Near the end of the month at Casa Lorax I’m always scrounging through the kitchen for something to make for dinner. We’re always out of important things and seem to have an excess of oddities.
Tonight I found a bag of pretty freezer-burned perch, about a cup of potato flakes and some semi-limp celery. I baked and flaked the fish, mixed it with the reconstituted taters, the minced celery, some minced onion, about half a cup of mayonnaise, a little white pepper, plenty of dillweed, and a pinch of salt. It smelled odd, but it was this or ramen, so I made patties and fried them in butter. They were incredible! Even my picky six year old and even pickier baby loved them. Definitely a keeper.
So, care to share any pleasant surprises that have come out of your kitchen?
We always seem to put off grocery shopping at least 2 days longer than is really wise, so we’ve had a few interesting concoctions here, too. One that seemed likely but didn’t work was hamburger Parmesan. Seemed like a good idea, we’ve got some slightly stale bread we can make into garlic toast, some frozen patties we can grill up, homemade spaghetti sauce from the freezer, plenty of cheese…but somehow it just.didn’t.work.
Tonight we had an old standby, some kinda meat and some kinda veg vaguely stir-fried together and served over some kinda starch. Today was sliced kielbasa: celery, carrot and peppers: polenta. A little garlic and olive oil with the meat and veggies, wasn’t bad at all actually. The Boy loved it and asked that we have it again soon, even.
Sometimes I like to make what’s called “Sausage Supreme” which is breakfast sausage, canned pineapple (with juice), brown sugar and tomato paste stir-fried together and served over some kind of starch (usually rice.)
One night I started browning the sausages and then went to find the pineapple. Didn’t have any. It was too late to make something else, so I grabbed a can of peaches and used that instead. Worked out well.
Back when we were first married we were trying to find something to have for dinner one night that wouldn’t involve going to the store. We found a can of corn, a couple cans of chili, and some bowtie pasta. So we cooked up the pasta, tossed it with the corn and chili, and shredded some cheddar cheese over it.
A few weeks later we were once again trying to figure out dinner when my wife said “why don’t we have that chili, corn, cheese thing we had the other night?”
That was going on 18 years ago, and “Chili Corn Cheese Thing” is still our family’s favorite ‘comfort food’.
A few weeks ago I decided to try making a “dump cake” since I was feeling both lazy and hungry. I heard of this many years ago from my Aunt Doris, but it sounded so yucky I never tried it. I did, however, remember the simple (and implausible) recipe that Aunt Doris had recited to me. I figured that if it was inedible I would put it outside for the birds and squirrels to eat.
You dump two cans of apple pie filling into a 9x13 inch baking pan and stir in a couple teaspoons of cinnamon. On top of the apple pie filling you dump an entire box of butter pecan cake mix (dry, right out of the box) and spread it around a bit. You crumble about 1/4 cup of brown sugar on top, then cut two sticks of butter into patties and distribute 'em across the top. Bake at 350F for about an hour, until the top is nice and brown.
The result is more of a cobbler than a cake. Somehow the dry cake mix is transformed into a crunchy streusel-ish substance by the butter and the moisture from the pie filling.
Boys and girls, it was incredibly delicious! Not healthful, but when something tastes this great I don’t think about my health. My husband liked it so much that when it was all gone I made him another one using peaches (with French Vanilla cake mix and no cinnamon). I am usually a homemade-treats sort of cook, but it may be a while before I go back to making things from scratch. I am hopelessly addicted to dump cake, and so is my husband. God help my waistline and my cholesterol level.
Definitely. More than once I’ve grabbed a box of some sort of beans and rice thing that I bought for convenience, doctored it up with leftover meat and hot sauce and whatever veggies I had laying around, and was wowed with how good it came out.
Also I once did a stir fry with pork and leeks. I’d never seen leeks in a stir fry before, but it was all I had, and we were hungry. It was excellent, to the point that I wish I’d written down what I did since I can’t seem to quite recreate it.
I made b’stilla for Christmas dinner. It’s a chicken pie with phyllo pastry, flavored with onions and saffron and cinnamon and sugar. It’s kinda weird.
Well, we just weren’t eating the leftovers. My husband urged me to try making soup out of it, reasoning that the phyllo would turn dumpling-like when it hit the broth. I really didn’t feel like it, but oh well, I tried. I flavored it up with chicken bouillon for salt and hot and sweet curry powders to mask the cinnamon. I added some frozen snow peas for veg.
And you know what, it’s okay. It’s like chicken soup. The sugar and cinnamon aren’t overwhelming everything, and the phyllo basically disappeared.
I once got a recipe for home made pizza dough and tried it out to make pizza. I figured there was no way it’d be as good as the local pizza places (and we have quite a few good ones around here).
Turned out my first try was just as good. Big surprise for me.
