What’s something else I can make to work my way through a large bag of masa? Arepas. Just think of them as Venezuelan unfilled pupusas. They can be enjoyed hot out of the pan and slathered with butter as a quick snack, or more commonly, split open and filled (with anything your heart desires, really). The first time I had an arepa was during my first trip to New York City at the Caracas Arepa Bar. The “Reina Pepiada” stole my heart—avocado and chicken. Because of the lack of Venezuelan establishments both here in Vancouver and back in Edmonton, arepas since then have been few and far between. So, when faced with that bag of masa, a desire to spread my wings beyond pupusas and fond memories of Venezuela’s version of a sandwich, arepas trumped cereal.
Arepas
I followed this very easy recipe and had no troubles. I filled mine with smashed avocado, pecorino (my stand in for salty South American cheese) and cherry tomatoes tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. But, that’s just me. Go crazy. Use an arepa to hold your hamburger. Ditch the English muffin and use an arepa the next time you do homemade breakfast sandwiches. Mmmmm… peanut butter and honey.
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It’s that time again. The time when you want to stay in the kitchen to stay warm rather than avoiding it to stay cool. The change from summer to fall came as a quick slap in the face out here on the West Coast; overnight, the air cold blew in and the thought of bare legs sent shivers down my spine.
So, to the kitchen I go, and this little diddy often brings me out of the oatmeal-for-dinner rut. It also has made me an official convert to DIY beans. Canned beans are alright in a pinch, but the texture and flavour of homemade run circles around anything found on the supermarket shelf. I guess you could say this is a Cream original, but it was inspired by a recipe I made a few times from a South Beach cookbook (no judging!). It is free of my beloved flour, but it’s chickpeas… they’re starchy enough to keep even me happy. I’ve been pretty steady with the following recipe, but you could easily turn to India by swapping ginger, curry powder and cilantro for the dried herbs.
Tomato-Chickpea Saute
Serves 2
2 cups cooked chickpeas (one standard can will yield a little less)
1/2 large or one small onion sliced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes
1 clove of garlic, minced
Pinch (or more) of crushed red pepper
Pinch dried rosemary
Pinch dried oregano
Pinch dried thyme
Salt and pepper
Grated salty cheese
Heat oil over medium heat in non-stick plan. Add onion and cook until soft and translucent, a little bit of colour is okay, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, pepper and herbs and saute until fragrant. Turn down heat to medium low and add tomatoes. Watch for splatter. Stir and keep at a light simmer until most of the tomato liquid has evaporated, about another 10 minutes. This isn’t a stew. Turn up the heat slightly if necessary. Season with salt and pepper. Add chickpeas, turn heat down to low and serve when chickpeas are warmed through. Top with some cheese.
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Shamefully, I don’t enjoy drinking alone. This means that I often end up with half-full wine bottles sitting on my counter at the end of the night pleading for me not to empty their contents down the drain. If there’s room, I’ll freeze the wine in ice cube trays. And then forget about them, of course. Jeremy’s quick sausage pasta jogged my memory. Veg, cheese and supper is done. Wine is a key ingredient to many meat-based pasta sauces, and leftover sips should always be considered for such uses. Some might argue that you should drink the wine instead, but at least in this case, pasta tipsiness is just as good.
Dining Companion: The Killing
Sausage and Broccolini Pasta
Serves 1.
Pasta for 1 (~100 g)
Half a bunch of broccolini, chopped
1/3 cup of red wine
1 Italian sausage link (sweet or hot; pork, chicken or turkey)
olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
pinch (or more) of dried chilis
Grated parmigianno or pecorino cheese
Salt and pepper
Handful of torn fresh basil
Heat a non-stick pan over medium. Swirl about a teaspoon or so of olive oil in pan. When oil is hot, remove casing from sausage, add to pan and break up into small pieces with the back of a wooden spoon. Cook and stir until sausage is no longer pink. Drain fat, leaving about a teaspoon. Add garlic and chilis to pan and cook until fragrant. Add wine, reduce heat to medium low and stir to pick up any brown bits from pan. Continue to simmer until wine is reduced by about half. Remove from heat if pasta is not yet ready.
