Hey Friends, here’s a surprise midweek quickie for you! I had a couple of skewers leftover from my Mainland Teriyaki and talking about how some of the ingredients were akin to those on a pizza got me thinking….this was the result!
Ingredients for the Mainland Teriyaki Pizza
Flatbread
Tomato Paste
Mozzarella
Leftover Mainland Teriyaki Skewers
A sprinkle of chilli flakes
Some thinly sliced shallots
Layer it all up, pop it into a really hot oven and you have dinner in 10 minutes!
These are just suggestions. After all, this is a dish based on leftovers. If you have some red or green peppers or mushrooms languishing at the bottom of your fridge, chop them up and add them in. Maybe throw in some anchovies or cherry tomatoes or herbs. Or some Togarashi instead of regular chill to ramp up the Japanese connection!
Heaven!
It’s probably a good thing I have no more Mainland Teryiyaki Skewers left. We went from a Japanese inspired South Seas Dish to a Japanese influened Hawaiian inpsired Pizza. Who knowa what might have come next! A Japanese / Hawaiian / Italian Taco? And after that, a Japanese / Hawaiian / Italian / Mexican Fattoush? Maybe it’s s fitting end that the last chapter in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery is inspiring a mix of all that has gone before it!
Hello friends and welcome to a midweek quickie. Today we are talking leftovers, specifically what to do with leftover Ham Slaw. I recently, please don’t laugh at this, but I only very recently learned that you could “bake” potatoes in the microwave! Combine the two and you get a super yummy ham slaw baked potato. AKA Work from home heaven!
Since then though, I have been making up for lost time and about once a week when I am on a working-from-home day and have suitable leftovers, I have been baking up a potato and having it with my leftovers for lunch. The Ham Slaw was AMAZING!
And how does it taste?
There is something I find so comforting about a baked potato. And at 6 minutes cooking time, you can bake your potato, walk your dogs and eat all in your lunch hour! The ham slaw is a pretty robust salad so will last in the fridge for a day or two so if you make a bit more than you need, you can have lunches for a few days. I had this as a work from home lunch but there’s nothing to stop you re-heating your potato in the office microwave either!
Ham slaw, a baked potato hack and two Taylor Swift gifs? What more could you want in a mid-week quickie! Hope your week is going well.
Wondering what to do with your leftover bearnaise sauce after making my steak frites with Bearnaise? Well, worry no more because I’ve got your back on this! You can use that leftover sauce to create some delicious Steamed Artichokes with Bearnaise Butter. Poached egg technically optional but really…you know you want it!
Artichokes Are My Spirit Vegetable
“Artichokes again?” asked the fussiest eater in the world. “I don’t know why you keep making them. They’re such hard work”.
“They may be hard work. But they are worth it. And if you think about, treat ’em wrong and they might kill you. Treat ’em right and they make everything sweeter…in fact they are a lot like me. I think artichokes are my spirit vegetable”.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that artichokes are my spirit vegetable. Why else, for no apparent reason, years ago did I buy a little ceramic artichoke? It’s all becoming clear now though, it was my spirit vegetable calling to me!
I fear lockdown may be making me lose my mind.
I did a quiz to prove that my spirit vegetable is an artichoke The quiz said I was a mushroom so it was obviously wrong. It also said that people may find me pretentious and depressing. As Marcel Proust said, “What a load of bollocks. I am a fucking joy to be around!”*.
If you would like to do a quiz that not very accurately tells you what your spirit vegetable is you can find one here.
Bearnaise Butter?
So, bearnaise sauce is a bitch of a thing to reheat. So, if you want to use some leftover “sauce” you can pop your sauce container into a little saucepan full of water and gently heat it up, whisking the whole time. The result will not exactly be a Bearnaise sauce but it will be an amazingly tasty thick melted butter just perfect for drizzling over your artichokes or seafood or chicken or asparagus. You could also pout it over your Eggs Benny instead of Hollandaise. But only if you then call then Eggs Bearnie.
A (Helpful?) Tip
You can use a melon baller to help scrape the choke out of your artichoke.
It is by no means mandatory but it is fun, while doing this, to sing that Skee-Lo song “I wish I was taller, wish I was a baller, wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her”.
To be honest though, this works any time you use a melon baller, not just for artichokes.
