recipe.  Next time! 

The original recipe also calls for using the zest of an orange to marinate the beef in and plain ol' water for sauce.  Why not be less wasteful and more flavorful and squeeze the juice to use instead of the water?  So zest AND juice the orange for this recipe, unless you're using some of your frozen stash of citrus zest.

Tips: I don't peel ginger before grating any more.  It's bothersome, the peel is very thin and really doesn't cause problems and I'm a lazy cook.  Grate away!  Also freeze the beef for about an hour before slicing.  It's easier to cut thinly when it's got a little more backbone.  If you plan to freeze a meal kit for this dish, you can include frozen broccoli rather than needing to get fresh broccoli when you're ready to cook, but the veg won't be nearly as crisp.

And now, I present the Improved Argo Spicy Orange Beef & Broccoli...

Spicy Orange Beef & Broccoli (makes 4 servings)

1 lb (or so) flank steak OR sirloin steak, cut thinly across the grain
grated peel of 1 orange (or 2 tsp frozen zest)
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 tbsp cornstarch
--------
3 tbsp sherry
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp beef bouillon granules
1 tbsp sugar
1/4-1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 cup orange juice (or water)
2 tbsp cornstarch
---------
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 cups broccoli florets

Rice, pasta, or shredded lettuce for serving

If prepping ahead to cook the same day or the following day or for freezing, combine the steak with the orange zest and ginger.  For same-day/next-day prep, combine the sherry, soy sauce, bouillon granules, sugar, crushed red pepper, orange juice and cornstarch and whisk. 

Showing the grain on the flank steak (right-slant) and the perpindicular angular of cutting (left slant)

For freezing, omit the cornstarch from the sauce mixture.  Put the marinated beef, sauce and frozen broccoli (if using) into a large vacu-seal or zip-top bag and freeze.  Make sure to have cornstarch in the pantry when you're ready to cook.

When ready to cook, toss 1 tbsp cornstarch with the zest-ginger-beef mix and set aside.  Add 2 tbsp cornstarch to sauce mixture if preparing from a frozen kit and whisk well.

Heat oil in wok or skillet over medium-high heat.  Add beef and stirfry for 2 minutes until nearly cooked through.  Add broccoli and stirfry 3 minutes or just until tender.  Whisk sauce mixture well and add to pan.  Stirring constantly, bring to a boil.  Cook 1 minute, until thickened.

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