Shaking Beef

One of our favorite dishes at Newport Seafood is Shaking Beef (Beef Loc Lac). It is a great Vietnamese Dish. We have made it many times. When it is served you can squeeze Lime Juice over the meat and sprinkle with Salt. You can find the recipe on our blog of: June 28, 2018. Click the date to get the recipe. If only we felt comfortable eating out during this Pandemic Newport Seafood would be one of the first places we go to.

 

Risi E Bisi

The first fresh Sugar Snap Peas were in the market. That always means Rici-e-Bici. We love this dish. It is like a a cross between a thick soup and a Risotto. It is delicious.  You can find the recipe for this perfect spring dish on our blog of: March 31, 2014. Click the date to get the recipe.

Orecchiette Carbonara with English Peas and Pea Shoots

Now that is Spring in Los Angeles, we can again enjoy Peas! A wonderful recipe is Orecchiette Carbonara with English Peas and Pea Shoots. We use the recipe from the book Sunday Suppers at Lucques.  One advantage is the peas don’t have to be shelled. The tips of the peas are cut off and then the pods with the peas inside are sliced in ½ diagonal slices. It is very easy. The pasta recipe is delicious and can be found in our blog of: April 28, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Long Cook Brocollini

We grilled a steak. With it we made our favorite mashed potatoes: Garlic Mashed Potato, the  recipe is in TheBalthazar Cookbook by McNally, Nasr, Hanson. This is a fantastic recipe - it is super-rich! We were amazed that it reheats perfectly in a double boiler. The trick on mashed potatoes is to use a Ricer - which is fun. It makes a far smoother mashed potato. Because of the Pandemic, we didn't have any garlic in the house, so we just left it our. The potatoes were still great! You can get the recipe on our blog of: November 12, 2012. Click the date to get the recipe.

We started with home baked Faccacio Bread. We purchased the unbaked dough from Cookbook, you can actually freeze the dough. This barely counts as cooking, to bake the dough, but it sure is good! We made a new recipe for us: Long Cooked Broccoli - it was excellent. The weather was warm, we ate outside and enjoyed the sunset.
We ate the leftover steak, it was wonderful.

Alice Waters’ Long-Cooked Broccoli

1-1/2    pounds broccoli

¼          cup olive oil

6           garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

Pinch of dried chili flakes

A few good pinches of salt

1           cup water

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 to 4 tablespoons grated parmesan or pecorino cheese, optional

To prepare the broccoli, cut the florets into small pieces. Trim the ends off the stems. Peel the stems with a paring knife and thinly slice.

In a medium pot with a heavy bottom, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the broccoli, garlic, chili flakes and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes, until the garlic is very fragrant. Add the water and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to maintain a bare simmer, cover the pot, and cook, stirring occasionally until the broccoli is very tender and falling apart, about an hour. You may need to add more water if the broccoli starts to dry out. After an hour or so, stir vigorously with a spoon to create the texture of a coarse purée. Stir in the lemon juice and zest and the cheese if using. Serve as a bed for grilled fish, shellfish or chicken, as a side dish, mixed with brown rice or pasta, or as a topping for crostini.

Spinach and Gorgonzola-stuffed Baked Potatoes

It was a nice night so we ate our leftover steak on the patio, with the great Spinach and Gorgonzola-stuffed Baked Potatoes. This a delicious baked potato recipe. We always make a few extra and freeze them. It is easy to defrost and reheat. Al fresco dining at its best. You can get the recipe on our blog of July 5, 2019. Click the date to get the recipe.

Singapore-Style Ham Fried Rice

Another use for our left over Ham: Singapore-Style Pork Fried Rice (substituting Ham for Pork). We love Fried Rice in all of it myriad forms! This is another good one to make! We sure are getting a lot of use out of the Ham!

Singapore-Style Pork Fried RiceFood Network

Ingredients

2       tablespoons vegetable oil

1       large egg, beaten

½      pound ground pork

Kosher salt

½      cup diced red bell pepper

¼      cup shredded carrot

¼      cup diced red onion

2       teaspoons Asian fish sauce

1       teaspoon curry powder

1       teaspoon minced garlic

1       teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

3       cups cold cooked long grain white rice

2       tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet or wok over high heat and then swirl in 1 tablespoon of the oil. When the oil begins to smoke, add the egg and swirl the skillet to make a flat egg pancake that's only half set, about 10 seconds; scoop out onto a plate.