The Recipe – Steamed Artichokes with Bearnaise Butter
Steamed Artichokes with Bearnaise Butter
A great way to use leftover Bearnaise Sauce
4 Artichokes
4 Eggs, poached (Optional)
1 Lemon
1 serve Leftover Bearnaise Sauce
Halve the lemon and squeeze the juice into a large bowl of cold water.
Snap off the outer leaves of the first three or four outer layers of leave from bottom of an artichoke. Use a serrated knife to cut off the stem at the base and the top half of each artichoke.
Using a small spoon or melon baller, scrape out the choke and any sharp leaves from the centre of the artichoke.
Repeat Steps 2 & 3 for all the artichokes
Drop the cleaned artichokes into the acidulated water as soon as they are trimmed.
Tip the lemon water into the bottom of steamer. Add the artichokes to the steamer basket and set over a high heat for around 15 minutes or until the bottom of the artichoke can be easily pierced with a skewer.
Meantime, warm your bearnaise sauce over a water bath, whisking every now and again to keep the bearnaise as emulified as possible. Do not worry if it splits, we are aiming for flavoured butter not a perfect sauce with this recipe!
When the artichokes are steamed, pour the bearnaise butter over. Top with a poached egg if using.
Enjoy!
Have a great week! Here’s some Skee-Lo to get you through!
Stay safe and let me know what your spirit vegetable is!
Towards the end of the second Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week I used up some Bolognese sauce which had been in the freezer. The first meal I made from this little batch of Bolognese was a traditional Spag Bol. Lovely, tasty, delicious spag bol However, there was still a little sauce and pasta left over so I decided to cook up a dish that had been on my radar for a while now – a Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette!
This recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Love Your Leftovers. This is a very handy book if you are keen to reduce your food waste.
So, as I was making this, delusions of grandeur were flitting through my head. What if the Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette…or the Spag-Om / Bol was to become the viral fusion food of 2020? Move over Dominque Ansell and take your cronuts with you! This is the year in which coronavirus and the Spag-Om™ take over the world. Before you start to mock me, remember that I have been in lockdown pretty much since March. That’s FOUR months. As of the coming Wednesday, we cannot even step out of our houses without wearing masks. No wonder I’m becoming delusional
So is the world ready for the launch of the Spag-Om™?
In a word, no.
This was not very nice. I feel the same way about the Spag-Om™ as I do about chocolate cheesecake. Each of the components is lovely, delicious yummy.
On their own.
But mix them together and you open a minor circle of hell. The Bolognese totally overpowered the omelette. If I was going to wrap my spaghetti Bolognese in something think I would have preferred a tortilla or other sort of wrap that you could toast until the bread got crunchy…maybe add a bit of garlic butter…happy days!
All is not lost though. I think there is something here. I feel a less meat-heavy sauce than Bolognese may be a better option for the future of the Spag-Om™, I have some pesto in my freezer. Maybe next Fridge, Freezer pantry week will see the launch of Spag-Om™2 Electric Booglaoo aka The Pesty Spag-Om™
No, this is not one of Agatha Christie’s little known cases but true-life kitchen drama. Do you think there is such a thing as Covid brain? Because I feel I have become increasingly scatty over the last few…how long have we been in lockdown now? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t matter how long because we have just gone back into it for another SIX weeks. 😕 For the love of God, people of Melbourne stay TF away from each other. Most of you aren’t even that attractive, why anyone in their right mind would want to get in your personal space is beyond me!
Ok. Rant over. Deep breaths and let’s talk about Vegetarian Scotch Eggs. And explosions.
Oh, these were so good!! The idea from them came from me making Diana Henry’s Baby Pumpkins with mixed mushrooms, leeks, grains. This was also totally delicious and I can heartily recommend making it!
But, after making this, I had a lot of the stuffing mix left. This is no disrespect to Diana. I’m sure had I wanted to stuff 8 eight baby pumpkins her quantities would have been just fine. I was cooking for one. There are usually only a certain amount of times you can divide a recipe before becoming nonsensical. You can generally halve quantities. Sometimes quarter them to no ill effect. Trying to cook to an eighth of a recipe makes no sense. So I guesstimated what I would need for one pumpkin which left me with a lot of leftover filling. The filling was delicious so there was no way I was going to waste it but what to do with it?
