This is Alice's response to my last post on Amy's leftover thread. I think we should all take her up on this offer. It would be fun!
(Deborah: tell me which ar eyour leftovers and I'll fix a menu for you ;-P I am the queen of "scovazzume di frigo" cooking!)
I've got a baby in my lap right now, and can't get to my daughter's pantry and fridge to do an inventory. But, I hope someone else jumps in.
Deborah Horn In a previous life I was an Umbrian sunflower farmer. I want to do a past life regression and stay there. ----------------------------------- www.petsburg.com My blog: Old Shoes - New Trip
Posts: 5111 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: 04 September 2001
1) Leftover polenta. A lot of it. 2) Leftover baked chicken, 3 half-breasts 3) Half of a yellow pepper 4) Half of a bag of baby spinach leaves 5) One bag of mixed salad greens 6) A couple of blood oranges
I also have the usual staples: milk, flour, oil, onion, potatoes, spaghetti etc. I can make a nice salad with the greens, oranges, & red onion but I really want to use up that polenta, in a way that my family will actually eat it. Willingly. Help! - Marie
Leftover polenta can be arranged in a lot of ways. It can be sliced (about 1 cm thick or less, 1/4 of an inch) and simply baked in the oven until the borders are brownish or fried in butter (or oil, it doesn't have to be deep-fried). Both ways it can be eaten with any flavorful cheese that will melt (not mozzarella, but a good gorgonzola or taleggio are perfect) or with a salame with some fat in (to melt) or just as a substitute for bread. Just slice it open and fill it with the cheese or salame and let melt for a few moments. The fried version can also be serevd with sugar as a cheap dessert. YOu can do it with the baked version too, by adding a little amount of butter, letting it melt and sprinking the sugar on top. The backed version can be used to make polenta e latte, which is good for breakfast too as an alternative to milk and cereals (altough I usually have it for dinner). Dice or break the ultrahot polenta in a bowl of cool milk, add sugar to your taste. The ultrahot polenta will make the milk warmer. You can also use the sliced polenta (in thinner slices) to make baked conotions similar to lasagne. Cut thinner slices and layer with basically anything you have handy: cheese, leftover tomato sauce (previously used to garnish pasta), or meat ragù, or also vegetables, salame or prosciutto, anything that may work, and bake for 20 minutes. With polenta you can also use funky ingredients, like Mexican sauces.
Now, with your ingredients I would make an entrée of a baby spinach leaves salad with hard cheese (preferably Parmigiano Reggiano) and any nut you happen to have laying around the pantry. On each platter lay a layer of the baby spinach leaves, top with the shaved or diced cheese, than garnish with a vinaigrette made with (per person) two-three spoonfuls of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of apple vinnegar, half a teaspoon of mustard and the nuts, ground to a coarse texture. Green salads sadden me, so I just forget about that bag.
Skip primo, 'cause we will fix a very carb-rich dessert.
For second you have those nice (urgh! ) baked chicken breasts. In a pan, place a bit of butter, let it melt, add a little more than half a glass of milk. Add two of the chicken breasts cut in strips, so that they warm faster and soak in the milk a bit, to become more juicy, add a some lemon juice (about 1/3 of a lemon), a pinch of salt and a little grated nutmeg for flavor and thickness, let the sauce reduce to a cream.
In another pan, slice half a small onion and add one peeled garlic clove, the yellow pepper cut in strips and one small potato diced. A pinch of salt and a little EVO oil and you ar done. Cover and turn on the fire. Let cook until the vegetables are almost done, on a low fire, adding a bit of water if they dry out too much. Five minutes before they are done, add a spoonful of vinnegar or two, uncover and let reduce.
Fry one big slice of polenta for each person in butter, or bake it by simply placing the slice on the oven grid (covered with a little alluminium foil, if you want to keep the grid cleaner). In a small bowl, mix a little fresh, sweet cheese (like quark or ricotta) with some honey and cinnamon powder (if you only have whole cinnamon, substiute the honey with sugar, place both in a moartar and grind; if you baked the polenta, skip the cheese, use sugar and cinnamon ground toghether and mix with some butter, less butter in proportion with sugar and cinnamon not to make it too rich in choleserol). Top each hot slice of polenta with the mixture and serve immediately.
