Yet another episode of photos of foods that my partner and I have been blessed to have tasted, if not consumed outright. Enjoy!
— Ann Cathey
Kielbasa with potatoes, mustard, baked beans and a kosher pickle.
Almond flour waffles with Li’l Smokies sausages.
Sliced sausage from Smokey Mo’s in Conroe, Texas.
Dave’s backyard brisket.
What wonderful things come to mind when scrounging in the kitchen.
My grandmothers and theirs used to make their own hash, rather than
buying it pre-made from the grocery. The potatoes made leftover meat
go farther on a tight budget. I found what I needed in my own kitchen
one morning and whipped this little recipe up for breakfast.
Kitchen Hash
Sausage leftover from brats and saurkraut.
Ingredients:
Tbs minced garlic
1/4 white onion, minced
Leftover sausage or other broken meats
2 medium potatoes, cooked, chopped
1/4 tsp pink sea salt
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp parsley
Cheddar Jack cheese to taste
Directions:
Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil
Add meat, sauté until hot
Add potato and spices, stir until hot throughout
Serve with cheese
Garlic, onion, and sausage.
Directions:
Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil
Add meat, sauté until hot
Add potato and spices, stir until hot throughout
Serve with cheese
Potatoes added
I simply served on a plate with shredded cheese. You might toss some
of this hash into a tortilla for breakfast tacos, or pile some on a
split biscuit and serve it with gravy. The potential combinations are
limited only by your imagination, and may be served for breakfast,
lunch or even dinner.
– Chopped jalapenos will give it a bit of bite.
– Diced, pre-cooked carrots, turnips, and/or rutabagas might be used
with or instead of the potatoes.
– Any broken meat will work with this recipe, from chicken and turkey
to pork, beef, venison, goat or mutton.
– Any type of onions, shallots, or even leeks will offer a variety of
textures and flavors.
Give this hash a try at home, seasoned to suit your tastes, an leave
a note about how it turned out.
Enjoy!
— Ann Cathey
Sandwiches are a staple for a lot of people for lunch. They are quick and convenient, easy to carry, throw together, and consume. The bread used is the main source of both carbs and calories for your average sandwich. Swapping out the bread for broad leaf lettuce to make wraps can add more crunch to your lunch, as well as a vegetable serving in your busy day.
Using a broad leaf lettuce, such as the outer leaves of iceburg, butterleaf, Romaine, or red-leaf lettuces, simply layer your sandwich fixings in the middle, roll it all up in the leaf, and eat.
Sound deceptively simple? It is! Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
TURKEY
Butter leaf lettuce
2 slices of turkey
a teaspoon of shredded beets
a teaspoon of fresh goat cheese
a teaspoon of chopped walnuts
Lay the turkey out on your lettuce leaf. Spread the goat cheese lengthwise along the meat so there will be some cheese in every bite. Add the beets and walnuts along the line of the cheese. Starting on one side, roll up the lettuce leaf around the other ingredients. Enjoy.
HAM
Iceburg lettuce
2 ounces ham, sliced or shredded
1 ounce Swiss or Emmenthaler
3 slices of fresh apple
1 teaspoon of chopped pecans
Follow the same procedure above in building and rolling your wrap.
BEEF
Romaine lettuce
2 ounces roast beef, corned beef or pastrami
1 ounce cheese, cheddar or provolone
1 kosher pickle spear
Brown or deli mustard
Beef is a hardy meat. Pile the beef and cheese on a microwave safe plate and heat for 30 seconds. This will soften the cheese but not make the meat hot enough to wilt the lettuce. Lay out the lettuce, add the meat and cheese. Run a line of mustard to taste down the length of the meat and cheese, an add the pickle spear. Wrap as instructed above.
Wraps are a wonderful way to use up leftovers that may be hanging about in the fridge. We always have broken meats, ends of cheese, a little of this or that available and have found this to be a good way to use them up.
You will also find that some restaurants now have lettuce wrap alternatives available for sandwiches on their menu. Five Guys Burgers & Fries now offers any hot dog or hamburger on their menu as a lettuce wrap. It’s a messy way to eat a burger, but it’s tasty and comes with any or all of their toppings.
I tried a double meat, double cheese wrap with pickles, mayo and sauteed mushrooms at Five Guys here in Conroe. It was so delicious that I smiled all the way through the meal, in spite of the slippery mess those mushrooms caused. I was licking my fingers afterward, too. They use two overlapping leaves of iceburg lettuce for that wrap, and the lettuce held up well enough in the beginning. It started getting messy about halfway through as the slippery ingredients started sliding to the relative bottom.
This taught me like nothing else that condiments such as mayo, mustard, and ketchup should be used sparingly in lettuce wraps, and to keep napkins handy!
Give wraps a try. The different combinations of ingredients are nearly endless, and can be tailored to individual diets. Remember not to over stuff your lettuce, go easy on the condiments, and have fun with it.
Bon appetite!
