Fusion Cuisine

In my constant search for new and exciting kitchen conquests, I have begun to experiment with the idea of fusing two cuisines in one dish. A common and exciting, yet relatively recent development in the big city restaurant scene.

Asian-Mexican is a wonderful combination. While trying out lots of new experiments, I stumbled across the idea of making "noodles" out of corn tortillas. I've often used baked tortilla chips and strips in traditional Mexican recipes. However, I had never tried just sauteeing them in a bit of oil. Especially, with the flavor of sesame oil, tortilla "noodles" make a wonderful, quick, and simple dish for lunch. The earthy whole grain corn flavor melds wonderfully with warmth of sesame oil. They can also be topped with a variety of stir fries or added to a soup as a noodle replacement.

The idea, at least in my mind, is to take complimentary flavors from different cuisines or culinary traditions and marry them in a way that brings out a totally new taste sensation. The same idea behind Tex-Mex cooking: take European style open pit barbecue grilled over regional woods; add traditional Central American and Southwestern Indian ingredients like dried chiles, fresh jalapenos, corn tortillas, and avocados; throw in some beans and rice for extra starch and you've got yourself something uniquely American (norteno)-a cuisine all its own.

In the same way, fusion cooking seeks to create something entirely new. While combining ingredients from other cuisines is hardly a new idea, I'm seeking compositions that are new and bring a surprise to the tongue.

Try this: saute sliced baby bella mushrooms, sliced onions, and minced garlic in butter, salt, and cracked pepper until darkened and tender, about 7". Add a dash of sesame oil and corn tortilla strips, stir frequently until strips are tender, adding oil if needed to keep from sticking; deglaze the skillet or wok with rice wine vinegar or other vinegar, scraping the bottom of the skillet vigorously. Add some drained bamboo shoots and salt and pepper to taste. Cook about 5" more. Add a few dashes of soy sauce and crushed red pepper. Serve piping hot.

Pumpkin Soup

I began a few years ago to experiment with processed pumpkin. I came up with several new recipes (fresh takes on traditional ideas) using this sweet and savory puree. One of these recipes is now a Hosch family favorite: pumpkin soup. Because it is a thick, unctuous soup, you could also call it pumpkin chili.

To start with, I'll tell you the easy way to process a hard winter squash. First, half the squash and scoop out the seeds and stringy flesh attached to the seeds. Then cut the squash into 4-6 large chunks. Bake on a cookie sheet at 425 until soft. Allow to cool until you can pull or cut off the peeling without getting burned. In a food processor, puree for a few seconds to get rid of the stringy texture. Then, whip with butter until it has the texture of canned pumpkin. Finally, let cool and freeze in quart bags until needed. This is far superior to factory processed canned pumpkin/squash in taste and texture.

To make the soup, brown 1 lb. Italian sausage, 1/4 diced onion, and 1 clove garlic in evoo. Add salt, fresh cracked black pepper, crushed red pepper, and Hungarian or Spanish paprika to taste. Add about 1/2 c. broth (I use homemade broth or stock whenever possible-also, a mix of chicken and beef broth works well for this recipe) and stir to thicken. Basically, now you have a soup base. Add 1 qt. processed pumpkin ot other hard winter squash, stirring vigorously to combine. Add 7 1/2 c. broth, stirring constantly. Add fresh rubbed sage, bring to a quick boil, reduce heat, and simmer for at least 4 hours. Serve with fresh crostini, brushed with evoo.

The leftover soup should be saved for other savory applications; such as, pumpkin ravioli or tortellini, pumpkin yeast bread, or pumpkin dumplings.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Not much of a summer recipe, but in the cccold of an air-conditioned house/cave, you can pretend it's the middle of winter. This is basically creamy soup making 101 with broccoli and cheese added. This is also the way I make potato soup, baked potato soup, cream of chicken soup, and fish chowder.

Start out by roasting frozen broccoli on a cookie sheet in the oven for about 25" @375, until it is just tender and slightly browned on the edges. Brown some onions and garlic in butter, and add some flour to make a roux. Then whisk until the flour is light brown. Add some warmed chicken broth and whole milk or half/half, salt to taste, pepper to taste, maybe a dash of nutmeg, and bring to boil again, stirring frequently. Add roasted broccoli, reduce heat to lo-med, and simmer for about 20" stirring frequently. Add the shredded cheese of your choice (I would use an Italian 5 cheese blend and some sharp cheddar) to taste and simmer for 10" more, stirring to keep the cheese from settling on the bottom. Options - for a savory kick, add some white wine to the chicken broth/milk mixture.

