Croque monsieur

When my mom was visiting last weekend, she bought me cheese, one block of which was some emmental. That made me think of grilled cheese sandwiches, so I went to the store to buy some bread. And then I decided that I wanted to make a croque monsieur, which involves ham (didn't have) and bechamel sauce (have never made before). Not one to be daunted by something as little as not having an ingredient, I used salmon pate (also courtesy of my mom) in place of ham. And then I looked up some recipes for bechamel, and it didn't seem that hard. In the end, it was a success! Deliciousness.

So the first task was to grate some cheese. Ok, grate a lot of cheese.


Then, I made the bechamel. It was hardly a traditional sauce, as I went for the kind with an egg in it, and you're supposed to just use the yolk, but I didn't have any immediate uses for egg whites, and I hate wasting food, so I just beat the whole egg and used that. I also put a bunch of garlic in the sauce. It made everything taste garlicky, which was a good thing. And the final change was that I didn't add any nutmeg - I didn't have any.

Bechamel (Alex's version...)
Made ~3/4C?

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
~3/4C milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic, minced.

Mince the garlic. Melt the butter in a saucepan (or frying pan, if you're me). Once its melted, add the garlic, and cook that for just a little bit until it smells delicious. Add the 2tbs of flour all at once, and whisk until its smooth. It should be a thick paste-like substance now, with a couple lumps of garlic. Add the milk, and whisk some more. The milk thins things out, but then you cook it for another couple minutes (less than 5), and it thickened up again. Take it off the heat, and season with salt and pepper, tasting.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add a little (~1/4C) of the hot bechamel to the egg to temper the egg, then add the egg-bechamel sauce back to the larger quantity of it. Whisk some more. Done! Set aside until you're ready for it.

Melt the butter.

Add the flour and whisk - it turns into a thick paste.

Add the milk, cook for a bit, and when it pulls away from the bottom of the pan, its thick enough.


Meanwhile, spread your salmon pate (or ham, if you're being all traditional - I think ham would have been better in this position than salmon pate, honestly) on one side of the bread. Mustard would be good here, too. Put some cheese on the other half, and close into a sandwich. I ended up taking off some of the cheese shown here, because I ended up making two sandwiches, and didn't feel like grating more cheese, so had to share the cheese.

Butter a baking dish, and put your sandwich(es) onto it. Spoon the bechamel over the top, nice and thick and gloopy. Top with more grated cheese, and bake for ~15 minutes at 400F.

After 15 minutes of baking, turn your oven to broil, and check every minute. Once the cheese is brown and delicious-looking, its done. Pull out the sandwiches.

Yum. One of these bad boys filled me up quite nicely after a 2hr run this morning...

To continue with the non-traditional way of making things, I topped the sandwich with avocado. Avocado makes everything taste even more amazing, because avocados are awesome.


Leftovers heat up nicely in a toaster oven, to get that crunchy crispy cheesy top again.

Pecan Pie

I have never made a pecan pie before, and since I know that they're not good for you, its probably not a good idea to make one and leave it sitting around, where I'll end up eating 4000 calories of pie over the course of a day. I kid you not, they're heavy duty. And DELICIOUS. So, I figured, why not experiment on Leo and Jenny? It might turn out to be a total flop and never set up, but then we can pick out goopy pecans from the filling and eat the pie crust on its own, Leo and Jenny are those sorts of people. My sorts of people. But in the best case scenario, it'll all work! To help with my endeavors, I followed a recipe. Sort of. I'm just incapable of properly following one of those, but what I did, worked out. The recipe I tried to follow is here. But I've reprinted what I ended up doing.

Maple pecan pie
3/4C maple syrup
1/4C molasses
3/4C dark brown sugar
1/4C white sugar
3 eggs
3 tbs melted butter
1 tbs flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-3/4C pecans

Pie crust for one pie bottom.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Mix everything together except the pecans. Put the pie crust into a greased pie pan. Put the pecans in the crust, and pour the filling over the top. Bake for 1hr, until it puffs up, and a tester comes out clean. Let it cool a bit before you try and eat it, or it'll be runny.

Hearty turkey lentil stew

I was going to just make a lentil soup, today, but then I realized that I could totally put turkey in it. Still not nearing the end of the turkey leftovers, which have now migrated to the freezer. Anyway, this is quite glop-ish, but, its tasty and warm and fairly comforting, if you're at the end of a cold, rainy, exhausting December day.