Meanwhile, cook pasta in salted water until al dente. Add broccolini during the last minute or so of cooking. Drain, reserving about 1/4 cup of pasta water. Add pasta and broccolini to pan and return to medium heat. Stir until pasta is well coated and slowly add the pasta water until a light sauce has come together. Add basil. Season with salt and pepper and add cheese once plated.
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Another solo dinner dealing with kitchen dregs. Waste not, want not, right? Solo dining on a budget is almost always trying to not overlook what you have despite continually thinking that you don’t have enough to make something delicious. Pasta is a staple, as is chicken broth, and bringing up the rear are frozen peas. In my freezer, I found the last of some cubed butternut squash. In my fridge, some cheddar and salami. Let’s throw them together in mock mac’n’cheese fashion and put them in the oven (a developing theme it appears). Although more goopy than creamy in the end, it all tasted good in my mouth. I should have mixed the diced salami throughout rather than placing it on top — but not because I browned the bits too much, I just would have liked the saltiness throughout. Tasty, relatively healthy and filling: alright by me.
Dining companion: Mildred Pierce
Baked Squash Pasta
Serves 1.
100 g short pasta
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup cooked, mashed butternut squash
1/3 cup green peas
3 tablespoons grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon grated parmigianno cheese
1/4 cup diced salami
nutmeg
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cook pasta until almost al dente, adding peas in the last minute of cooking.
Meanwhile, add broth to squash to thin. Warm in sauce pan over low heat. Add 2 tablespoons of cheddar to melt. Season with salt to taste and add pinches of nutmeg, cayenne and black pepper. Toss with pasta and place in a greased individual baking dish or large ramekin. Top with remaining cheeses and diced salami.
Bake for 30 minutes, broiling for for a minute or two at the end to brown cheese.
This was an experiment. Taking dregs from my kitchen and trying to put them together in a way that would taste good and satisfy hunger. A workhorse solo supper. With some leftover milk, I made ricotta (I’m obsessed!). Quinoa in the pantry. Bits of veggies in the crisper. A ready supply of breadcrumbs.
Combine and bake.
I tried to get a little creative by making a layer of ricotta. I think it only made for an interesting picture. Mixed with everything before baking probably would have not made any difference. Well-planned, this meal was not. Tasty and satisfying, it actually was.
Dining companion: Big Love
Oven-Baked Quinoa
Adapted from Gourmet Recipes for One
Serves 1.
1/2 cup quinoa
1 egg
1/2 cup ricotta
2 tablespoons grated gruyere cheese
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 broccoli crown, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon grated parmigiano
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add red pepper and cook until slightly softened, a few minutes. Add quinoa and lightly toast. Add 1 cup of water, broccoli and a good pinch of salt, and bring to a boil. Once bubbling, reduce heat to low, cover and cook until quinoa is cooked, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly. Season to taste.
Lightly grease an individual baking dish or large ramekin. Beat egg in a small bowl and add to quinoa. Mix well. Mix ricotta and gruyere together in another small bowl.
Add half of quinoa to baking dish. Spread cheese mixture over top. Add remaining quinoa and then top with breadcrumbs and parmigiano.
Cover lightly with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake another 10-15 minutes until crumbs brown to your liking.
I know that this is one horribly overdue post. I mean, this dinner was from my Christmas holidays. I’m sorry. It’s just that every time I thought about this meal, I got really hungry. You see, this was the best of my chicken leftover dinners. By a long shot. I was the cliche of “I can’t believe I actually pulled off something so delicious!” I even agreed with the recipe’s creator that it WAS an easy recipe.
Shortly before Christmas, I had watched one of Jamie Oliver’s many holiday specials. This particular episode had a recipe for using your leftover turkey in a pot pie with leeks and puff pastry. I had the leftover poultry, but for this to be a solo supper, I wasn’t going to make an entire pie and then eat it that way for the next five nights (the bane of single dining, in my opinion). What I could do, and what you can see I did do, was make an individual pot pie by topping my filling with a biscuit. I love puff pastry. I love biscuits more. The end.
Dining companion: Misfits (Have you watched this yet? You must! You really really must.)
Chicken and Leek Pot Pie
Serves 1.
