ham I am

What was I thinking, buying a ham that weighed in at nearly ten pounds, for just three people??  Well, I guess I was thinking that it was South Carolina ham, so locally sourced, and only $3.99 a pound.  But now I am buried in ham.  We can eat only so many ham sandwiches, so, enter the chicken roulade.  ("roulade" is just a fancy French word for "rolled".)

I got a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced them nearly in half, so I could open them like a book, and pounded the bejeezus out of them, until they were about 1/4 inch thick.

I made a filling of sauteed mushrooms, onions, fresh thyme, and ham, bound together with some fresh bread crumbs, and flavored with a few tablespoons of minced parsley, salt, and pepper.

fresh breadcrumbs can be made easily by grinding up the heels

of a loaf of sandwich bread

the filling, sauteing away in my beloved new pan

I laid out the pounded breasts and put a little stuffing on top of each one.

From there, it is just a matter of rolling, and breading.  Easy enough by dipping each roll in a bit of egg thinned with milk, and then some panko breadcrumbs.  One breast was considerably larger than the other, so I started the larger one cooking first.

just 1/4 inch of oil in my new pan 

and crispy roulades were ready for dinner

The roulades took about 16 minutes to be thoroughly cooked through to a temp of 160, with a nice, crisp exterior all the way around.  I took them out and rested them on a little baking rack, and prepared my side dishes.

In this case, little potato pancakes fried in the same oil as the chicken, made from leftover potato au gratin.  They were delicious, and even though very cheesy, didn't stick a bit.  My old pans are abandoned for good, I think.  I also made a puree of peas, steamed just until tender, with a bit of fresh thyme from the garden.  Once they were barely cooked, I added a little lemon zest and juice, a bit of salt and pepper, and pureed them into a mash.  I just love this way of preparing peas.

sliced roulades, piled on potato pancake, with a side of pea puree

the perfect pie is a tart

Easter dinner was about as traditional as you can get.  A glazed ham (glazed with orange marmalade, bourbon, and mustard), potatoes au gratin, asparagus with lemon and shallots, and a black raspberry tart.  I won't bore you with pics of the traditional stuff, but I do have to post about the tart, because it turned out so well.  As a young friend once declared, upon eating this tart, "Jesus would eat this pie!"  Ever since, among a small group of friends, it has been known as Jesus's pie.  Well, Jesus would have been very happy with his resurrection day pie, because it was delicious.  And, oh so simple.  The crust is a combination of a small packet of cream cheese, 3/4 of a stick of butter, two tablespoons of lard, a teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and one and a half cups of flour, mixed up in a food processor with just enough cold water to make it come together as a dough.  Yes.  Lard.  But I can get the non-hydrogenated stuff.  If I couldn't, I would just use the cream cheese and a full stick of butter.

What makes this tart so fun is the ease of putting it together.  The dough, rested in the fridge for a couple of hours, is simply rolled out like a big pizza crust.  The berries, straight from the freezer, get mixed with a bit of quick-cooking tapioca, the zest and juice of a lemon, and about 4 tablespoons of sugar.  I use much less sugar than what is called for in most pie recipes, so the berry flavor can really shine through. 

That gets piled into the middle of the crust, dotted with a little butter, and baked at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the berries are bubbling.

the crust was brown, crisp, and delicious

Once the berry mixture is piled in the middle of the crust, the edges are simply folded over and crimped into place.  An extra step, not necessary, but resulting in a really brown and crispy crust, is to brush the crust with an egg white beaten with a tiny bit of water, and sprinkled with sugar.  I bake the tart on parchment paper, which makes cleanup a snap.

The one thing I would do differently next time, would be to bloom (let it hydrate and soften) the tapioca in a little bit of hot water.  Some of it did not dissolve during baking.  But the flavors were out of this world, and the production much less fussy than making a traditional pie.  Happy Easter!

the curse of leftover ham

Easter is fast approaching, and with it comes the inevitable curse of leftover ham.  That is, if you are a traditionalist, and serve ham for dinner.  I am, and I bought the smallest ham I could find at WF, which weighs in at just under ten pounds.  With just Jim, my mom, and me that is A LOT of ham.  I don't know about you, but I can eat only so many ham sandwiches.  So last night, I sliced off a bit of the ham in anticipation, and made a hash.

