Broccoli: A Week in Leftovers

I am not quite sure what happened to last week. I did cook. We did eat. I did think about writing those things down. It didn't happen. Still, not wanting to let perfect become the enemy of the good, let's see what we ate.

Tuesday
We had leftovers of the Mushroom Marsala Pasta Bake for lunch (delish!) and for dinner I made Cream of Broccoli soup from the Joy of Cooking. If I had to recommend one desert island cookbook, it would be the JOC. There are basic recipes for just about anything you can think of, so it's a great jumping off point. The recipe calls for celery, but as I had none and didn't want to go back to the store, I used leeks instead. I doubled the recipe and it fed us lunch for the rest of the week. If you're nervous about cream, use a little at a time until you're happy with the level of creaminess. I grated Gruyere cheese on top as a garnish (delicious and melty) and served a Paratha (frozen, from No Frills) on the side.

Wednesday
Cream of Broccoli soup for lunch, so that worked out nicely if I do say so myself. In hunting for the lone frozen Paratha in the freezer the night before, I found a frozen flank steak and took it out to thaw. One of my favourite things to do with flank steak is Beef and Broccoli (are you sensing a theme?), so we had that. Fortunately, we only required from the store more broccoli.

Beef and Broccoli - My notes:
-Flank steaks are often heavier than a pound, and it's not really something you ask your butcher to...butcher, so aim for a 2 pounder and freeze the rest (label your ziploc with the contents and date).
-If the meat is still a smidgen frozen, it will be easier to slice very thinly.
-This doesn't seem like much marinade, but it's fine.
-I never have Chinese rice wine. I sometimes have sherry, so I'll use that, otherwise I use a combination of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce.
-I never have Chinese black vinegar. I always have balsamic.
-My instincts screamed this is not a sufficient way to steam broccoli. It totally is. Go with it.
-I use canola or sunflower oil as my high heat cooking oil, but you could use peanut too. 2015 is the year I learn the difference between oils!
-I tend to use a wok-ish pan for this dish, which isn't large enough to allow for the meat to spread over just one layer. Don't sweat it. Give it 30 seconds, toss, 30 seconds, and so on until the meat is no longer pink. These are thin strips, so they cook fast.
-D likes extra soy to add at the end, but that's very much to taste.
-We serve with white rice. I love brown rice, but it tends to take more time to cook than this recipe allows. Still, I think brown rice has more texture and flavour, so if you can time it right, by all means use brown. You could also use udon, soba, or rice noodles.

Thursday
I love it when a plan comes together! I had beef and broccoli for lunch, David had soup, and then beef and broccoli for dinner since I was out.

Friday
More soup! And frankly, this is the moment when your interest in any particular leftover wanes, so it was just as well we finished the soup. Given that it was a Friday and it had been A. Week. We decided to have Chinese food for dinner. Might we recommend Danforth Dragon?

Saturday
We were out of soup at this point but I wanted to keep the streak going so I made another one! Melissa Clark is a big part of the NYT Cooking team now, but I first read about her cookbook Cook It Now and instantly had to have it. It's arranged by month and since she's in New York, it really does match the season and sense of what you might want to eat at different times of year. The recipe for 'Fragrant Lentil Rice Soup with Spinach and Crispy Onions' is for February, but given none of the ingredients are hard to find any time of year, it makes for a really wonderful and filling soup.

Fragrant Lentil Rice Soup with Spinach and Crispy Onions - My notes
-Ignore the implied order of cooking and make the onions while the soup does it's final 30 minute simmer. Her method for charring the onions seems fussy, but it does work, so stick with it.
-Speaking of onions, do them all in one go. My tip for preventing onion tears? Wear contact lenses, if you have them.
-DO use the spinach but you can pass on the mint and the lime wedges.
-Another thing I love about this book is she offers her own notes at the end of the recipe, and among them are that the soup itself is really more stew-y, so add more broth if you like a thinner soup. As well, she suggests just stirring the leftover onions into the leftover soup.
-She recommends homemade paratha (and gives a recipe), but I've never been brave enough to try. We buy frozen from No Frills and they are delish.

Sunday
We had Sian's Famous Lazy Eggs Benny for breakfast (recipe coming soon) before we started, gulp, moving our stuff to my mother-in-laws. For a variety of reasons, we've decided to take her up on her generous offer to live there while we figure out our next move. Given that my MIL is a fantastic, albeit slightly sparer than I, cook, it'll be interesting to see how the cooking shakes out. I've already declared my intention to unpack my favourite small kitchen appliances.