Filling
Adapted from Jamie Oliver
1 slice of 1/4-inch thick pancetta, chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
3/4 cup pulled/shredded cooked chicken
~1 teaspoon olive oil
~1 teaspoon butter
2 leeks, white part finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 tablespoon cream
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Put your pancetta in a pan over medium heat and add thyme. Add olive oil and butter and let it saute for a few minutes. Add the leeks and saute them for about 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper then cover, turn the heat down to low and let them cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring every 5 to 10 minutes to make sure they don’t stick.
When your leeks are soft, add the chicken and stir. Add the flour, mix it in well and then pour in stock and stir again. Add the cream, then turn the heat up to high and bring everything to a boil. Season more to taste. Turn the heat off. Pour the mixture through a sieve over a bowl to catch the gravy.
Biscuit top
Adapted from Canadian Living
6 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons grated cheese, something flavourful like an aged cheddar or pecorino romano
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cold butter, cubed
2 1/2 tablespoons milk
Mix together flour, baking powder, cheese and salt ; cut in butter with your fingers until crumbly and the butter is the size of peas. Drizzle in milk and mix with hands until a soft sticky dough forms. Turn out onto a floured surface. Knead 10 times or until smooth.
Place chicken filling into a buttered individual gratin or large ramekin. Pat biscuit to fit on top.
Bake on rimmed baking sheet in preheated oven until biscuits are golden and no longer doughy on bottom, will depend on size of biscuit but around 20 minutes. Keep watch.
Unmold/remove pie from dish and pour reheated gravy over top.
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Few things warm you up the way a bowl of chicken noodle soup does on a winter’s night. So, with leftover chicken, time and a craving for the sense of being in hot, sticky Ho Chi Minh City (instead of cold, clammy Vancouver) on my side, pho ga it would be. Yes, while not as popular or ubiquitous as the bovine-centric pho bo, pho with chicken (ga) does exist and can serve as a nice deviation from your everyday chicken noodle soup.
I do know that a good pho relies heavily on a good broth. And it’s with my broth that I must insert the “faux.” For ease and quickness, I passed over the grilling (or broiling) of bones and vegetables and simply infused some of the chicken broth I had made with necessary aromatics. Missing out on some rich smokiness wasn’t so bad when faced with a bowl that smells heavily of cinnamon, cardamom and star anise. I took cues from both Mark Bittman’s Hanoi Noodle Soup in How to Cook Everything and the pho recipe I learned at the Red Bridge Cooking School in Hoi An, Vietnam.
Dining companion: Misfits
Easy Pho Ga
2.5 cups chicken broth
1 star anise
1/2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled
1 cinnamon stick
1 cardamom pod
1 clove of garlic, sliced lengthwise in half
salt and pepper
rice noodles (the ones that look like linguine, not rice vermicelli), enough for one
shredded, cooked chicken, about 1/2 a cup
fresh cilantro
pickled onions and chilies (same recipe as here, just with a chopped Thai chili added)
lime wedges
chili sauce
Add spices, garlic and ginger to broth in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn heat to low and simmer for an hour.
Cook noodles according to package directions. The most common method is to soak noodles for 20 minutes in hot water, then drain. Place in soup bowl.
Once broth is ready, strain out aromatics and then add salt and pepper to taste. Add chicken to broth to warm up.
Pour broth (there may be extra) and chicken over noodles in bowl. Top with onions, chilies and fresh cilantro. Serve lime wedges and chili sauce on the side.
I resisted for a long time, but now I freely admit to enjoying Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. I still can’t stand Guy Fieri, his overuse of stupid phrases, his flip-flop jokes and the constant trips back to the mid-90s. The endless shots of too much are often too much, but I can’t stop. It’s become a guilty pleasure. Too much butter, too much cheese, too much meat. A double bacon cheeseburger contained within two grilled cheese sandwiches? I’m sure that’s been featured on at least three episodes. I’m all for supporting the small and local and enjoy that the show focuses on that. But the American excess steals the show. Is it the post-recession moment that causes us to turn to such TV trash? The mountains of meat and cheese and fries and BBQ that can all be had for only $4.99?
While I may view it as the Food Network equivalent of reading tabloid magazines, my eyes feasted on the Christmas marathon. Visual indigestion led to inspiration. A cilantro-jalapeno pesto from a tailgating episode. Because I was going to be putting it on a sandwich with cheese, I ended up making more of a Provençal pistou — a loose pesto without cheese and pine nuts. As the flavours I wanted were present, I didn’t mind the lack of body. Matched with pickled onions, roasted red peppers, provolone, fresh ciabatta and roasted chicken, it made my first round of leftovers totally… money.
