Roasted Savoy cabbage (and what to do with the rest)!

I really felt like eating cabbage today and was met with 2 reasons why I shouldn't buy one. The first is that my husband doesn't really like cabbage unless it is in coleslaw and the second is that I always seem to throw out half a cabbage about a week or so after I first used it because I didn't get around to doing anything else with it. These reasons aside I bought the most glorious Savoy cabbage ever! It was beautifully curly with rich, dark green leaves on the outside which I knew were hiding crunchy yellower leaves inside!

My idea was to do something new with the cabbage for dinner to see if I could get hubby on board with liking it and then turn the rest of it into coleslaw which I know he likes and means that I don't risk having to throw away any unused cabbage down the line!

We were having prime rib for dinner and I decided that baked sweet potatoes and roasted cabbage would do perfectly with it, and they did! Roasting cabbage has never been easier! I cut it in half through the stem, then cut one half into 4 pieces which I thought looked like good serving sizes. I lined a tray with foil and drizzled olive oil over it then laid the cabbage pieces down. They then got a drizzling of olive oil and some salt and pepper on them too. I am sure they would be glorious even if you just stopped right there.

Because I had been sealing my prime rib roast in some hot olive oil prior to putting it in the oven, I decided to use some of that oil over the cabbage instead, to add some extra flavour. The cabbage leaves sizzled as I drizzled the hot oil over them!

They then went into the oven at 335degrees for just over an hour. This is not exact science and I am sure you can cook them at a really high heat for a short period of time or moderate heat, whatever you like, I just had the oven really low because I was cooking prime rib medium rare.

Roasted cabbage is amazing! Even hubby loved it! The outside leaves go so crisp they are almost like chips (very like kale chips if you've ever had them) and the rest of it was so sweet and melt in your mouth. I love this. I will do this again in a heart beat! I ate one and a half pieces, which technically is close to a quarter of a cabbage, and you would be hard pushed to eat that much any other way!

I turned the remaining half cabbage into coleslaw really quickly. I grated 2 carrots into a tupperware, added half a Savoy cabbage finely sliced, the juice of 1 lemon, roughly 1tbsp rice vinegar, 1/4 cup ceasar dressing, 2 tbsp mayonnaise, 1 tbsp honey dijon mustard and some salt and pepper to taste. The ceasar dressing gives a lovely garlicy punch and the honey dijon a gentle sweetness cut with the tartness of the lemon. You could add more or less mayonnaise parts to lemon/vinegar parts depending on if you like creamy coleslaw or not. It was a win win situation all round tonight for me because hubby decided that it was the best coleslaw he'd ever had too!

Zesty chicken and mango salad.

I don't have a photo of this salad because I ate it for lunch at work but hopefully you can get by without one. This salad was so powerful and beautiful with brilliant colours and vibrant flavours!

I used the flesh of one nearly all the way ripe mango, so it was still a beautiful orange colour just not soft and gooey. It was fairly finely chopped into strips.To this I added a small sprinkling of finely chopped red onion (I wanted the flavour contrast but I am not a huge fan of onion breath!), a cut up grilled chicken breast that had nothing on it but salt and pepper, some cilantro and some blue cheese crumbled bits. I mixed it all together with a few mixed green leaves and dressed it with a mixture I put together of thai sweet chilli sauce (sweet, hot, garlic), rice vinegar and fresh lime juice. 

So, this salad had only 6 ingredients (if the mixed greens count as one and the dressing doesn't count), ranging from soft and sweet, to light and fragrant with pockets of heat, fresh citrus and salty blue cheese. It was an amazing combination of flavours, colours and textures. I actually made everyone taste it to see how yummy it was! And it was very filling with all that protein, veggies and fruit!

Left over pumpkin/pumpkin pie filler?

One of the biggest tasks facing the owner of left overs is how to make them into something new and interesting. I think some people lack the motivation to re-create or just do not like left overs full stop. I am one those weird people that doesn't like to eat the same thing 2 times in a row so if I did have left overs they would have to wait for a day. Or have been doctored to be different enough.

I have some pumpkin pie filler in the fridge, left over from the cheesecake that I made on the weekend and I was waiting for an idea to present itself. This morning, I put it in my oat bran porridge and it was one of the most delicious versions of porridge that I have had. You would have to be using plain oats obviously as other oats are already sweet enough (or too sweet in my opinion). I heated up a few heaping dessert spoons of it in the microwave then added my hot porridge and mixed it all in. The spice was just right and the pumpkin added such a great flavour and colour, it was an amazing way to start the day!

If you have regular pumpkin your options are broader than the sweetened version. I would go for using it to cut mashed potatoes either as a side or on the top of a cottage/shepherd's pie, or in a risotto, or even in the recipe I wrote about a while ago that was for a butternut squash and coconut lime rice. Awesome addition to baby food. Or in a good old soup, similar to the one I wrote about in my first blog entry almost a year ago now!

Thanksgiving potluck

9 of us and a dog gathered for Thanksgiving potluck on Mon. It was the perfect combination of the finest food and company to remind us what we are most grateful for, family we were born into and family that we chose (friends).

There was so much food that I couldn't get it all in one photo! The buffet line started with mashed red skinned potatoes with garlic and sour cream (and some left over tzatziki), brussel sprouts sauteed in pancetta and onions with sherry and balsamic vinegar, quinoa stuffing with leeks.mushrooms and sausage, baked cauliflower with a tri-cheese crust, steamed corn (cut straight from the cob in mid Summer and frozen in all it's glory for this occasion), crisp coleslaw with cranberries in it, home made cranberry sauce (with wild cranberries) and the bird! Cooked in a bag, think it took about 2 and something hours to cook a 16lb bird this way. I wasn't convinced when I first heard the idea but it does work, the bag catches all the juices conveniently for you too and the meat doesn't dry out. I went to carve it and it pretty much fell off the bones! Only thing you don't get is crispy skin, so if you are a fan of that then you have to compromise for the speed and neatness, or just go about it the old fashioned way!