And that brings us to today. I've got an amazing Ragu Bolognese on, which I can't wait to tell you about tomorrow.

Sunday Dinner

I grew up in a household where Sunday featured a big meal, either brunch at the Winter Club or a roast for lunch or dinner. Any of my siblings in town were expected to attend, which I only understand now how torturous it must have been to be expected in a jacket and tie for brunch on a Sunday at noon. Like good WASPs, meat and two veg on a Sunday were important to my family and are to this day.

It's taken a long time before I could think about continuing that tradition in Toronto. When I lived alone, Sunday was just another day and I didn't have the facilities, nor confidence, to attempt such a meal. Then when D and I moved in together, Sunday became the night we ate at his mother's, as we continue to do. What I've noticed, among my friends, is that regardless of how old we are, we continue to go to our families on Sundays, rather than them coming to us. As I say, I think part of that is that many people don't have the space to attempt such a gathering. And it's certainly easier, one less meal to plan and a way to see your family to boot.

In her excellent cookbook How to Eat, Nigella Lawson says of Sunday lunch, "One of the silent, inner promises I made myself on having children was to provide a home that made a reassuring, all-comers-welcome tradition of Sunday lunch. It hasn't materialised quite yet, but very few of my generation lead meat-and-two-veg lives any more,". I believe part of why I was put on this earth was to feed people and the idea of having an open invitation on Sundays, particularly for people who don't have family local, intrigues and delights me (D may have a different opinion...). But until we have our own family and Sunday's become more flexible, I'll be thrilled to open my kitchen up on the occasional Sunday to friends.

Last Sunday afforded just such an opportunity, and I knew it needed to be roast beef. The brilliant thing about roast beef is that it takes no effort and not really that much time. I picked up our roast late Sunday morning, thanks to a sale at Loblaws, and had plenty of time to get it on the table for dinner at 5:30. Nigella rubs with dry mustard, but we just used salt and pepper and called it good. The most important beef tip is to make sure you give yourself time to let it rest (about twenty minutes), which is useful particularly if you have a small oven like we do. Important tools here are a sharp carving knife and a cutting board with a gutter to catch the juices. Nigella says English mustard is non-negotiable, so that was a given, plus some horseradish.

The gravy was truly spectacular and I regret that I cannot reproduce the recipe for you here (see this for why) and Nigella doesn't have the recipe posted. But just to taunt you, what's great about this recipe is that you can make it hours ahead of time, and all you have to do before serving is add the beef drippings and heat it up.

Roast potatoes hardly require a recipe, but I recommend you follow Nigella's. Duck or goose fat is easier to find than you might think, either tinned or fresh. Certainly ask your butcher, as it will make ALL the difference. The key here is to not be afraid to get the fat smoking hot. It will be terrifying when you toss the potatoes in, but the results will be delicious. Semolina is well worth the addition too and a bag lasts forever.

It's just as well the Yorkshire pudding recipe isn't available because it flopped on me, and not for the first time. A consult with my mother suggests I didn't get the fat hot enough (our tiny oven created a bit of a staging issue, and it was a race to the finish). My father always used the Joy of Cooking recipe with success, so I would recommend that instead.

But apart from the gravy, I think the piece de resistance was the cauliflower cheese. I just used regular 5 year old cheddar and it was delicious. This too can be made ahead of time and tossed into the oven at the last minute.

My original vision for the evening featured a luscious pudding, but once again I was struck by Nigella's wise words, "Traditionalists will insist on a sturdy pie or crumble for pudding, but really, after all that carbohydrate, have you got room? I am immensely greedy, but I don't like the invasive and uncomfortable feeling of bloatedness that can make you regret eating much more than a hangover can ever make you regret drinking,". Her suggestion was lemon ice-cream, so I just bought a pint of some of Ed's Real Scoop Lemon Gelato, a pint of blackberries, and called it good. It was really refreshing, actually, and I had milk-chocolate digestives to go with the tea.

What's your Sunday tradition?

Chez RosenBum Sunday Dinner
Cheese Straws
Roast Beef (How to Eat)
The Gravy (How to Eat)
Roast Potatoes (How to Eat)
Yorkshire Pudding (Joy of Cooking)
Cauliflower Cheese (Feast)
Lemon Gelato and Berries
Digestives
Port and Sherry