Hash is a great way to use leftovers, and a good way to get a variety of vegetables into your diet.

for my hash, I used hot red pepper, leek, sweet bell pepper,

and fresh Vidalia onion

I started the veggies along with diced ham, in a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil shimmering over a medium burner. I was cooking them in a new 14-inch cast iron French pan.  Yes, I loved the 10-inch one so much, that I bought a larger version.  The pic on Amazon doesn't show it, but the 14-inch titan has a very nice "helper" handle on the side opposite the main handle.  It is a monster, and it is gorgeous.  With cast iron, you really never need to go much over a medium heat.  Once the veggies and ham had started to brown, I added a couple of cups of shredded potatoes and started heating some water, with a couple of teaspoons of salt and a couple of tablespoons of vinegar.  The vinegar help poached eggs to stay together in nice, tight little orbs.  It also helps if you have very fresh eggs.   I brought the water just up to a slow simmer.

poaching eggs is a really easy and healthy way to cook the wonder orbs

Poached eggs are done in about 4 minutes, but you can hold them for a long time in cool water, then just drop them into simmering water for a minute to heat them up.  They are done when the white is completely cooked, and the yolk is still soft to the touch.

I added salt and pepper to the hash,then spooned a cup of the hash in the center of the plate, and added a poached egg.  I added a bit of salt and pepper to the egg, garnished with a bit of chopped parsley, and dinner was served.

a pretty, simple way to use leftover Easter ham

the new pan in action -- I decommissioned several old pans when this baby arrived

new love in my life

All these years I've been obsessed with cooking, and I've never owned a cast iron skillet.  I have enameled cast iron pots, and every size and variety of pan you can imagine, but cast iron never won my heart.  I know people swear by them, but when I would look at them, they looked awkward with their thick walls and stubby handles, and I never bought one.  I'm sure I have missed out on a superb cooking tool.

The other day, I think I found MY version of cast iron.  It's called a mineral pan, and referred to as "steel" in several places, but it is 99 percent iron.  Watching yet another foodie show, this one a "best of" affair with Alton Brown, I saw this pan.  The restaurant was purported to have the best mac 'n cheese in the states, and the chef said he had searched far and wide for a way to get a baked-like crust on mac 'n  cheese cooked to order.  He finally settled on a French cast iron pan.

My new pan, after use #2

I am in love.  After cleaning off the wax coating, and seasoning the pan with peanut oil, it is already slicker than owl snot, as they inexplicably say down in Texas.  The idea is for it to get black, the way cast iron does, and after making a burger with a lovely brown crust, and then some hash browns this morning, my pan is on its way to the dark patina I am after.

inaugural run -- even on day one, the melted cheese just wiped right out of the pan

So, enough about the new toy, but I will close up by saying they run small.  I bought the 10 inch pan, but I bet it isn't even eight inches across the bottom, so the measurement must be from rim to rim, and the pan flairs quite a bit.  If I continue to love this pan, I'm sure I'll be buying more of them in larger sizes.  The good news is, in the world of cookware, they are not really very expensive.  The De Buyer one I bought was under 50 dollars.  If they last forever, it will have been a good investment.

shrimp with an Indian twist

I was in the mood for something a little different last night, so I settled on a little riff on a Bobby Flay recipe I saw for flatbreads served with a chickpea puree and a cilantro pesto.  It featured a lot of Indian flavors -- cilantro, tahini, chick peas, garlic, and lime -- but it certainly wasn't a traditional dish.  Bobby's recipe called for grilling the flat breads and shrimp, then layering the bread with the puree and shrimp, and topping with the cilantro pesto.  I wanted more of a complete meal, so I added sliced onion and red bell pepper as well.

The purees were a little ingredient-heavy, but nothing too complicated, and mostly stuff I had on hand.  They were simple to prepare.  Just a matter of dropping the stuff in a food processor and giving it a whir.

all of the ingredients for the pesto went in the processor

The pesto was an odd mix of flavors, but it worked.  It had both cilantro and spinach, along with a couple of cloves of garlic, toasted pine nuts, a little bit of parmesan, a couple of tablespoons of lime juice, and olive oil.  One mistake I made was to not mellow the garlic a little before adding it.  The pesto was delicious, but packed a huge garlic punch, and consequently a little heart burn in the evening.

It was too late to fix that in the pesto, but I did fix it in the bean puree.  A great way to take the edge off of raw garlic is to pop it in the microwave for about 15 seconds.  The heat slightly, very slightly, cooks the garlic cloves, and it also makes them very easy to peel.