Pam's Paper Bag Turkey

My grandmother, Lillian Mays, was famous for her paper bag recipe for turkey. She used a brown grocery bag covered in butter as a way of sealing in moisture. This old fashioned method also helps one to avoid brining and basting. Both tedious, time consuming tasks.

My sister, Pamela, called me for a turkey recipe and I have a few, but I recommended this method, because it is a quick fix for a non-brined bird. The following is Pam's take on Grandma Lillian's method for a moist, juicy bird. I threw in a stuffing recipe.

1 whole turkey, 23-25 pounds
1 large brown paper bag (grocery bag)
Butter, soft but not melted
Salt, garlic salt, pepper to taste

Remove neck and giblets from cavities. Rinse the turkey and pat dry with paper towels. Stuff, if desired (for a good stuffing/dressing try sauteing sliced apples, chopped onions, chopped celery, red bell peppers, and minced garlic in butter with salt, cr. bl. pepper, sage; add 1/2 loaf leftover crumbled cornbread, 2 chopped hardboiled eggs, and 2 beaten eggs, mix well; stuff as much as possible in turkey cavity, before baking; bake the rest of the stuffing at 375 until done, about 25 minutes - a stuffing is basically a savory bread pudding).

Thoroughly coat the turkey with butter using your fingers or a paper towel. Season generously. Place the turkey in the paper bag. Seal the bag with staples, paper clips or a needle and thread. (Use 2 bags if 1 is too small.)

Place the turkey on a sturdy shallow baking pan. Bake at 325° for about 5 hours. Reduce the cooking time to 4-4 1/2 hours for an unstuffed or smaller turkey.

No, the paper will not burn, and the turkey will not taste like paper. But you will enjoy all those little gasps of appreciation when you ʽunwrapʼ your perfect paper bag turkey.

Ode To A Brat(wurst)

Ode to a brat.

My friend as you sizzle so fragrant and smelly
won't you please take up residence in my belly?
With a little honey dijon, some caramelized onions and Bavarian style kraut
of all the sausages, is there any doubt?

Brats are so savory. In truth, bratwurst is just an unsmoked, mildly spiced, pork sausage. Fry them in a skillet (boiled first, until done, of course) with eggs. Douse the finished brat with 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar for a nice glazed sausage.

Try them with my Bavarian style kraut. Add 1/4 c. sugar and 1 tsp. fennel seeds to a can of sauerkraut. Warm slowly over med-lo.

For a great mustard accompaniment, add 2 tbsp. honey to 1/4 c. dijon mustard. If desired, also add 5 dashes or more Tabasco.

Put 'em on a bun with slowly caramelized onions, or kraut, or mustard, or all three!

Tina's Mom's Gumbo Recipe and My Gumbo Recipe

Finally getting back to my blog. Been sick almost non-stop for about 2 months. Finally seeing the light of day. Ready to cook!

Been experimenting with making gumbo. I've gotten pretty good at making roux over the years, so I figured it was time to use that expertise in making gumbo.

As far inland as I am (in SW MO), chicken and sausage gumbo is about as authentic as I can get. I can't afford the flown-in shrimp at the fresh seafood shops in Springfield and I've hesitated to try raw frozen shrimp. Maybe someday I'll take the plunge and try it with frozen (a little seafood humor, very little).

Anyway, another problem is this nasty sausage they sell up here. Very hard to find good southern style sausage, much less, authentic Andouille. I hate to use too many substitutes. Then, its just a glorified chicken soup. Too thin and too pale. Finally, my local supermarket started selling sausage made in Texas. Really good sausage. Not as good as the Richard's (pr. ree-chards) Crazy Cajun sausage we could get in every grocery store in Central LA, but it is good.

Traditional gumbo, which has just as many African roots as it does French roots, is either an okra-based soup (yes, it is technically a soup; a thick, "stoupy" - to borrow from Rachael Ray - soup, but still a soup) or file-based. File (pr. fee-lay) powder is sassafras root, ground and powdered. Okra-based is by far the best. I only use a tbsp. of file, if any, in a pinch for a little flavor boost (very little).