Dining companion: Misfits (A good chunk of my holidays were spent watching the first two seasons of this British series.)
Cilantro-jalapeno pistou
2 handfuls of cilantro
1/2 jalapeno, sliced (remove seeds and ribs if you want less heat)
1 clove of garlic
a few tablespoons of olive oil
In either a food processor or with a mortar and pestle, crush the cilantro, jalapeno and garlic together. Slowly add the oil until it all comes together. Continue adding oil until you reach a pesto-like consistency. You can also make it thicker or thinner with less or more oil. Cover remaining with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
Quick pickled onions
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
3/4 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup white sugar
Stir sugar in vinegar until it dissolves. Add onions, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for at least 2 hours. They will keep for a few days.
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When I started making this famous French sandwich one night and thinking of its inspiration — my friend and former classmate Sarah’s blog Edible Witness — I was reminded of a very fond sandwich memory of when I attended school with Sarah in Toronto. Having just started graduate school, budgets and studying meant that socializing on a Saturday night was rare. Of course that quickly changed, but in the early days, we took our mountain of reading very seriously. So, it goes that I met Sarah and Mike for lunch one Saturday and will never forget three things from that day: the amazing booth that’s Sarah’s apartment had, the introduction to what would become one of my fave T.O. spots, Terroni, and the process of conversation becoming friendship.
When Sarah posted a recipe for a Croque Monsieur, I knew a solo supper would be raised a few notches with the bechamel-oozing bistro classic. There’s technique in the making of the roux, but just keep stirring and remember to not let it brown, the nutty aroma of cooked butter and flour (almost like fresh baked shortbread) is a sure sign you’re there.
Dining companion: The Trip
Croque Monsieur
Serves 1.
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 cup hot milk (warmed in the microwave a minute or so)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
pinch of nutmeg
1 cup grated gruyere cheese
Dijon mustard
4 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed
6 thin slices of Black Forest ham
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toast bread on a baking sheet for about five minutes and set aside.
Melt butter on low heat, then add flour and whisk vigorously to form a roux. Stir constantly for a few minutes until the roux begins to absorb the butter and the flour cooks. Add the hot milk, whisking in gradually to avoid lumps. Heat and stir until sauce thickens (coats back of spoon), then stir in salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove from heat and stir in half the cheese.
To assemble sandwiches, spread mustard on one half of sandwich, then top with three slices of ham, some grated cheese and about a tablespoon of the sauce. Place other slice of bread on top, then spread with more bechamel and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat.
Bake sandwiches in oven for about five minutes, then broil for a few minutes until tops lightly brown and bubble.
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I wish I could sexy up this post somehow for you; come up with a charming story about this soup and its origins.
Is there charm in wanting healthy food after a weekend full of pumpkin pie, whipped cream, mashed potatoes, turkey and bottomless glasses of red wine? Not particularly. It just is.
As a chill has entered the air (so salad just wouldn’t cut it), I took to making myself what amounts to a diet soup. Like a diet salad, it’s full of high-volume, low-calorie ingredients that are chock full of vitamins, flavonoids, antioxidants and heart-healthy fibre. See? Not sexy. Delicious, however, and the perfect thing to eat as you’re coming down off your tryptophan high. And the perfect thing to eat before indulging in another piece of leftover pie. Okay. That might be the sexy bit.
Dining companion: Boardwalk Empire
Tomato, red pepper and barley soup
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 4 shallots, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
- 2 carrots, halved then chopped
- 2 red peppers, diced
- 28 oz can of plum tomatoes
- 2 cups of chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 0.25 cup hulled barley
- salt and pepper to taste
Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots, peppers and carrots and sweat down for about 5 minutes. Add garlic, oregano and crushed pepper and saute until fragrant. Add tomatoes (with juice) and break up with the back of a wooden spoon. Add some salt and pepper to taste here.
Add stock and bring to a boil. Add barley, reduce heat to a simmer and cook soup half-covered for about an hour — until barley is cooked, may only take 45 minutes. Check seasoning and adjust to taste.
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