I wish! Sometimes when I’m following a recipe, I think, ‘this is going to turn out tasting like ass’. I’m seldom disappointed.
But I did make a pretty good soup out of a bowl of overcooked frozen vegetables. They were all mushy and sodden, I was going to throw them out, but there were over 2 cups. I put them in the blender with some chicken broth, a little half and half, a dash of Tabasco, and heated and served with some grated cheddar on top.
I and my family used to cook chicken and pork chops with a seasoned coating mix called “Bakin’ Magic” for years and years. Then I moved into my own apartment and bought some meat, but didn’t buy the seasoning mix. I didn’t have much in my kitchen in the way of seasoning: a container of an Italian herb blend from Costco, salt, and pepper. So I sprinkled the herbs to almost cover the meat, and sprinkled on some salt and pepper, and baked. They were absolutely amazing, far better than with the commercial mix we had been using. Since moving back in with my mother I’ve used it nearly exclusively despite having still having plenty of the previous stuff.
Not high cuisine, but I certainly didn’t have any expectations I’d get anything I’d be using in other circumstances.
When I was living on a farm, one of the barn girls gave me an oatmeal-raisin cake as a little Christmas present. Aww, that’s so sweet! She made it herself and was so proud. Unfortunately, it was incredibly, brutally dry. It had approximately the texture of an adobe brick.
But money was real tight back then, and, I hated to waste anything, especially not free food. I cubed it, poured two cups of milk, a beaten and half a cup of sugar over it, and baked it – it made one hell of a tasty bread pudding.
I had some boneless chix, some cajun Ms. Dash, EVOO, and some tomato paste. Using canned tomatoes I bought, I made VERY cajun chix parm. (dredged the chix in MS. Dash too aggressively)
Another one- Boiled, diced Russett taters. Mixed with mustard, made a swell potato sald.
And if I have condiments I need to use up, I mix them into a whole new condiment, use it on sandwiches/burgers, or even chips.
Since I never use a recipe, I never have any expectations. But I’ve learned what not to do, so most of my creations are pretty good. I’m on a low-glycemic-index diet these days, so I just made a huge pot of soup . . . big chunks of chicken and a ton of veggies, and for the first time I used lemon pepper and fresh lemon juice and grated peel. It turned out great. I plan on experimenting with adding fruit flavoring to soup.
And a couple of weeks ago I had some salmon fillets to use up, so I made a salmon, sun-dried tomato and spinach pizza. It was awesome.
Just Thursday I made crock-pot lasagna. I made it because I could prep it the night before and just turn it on mid day to be ready for New Years. I figured I could even bring if to work and cook it at my desk before the party. It was reall a slap-dash thing. Sauce, noodles, cheese, sauce, noodles, cheese … I baked it briefly to brown the cheese on top. I used my spaghetti sauce from that thread.
Did this the other day, just to use up some leftovers, and because I was dining alone:
Ingredients:
Half a french Baguette, three days old and dry as a brick
Three spring onions
Two eggs
One long chilli
About a handful of strong cheddar, grated
About a handful of cold baked gammon, shredded
A glass or two of tomato juice
I split the baguette lengthways - it was dry and crunchy throughout its thickness. I spooned tomato juice onto the cut surfaces until no more would soak in.
I finely chopped the chilli and spring onions, then beat this up with the eggs, shredded gammon and cheese - it had the approximate consistency of coleslaw.
I spread it on top of the tomato-soaked bread, then put it under the grill for about five minutes.
The egg/cheese/etc mixture puffs up as it toasts - the result greatly surpassed my expectations - it’s sort of a Welsh Rarebit, but sort of like a French bread pizza, but something else as well. It was really delicious and satisfying.
Thanks for the responses everyone! I’m getting some great ideas. Panache45, your pizza sounds divine!
Oh, I’ve got another actually. My 18-year-old sister loves my spinach artichoke dip, so went to the store to get the stuff before coming to visit so I could make it for her. She didn’t know frozen spinach comes in a box (bless her heart) so got a bag of turnip greens instead. Also some roasted red peppers which we’ve never put in before. Turnip greens work just as well and the red peppers were a great addition. We ate it all in a hurry. However, I found a caterpillar at the bottom of the artichoke can when I used the leftovers a few days later. Eeewww!
I intended to try making some Crepes Suzette, but then couldn’t find any liqueur to buy before stores would start closng. So I had eggs and orange juice sitting around with no use and I was leaving on vacation the next day.
Seeing as I was going to be gone for a week, I decided to try and use as much random stuff as I had sitting around the house. In total I had:
Orange juice
Chicken
Pork broth
Thyme
Flour
Eggs
Corn meal
Parmesan cheese
Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces and cook in a sauce of pork broth and orange juice with thyme (and probably some salt and pepper, I don’t recall). Then make cornmeal and Parmesan crepes. Wrap the chicken up like it’s in a burrito and go to town on it.