We rounded up dinner with the maple/pumpkin cheesecake and a ginger/pecan crust and a traditional home made pumpkin pie. And then the turkey coma set in...

Gluten free stuffing!

One of my other contributions to the pot luck lunch for Thanksgiving is stuffing. Seeing as one of the party goes gluten free and I try to avoid it, and because I love quinoa, this seemed like the way to go!....leek, mushroom and sausage quinoa stuffing. The recipe idea comes from good old Quinoa 365 but has been doctored a little.

I quartered and finely chopped a leek and started it frying in some olive oil in a medium sized pot. On top of that I added 2 sticks of finely chopped celery and about 8 cremini mushrooms chopped. Once this had fried a bit, I added about 1 1/2 cups of quinoa and maybe 3 cups of chicken stock. I was meant to add savoury and a bay leaf but in their absence I added a generous pinch/pinches of basil, thyme and rosemary and a few shakes of Worcester sauce, salt and pepper! I put the lid on and let it cook away on a low heat until the quinoa was almost cooked, about 10minutes.  Add liquid as needed, if needed. Turn the heat off and let it sit for another 10minutes.

In a frying pan I fried until brown the meat of 3 sausages. I chose traditional British banger style ones, though mild Italian would be good too or even a breakfast sausage. Just split the skin with a sharp knife and take the meat out of the casing and break it up with your fingers as you drop it into the pan. Fry it until it is brown. Then I took it out and finely chopped it on a cutting board and added it to the rest of the stuffing with a few generous knobs of butter (tbsps x 3 or 4). I made it today and mixed it all together and am letting it sit overnight so that the flavours infuse and hopefully tomorrow it will taste even better.

It is a really good option for stuffing being gluten free and full of protein. It can easily be made vegetarian by using vegetable stock and no sausage. It could also be eaten on it's own as well as it is so filling and wholesome, but I am looking forward to paring it with turkey and letting the richness of the pork and herbs compliment the turkey meat.Yum!

Pumpkin/maple cheese cake on a ginger/pecan crust - Happy Thanksgiving!

Once again, it has been a while. I received an email from my cousin and dear friend today saying that she was about to give up checking my blog because I may never write again! That was motive enough. Poor excuses to follow; long working hours, not home for dinner, nothing of interest to write about......

It is Thanksgiving this weekend and I am going to Megan's for a potluck dinner which she and I basically had planned weeks ago and have been looking forward to ever since! Needless to say there will be a full report on the actual dinner itself, but for now, a little on what I have been working on in anticipation of it.

Dessert has to be pumpkin related that goes without question. Tis the season. And while the typical pumpkin pie is tempting, I decided to try out a pumpkin cheese cake. A quick Google search brought up a multitude of options so I browsed through them all and came up with a mish-mash recipe that had all the things that sounded good to me.

For the crust I found a packet of ginger snap biscuits (cookies) that had cinnamon in them, they were called Spice Snaps I think. I put 3/4 of the packet in a ziplock bag and beat it with my rolling pin and then rolled it with the rolling pin to turn the cookies into crumbs. I did the same with some pecans, aiming for a total of about 2 1/2 cups of dry ingredient. My cheese cake tin is slightly bigger than the usual one so I had to try and beef up the recipes so that they wouldn't look pathetic at the bottom of my pan. The usual recipe used 1/3cup of melted butter in the crust, I used slighlty more because I was using more crumb matter. I mixed it together and pressed it into the tin and baked it at 350 for 10minutes then let it cool.

I had let 2 tubs (400g each) of cream cheese warm to room temperature for a while so that they would beat nicely. The recipes used pumpkin puree and because I had left it so late there was none to be found and I had to settle for pumpkin pie filler, which is already sweetened. This meant using less sugar in the mixture as it was already half way there. I like the idea of maple with pumpkin so I used some maple syrup and a tiny bit of brown sugar to help it along the way. The recipes used 3 eggs but my eggs were small and I used a little more filling than usual too so I used 4 eggs. I think 3 would be fine. So, beat the cream cheese, sugar, maple syrup, vanilla essence together and add the pumpkin, half a can, which is about a cup. Then you beat in the eggs one at a time. I had also let the eggs warm to room temperature as they are easier to work with like that.

One of the recipes did some fancy marbelling thing with half the mix plain and the other half with the pumpkin so it swirled cream and orange coloured. I put pumpkin in it all and then added even more pumpkin (another half cup roughly) to the last cup of mix to make it richer in flavour. My marbelling skills were not up to par but you could tell there were 2 parts to it at least.

The cheese cake baked at 350 for 55minutes. I had a dish with water in the oven at the same time to keep the air moist in an effort to stop it from cracking. Note 'effort'. There were still some cracks but not too bad. Your cheesecake should wobble in the middle when you take it out because it will continue to cook for quite some time once it has come out of the oven and you do not want a dry cheesecake.

I made the cheese cake last night and today I decided it was due a taste test before it went round to be presented at lunch! I love the ginger and pecan in the crust, it is a deal maker! I think there was too much butter in it, but then it could just be that I am not used to eating rich foods anymore and noticed it. The cheese part was smooth and beautifully flavoured with pumpkin and spice, not too sweet, and you could tell where the marbelling was because it was a different texture. Very rich, but you should expect that with any cheesecake. I am very happy with the outcome. I will serve it with a vanilla/brown sugar whipped cream tomorrow, not that it needs any more richnes to it but it will look pretty!