–Ann Cathey
What, you may ask, is a broken meat? This is what’s left over when you have roasted a turkey and served the bird, or cooked up a ham that you served sliced for game day, or what’s left after you had a dinner party and served a loin of beef. Typically, these leftover meats are “broken” or removed from the bone and wind up in slices, chunks, and shreds.
Broken meats can be used so many ways. They can be diced for salads, sliced or shredded for sandwiches or wraps, used in stews, soups or chili, and so on.
Turkey might wind up in a lettuce wrap with leftover cranberry sauce or a tablespoon of fruit salad. It can also be diced or shredded and used as the meat in a pot pie.
Any meat can be shredded and used in making tamales or chili. These two dishes were originally intended for “trash” meats, using tough cuts or leftover ends. Broken meats will make them incredible.
Toss broken meats into tortillas with a bit of refried beans, cheese and diced tomato for tacos, burritos or quesadillas. They can also be used as pizza toppings and lasagna fillings, and be tossed into salads for an extra jolt of protein.
Stews, soups and chowders all benefit from some extra meat. Beef, pork, and chicken are all good for these applications.
Ham, being very salty in general, and often having a sweet glaze applied, is great for dicing and scrambling in eggs for breakfast. It’s also good sliced or shredded for sandwiches, and even for tossing with diced yams (sweet or savory) for a new baked dish.
Pigs-in-blankets are great. Any leftover meat with a little bit of an appropriate cheese can be wrapped up in pre-made biscuit or croissant dough and baked up into a warm treat.
Leftover steak (like that ever happens!) can be sliced up and tossed into a stir-fry or served as a breakfast side. It can also become a new main dish when sauteed with onions and mushrooms to be served over noodles or rice.
Broken meats just require a little imagination to become interesting and tasty meals rather than just sitting in the fridge being forgotten.
Drop us a line and let us know how you use your broken meats!
–Ann Cathey
A lot of people enjoy wine, but have not yet learned how best to pair wines with food for the maximum enjoyment. While I am not a big wine drinker, my father made sure I was at least educated in the basics. In his honor I will share some of what he taught me.
We start with the simplest of rote teachings that I grew up with: Red wines for red meat (beef, venison, buffalo, etc), white wines for white meat (fowl, pork, etc). That is merely a starting point – there are so many delicate variations to explore that wine enthusiasts, each with his or her own opinions, abound. Let’s just stick with some basics.
There are so many more varieties of grapes being grown around the world that to try to cover them all at once would take a really long time and likely confuse many readers.
All of the wines mentioned below are readily available from numerous vineyards, and consequently from vine to vine are a little different. You may find that you prefer the flavor of a wine from California or Texas over that of the same type of wine produced in Europe, or vice versa. Experiment with the differences and find the wines that you like best.
Personally, there is little difference between a table wine and a cooking wine. A little for me, a little for the pot, as it were. On the opposite end of the spectrum, many people consider wines to be categorized as only to be savored from the glass, while others are good only for cooking, and yet others are only good for making vinegar. As with any taste experience, personal taste is everything.
RED WINES
Cabernet Sauvignon is a red wine that often sports hints of cherry or blackberry. It has a full-bodied, but firm flavor, quite gripping when young. With age, rich currant qualities come forward. Vanilla notes, if present, come not from the fruit but from the oak treatment.
-Food-wine pairing: best with simply prepared red meat.
-Cheeses: Cheddar, Gouda, Edam, Havarti
Merlot is the go-to for most people starting to experiment with wine. It is wasy to drink and excellent for most cooking projects. Most often it will sport black-cherry and herbal flavors.
-Food-wine pairing: any will do
-Cheeses: Gouda, Camembert, Gorgonzola, Brie, Cheddar
Pinot Noir is very unlike it’s cousin, Cabernet Sauvignon. The structure is delicate and fresh with very soft tannins. This is related to the low level of polyphenols. The aromatics are very fruity (cherry, strawberry, plum), often with notes of tea-leaf or damp earth
-Food-wine pairing: excellent with grilled salmon, chicken, lamb and Japanese dishes
-Cheeses: Swiss, Port Salut, Gruyere, Feta
Syrah, or Shiraz, is a very popular wine for both drinkability and table pairings. The shiraz variety gives hearty, spicy reds. While shiraz is used to produce many average wines it can produce some of the world’s finest, deepest, and darkest reds with intense flavors and excellent longevity. It offers aromas and flavors of wild black-fruit (such as blackcurrant), with overtones of black pepper spice and roasting meat. The abundance of fruit sensations is often complemented by warm alcohol and gripping tannins.
-Food-wine pairing: meat (steak, beef, wild game, stews, etc.)
-Cheeses: Sharp Cheddar, Edam, Gouda, Roquefort
Zinfandels are sporty wines offering raspberry, blackberry, black cherry, raisin, and prune flavors. For decades zinfandel was California’s grape, though now it is grown all over the west coast of the United States, in Australia, Italy, and elsewhere, and its ancestry has been traced to Croatia. California zinfandel remains the model for all others, and it grows well and vines distinctively all over the state.