2. Add the pork to the skillet, sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring constantly and breaking up any clumps, until brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer to a bowl. Add the remaining tablespoon oil, then add the bell pepper, carrot, onion, fish sauce, curry powder, garlic, ginger and 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are crisp-tender, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Add the rice, stirring to break up any clumps, and spread it out in the skillet. Cook until heated through, about 3 minutes. Return the egg, pork and any juices to the skillet and cook, stirring and breaking up the egg, to mix it in thoroughly, about 1 minute. Season with additional salt if needed. Stir in the cilantro and serve. 

Chicken with Skillet-Charred Cherry Tomatoes with Basil

I saw a recipe for Skillet-Charred Cherry Tomatoes with Basil. It was the simplest recipe ever, but boy I new it would be good! Since we had some Cherry Tomatoes, I was in luck. I reheated the Chicken and topped with the sautéed tomatoes. Perfect, evn though we didn't have any Basil in the house.

Skillet-Charred Cherry Tomatoes with Basil

Food and Wine

Chris Cosentino remembers charring tomatoes when he was a line cook under chef Mark Miller at Red Sage in Washington, DC. "Mark always said, 'It needs fleck,' " Cosentino says, referring to the blackened bits on the skins. "The fire brings out the sweetness in the tomatoes." 

Ingredients

1           tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2-1/2    pints cherry tomatoes

24         squash blossoms (optional)

¼          cup small basil leaves or chopped basil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

How To Make It

1. Heat a 12-inch cast-iron skillet over high heat until smoking, 5 minutes. Add the olive oil, tomatoes and squash blossoms and cook until the tomatoes are lightly charred and about to burst, 3 minutes.

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2. Off the heat, stir in the basil. Season with salt and pepper and serve right away.

Two More uses for Left Over Ham!

I made a Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich on our Panini maker. It was excellent. I was in luck, we had frozen Brioche Bread from our local great bakery - Proof Bakery. The secret to the crispy sandwich (besides the Panini was coating the outside of the Bread with lots of Butter, use a good strong Mustard and too completely be cross cultural, I sliced Bubbie's Kosher Dill Pill Pickles and placed them on the ham before grilling!

We also made Ham and Lentil Soup from the left over Ham. This was an excellent rich soup. We got a lot of use out of the Ham!

Ham and Lentil Soup Recipe

Culinary Hill

This Ham and Lentil Soup recipe is perfect for chilly weather and cooks up in about an hour; all you need is a loaf of French bread for a cozy winter’s feast. Put your leftover ham to work and make it on the stove, in a pressure cooker, or in your crockpot!

Soup has many superpowers: it warms us up, helps heal us when we are sick, and soothes the savage beast when we’re crabby with hunger.

Maybe that’s why so many people insist that they can’t make a decent soup, because it’s too tall an order to make something that is so good for you, and that can do so much.

Maybe that’s why the grocery shelves are stocked with so many cans of soup, none of which hold a candle to the real thing: made-from-scratch hambone lentil soup.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s totally, completely possible to make a delicious homemade soup with little more than a smoked ham hock and some lentils. If you make this lentil soup recipe, you’ll probably never buy another can of soup again. It’s that good.

I’ve always believed that the best soup in the world is the one you make yourself with basic ingredients. If you’ve got lentils in the pantry and a leftover hambone from the holidays, put it to work in this simple, completely satisfying soup.

This ham bone and lentil soup is perfect for the stove, the pressure cooker, or the crockpot, depending on what you want to use. All the instructions are included down below in the recipe.

What kind of lentils for hambone soup?

I recommend any variety of whole lentil for this recipe. Look for a green or brown lentil for making ham and lentil soup.

How Do You Cook Lentils?

Compared to other dried legumes, lentils are easy to prepare. There is no need to presoak lentils, and they take much less time to cook than chickpeas or beans.

I’ve written a how-to about lentils, if you care to explore this easygoing member of the pulse family; I love adding cooked lentils to almost everything!

For making hambone and lentil soup, cooking lentils is just a matter of adding the rinsed lentils to the cooking liquid and simmering until they’re tender. Pre-rinsing is super important, to remove any dust or grit, and to get rid of any pebbles that may have snuck in with the lentils.

