January Round-Up

WARNING: PICTURE HEAVY

Lest you think the last half of January was all about dessert and bread, I made a couple of pasta dishes this past weekend. I had 4 hot Italian sausages (~3/4 lb) in my freezer, along with most of a 2 kg bag of shucked clams. I was going to combine them in a tomato sauce to serve over pasta, then decided to go with a simple sausage/broccoli olive oil and garlic sauce instead. Then I changed my mind AGAIN and did both. The sausage/broccoli (I also added some fennel seed and dry red chili pepper flakes to the sauce) was served over rigatoni pasta. I combined half of the meat mixture with 1/2 pound of the clams and ~1 1/2 cups of a jarred Classico tomato and basil sauce and served it over fettuccine. If I’d had another couple of sausages, and another stalk of broccoli, I would have added it to the pan.

Great meals but not exactly needing a recipe write up. 🙂

And there were some odds and end meals like this prime rib (from my British Christmas menu) on a pretzel bun with roasted potato wedges, onion rings (bought frozen) and Caesar salad.

The last pork tenderloin (1 lb) in my freezer was cut up and turned into pork souvlaki and pork vindaloo. The souvlaki was served on couscous with roasted sweet potato while the vindaloo was served over basmati rice with chickpea curry.

I was tempted by a sale on boneless skinless chicken breasts and bought six which I turned into cutlets and a bunch of chicken fingers.

   

The cutlets were individually wrapped and frozen away. Some of the chicken fingers ended up in buns as sandwiches while a few more were part of a more complete meal. A couple of lamb shoulder chops (from a package of 6… I can’t resist a sale) were marinated with chimichurri butter and roasted for another tasty meal.

A couple of meals featured eggs. The chorizo cornbread with giblet gravy came out of the freezer. In the 2nd meal, a more traditional breakfast, the sourdough starter pancakes also came out of the freezer as did the last of the bacon. A bit of mango added fresh fruit to a diet that’s usually lacking. 🙂

I’ve got some Stilton cheese left over from my Christmas supper so I played with an idea for a cheese puff/gougere ring which could be cut in half and filled with chicken/turkey or shrimp/crab salad. Unfortunately, the ring ended up resembling a relatively flat pull apart gougere ring. Next time, I’ll add another egg to the choux pastry, spoon the choux pastry much close together or smoosh it together into a round. Still, the gougeres tasted good, especially eaten with some of the sparkling wine from New Year. I had enough wine left in the bottle to toss about 1/2 cup into the earlier sausage/clam tomato sauce I made this past weekend. But that was sheer coincidence, not good planning on my part.

I made a batch of lemon curd early in January to use up some softening lemons from my fruit crisper drawer and, between the tarts (leftover pastry from the mincemeat tart bake), the sweet cream puffs filled with whipped cream mixed with the curd and just spooning it over ice cream, it’s all gone now.

I think that about covers my January.

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