A week's worth of good old-fashioned home cooking

If home cooking is like this...

I cooked a roast beef the other day - just a cheap eye of round, cooked rare - and I left it out overnight by mistake. As the kitchen is fairly cool this time of year and it didn't look or smell bad, it's dinner tonight. And here's real-life home cooking in action: I sauteed some onion in a bit of oil, added a little tomato paste and cooked another couple of minutes. Next in the pan was some leftover turkey gravy - the kind from a packet and itself on the verge of going bad - along with a cup of water and a beef bouillon cube. I brought it to a boil, then seasoned it with a little thyme, nutmeg, and black pepper until it tasted good, added the beef and a very old pork chop, both sliced thin, and it's cooking away. I think it will taste good; let's hope it doesn't kill us. To accompany, leftover green beans (with browned butter and almonds) and probably noodles.

Other meals this week: last night was intended to be penne with vodka sauce. Unfortunately, we had no vodka, and I couldn't find the cream that I am 100% sure I bought on my last shopping trip. So it was penne with vodkaless sauce and a weird salad on the side that only I liked. It was the easiest fennel salad Epicurious listed that contained ingredients I had on hand. It was supposed to be pretty much all white - fennel and celery and fresh mozzarella, dressed with lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I think I'll do it again without the mozzarella.

Earlier this week, I tried a new way (for me) of cooking salmon, that I found on AllRecipes. Marinate the salmon a little while in olive oil, lemon, fresh garlic, salt, parsley, thyme, and dill (if desired), then bake it in the marinade, covered. I found it too lemony and too garlicky, but it was well received by the other salmon-eaters, and I think I'll tweak it and do it again. Very easy.

Isn't home cooking exciting?

Even more turkey...and a real turkey of a meal

I like turkey leftovers so much that I cooked another turkey this weekend. I kept it simple: no stuffing, no fussing. I did put butter under the breast as some recipe assured me that it would make for wonderfully moist breast meat. However, there was no discernible difference in the finished product and I won't bother with that again. I salted the bird, put broth in the roasting pan, threw the neck and giblets in the broth, and put half a lemon and some garlic in the bird's cavity. It smelled wonderful, but again, no discernible difference in the finished product.

Even before dinner, I took all the meat off the bones, threw bones, drippings, skin, and giblets into a soup pot with water to cover, and started cooking the broth (with no additions this time). I even left it cooking overnight (on low), then brought it to a boil again in the AM before I strained and cooled it. I'll make soup with it today.

The next dinner was a "King Ranch casserole" to use up a bag of stale tortilla chips that had been in the pantry a looooonnng time. The recipe was pretty much straight from the Joy of Cooking and the same or similar recipes are on Allrecipes. It was pretty good.

Last night's dinner didn't quite work out, shall we say. I made pork chops with sauerkraut and apples, but instead of just making it the way I thought it should be made, I followed a recipe from Allrecipes that called for a huge amount of brown sugar. I would normally just add a little sprinkle. What the heck, I thought - maybe the kids will like it better if it's really sweet (not really thinking that one kid wouldn't eat it under any circumstances, and the other doesn't even like sweet foods). It was disgusting. I almost never throw food out, but this had to go. Note to self: you do better when you just cook. Forget all the recipes, already!

This doesn't count as cooking

Well, I promised myself to blog about everything I cook, boring though it may be. In this case, it's not only boring but embarrassing. Two nights ago, I opened two cans of Campbell's cream of chicken soup, added some milk, heated it with cooked chicken, added a few seasonings (pepper, nutmeg, fresh parsley), and served it over Pillsbury biscuits that I bought because I wanted to use a BJ's coupon. The peas served on the side had been in the freezer too long. I do get points, however, for poaching a couple of enormous chicken breasts and getting a nice batch of broth out of it.

Last night wasn't much better. London broil that didn't sear properly because I had put Worcestershire sauce on it, baked potatoes (hard to mess those up), and salad from a bag because it was on sale and there was a coupon (which I forgot to use).

Dear readers (if any), this is now going to be more like a reality show than I anticipated.

Thanksgiving and its aftermath

I cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner this year. Most years, I cook sides and we go to my parents' house, where they make the turkey, and my youngest brother bakes rolls and pies. This year, that brother and his new bride could not come until Sunday, hence the dinner at my house, with my dad and sister in attendance.

I was excited for the chance. I made up a pretty menu and a cooking schedule for the day, which worked well except for the turkey seemingly taking longer than it should have, the result of my never investing in a real meat thermometer and the little pop-up not popping up. It didn't matter; it was a traditional meal and the turkey was overcooked in the traditional fashion.

It being well after Thanksgiving now, I'll just share what I thought was the most successful recipe: the best sweet potato casserole I've ever made. I got it from Allrecipes, but made some small changes. I only made half a recipe, but I'll give you the larger amount.

Classic Sweet Potato Casserole
5 sweet potatoes (no size given in original - I used 4 small ones for half a recipe)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp heavy cream
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Bake sweet potatoes until fairly soft (this can be alongside the turkey). Cool slightly, then scoop them out into a large bowl and mash them.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.
Mix the mashed sweet potatoes, salt, first 1/4 cup butter, eggs, vanilla, spices, white sugar, and cream. If you use an electric mixer, the strings from the sweet potatoes will wrap around the blades and will be easy to remove and discard. Put the mixture in the baking dish.
In a medium bowl, combine the softened butter, flour, brown sugar, and pecans. Mix with a pastry blender or your fingers to the consistency of coarse meal. Sprinkle over the sweet potato mixture.
Bake about 30 minutes, until the topping is crisp and lightly browned.

Now, what do you like to do with the leftovers? I like the leftovers so much that when we don't have T-day dinner at our house, I always cook a turkey a few days later so that I can have leftovers.
I like turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce and cole slaw. This year, I put a little stuffing on the sandwich, as I had seen on restaurant menus, and it was delicious (it was a sausage stuffing, very well seasoned).
I always make broth from the carcass and use it for a mushroom, leek, and barley soup.
And I love to make James Beard's turkey hash recipe from the stuffing, although I don't use anywhere near as much butter as in the original! Here's what you do (I'm not looking at the recipe so it may be wrong in some major or minor way): saute some onion, garlic, and green pepper in butter. Add cold leftover stuffing and turkey and cook it until it is hot and soft. Mix in some almonds and black olives (yes, you heard me), then pour in some heavy cream (or half-and-half if you don't want to overdo it quite that much). Cook it down a bit, stir in some parsley, and serve. Sometimes I leave out the olives and almonds, but this year I had some around and they are good in it, even though I don't like canned black olives. Both are better sliced than whole in this.