Well, my first time to try gumbo, I was in a pinch. Traditional gumbo, as well as most Cajun and Creole dishes, usually include green onions (I like to use most of the green chivy tops, as well) and and fresh parsley. I didn't have either of these ingredients. Like I said, I was in a pinch. I did, however, have some leek tops that I had kept around for just such an occasion. I used them, in place of the green onions. I still missed the pungency of the scallions, but it wasn't bad. Without parsley, however, I was about to give up. Until I decided to use the celery leaves in place of the missing parsley. I also added a tbsp. of some very old file that I found in the cabinet (pretty scary that I didn't know it was in there until that week). It worked. The gumbo was pretty good. But the file, as I expected, failed to enchant.

I've got plenty of southern and Louisiana cookbooks with gumbo recipes, but I wanted comparison recipes from live people. So, Tina Ireland, a friend of mine from Kentucky, who grew up in Southeast Louisiana, sent me her mom's recipe. She apologized for the lack of measurements, but I think that just displays authenticity. The best cooks in this world, in my opinion, are the moms and dads, aunts, and grandmas who feed us day-in and day-out with ingenuious, inventive recipes that simply use whatever happens to be available at the moment. Here is her e-mail.:

Mom's Gumbo

Here's what my mom emailed me when I asked for her gumbo recipe. I suppose it's a figure-the-rest-out- yourself kind of recipe, which should be no problem for those who are talented in the kitchen. It's basically, throw everything in the pot after you're done and cook it till it's done. It should be no problem for some to find all of the ingredients, but for those of us who live up north it can be a real challenge... I hate the rubber they sell at the store that they try to pass off as shrimp! Grrr...


1 lb peeled shrimp (small). 1 lb okra (fried down or baked at 350 degrees in the oven 1 hr. – less calories). 3 crabs or some crab meat depending on if you like it or not. Seasonings sauté: onion, garlic, celery, green pepper, green onions. Roux. Add small can of tomato sauce for the red-brown sauce or some ketchup. Tony Chachere's seasoning. Salt & pepper.

You can see the basics here of a traditional LA gumbo: roux; a base of onions, garlic, celery, green pepper, and green onions; fresh shrimp, crab, etc.; and, of course, of course, of course, Tony Chachere's seasoning.

Tony's is a brand of Cajun seasoning. Cajun seasoning is one of those elite few spice mixtures that deserves its place in the world's short list of historic spice mixtures. Up there with garam masala, five-spice powder, herbes de provence, italian seasoning, and ras el hanout.

You can make a Cajun seasoning on your own, if you like. It is a type of seasoned salt. I like to mix garlic powder, salt, cracked bl. pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, onion powder, crushed celery seed, and crushed cumin seed. The heat of the spice is determined by the amount of cayenne. Creole and Cajun cooks each have their own spice mixtures. Paul Prudhomme uses a different type of Creole spice mixture for almost every dish.

Here's my gumbo:

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

Warm two quarts of chicken or turkey stock (see my article on broth/stock making) over med. heat. You can use broth if you want or for deeper flavor make a stock: bring 2.5 quarts broth to a boil with one chopped onion, some leftover chicken bones, some garlic, 2 chopped stalks celery, and 2 chopped carrots; reduce heat and simmer for about an hour, strain for a clear stock.

Brown 1# sliced southern style smoked sausage in a skillet. Shred 1# leftover chicken or turkey meat. Set aside.

Saute 1 diced yellow onion, 2 chopped stalks celery w/leaves, 5 diced green onions (w/tops) and 3 pressed and minced cloves of garlic in 2 tbsp. butter. Salt to taste. Add cracked bl. pepper, 1/4 tsp. coriander, 1/2 tsp. mustard, 1/4 tsp. cayenne, 1/2 tsp. sage, 1 tsp. paprika, 1/4 tsp. fennel, 1/2 tsp. celery seed. Remove from pot, set aside.