My first thought was arancini. But why stop at arancini when you can also put an egg in it? And thus the ideal of my vegetarian scotch egg was born. I popped an egg onto boil, intending to have the perfect four minute boiled egg in the centre of my scotchie. Then went back to work. So, about half an hour later I was drawn out of some intense concentration on a particularly fascinating spreadsheet by what sounded like a bomb going off in my kitchen. First, there was a massive bang, very closely followed by something hitting the window so hard I’m surprised the glass didn’t shatter. The water had dried out in the pan so much that the egg had actually exploded!!!! There was egg shrapnel all over my kitchen. It was like eggmageddon in there!
Like this but on the stove:
Vegetarian Scotch Eggs Take Two
You know how when people who can’t cook say I can’t even boil an egg? So, after the first egg EXPLODED, and I’d cleaned the kitchen and taken a few sedatives because the goddamn thing sounded like a bomb and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer it was time for egg number 2.
On the positive side…this one didn’t explode.
But I did kind of wander off mid-cook to take a call and lost track of egg time. I could tell while peeling it that it was hard-boiled and not the beautiful runny yolk I wanted. But I wrapped it in the mushroom, leek and barley filling regardless. This is the year of not wasting anything remember.
Sure we lost an egg in some explosive collateral damage but you know …I blame Covid for that. I have no rationale for that blame. It’s fucking everything else up so it can also take the blame for my exploding egg. And you know if I hadn’t been working from home and been distracted from cooking it by…errmmmm…work…
Let’s swiftly move away from that one.
Egg 2 turned out pretty delish even though hard-boiled.
Vegetarian Scotch Eggs Take Three
I had a little of the mushroom filling leftover after wapping egg 2. Third-time lucky right? Right! This time I did not take my eyes off that pan for the entire four minutes. I barely blinked. And voila the perfect 4-minute egg as per the pictures above and below
Because it was still so soft it was a little harder to wrap in the filling than the hard-boiled egg. I was terrified I would press too hard and cause the yolk to ooze out before I could get it crumbed and fried.
It’s a bit hard to give you a recipe for this because it was based on the leftovers from the Diana Henry recipe which is here:
You need to judge how many eggs your leftover filling wil cover. To crumb and cook the Scotch Eggs, see my recipe for Pakistani Scotch Eggs. To get your eggs the way you want them, see below:
In lieu of a proper recipe this week, here is a little list of what is currently floating my boat.
Watching
Crazy Delicious – an amazing cooking show on Netflix. Think Heston done by home cooks, a magical ingredient garden, a delightful host in Jayde Adams, oh and Heston is one of the judges!
Dead Pixels – another British show, this time a comedy about the lives of three people obsessed with a video game.
Searching For Sugarman – this was our most recent film club choice. It’s so touching and warm-hearted and as an added bonus, the sounds track is awesome! There has not been a DAY since I watched it when I have not listened to Rodriguez’s Cold Fact at least once!
Reading
I just finished reading “One of Us is Next” which is Karen McManus’ follow up to “One of Us is Lying”. I didn’t love it as much as the first book but it was still a good fun read.
Podding
My current fave is Season 4 of Slow Burn by Slate. I loved Season 1 & 2 of this which covered Watergate and The Clintons respectively. I have not listened to S3 which is about Biggie and Tupac yet but I am going to start it in the next few days. Season 4 is about David Duke who is a total dick a white supremacist politician from Louisiana, and formerly a grand wizard poobah double dragon something from the KuKluxKlan. AKA a total f**king dick..
Here’s Topher Grace brilliantly playing him in Black Klansman.
Please send me your recommendations for books, tv, pods, films, music something, anything to keep me entertained over the next few weeks!
Life Update
Just to make us all feel a little bit better about the state of the world, here is a picture of Holly being adorable. This little dog has absolutely captured our hearts in the last 6 months. She has gone from a timid little thing who was scared of everything to a cheeky little girl who is confident and happy in her life. Being able to give such a lovely girl, who has had such a terrible life, a loving home for the last chapters of her life is the best thing we have done for a long time!
If anyone is thinking about adopting an older dog or a dog rescued from medical research please reach out. I am happy to share our experiences.
Have a great week everyone! Have fun, stay safe, and please, send me your recommendations for books, films, podcasts, tv, etc!
