Elegant Life Leftovers: Salade Nicoise

We love leftovers around here but I notice that is not the case at every household.  I think two things make the difference.  First, I plan for leftovers and second, we have a gleeful attitude about them. 

For example one never hears the “Oh, leftovers,” drone in this house.  Leftovers to us mean really good food, already prepared, maybe served up with a new look, maybe not.  The work is done and all we need to do is reheat and enjoy (again). 

As with most slow-cooked meals, an encore of beef stew over rice instead of first-night noodles just gets better the second day.  Last night’s mac 'n cheese side dish takes center stage for a hot lunch with a little salad.  Maybe some cubed ham, roasted red peppers, extra hot sauce or chopped tomatoes make it taste a little different.  I know children don’t care if your work is done but you can overcome their comprehension problems by spending dinner prep time doing something nice with them instead.  On nights when we are serving leftovers and have little extra time, sometimes a baked dessert happens.  What kid could complain about that?

I think the real difference is that our leftovers are planned which is how they become “elegant life” leftovers rather than “what’s that growing in the back of the fridge” leftovers.   I always think of my French host mothers when I cook this way.  Everything tastes amazing and there is little waste.  From time to time I’ll share a few of our favorite planned leftovers in this blog under the banner “Elegant Life Leftovers” starting this week’s Salade Nicoise.

Last night’s baked chicken breasts with green beans and potatoes are the obvious base.  Make a few extra chicken breasts, green beans and potatoes and transform them into something new using roasted tomatoes and a bevy of pantry staples.  Roasting halved plum tomatoes concentrates their flavor and is a nice substitute until summer-ripened tomatoes are available.   I sprinkle them with Herbs de Provence, capers and a little olive oil to prep them for this salad.  Roast them with your chicken and cool them overnight with the rest of your salad leftover ingredients.

Every food writer reminds you that making a vinaigrette is easy and I submit this may be one of the big secrets to leftovers tasting fresher and better at our house. There is a customized recipe below that really suits this salad but if you must, use your favorite bottled salad dressing.  But really, think about making your own; you’ll have the extra 5 minutes.

Elegant Life Leftovers Salade Nicoise
2 breast halves serve 2 for a substantial salad or 4 as a lighter lunch salad.  Leftover tuna or salmon steak also makes a great salade nicoise. 

Ingredients
2 cooked chicken breasts halves, sliced
1 cup cooked green beans
4 cooked eastern potatoes, quartered
2 plum tomatoes- halved and roasted with Herbs de Provence*, capers, olive oil
1/2 small jar roasted red peppers, sliced
4 cups lettuce- bibb is lovely but use your favorite mix including mache, red leaf, oak, arugula, watercress
2 tablespoons black olives, drained (nicoise, kalamata or even plain canned black)
1 can/jar artichoke hearts, drained and quartered if large (marinated or unmarinated)
1 hard boiled egg, quartered
Extras: leftover roasted asparagus or zucchini, fresh dill or parsley, canned white beans, anchovies, button mushrooms, sliced radishes, etc

Method

1. On flat plates, arrange lettuce leaves to cover plate.  Make a “composed” rather than tossed salad by laying out the remaining salad elements in their own beds.  
2. Place the chicken in the center and arrange the other ingredients around the chicken.  
3. Place like colors (tomatoes, red peppers) at opposite sides of the plate and fill in with green beans, light green artichokes and green herbs then add another color: creamy potatoes and beans. Accent with dark black olives, rosy-rimmed radishes and hard boiled egg. 

*Herbs de Provence usually includes dried herbs like thyme, rosemary, margoram and even lavender.  Like most regional herb mixtures there are variations.  You can use any similar combination like thyme, oregano and rosemary or thyme, oregano, black pepper and fresh parsley.

La Vinaigrette
Ingredients
Juice of one large lemon (or 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar)
1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 ounces good olive oil (extra virgin or mixed)
2 teaspoons capers, slightly crushed
salt & pepper

Method

1. Mix lemon juice and mustard together and slowly whisk in oil to form a thick emulsion.  
2. Add capers, salt and pepper and serve immediately. 

You Can't Say Prune

The winner of the fruit re-brand of the decade has to be the prune.  Now cleverly packaged in a single snack portion as a dried plum, the marketing team, like Jack Horner, can pat themselves on the back for pulling out a plum from the sales pie chart.*  I laugh but admire the effort and more, the success of turning this little stone fruit’s dried version from withered, back cabinet stalwart to the juicy darling of backpacks everywhere. 