In the same pot, make a roux. A roux is a character-lending sauce used as the basis for many French, Cajun, and Creole dishes. The proportion of fat to flour is 50/50. Melt 1/2 c. (1 stick) butter in a cast iron skillet over med. heat. When the butter is smoking and with whisk in hand and wooden spoon nearby, add 1/2 c. flour. Whisk vigourously until flour is mixed well with the butter. Add salt at this point to taste. Then cook the roux over med. until it begins to darken noticeably. When you first start, just go with med. brown. The more experience you acquire in roux making, you'll want to let the roux darken to almost black for an authentic Cajun flavor.

When the roux is bubbling add the 2 qts. of stock and stir to blend. Bring to a boil. Add sauteed onion/veg. mix. and 1# okra, preferably fresh. Add 1 c. minced fresh parsley, Italian or curly. Add the shredded chicken and sausage. Add a few shakes Tony Chachere's, if desired.

Bring soup to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer with lid cocked to allow some steam to escape. Simmer for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice.

Red Beans and Rice

This is winter comfort fare. 2 starches in one meal! Better have your jogging shoes handy. Po' folks cooking at its best. A traditional way for Southern Louisiana folks to get enough carbs to ready themselves for another day working out in the fields. I've added a few savory flavor boosters. Namely, chicken broth and sausage.

I love beans all by themselves. Or with hot cornbread. So, I've included my bean recipe. Red beans and rice is a great way to use up leftover beans, as you only need about 1/3 #, and most packages are 1 #.

1 pkg. red beans
salt, cr. bl. pepper to taste
2 cl. garlic
2 strips bacon, chopped; or chunk of ham,chopped; or ham bone
2 tbsp. oil
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 carrot, quartered, diced
1 stalk celery, diced

Soak the beans according to pkg. directions, drain. Cook the beans and all other ingredients with prescribed water amount. The key is to quickly boil the beans over very high heat. Then reduce the heat to med.-lo or even lower. Cover the beans with the lid just tilted. Simmer for about 2 hours until tender.

This will also be a good time to give my rice recipe. Use it any time you need rice in a dish.

1 pkg. brown rice
chicken broth, in place of pkg. directions for water
1/4 yellow onion, diced
2 cl. garlic, minced, 1 stalk celery, diced
1 tbsp. butter
salt, cr. bl. pepper to taste
1 tbsp. Tony Chachere's seasoning, or other seasoned salt

Slice 1/2 # Southern style smoked sausage and fry in a skillet until browned. Saute 1/4 diced yellow onion in some of the sausage grease. Add the sausage, onion, and 1/3 of the beans to the rice and bake @350 for about 10". This is just to let the flavors mingle a bit.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage

If you don't have a dutch oven. This recipe is a reason to buy one, although any soup pot with a lid will do. If you've never liked cooked cabbage before, you should try this recipe. Delish, with a wonderful Eastern European flavor.

1 head cabbage, chopped, 2"squares
1 c. sugar
salt, cr. bl. pepper to taste
1/2 onion, sliced
1/4. c. apple cider vinegar
1/2 sliced, deseeded, sweet red bell pepper
1 tsp. coriander seed, 1 tsp. mustard seed
2 tbsp. butter or evoo

In a dutch oven, soup pot, or deep skillet with lid, over med. heat melt butter and saute onions until tender, about 5". Add cabbage, red pepper, and spices. Saute stirring frequently for about 10", or until cabbage has just started to soften. Add vinegar to deglaze the pot, stirring constantly until any hardened bits of onion on the bottom of the pot are scraped up. Add sugar, salt and pepper. Cover, reduce heat to med.-lo and simmer for about 30" or until cabbage is tender. Serve with crusty German style bread, such as rye or pumpernickel. Goes well with pork dishes or fish. Serves 6.

Broth Making

Right now I'm making broth from leftover roast chicken with vegetables. Recipe to follow. I have developed a ritual of using every last scrap of a leftover roast. Whether crock pot beef or venison roast or roast turkey or chicken, I use the pan drippings, every bone, and every vegetable.

I had 2 legs and 2 thighs leftover from the scrawny chicken roast from last Thursday night. Just a bit of meat, maybe 1/4#, so I just froze it. I also froze the potatoes. I'm saving the delectable roasted onions, red peppers, and artichoke hearts for an exquisite puree. I'll top some roasted meat or potatoes with it. The bones, roasted garlic, and every bit of chicken fat I could find were tossed in a pot with water to cover. I boiled it quickly and simmered about an hour. A touch of salt, and I have a nice thick broth.