-Food-wine pairing: any will do, though very acceptable with fruits
-Cheeses: Double Gloucester, Asiago, Bleu, Feta, aged Gouda or Cheddar
WHITE WINES
Chardonnay is often wider-bodied (and more velvety) than other types of dry whites, with rich citrus (lemon, grapefruit) flavors. Fermenting in new oak barrels adds a buttery tone (vanilla, toast, coconut, toffee). Tasting a moderately priced Californian Chardonnay should give citrus fruit flavors, hints of melon, vanilla, some toasty character and some creaminess.
-Food-wine pairing: it is a good choice for fish and chicken dishes.
-Cheeses: Brie, Asiago, Havarti
Riesling wines are much lighter than Chardonnay wines. The aromas generally include fresh apples. The riesling variety expresses itself very differently depending on the district and the winemaking. Rieslings should taste fresh. If they do, then they might also prove tastier and tastier as they age.
-Food-wine pairing: dry versions go well with fish, chicken and pork dishes.
-Cheeses: Bleu, Colby, Brie, Edam, Gouda, Havarti
Pinot Grigio creates light, zippy, food-friendly white wines that do not clobber the palate with oak and alcohol. Its alter ego, pinot gris (same grape, different name), has become the white wine of Oregon, where it produces lively, pear-flavored wines that may carry an additional fruity sweetness. The California version is a bit heavier, while vintners in Washington make intense, tart wines that match well with seafood.
-Flavors: Citrus, fresh pear, melon, Fuji apples, seafood
-Cheeses: Goat cheese, Muenster, Gouda, Edam, Asiago
Sauvignon Blanc is generally lighter than Chardonnay. It tends to show an herbal character suggesting bell pepper or freshly mown grass. The dominating flavors range from sour green fruits of apple and pear through to tropical fruits of melon, mango and blackcurrant. Quality unoaked Sauvignon Blancs will display smokey qualities. They offer bright aromas with a strong acid finish.
-Food-wine pairing: a versatile food wine for seafood, poultry, and salads.
-Cheeses: Gruyere, Mozzarella, Asiago, Neufchatel
For the host or hostess who does not wish to keep a cellar of wines, simply keeping one red and one white that are versatile on hand will cover most casual occasions. A good Zinfandel is also a catch all for a lot of people as it goes with so much.
There are tons of information out on the internet for those who wish to develop their wine palate. One sight of particular interest is Wine Enthusiast [http://www.winemag.com/], which offers Wine for Beginners [http://www.winemag.com/wine-for-beginners/]. The article offers some valuable information up to and including storing wines and investing in them. This site was a primary source for material used in this blog.
My primary investment in wine is what it will do to a roast or add to chicken or duck when cooking, and I freely admit it. Your relationship with wine will develop to suit you.
Happy Sipping!
— Ann Cathey
A friend of mine shared an interesting, and helpful, set of cooking charts from some else’s blog. They are not what I expected, though I will likely have a few of them printed out and stuck to the insides of relevant cabinets in my kitchen!
These wonderful diagrams contain knowledge made simple on things like building vinaigrettes, handling and cooking meats, simple substitutions and measurements, how to choose proper kitchen tools, and even seasoning cast iron.
–Ann Cathey
Not everyone is an expert at wine and cheese pairings, but everyone should know what they like.
If you are setting up tasty treats for a gathering and would like a simple guide to wines and cheeses (and other tasty ideas), this list is taken from my own experiences. I’m not an expert in the field, but I know what I like and what combinations are pleasing to my palate. I’ve added links to the different types of cheeses and wine varieties for the curious.
If you enjoy Brie, cold or warm, Riesling chilled or at room temperature is lovely. With the Brie, if it is being warmed or baked, add a sprinkle of pine nuts and some jam. Apricot, raspberry or loganberry have all proven to be excellent. Serve with thinly sliced baguettes.
Soft goat cheeses are good with Shiraz (or Syrah). They come in several flavors these days, most notably honey, garlic and herb, and sun dried tomato. Pair these with sliced sweet apples, crisp crackers, or a “party bread” (small loaves baked and cut specifically for canapes).
Parmesan and Asiago are very dry, crumbly cheeses most commonly found grated or flaked for toppings. They are also delightful tasting cheeses and pair nicely with Chardonnay.
Sangria and pink Moscato are favorites to pair with fruits and mild cheeses such as Mozarella and cheddar. These are most often used as dessert wines and tend to favor sweet accompaniments.
Red Moscato and chocolate and dipped fruits are a winning combination. Along with Belinnis, this combination is fun for brunches.
Some traditional standards that are generally true for meats are red wine for red meats, (beef, pork, venison, buffalo, duck), and white wines with white meats (chicken, turkey, fish). I have found this to be true for the most part.
Merlot and Shiraz pair well with grilled red meats. Chardonnay is a crisp counterpoint to may seafood dishes. Sauvignon Blanc goes well with most chicken dishes.
As for cheeses, when in doubt, you can’t go wrong with a good cheddar.
I hope this clears up a little of the mystery of pairing wines, and that you will experiment for yourself to find the combinations that most please your palate.
— Ann Cathey
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