Ingredients

1       tablespoon olive oil

1       cup carrots sliced (2-3 carrots)

1       cup celery sliced (2-3 stalks)

1       large onion chopped (2 cups)

8       cups chicken broth

Dry mustard to taste

1       pound dried lentils picked over, rinsed, stones discarded

1       meaty ham bone or ham hock

How To Make Ham And Lentil Soup In A Dutch Oven On The Stove:

1. Heat olive oil in the Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering.

2. Next, sauté carrots, celery, and onion until softened, about 5 minutes.

3. Stir in the broth, water, lentils, ham bone, spices, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil then simmer for 45 minutes, until lentils and ham are tender.

4. When the lentils are cooked, remove the hambone and the bay leaf. Cut the extra ham off of the bone, chop it up, and return it to the pot along with any additional ham you might be using.

5. Finally, season the soup to your taste with salt and pepper and garnish with parsley, if desired.

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Rigatoni Modo Mio (Pasta with Cauliflower and Ham

We had a serious amount of leftover ham. Cathy found this recipe for Penne or Rigatoni Modo Mio (Pasta with cauliflower and ham) in Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook. It was perfect! I love cauliflower and we had lots of delicious ham. It was a perfect use of some of the leftover Ham. You can find the recipe on our blog of: May 7, 2014.  Click the date to get the recipe.

We started with The Hungry Cat Salad. Hungry Cat, the restaurant, has closed - we continue to make their Salad. I like the avocado, egg and lemon juice. It is a great salad. You can read about why it is called The Hungry Cat Salad on our blog post of: November 21, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

Ham & Turnip Gratin

Because of the Pandemic, we wanted to order meat that would give us lots of leftovers. The Bourbon and Honey Glazed Kurobuta Ham, sure fit the bill. It was giant, and we had all kinds of things we could make with the leftovers. Snake River Farms is a great resource for ordering meats.

We had ordered a box of vegetables. In the box were turnips. We made a great Turnip Gratin that was a perfect side for the Ham.

For dessert Cathy baked a favorite of mine: Chewy Date Bars, they are fabulous. You should make them! You can find the recipe on our blog of: December 1, 2018. Click the date to get the recipe.

Bourbon and Honey Glazed Kurobuta Ham

Snake River Farms

Ham makes a beautiful and elegant centerpiece for any holiday meal. Be prepared though, the aroma of this lightly smoked, deeply flavorful Kurobuta ham, slathered in a honey-sweet, bourbon-infused glaze might bring your dinner guests to the table before you even get it out of the oven.

Ingredients

1       Kurobuta Small Half Bone-In Ham (about 6 lbs)

½      cup dark brown sugar

½      cup honey

1/3    cup orange marmalade

1       cup, plus 2 tablespoons bourbon

¼      teaspoon ground cloves

¼      cup Dijon mustard

Directions

1. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and heat the oven to 325°F.

2. Using a sharp knife, score surface of ham with 1/2-inch deep cuts in a 1-inch diamond pattern.

3. Place the ham in a large, rimmed baking pan, cover tightly with foil and bake until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the ham registers 130 degrees F, about 1 hour, 30 minutes (about 15 minutes per pound). 1 hour, 30 minutes

4. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine brown sugar, honey, marmalade and 1 cup bourbon.

5. Bring to boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has thickened slightly, about 5 to 7 minutes. (To test, drop a small spoonful on a small clean plate. Let sit for a couple of minutes to cool. If you can run your finger in the glaze and leave a clear trail behind, it’s adequately thickened.) 5 minutes. 5 - 7 minutes

6. Remove the ham from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 475°F. Reserve 1/4 cup of the glaze. Brush the ham all over with half of the remaining glaze. 5 minutes

7. Bake, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Brush the ham all over again with the remaining half of the glaze. Bake, uncovered, for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the ham is browned. Remove from the oven. 15 minutes

8. In a small bowl, stir together the reserved 1/4 cup glaze and remaining 2 tablespoons bourbon. Brush all over the ham. Let stand for at least 20 minutes before slicing. 25 minutes

Turnip Gratin

Food Networks

Ingredients

2           pounds turnips

3           cups heavy cream 

2           thyme sprigs 

1           head garlic, cut in half along the equator 

¼          teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 

Salt and pepper to taste 

1-1/2    cups shredded white Cheddar cheese 

Parsley leaves, for garnish 

Directions

Special equipment: a mandoline

Thinly slice the turnips using a mandoline. Set aside.

For the custard: In a medium saucepan over medium low heat, combine cream, thyme, garlic, nutmeg, and salt and pepper. Bring to just below a simmer and cook until thickened slightly, 6 to 8 minutes.