You don't have to have raw chicken to make broth. Cooked meats make great broth, too. Steak scraps, roast bones, leftover vegetables, fish trimmings, a turkey carcass, all these are rich with hidden flavor only revealed in a boiling water bath.

If you are poor, like me, you learn to make flavor when and where you can. Rice and mashed potatoes both benefit from chicken broth added either in place of water or as a finishing touch. Anytime you want to bring out the flavor of a stir fry, just add a cup of chicken broth a few minutes before serving. Reduce to 1/4 and you'll find it brightens the final flavor of all other ingredients. Try chicken broth when you make a vegetable side dish. After blanching the frozen or fresh vegetable in boiling water, simmer in a warm pot of equal parts salted chicken broth and water.

I've developed a habit of saving meat trimmings and making broth on a back burner while I'm preparing another meal. Freezes well. Thaws quickly. And you can always boil your zipper bag of frozen broth in a pot of water to thaw it even more quickly, if you're in a hurry.

If you want an even richer flavor, make stock, which is a deeply concentrated broth made with vegetables and herbs, as well as bones. Try using a pot full of leftover bones, a carrot or two, some celery, half of an onion, and garlic. Add a sprig of thyme, or some dried thyme and black pepper in an improvised cheesecloth bag. Salt to taste. The key is to fill the pot with ingredients, boil quickly, and simmer for a long time. After about an hour, drain the broth and press the colander to extract as much extra liquid a possible. Put the broth back on the burner and simmer for an hour or so. You'll notice the broth deepening in complexity as it concentrates.

If you'll simmer a leftover turkey carcass for about an hour on very low heat, the first batch of broth will always be worthy of being called stock. So rich and mellow. Then, take the same carcass and simmer for another hour. This time, you'll have a thinner broth. Also delicious and very useful.

Arrabiata Sauce

A wonderful quick, weeknight dish. My interpretation of a fiery Italian classic. A spicy and tart departure from my usual sicilian style basic tomato sauce with garlic. Best with linguine, al dente.

1 lg. can whole tomatoes, liquid/juice reserved
2 tbsp. evoo, or butter/oil mix
salt, cr. bl. pepper, 1/4 tsp. crushed fennel seeds, dash crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 med. onion, diced
3 cl. garlic, pressed, minced
1/4 c. balsamic vinegar

Options:
1/2 # leftover sauteed chicken cutlets, chopped; 1 small can sliced olives; 1 small can marinated artichoke hearts

In hot oil, over med. heat, saute salted garlic and onion with fennel, bl. pepper, and red pepper for 4-5 minutes until translucent. Deglaze the pan with the vinegar. Quickly scrape the fond from the pan. Add the tomato juice and stir until reduced to 1/2. Add the tomatoes and have a potato masher ready. Mash the tomatoes in the skillet (it is handy to cut open the canned tomatoes first to avoid messy squirts in the pan). Salt to taste. Reduce heat 1 notch and simmer about 20 minutes. Add chicken or other optional ingredients, if using. Cook another 5 minutes. Serve over linguine with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or better yet Pecorino-Romano.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Tortilla soup is an interpretive dish. You make it the way you like it. I like it as an herbal, brothy concoction on cold winter days. A traditional way to use up stale or surplus tortillas.

I'm not a practitioner of the principles of the Slow Food movement, but I do like to take time and allow complexity and depth of flavor to develop in my food. In my opinion, and with little exception, a soup that hasn't had at least 2 hours to simmer isn't worth eating. Tortilla soup should be an all day or next day dish. The nice thing about soup is you can leave it alone for long periods of time and it is the better for it.

As I previously mentioned, I had 1/2# leftover sauteed chicken breast strips that I needed to put to use. I had a hankerin' for tortilla soup, so I pulled out a 2 quart bag of turkey stock. Which reminds me, I need to write on broth and stock making. Never let leftover chicken scraps go to waste!

I always start my soups with a roux. A roux is a butter and flour thickener that adds a layer to a soup's flavor. Making roux is presumeably a French technique probably as old a flour itself. Use equal portions of butter and flour. Melt the butter over med.-lo to med. heat. Keep it on med.-lo until you get some practice. Add the flour and stir. You can whisk if you like.

