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ladyspriteYou know, for a week off, this is shaping up to be pretty darn busy. Even after cancelling almost half of my plans due to illness, I'm scheduled within.... not quite an inch of my life, but pretty close. I've got doctor's appointments, car repairs, visits to friends and family, projects for work, projects for SCA, errands to run, and enough things to accomplish that at any given point in time, I'm fairly sure that I'm forgetting something.
That said, I'm still managing to have a fairly good time. Christmas was sweet, and fairly low-key, and I got some wonderful gifts - my husband decided to splurge on a whole bunch of small-but-marvelous presents, the techs at one office went out of their way to find little treats for me, and the friends we had dinner with gave me a couple of truly fascinating cookbooks, though I still think the best gift I got was their four-year-old son climbing into my lap and telling me that he was happy I was part of his family. I don't ever want to have children, true, but I love other people's kids.
The one fun-challenge I've set myself for this break is widening my cooking horizons. I grew up in a fairly low-income family, so most of the meat we could afford was chicken and ground beef. Between that and the fact that I'm a baker first and foremost, most of my main dishes are soups, casseroles, and vegetarian dishes. I make things that need stirring, and mixing, and seasoning, rather than standard main-dishy slabs of meat.
I've never been a big fan of slab-of-meat dishes, but I've also acknowledged over the past few years that I've started to appreciate many foods that I didn't like when I was younger. So, while I've got the time and the opportunity, I am Experimenting With Meat, with the help of my husband (who actually knows how to cook the stuff) and my impressive stash of cookbooks. And so far, it's being pretty positive.
Last night was a festival of Cook's Illustrated recipes. Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and roasted green beans, all very good. The green beans were the true win for me; they wind up rich and salty and amazingly strong-flavored and delicious; but from start to finish it all wound up being one of the best meals I've made in a long time. Maybe this whole meat thing isn't as overrated as I thought it was.
Now I just need to figure out what to do with the left-over two pounds of roast pork....
That said, I'm still managing to have a fairly good time. Christmas was sweet, and fairly low-key, and I got some wonderful gifts - my husband decided to splurge on a whole bunch of small-but-marvelous presents, the techs at one office went out of their way to find little treats for me, and the friends we had dinner with gave me a couple of truly fascinating cookbooks, though I still think the best gift I got was their four-year-old son climbing into my lap and telling me that he was happy I was part of his family. I don't ever want to have children, true, but I love other people's kids.
The one fun-challenge I've set myself for this break is widening my cooking horizons. I grew up in a fairly low-income family, so most of the meat we could afford was chicken and ground beef. Between that and the fact that I'm a baker first and foremost, most of my main dishes are soups, casseroles, and vegetarian dishes. I make things that need stirring, and mixing, and seasoning, rather than standard main-dishy slabs of meat.
I've never been a big fan of slab-of-meat dishes, but I've also acknowledged over the past few years that I've started to appreciate many foods that I didn't like when I was younger. So, while I've got the time and the opportunity, I am Experimenting With Meat, with the help of my husband (who actually knows how to cook the stuff) and my impressive stash of cookbooks. And so far, it's being pretty positive.
Last night was a festival of Cook's Illustrated recipes. Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and roasted green beans, all very good. The green beans were the true win for me; they wind up rich and salty and amazingly strong-flavored and delicious; but from start to finish it all wound up being one of the best meals I've made in a long time. Maybe this whole meat thing isn't as overrated as I thought it was.
Now I just need to figure out what to do with the left-over two pounds of roast pork....
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Date: 2006-12-27 07:25 pm (UTC)What my mother always did with leftover beef roast was to make hash. Dice the meat into bite-sized chunks, add diced potatoes and coarsely-chopped onion, water to cover plus about an inch, cook until the potatoes are done and then add gravy thickener to the broth -- this is a soupy rather than a solid hash, more like stew. Salt, black pepper, and Worcestershire sauce to taste; serve with bread for dipping, or over bread in the bottom of the bowl if you prefer.
If I were doing this with pork, I'd add some Penzey's Pork Base during the cooking phase. And because my taste in spices is considerably wider than my parents' (as in, their spice cabinet contained salt, black pepper, poultry seasoning, Lea & Perrins, and cinnamon sugar, nothing else), I'd probably throw in a little garlic and a bit of anything else that smelled right, and a few drops of Tabasco -- not enough to add any real heat, but just a teeny bit to bring out the flavors already present. It's one of those almost-infinitely-variable dishes.