To assemble: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a 2-quart baking dish, add a thin layer of custard to cover the bottom. Then add a layer of turnips followed by a layer of cheese. Repeat the process of layering until all of the ingredients are used up, making 3 to 4 layers. Cover with foil and bake 45 minutes. Uncover and continue to bake until turnips are fork-tender with a golden crispy crust forms, about 15 minutes longer. Garnish with parsley and serve.

My Kind of Leftovers!

We had leftover Steak. We had frozen Potato Pancakes (Latkes) from our Chanukah dinner. We also had Foil Baked Carrots, from our previous dinner. This made for an easy dinner. All leftovers. All great. Potato Pancakes are the best!
I had purchased a dozen of them from: Wexler's Deli in Santa Monica. I will do it again next year. I love Potato Pancakes but don't like the clean up from the splashed oil! We ate some for Chanukah, gave some to Bea, and froze the rest, having no idea they would become Pandemic fare.

Steak with Fresh Broccoli

We had leftover Steak and Mashed Potatoes. With the leftovers we decided to try a new dish: Roasted Fresh Broccoli with Garlic, Lemon, and Parmesan Cheese. We liked it, very easy and perfect accompaniment for our dinner.

This is my kind of dish. Simple to make and very tasty, I loved it!

Roasted Fresh Broccoli with garlic, lemon, and Parmesan Cheese

Erren's Kitchen

Serve this delectable recipe for anything from holiday dinners or just as a simple side for everyone will love! This simple, yet delicious twist on one of our favorite vegetables is the perfect side dish for almost any meal.

I love this recipe so much that I’ve started creating similar recipes with other vegetables but I’ve tried it with asparagus and cauliflower too!

Why This Recipe Works

Cooking broccoli in high heat, caramelizes the outside, creating crispness and a sweet, nutty flavor. The crisp caramelized outside of the broccoli contrasts well with the tender inside of the florets. 

The nuttiness of the roasted garlic and broccoli combined with the saltiness of the cheese and sour lemon is a fantastic’

How to Make Roasted Broccoli:

broccoli.

Perfectly Sliced Garlic

Toss the garlic on the broccoli and drizzle with 5 tablespoons of olive oil. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper.

Roast about 20 minutes, until crisp-tender and the tips of some of the florets are browned.

Remove the broccoli from the oven and immediately toss with a bit more olive oil, the lemon zest, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese.

Serve and enjoy!

Low Carb, Keto-Friendly

This roasted broccoli recipe has approximately 4g of Net Carbs making it perfect for anyone cutting carbs or following a low carb diet.

How to Choose The Best Broccoli

Look for bright green broccoli with firm , strong stalks.

Avoid woody Stems this will turn out hard and chewy when cooked.

Don’t purchase broccoli with yellowing florets. Yellow is a sign that it is gone past the stage of desirable texture.

Choose broccoli with compact clusters in the florets. The more open the florets, the older it is.

for Perfect Roasted Broccoli

Don’t skimp on the oil (even if it seems like a lot), season well, and make sure your oven is hot before adding the broccoli.

On washing your broccoli: After washing your broccoli, be sure to dry it thoroughly.  The drier it is, the more it will crisp up. 

For crispy results: If you want even crisper broccoli, try flipping it halfway through the roasting. It’s a time-consuming task, but it crisps on all sides. 

Short on time?  Make this dish even quicker by skipping the fresh garlic and replace it with garlic powder or you can do it simply with just olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Cooking for kids?  I don’t know about your kids, but I have one that won’t eat anything that even resembles being burnt.  This recipe does get quite crispy, so you may want to keep an eye on it and cook according to taste.

Variation:

For more texture, try mixing the cheese with breadcrumbs and a little olive oil and sprinkle it on top before roasting.

Let’s Make

A delicious side dish that’s quick and easy to prepare and makes a great accompaniment to meat, poultry or fish.

Prep10 minutes

Cook25 minutes

Total35 minutes

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Cut the broccoli florets from the thick stalks, leaving an inch or two of stalk attached to the florets, discarding the rest of the stalks. Cut the larger pieces through the base of the head with a small knife, pulling the florets apart. You should have about 8 cups of florets.

Place the broccoli florets on a sheet pan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Toss the garlic on the broccoli and drizzle with 5 tablespoons olive oil. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper.

Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, until crisp-tender and the tips of some of the florets are browned.

Remove the broccoli from the oven and immediately toss with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, the lemon zest, lemon juice, and Parmesan.  Serve hot.