According to Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, there are 4 basic types of roux: from light brown roux to dark brown roux. I prefer a light brown roux in this recipe. That means that the roux is just about ready when the lumps of flour melt into the butter.

Next is the technique for making corn tortilla strips. I like Rick Bayless' method for making baked tortilla chips as found in Mexico: One Plate At A Time. This is to coat tortillas with oil and bake them in a hot oven. Pour a thin stream of oil over a cookie sheet full of wedge-shaped or strip-shaped tortilla chips. Toss them gently to coat all sides. Bake in a preheated oven at 400-425, depending on your oven, for 5-8 minutes until just crispy. They will finish crisping for about 2 minutes after you take them out. Make sure they are evenly spaced on the cookie sheet. It is okay if you layer them about 2 deep, as long as none of them is completely covered. You will later use these in the bottom of each bowl of soup.

10 corn tortillas, sliced in long, thin strips, baked crisp
1 c. leftover chicken, shredded or diced
or 1/2 lb. chicken breast meat, sauteed in butter, shredded

2+ q. chicken or turkey stock
1 qt. water
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp. flour
3 tbsp. butter, evoo, lard, bacon grease, etc.
2 lg. carrots, diced
1 med. onion, sliced
5 cl. garlic, pressed, minced
1/4 c. cilantro or parsley, minced
1 stalk celery, diced

1 poblano chile, deseeded, reconstituted in warm water, chopped
spice mixture: bl. pepper to taste, 2 tbsp. cumin seeds, dash of
curry powder, 5 allspice berries, pinch cinnamon, 1 tbsp.
paprika; combine and crush in a mortar with pestle
2 tbsp. total minced fresh basil and dried oregano

Warm the chicken broth and water in a pan to the side of your Dutch oven. In the Dutch oven, melt the butter over med.-lo to med. heat. Add the flour and stir vigorously until flour is dissolved. Continue to cook about 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Add the spice mixture and stir about 30 seconds. This is called "blooming" the spices, an Indian technique. Add the diced vegetables and about 1 tbsp. salt and cook until just tender, stirring often, about 3-4 minutes. Add chicken, stir. Add the apple cider vinegar to deglaze the pan and reconstitute the roux, which will now be clinging with the spices to the vegetables. Scrape vigourously to break loose the flavorful fond that hardens on the bottomof the pan. Pour in the broth and water mixture. Bring to the boil quickly, turning up the heat to med.- hi if necessary. Stir frequently until the soup boils. Lower heat to med.-lo or even lower and simmer for a minimum of 3 hours and up to 8 hours, uncovered.

To serve, place several tortilla strips in each serving bowl and ladle hot soup over them. Garnish with lime wedges, fresh onion, white farmer's cheese, and fresh cilantro.

A Word About Chicken

One of the most common ways to purchase chicken is the chicken cutlet. The convenience of this cut, whether boneless breasts, breast tenderloins, breast strips, or boneless thigh meat often leads to the waste of an expensive piece of meat. Chicken can be used to add tremendous flavor and variety to a multitude (plethura! infinity! gazillion! way too many!) of dishes.

Rachel bought a 1# package of breast strips from the discounted meat section (a great way to stock up and save a bundle on meat at the same time). They were pre-cut strips that would work in any stir fry or pasta dish.

I found them ghastly, being the food snob that I am. I'd much rather butcher my own bird, or at least buy a whole chicken and cut it up myself. If I had my way, we'd all be raising our own "yard birds" from heritage breeds. But I don't have it my way, and Tyson is about the best that we can do on my paycheck. So I made lemonade from those lemons. Pasta arrabiata, to be exact. However, as is my custom, I felt the need to reserve 1/2# of the breast strips for another dish later.

The recipe will follow shortly, but I wanted to get across Leftover Principle no. 1: When preparing a dish or tinkering with a recipe: if you know you can get the same flavor using smaller quantities of certain ingredients, then make do with less.

I promise you, no one missed the extra 1/2# of chicken in the linguine arrabiata. And the sauce was simplified, thus allowing the tartness of my version of the vinegar-based sauce to shine through. Always a good idea when cooking Italian food.

Later on this week, I used the 1/2# of chicken to make about a gallon (or more) of chicken tortilla soup. It imparted a wonderful flavor when paired with the sofrito base, light brown roux, and turkey broth.