I used cannelini beans instead of chick peas in the bean puree, because I love their very creamy texture and their pale yellow-white color.  I just rinsed out the food processor, and added the beans, a couple of cloves of mellowed garlic, about a quarter of a red onion, the juice of a lime, about half a chipotle pepper, a tablespoon of honey, salt and pepper, and half a cup of tahini.  It made a really delicious hummus-like puree.  In fact, I will probably come back to this combination of ingredients to make a hummus.

a pair of sauces for the grilled shrimp

The shrimp prep was very simple.  I just seasoned the shrimp and vegetables with salt and pepper.  I put the flatbreads on the grill first.  I don't mind making my own, but the packaged naan breads from the store are really quite good, so I just grabbed a package of those.  I put the veggies on as well, to get them caramelized, because the shrimp cook so quickly.

a few minutes head start on the veggies will give you

nicely caramelized onions and peppers

the naan came off and the shrimp went on

Shrimp will cook in just a couple of minutes a side, and they are very easy to overcook and turn to little chunks of rubber, so it's best to pay attention while they cook.  I know the meal sounds a little complicated, but really, the prep was so easy, I had everything ready in less than half an hour.

the bright, garlicky sauces were delicious with the

tender shrimp and soft naan

citrus, citrus, and more citrus

My favorite part of any citrus fruit is the zest.  There is so much fragrance and flavor in the zest, while the flesh of the fruit is mainly acid.  Acid is very useful for brightening a dish, but the zest is a different story.  It contains the essence of the fruit.  One of my favorite ways to use citrus is in salads.  Yesterday, I made a chicken salad with the bright addition of lemon zest and juice.  Microplane graters are the bomb for removing citrus zest.  If you don't have one (or two, or three) get one.

some typical graters -- my favorite is the long skinny one

I made a chicken salad.  The chicken was already vacuum-packed for the freezer, so I cooked it sous vide, at 165 degrees.  It came out of the pot very tender.

simple, and oh so good

Into the chicken went diced celery, minced shallot, the zest and juice of one lemon, toasted almonds, a bit of  light mayo, and salt and pepper.  Oh yes, and a handfull of minced fresh dill.  A simple, and very delicious, chicken salad.

 a very happy thing to have in the fridge

 sandwich art can be very simple

eggplant revisited

Jim really likes eggplant Parmesan.  I really hate making it because it makes such a mess.  The eggplant has to be battered with flour and egg, then breaded with some sort of crumb.  Then they have to be fried.  A sauce has to be made, then the whole thing layered up and baked.  I have to admit that it is tasty, and the kitchen can be cleaned up while it bakes, but I am not motivated to make it very often.

So I decided to try and reign in the multiple steps a little, at least for mess.  This time I did have motivation.  I had a refrigerator full of odds and ends vegetables, half a jar of spaghetti sauce, half a ball of fresh mozzarella, and an eggplant.  I decided to try breading and baking the eggplant instead of frying.  Still a process that created some mess, but the dishes for the breading could go in the dishwasher, and the top of the stove wouldn't be an oily mess.  I skipped the initial dip in flour, which helps the crust adhere during frying, and simply coated the eggplant in egg with a little milk and pressed it into seasoned panko breadcrumbs.

I seasoned the panko with salt, pepper, and fresh oregano;

the oregano in my garden is growing like crazy

I sprayed the crumbed eggplant with a spritz of olive oil (easier and more even than drizzling, so I keep a spray bottle of olive oil on hand).  

it baked up brown and crisp -- success without the mess

Yes, I had a jar of pasta sauce in my fridge.  I usually make my own sauce, but this stuff is good, and I was trying to win a sales contest at work, so I bought two jars myself.  I had a leek, shallots, red sweet peppers, and mushrooms, so I really boosted the vegetation in the meal by sauteing the veggies along with some garlic, then simmering them in the sauce .

pasta sauce is a great place to boost the vegetable content of any meal

From there, it was just a matter of layering the cooked eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and sauce, and baking it for 20 minutes or so while I tidied up the kitchen--a much easier task now that the frying stage was out of the picture.

all layered up, with a final grate of a little parm

20 minutes in the oven produced a vegetarian feast and a tidy kitchen

I couldn't tell a bit of difference between the fried eggplant and the baked version, so this will be my "go to" recipe down the road.  Good thing, because we will be growing eggplant in the garden this year.