Lentil glop stew
Made lots and lots, but that is because I put lots and lots of veggies into it. Basically three huge servings

~1/2C dry lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
1C turkey stock
1/2 broccoli
1/2 zucchini
1/2 eggplant
a bunch of mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1/2 green pepper
1C chopped kale
olive oil
1 bay leaf
salt
pepper

Start by putting on a pot of brown rice. This is a very brown-rice-appropriate sort of meal. Yea hippies!

Put the lentils, turkey broth, tomatoes, and bay leaf into a pot and bring that to a boil. Once it boils, lower the the heat to a simmer.

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, cook all the veggies. Once they're as done as you like them (i.e. cooked, but with some bite, still), pull that pan off the heat, and taste the lentils. Salt and pepper them, and if they're done, dump in the veggies, and serve. If they're not done, wait. (instructions for how to make lentils: cook until done).

It took about 20 minutes, total.

Enjoy with rice, or bread, or just on its own.

Turkey Thai curry soup

Yup, more turkey leftovers posts! In this one, I make a curry. With lots of lime and cilantro. All the other stuff that goes into it is optional, but I recommend going heavy on the veggies, it tastes better and is better for you. Pretty much everything in this recipe is optional except the curry paste, coconut milk, lime, and cilantro. So, go wild...

Turkey Thai curry
Made about three servings

1 can coconut milk
~2tbs Thai red curry paste (I have some Thai Kitchen brand kicking around, used that)
1C turkey stock
1 lime
~1C cilantro
~2C chopped, cooked turkey
1/2 jalapeno
2 cloves garlic
a bunch of mushrooms
1/2 broccoli
1/2 eggplant
1/2 zucchini
1/2 green pepper
Oil
Salt

Heat some oil in a big frying pan. Chop the garlic and the jalapeno, and throw those in. Chop all the other veggies into bite sized pieces, and throw it into the pan, but reserve about 2 tbs of chopped cilantro for garnish. Once its all in the pan, add the coconut milk and curry paste - taste as you go with the curry paste, you might not want that much if you don't like spicy things, but the more you add, the more it tastes like curry. Also, its not on the ingredients list, but I highly recommend putting in some fresh ginger, too. Zest the lime, and put the zest into the curry. Add the turkey broth and the turkey, make sure everything is mixed together, and let it simmer away for 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are at a state where you like to eat them.

Once the veggies are cooked, pull the pan off the heat, and serve over a heap of rice, or just in a bowl as a soup, garnished with some cilantro. Squeeze lime juice over the top. If you want it more soupy, add more turkey broth, if you want it more curry-like, add less broth.


Also, use all your leftover veggies tomorrow, in the hearty turkey lentil stew.

Creamy turkey en croute

Yup, we cooked a turkey, the smallest one we could find (at 13 pounds) for three people. Because Jenny doesn't eat turkey. Needless to say, we have lots of leftovers.

mmm, so good at the time, so not-good as leftovers. But that's referring to the cold type of leftovers. This is totally transformable. I think my hatred of sandwiches extends to cold turkey breast.

We also had some leftover pie dough, enough for one pie. I thought about making another pie, but Ed took the pie dough and made little mini-pie-crust-things, and we put a leftover turkey mixture into those. Actually quite delicious! I will call it, turkey en croute! Sort of.



The shell was a blind-baked pie crust. Roll it out, and cut into squares, I think they were ~4" per side. Stuff those into a greased muffin tin, poke a bunch of holes (with the tines of a fork) into the bottom, and bake them at 350F for ~15 minutes, until they're golden brown. You'll end up with pretty little cups for putting filling into.

Creamy turkey filling
Made enough for four hungry eaters

Olive oil
~2C leftover turkey (white or dark), cut into bite-size or smaller chunks
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
~1/2C turkey stock (optional?)
~1/2-1C greek yogurt
salt and pepper, to taste
~2 tsp rosemary

We happened to have some greek yogurt, so that is what turned into the creamy part of the creamy turkey filling. Greek yogurt is awesome, by the way - tangy, thick, and almost (if you squint your eyes) good for you. Buy the full-fat stuff, by the way, it tastes better. We got ours from the greek place, which means its definitely full fat.