In essence, I was able to extend a $3.00 package of chicken breast strips to make 2 meals. True, I had to use other items to make those meals. However, the price of the meat, which often manages to eat up the grocery budget, was minimal. Thus saving us money.

Breakfast Burritos

1/4 lb. leftover sausage (uncooked)
6 eggs
2 tbsp. sour cream
1/4 c. diced onion
1 cl. garlic, pressed, minced
1/2 c. salsa
1/2 c. shredded cheese
salt, cr. bl. pepper
1/2 tbsp. butter
4 large tortillas

Beat into the eggs the salt, pepper, and sour cream (if you're used to milk or half-n-half in your scrambled eggs, you need to give sour cream a try, it is better than both and with no watery eggs, like with milk). Melt butter in skillet over med. heat. Brown sausage with onions and garlic. Add eggs and cook until almost done. Add the salsa and cook until liquid is mostly evaporated. Add half of the cheese, stir and put the egg mixture in a warm skillet. Meanwhile, warm the tortillas in the skillet. About 30 seconds per side. You want them flexible and almost translucent. Spoon about 1 cup of egg mixture into each burrito and roll up. Very filling.
Serves 4.

Leftover Sausage

Gonna pull up an old advertising word to describe using small amounts of sausage to boost the flavor of dishes: "flavorize". I put in a few years with Old Dutch Foods in St. Paul, MN. On their original potato chip tins (they are collector's items, if you ever see any at an antique store) they claim that Old Dutch Potato Chips are "flavorized". So, I'm going to teach you how to flavorize your meals.

A technique for adding flavor to many recipes that require a sauteed sofrito or battuto (a starting base, usually carrots, onions, and celery; different for every culture) is to add a little bit of minced bacon or about 1/4 lb. of fresh sausage to the sofrito. You'd be surprised how a small amount of breakfast sausage will go a long way towards boosting the final amalgamation of flavors in your dish.

Today's tip is to reserve about 1/4 of a 1 lb. roll of breakfast or Italian sausage each time. Save this for up to a week in a Zip-loc bag. Add it to a sauteed base on a whim. I made breakfast burritos this morning with 1/4 lb. of leftover italian sausage. Delicious. I'll start combing (see the desert scene in Spaceballs) my recipes for other uses. About a million, I think.

Matambre

See slide show (click on the title to view the recipe with the slide show)

The dish that "kills hunger". An Argentine classic. We tried it Thursday night. Delicious. Filling. Amazing and unusual combination of ingredients. Germans call a similar dish rouladen. A rolled roast or steak. I've done a bit of Americanization/Hosch improvisation to improve the recipe. I would recommend this recipe for a family get-together, when you have a few hours to prepare.

Traditionally made with pounded flank steak, which is from the side/belly (flank) of the cow. (Incidentally, flank steak is the best meat for fajitas: seasoned with salt, cr. bl. pepper, chipotle powder/cayenne pepper, and cumin; grilled to medium over charcoal and mesquite chips/chunks; sliced against the grain into thin strips; that is "fajitas".) Unfortunately, the growing popularity of flank steak in the U.S. has driven up prices (economics 101: Obama should pay attention to grocery prices instead of reading Karl Marx and FDR), and I had this venison backstrap in the freezer (tenderloin is also perfect for this; you could even use a pork loin or tenderloin). If you're into organic, it doesn't get any better than wild-killed venison. Sustainably managed by the state, fed by God from wild grains, nuts, berries, and bugs, and hunted and killed in a humane way by private citizens.

Opening a tenderloin is a trick. Takes practice. That is the only way. If you've ever eaten a flattened, breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, you've probably eaten an opened tenderloin. Start with a 1/4 cut to the side, but not all the way through, lay that out. Then a 1/4 cut to the bottom, lay open. Then 2 more cuts, and the tenderloin is opened like a book with 3 binders. Place it between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and pound the heck out of it until it is of even thickness. Brush it with apple cider vinegar and let it marinate for 4-6 hours.

1 flank steak or opened tenderloin, pounded

1 lg. carrot, quartered, cut into 3-4" sticks

1/2 med. onion, sliced thick

3 eggs, fried well done/over hard in butter/salt/pepper

1 c. leftover cooked spinach

1/2 c. feta cheese, crumbled

salt, cr. bl. pepper, hot paprika/chipotle powder/cayenne pepper, dried

thyme

1/2 c. red wine vinegar

1 c. beef broth (chicken broth o.k.)