Having gotten over our fear of dried prunes, I propose we take a second look at the jarred prune.  Drained of its syrup, its wonderful mixed in hot and cold cereals and on yogurt with some wheat germ.   However, its real calling in life is in sauces for pork, lamb and chicken.  Sauces can make a fast meal more satisfying and this low fat, high fiber sauce tastes delicious.  And if you are having company, this sauce is “restaurant level” and can be prepared in minutes while an elegant pork loin finishes roasting in the oven.

Port Wine Prune-er-Plum Sauce
Makes about a cup.
5-6 prunes in syrup, drained
3 oz beef broth
4 oz port wine
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
salt and pepper

1. Remove pits from prunes and dice.  
2. Combine with broth and wine in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until bubbling.  Lower heat and cook 2-3 minutes until sauce has thickened.  
3. Remove from heat and stir in 1 teaspoon (small pat) cold butter. Taste and add salt and pepper.  
4. Add a bit more sweet wine if sauce tastes too beefy.  This is a lightly sweet/savory sauce. 

Note: Red wine with a 1/2 teaspoon of honey or Madeira can be used if there is no port in the house.



Roast Pork Loin
2 pounds will serve four with a nice amount of leftovers for sandwiches or a stir fry.  Double the recipe for a 4-pound roast.
Rub:
1/4 teaspoon each: dried thyme, basil, oregano, rosemary, savory, black pepper, salt. 
1/2 teaspoon each Dijon mustard and olive oil

1. Mix herbs with Dijon mustard and olive oil to form a paste.  Rub over top and sides of loin.  
2. Roast in a preheated oven at 450˚F for 10 minutes.  
3. Without opening oven door, lower temperature to  325˚F and roast 40-50 minutes until internal temp of 155˚F (150˚F if you like the meat a bit pink).  Rest 15 minutes covered before slicing. 

Serve slices of pork loin with Port Wine Prune-er-Plum Sauce.
 


*Little Jack Horner
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said 'What a good boy am I!

I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes ,Oxford University Press, 1951

Sweet Potato Black Beans and Rice

We did not grow up eating fresh sweet potatoes.  The canned variety made an annual appearance under a blanket of bronzed marshmallows at Thanksgiving and not a year went by without leaving me in culinary confusion. What was dessert doing next to my mashed potatoes and stuffing?  (We called it stuffing back then because it was stuffed in the bird.  Now we bake stuffing separately but can’t remember to call it dressing.) Yes, I know the cranberry sauce is sweet too but that is an accompaniment, not a dish of its own. 

The years passed and we all moved around a bit.  Some of my family landed in Kentucky and then North Carolina where sweet potatoes were part of the food vernacular, not reserved for November only.  So when at last fresh sweet potatoes started showing up at our northern supermarkets, we got busy baking them.  We love the small ones that we pierce with a turkey skewer and bake at 400˚F until the flesh just under the skin begins to caramelize.  Lots of black pepper and a touch of salt and butter make this our favorite pork side dish. 

I’ve been impressed by how well sweet potatoes go with all kinds of cuisines.   One of my favorites is a variation on Latin cuisine’s beans and rice.  Sweet potatoes cooked with black beans and tomatoes make a sublime combination.  One of the keys to this dish is cooking the sweet potatoes in the juice from the tomatoes.  It seems to bring up some essential flavor common to both ingredients and creates a tasty match with the beans and spices including Spanish smoked sweet paprika. This is a year-round meal because it can be made from (low-sodium) canned beans and tomatoes and fresh sweet potatoes from the pantry. 

Sweet Potato Black Beans with Rice
Yield: About 3 cups (3 main dish servings, 5-6 side servings)

Ingredients
1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced (1/2” cubes)
1 14-oz can low-sodium tomatoes
1 14-oz can low-sodium black beans
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika (look for a variety from Spain)
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro
1/4 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
Optional: hot sauce to taste
2 cups cooked brown rice


Method

1. Place diced sweet potatoes in a microwavable container with the juice from the canned tomatoes.   Microwave, covered with several small vents , for 4-5 minutes until potatoes are fork tender.  
2. Meanwhile, roughly chop tomatoes and drain beans.  Place tomatoes and beans in a saucepan and add oregano, cumin and salt.  Bring to a boil over medium high heat then lower heat and stir to cook bean and tomato mixture down.  
3. When most of the liquid has evaporated, stir in cooked sweet potatoes and remove from heat.  Add chopped cilantro, pumpkin seeds and hot sauce.  (Sweet potato mixture can be set aside at this point, covered and refrigerated for use within the next 2 days.)
4. Serve perfectly plain over cooked rice with a warm whole wheat flour tortilla or top with extra cilantro, chopped black olives, pickled jalapeños, queso fresco and sour cream.