So, heat some olive oil, toss in the onion, add some kosher salt, and let that sizzle away for a few minutes. Add the rosemary and let that sizzle until things smell like rosemary. Add the garlic, toss it around until it smells fragrant, then add the other veggies and the turkey stock. Cook those down until they're basically done, taste one to see how crunchy it is. Add the turkey, toss it around until its warmed up, then pull the pan off the heat and stir in the greek yogurt and some pepper. Taste, and adjust the seasonings as needed.

Lump some creamy turkey into the pie dough shells, and serve while warm. Its delicious!

Nachos!

I'm not sure if I've ever made nachos before. The premise is pretty simple, cover tortilla chips with grated cheese and heat until the cheese melts. But I've always preferred the chips that have way too much stuff on top, sort of like my overstuffed burritos, so just chips and cheese isn't going to cut it. Then there is the consideration that tortilla chips are the best calorie-per-dollar food you can get, which doesn't put them in such a good light in terms of healthiness. I wanted something goopy and cheesy and warm, though; its been a rough week and weekend. I experimented with making some oven-toasted corn tortillas, and those worked well as chips - no deep-frying necessary. And then I loaded up an entire dinner's worth of food on top of those, with a ton of cheese, and voila! nachos. Alex-style.


Nachos, Alex-style
Made enough for definitely more than one Alex

~1/3lb ground beef
3 tbs Alton Brown's taco seasoning
1 red onion
1 clove garlic
some spinach
6 corn tortillas
1 can black beans
1/2 block of cheddar
1/2 avocado
1 jalapeno
~1/4C salsa
~1/4C olives (kalamata in this case)

Preheat your oven to 400F. Meanwhile, set a pan on your stove, and turn it up to medium-ish. Dump in the beef (I used ground sirloin, and it was durn tasty). Add the garlic, half the onion, and the taco seasoning. Let that cook away, stirring occasionally to break up the beef.

Take your six tortillas, stack them, and cut them into wedges. I cut each into eight wedges. Spread them on an ungreased baking sheet, and bake for ~10 minutes. Take them out when they're crispy and just browning around the edges.

Once your beef is done, add the beans, stir that around for some flavor, and put it all in a bowl. Dump the spinach (maybe two handfuls) into the pan, and stir that around until it wilts thoroughly.

Grate the cheese.

Put your "chips" into a smaller baking dish, so that they're a bit overlapping. Sprinkle on the rest of the onion, the chopped jalapeno, and the olives, and cover with a couple spoonfuls of salsa. Cover that with the spinach, and some (probably about a third) of the beef/bean mixture. Put the grated cheese all over that. Put the entire concoction back into the oven, for another 10 minutes or so.

Dice the avocado. I only ended up using half of it, but the whole thing would have been scrumptious, as would have been some cilantro. Alas.

When the cheese is melted and a little brown on top, your nachos are done. You can eat them straight out of the pan, or attempt to transfer them to a plate. Sprinkle with the diced avocado, and enjoy!

Yes, this is how I like my tortilla chips - loaded. Also, yes, I was eating dinner in front of my computer. This is not a rare happenstance, unfortunately...

Rosemary pecans and cranberries

One of the things in my giant Trader Joe's care package from TNC when I left was a pack of these rosemary pecans and cranberries. They were delicious, and I figured they couldn't be that hard to replicate, so, I went ahead and experimented. I think it worked out, although I overcooked them by about five minutes. Basically, you just melt some butter and sugar in a frying pan, add rosemary, let that cook for a while, throw in the pecans and cranberries, toss around until they've absorbed all the fat, toss with some kosher salt, and bake for 10 minutes. Deliciousness!

Rosemary pecans and cranberries
Made about two cups
~1C pecans, chopped
~1C craisins
~1tbs rosemary, dried
2 tbs butter
1 tbs sugar
~2tsp kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Melt the butter in a frying pan with the sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the rosemary, and let that cook in the hot fat until it smells like rosemary. Should smell delicious. Add the pecans and cranberries, and stir those around until they've absorbed all the fat. It should take less than 5 minutes. At some point, sprinkle with ~2tsp of kosher salt. Once there is no longer anything left on the bottom of the pan, dump your fruit 'n' nuts on a baking sheet. Shake it a bit to spread the mixture evenly, and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the mixture is mostly dry. You don't want to overbake, as the cranberries will get hard, and the nuts will taste burned. No good.

How do you eat this deliciousness? Sprinkle on salads, on mashed sweet potatoes, eat them as a snack, heck, I put some in my oatmeal. They're crunchy and caramel-y and rosemary-y. A good combination.