Alice: Thanks for your great menu ideas! The idea of using the polenta as a dessert is a good one, since nobody (except me) liked it as a side dish (I guess they share Earline's opinion of polenta). I am going to try frying slices of polenta in some butter, and topping with ricotta, cinnamon, honey and fruit, since I have some frozen raspberries. This will also give me an excuse to use my new grill pan of which I am very fond. If any is still left tomorrow, I will try the breakfast idea. If any left after that, the dog gets to eat it! - Marie
Okay Alice....I have about one cup (8 US ounces) of heavy cream and about 250 gr of ricotta. What do you think? I need to use the cream before it goes bad!
With heavy cream you mean "panna da cucina"? Place it in the only place that's worth accepting it: the trash bin.
The ricotta is delicious as dessert. It can be worked with a fork until creamy, than you can add to it lots of stuff: plain sugar, honey, spices, sugar & spirits, fruit preserves, candied fruits (in particular orange peels), chocolate chips or coca powder, or any cocktail of the above. If it's superfresh, try making some patry dough, cutting it in rounds, and filling it up woith ricotta mixed with sugar and organge blossoms flavor, seal the rounds by bending them in two, "paint" some egg yolk on them and bake. That's a simplification of Neapolitan sfogliatelle frolle (which in turn are a simpler version of sfogliatelle ricce).
Than you an make salted stuff out of it. it works beautifully to garnish pasta: the simplest way is to work it, mix it with grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino, add a little white or black (white with Parmigiano, black with pecorino) pepper (freshly ground) and use the cream to garnish any psata yo make. I also like it with fresh tomato (in summer). For two people yo need a medium sized onion, 3-4 medium sized tomatoes (on the ripe side), a little EVO oil, salt, basil, and 100 grams of ricotta. Slice the onion thinly but not thin enough that it will melt: basically make the slices as large as the spaghetti you will be using. In a large pan, sauté the onion with some oil until golden, than add the tomatoes peeled, seeded and cut in strips. Add a pinch of salt, and let cook for a few minutes (5 minutes are enough, it still has to taste raw), so that some of the liquid is consummed. All this can be done as the water is getting to a boil and the spaghetti are cooking. Add the ricotta and the shredded basil leaves, mix well, than transfer the spaghetti to the pan, with a couple spoons of their water. Sautée for a minute so that the pasta is covered with the sauce and you are done. IMHO in this case no grated cheese is required.
Yeah! I can envision it: each week I visit one person, check his/her fridge, throw away cream and green salads (which depress me) and proceed to cook lunch. By surprise, so that the person will not be able to fix special stashes of food. One day I ring at your door as you are dying your hair, dressed in a pair of slippers and an old, faded dress, the dirty dishes are in the sink because you don't feel to wash them right now and there's a stack of stuff to be ironed on the table. And the cat gest so scared by the guy with the camera and the other guy with the lights that it pisses on the sofa (if it's adog it starts howling). Great TV show!
quote:Originally posted by Alice Twain: With heavy cream you mean "panna da cucina"? Place it in the only place that's worth accepting it: the trash bin.
NO...the kind that's in the refrigerated section of the grocery store! Real Cream!
Right now Im going to look for a really decadent chocolate dessert to use the cream in. I used the ricotta with the last of the fresh spinach, eggs and parmigiano to fill cannelloni, then topped them with a bechamel sauce. It was a yummy lunch!
Damn! The other use I have for the cream is making "chocolate mousse" (actually a plain ganache plus sugar served in cups). Last night a firend was telling me about a dessert she made trying to imitate Pistocchi cake: a ganache with plain and not whipped cream, with sugar, placed in pan and coooled until hard, than covered with pulverized cocoa.
Alice, Your show concept is brilliant - way better than the latest one I just heard about... when Martha Stewart gets out of jail she's going to do a version of The Apprentice where a group of people compete with each other to get a job at her company.
Ok, for the next episode of "Leftovers with Alice"....
"Alice vists Krista in Santa Barbara and opens the door to a slightly messy kitchen and a refrigerator with some arugula, mushrooms, milk, Pellagrino, Havarti cheese and a small amount of Feta cheese that's been in there for quite a while.