Note: This recipe is being submitted to the North Carolina Sweet Potatoes Commission Bloggers Contest.

Noodling Around

I used to watch my (great) Aunt Emma make egg noodles.  There was a recipe but it was in her head because, ”It is too easy to write down.”

So I watched and tried to figure it out.  I was seven the first time I saw her make them.  I saw her build a mound of (unmeasured) flour on a wood cutting board and carve out a crater in the center.  I watched her break whole eggs into the crater. Number, unknown.  I think salt arrived around this time. Perhaps a little water too. Again, unmeasured.  She gathered the ingredients up in her strong and boney hands and kneaded a few times.  She rolled the noodle dough out too an impossibly thin and flexible sheet.  She used the tines of a fork to cut thin noodles.  The fork gave her an even cut. The noodles rested on a checkered dishtowel until they were dry enough to add to homemade chicken soup.  I’ve eaten many egg noodles.  Packages ones are not bad.  Yet none tasted like these, slightly uneven in length and so soft and light.  

I’ve never made noodles on my own.  I look at pasta machines and think I will get to that one day.  I look at recipes for noodles, with and without eggs, and know they are not hard to make, especially for a person who has watched my expert aunt.  Still, the quantities seem large and we are a small household so I held off.  I’m not looking for big projects these days. 

Today I found myself with two leftover egg yolks.  I’d just been reading a book of Amish recipes and the one for noodles was easily divisible for the number of egg yolks I had.  I also liked the instructions for rolling out and drying the homemade noodles without a pasta machine.  It did not look like a big deal.  And it wasn’t.

It took no time to combine the four ingredients and roll out the dough to a pretty thin sheet.  Practice will result in thinner sheets in the future.  With the recipe cut down to 1/3, I knew the rolling would be manageable and I’d have just enough noodles for a main course for two.  The sheet of dough dried on a dishtowel for about an hour, turned over once, before I placed it on a cutting board and cut it into thin strips with a pizza cutter.  I used ruler to help guide my hand.  Even though they’d been left to dry for a bit, the noodles were closer to fresh noodles so I boiled them just 2-3 minutes, tasting several as the moments passed.  With homemade noodles, you can really appreciate the al dente stage. 

Although my noodles were much thicker than my aunt’s, there were tender and light.  We ate them in a lemony-sage stewing broth from thinly sliced pork chops.  The texture of the noodles reminded me of the kind of noodle I’ve eaten in Japanese soups.  Pleasantly (but not too) chewy and really flavorful from absorbed broth. 

If we hadn’t eaten all the noodles, I could have dried the uncooked ones completely and stored them in an airtight container for another night or put them in the freezer in single serving mounds.  Next time I’ll try a full recipe.  And one where I get to build a crater for the eggs. 

Homemade Noodles for Two
Adapted from The Best of Amish Cooking by Plyllis Pellman Good, published 1988

Ingredients
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons water
3/4-1 cup flour
large pinch salt

Method

1. In a medium bowl, combine the egg yolks and water with a fork until completely mixed. Add salt and most of the flour.  
2. Mix, first with the fork and then with your hands, to create a stiff but still flexible dough.  Add more flour as needed, a tablespoon as a time.  If the dough is too dry, add a tablespoon of water.  
3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured cutting board and roll out into as thin a sheet as possible. Turn the dough over as needed and sprinkle on a bit more flour to keep it form sticking.  Now try rolling it even thinner.  
4. Slide the thin sheet onto a dishtowel to dry for an hour, turning once.  (If towel becomes too damp, replace it.)  
5. Once dough is dry to the touch, cut thin strips using a knife, pastry or pizza cutter.  There are also multi-blade pasta cutters for noodles.  (If you have one, you are already more experienced than anyone else trying this recipe.)
6. To eat the noodles right away, place them in salted boiling water for 2-3 minutes.  Taste them for the desired consistency.  The thinness of your rolled out sheet of dough will determine how long the noodles take to cook. Drain and toss with your favorite sauce or a bit of butter and chopped parsley.  
7. To store, dry sliced noodles completely and store in an airtight container.  Cook dried noodles as above but for a few minutes longer, perhaps 7-9 minutes.  

Note: My mother recently reminded me that Emma, who frequently called me over while she cooked to show me the desired color, texture or shape of an ingredient, did not step into the kitchen until midlife when family circumstances required that she learn to cook in addition to her full time job.  One of my many cooking heroes, Emma demonstrated that cooking is a skill any of us can master when it is our time.