About 3 tbsp. butter

About 3 feet kitchen twine

Preheat oven to 400. Saute carrot sticks in 1/2 tbsp. butter over med. until tender and slightly browned. Unroll marinated steak/loin, sprinkle salt and pepper, paprika. Spoon on spinach, then feta cheese. Lay out carrots, in 3-4 rows along the steak. Cut hard fried eggs into large pieces and lay out evenly over carrots, covering the whole steak. Add sliced onion. Top it all off with a little salt, pepper, and paprika. Starting with the edge closest to you, carefully roll up the matambre and tie it with the twine at 2" intervals. Cover all sides with salt, pepper, paprika, and dust generously with twine. If it looks like a mess and it's starting to fall apart, don't worry, my first experience with a rouladen was the same. If you can make it to the pan with it, it will turn out o.k.

Now, brown 2 tbsp. butter on med. in a dutch oven with an oven-proof lid (you can make this in a deep skillet with a lid or foil, or transfer it to a glass oven dish and cover with foil). When the butter begins to brown, add matambre and brown on all sides (about 1" per side). Pour in broth with any leftover vinegar, cover, and roast in the oven for 30". Uncover and reduce heat to 375, roast for 20-25" until matambre is darkened nicely on top. Let it rest on a cutting board for 15" before slicing. If you can't get it out of the pan without it falling apart, just let it rest and slice it in the pan. Serve with pan gravy spooned over the top.

Serves 6

what to do with leftover soup

Tonight, fiesta! The matambre is cooking. Matambre is traditionally a pounded flank steak layered with vegetables, rolled and tied, and roasted in a dutch oven. I'm using a venison backstrap that a friend from church, Bill Durrmann, gave to me ('cause he's the great white hunter, and I'm not).

Anyway, I was thinking of a way to use up leftover soup. I've got some posole from the other day. I decided to drain the meat and hominy and use the 3 cups or so of broth to make a nice sauce.

Leftover soup sauce for meat, etc.:

2 tbsp. butter or evoo
2 tbsp. flour (I used whole wheat for this one)
2-3 c. leftover soup broth (broth only)
salt, cracked black pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan over med. heat until it starts to brown. Add flour and whisk quickly to mix. When roux (butter/flour mixture is called a roux) begins to brown, add broth and spices, if using. Whisk slowly until sauce begins to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring until sauce thickens. Delicious over any meat.

Tomorrow night...a big fiesta meal. Matambre, an Argentinan steak dish with an adobo sauce made from leftover posole. My friend and the guy that originally made the posole (a pork and hominy soup in pepper broth), Arturro Lopez told me tonight that matambre means "kill hunger". Sounds promising. Recipe is an adaptation of one in this month's Saveur magazine. Will update tomorrow.

Leftovers

I've been a dirt poor preacher for a while. Following your passion doesn't always pay as well as you might hope. You should follow your passion, though. It's really the only choice. Anyway, a few years ago, I began to develop an interest in la cucina povera, an Italian phrase meaning, "the cooking of the poor". Probably because I was one of the "povera" throughout time immemorial. One who found that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. Ever since I first ate at Po Folks in Jackson, TN, as a kid, I knew that the real food of this world wasn't found in palaces, but in cabins and shacks.

A paesano approach to cooking is one that considers multiple end results before you even shop for the food you will cook. A recipe beginning with the understanding that this meal will ultimately become more: two or even three meals.

I don't mean reheated lasagna. Although my wife's lasagna is delicious reheated (and you can't make lasagna into anything else...wait a minute, you could...). I mean recycling leftovers into completely new meals. Really good meals. No...delicious, inventive, exciting meals.

This blog is about leftovers. Sometimes cooking a little bit too much for supper and planning on making something else out of the surplus. Nothing new, really. Just what mammas, mommies, nonnas, yayas, nannies, and grandmas have been doing for thousands of years.

A surefire way to save a ton of money. A way to unlock that hidden spendthrift within and let him or her loose in the kitchen. A way to turn a $300.00 grocery bill into a $150.00 grocery bill and laugh about it all the way to the pantry.