The pantry has the usual basics like olive oil and a couple types of dried pasta, a carton of diced tomatoes, some green olives.
Krista awaits Alice's inspiration.... she has been working on the computer in Photoshop all day and has no creativity left..."
What do you think? Can you do anything here? -Krista
Posts: 1694 | Location: Santa Barbara, California | Registered: 21 May 2004
Barb, make pasta al limone with that cream! Heat and reduce the cream, add lots of butter, then grated lemon peel and lemon juice, stirring very well, throw in thin cooked pasta and add freshly grated parmigiano reggiano. It is super. I have some other recipes for cream, but they are French.
Alice, Sorry, I meant San Pellegrino... sparkling mineral water.... we always have tons of it in the house even when we have nothing else. Not that it would help remotely with meal creation, but at least we'll have something to drink (luckily we also have wine).
Havarti cheese is a Danish cheese, kind of mild and creamy - it melts well. I usually buy to make my version of a Monte Cristo, which is like a ham and cheese sandwich that is dipped in beaten egg and then fried.
The mushrooms are shitake mushrooms, about 6 medium sized ones. Oh, and by the way, I have bread crumbs, but no bread in the house. I have a tiny tin of anchovies and a half a box of currants.
-Krista
Posts: 1694 | Location: Santa Barbara, California | Registered: 21 May 2004
Jgk: Philadelphia Kraft is a cheap and industrial version of quark. For the geeks out there, the quark particles were named after the cheese. ^_^
Krista: Ok, now I have some firm ground (though I still don't know which mushrooms do you have). San Pellegrino is overpriced. If you want water form that source, buy yourself Pracastello, Ambria, Limpia. They cost half as much and they come from the same vein. I will have to add some ingredients, because your list is really tiny. And, obviously, nby now your pantry will have completely different stuff, since you message dates backa few days.
I would use rucola plus some other green leaves to make a salad. Rucola should never used alone, because it's too bitter and spoicy (I mena, real rucola, not ruchetta, which is wht is usually sold as "rucola" herein Italy), but it's great to add character to a mlder salad. So, make a salad with a mild "base" salad, the rucola, a few thinly sliced radishes and the diced feta cheese. I would garnish it with a simple vinaigrette, or just with salt and EVO oil. You may have it as entrèe or as side dish. In case your mushrooms or other tasty varieties, you may use them to make a pasta sauce cooking them with butter, a little water if needed (in case they are a tough variety) and a little black pepper, greshly grated, to add flavor in the lst couple of minutes of cooking (use any flattish shape of pasta, although this sauce should call for tagliatelle). Or you may prepare a nice vegetable ragout-like sauce: finely dice carrot, onion, garlic and celery, heat them in a couple spoonfuls of hot EVO oil and keep them going on a low fire until they turn golden. Add the diced mushrooms, heat them a couple minutes more, add the canned tomato and a poinch of salt. Cook until the mushrooms are tender and for at least 30 minutes. Use this sauce to garnish the pasta. In case your mushrooms are the unflavorful "prataioli" (champignon), and yo have a little dried porcini, you may cut the fresh mushrooms in slices, add the soaked porcini, place them in a pan with some butter, turn on the fire, add a pinch of salt, cover and let cook until tender, than add some thinly minced parsley and garlic a minute befor turning off the fire. Quick and nice. In case they are prataioli and you have no dried porcini to spice them up, just slice them thinly and add them to the salad.
Your other cheese sounds fine for making a crostini-like thing. Dice a few oilves, mix them with the cheese (if it's possible). Slice bread and spread the cheese on top of it. If it's not possible to mix the olives and cheese, sprinkle the olives on the brea,d than cover with the cheese. Grill. This may be the calories-bringing part of the meal in case you don't make the pasta. If you make the pasta, than make less of these crostini and serve as entrée.
Topic Closed
) baked chicken breasts. In a pan, place a bit of butter, let it melt, add a little more than half a glass of milk. Add two of the chicken breasts cut in strips, so that they warm faster and soak in the milk a bit, to become more juicy, add a some lemon juice (about 1/3 of a lemon), a pinch of salt and a little grated nutmeg for flavor and thickness, let the sauce reduce to a cream.
