More Magical Leftover Vegetables

Since the initial post about my magical leftovers ran long enough to test a saint’s patience, I opted to save the remaining experiments for another day.

Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing for Wedge Salad

I had been craving blue cheese dressing ever since I picked up the beautiful head of lettuce in my CSA. I know that it is not the best for me (especially the Serious Eats recipe!), so I ate the first wedge of the lettuce with some light commercial sesame ginger dressing that had been hiding in my refrigerator. The lettuce was fantastic, but the dressing wasn’t that blue cheese goodness that I craved.

So I took stock of what I had in the refrigerator - mayonnaise, lemon juice, buttermilk - and of what I needed to complete the recipe - sour cream, blue cheese - and supplemented my grocery list appropriately. However, on second thought, I couldn’t remember when I had last used the buttermilk. To be safe, I dumped the bottle I had and bought a new one.

Making the Serious Eats buttermilk blue cheese dressing is so simple that I did it at 415am one morning in order to be able to bring a container of dressed lettuce to work for lunch. Although the recipe says to use a whisk, I prefer using a fork to smash the blue cheese and combine the ingredients. A fork works just as well as a whisk - I’ve tried it both ways - and is much easier to clean. Either way, all you do is dump the blue cheese into a mixing bowl and measure the buttermilk, sour cream, and mayonnaise over it. The recipe says to use two ounces of good blue cheese; however, I use closer to six ounces of the inexpensive blue cheese crumbles that are usually on sale at the grocery store. That doesn’t taste as strong or as creamy as the good stuff, so it is pretty much a wash.

Once those four ingredients are combined, all that is left to do is stir in a little lemon juice and season with black pepper. It’s probably best to refrigerate before using so it thickens up some, but I just dumped a bit on my lettuce in a to go container.

Of course, in the interest of time that morning, I did not make a full on wedge salad. I actually did have two different types of bacon in my refrigerator - precooked and need to be cooked - but I forgot to prepare that the night before. I also forgot to buy tomatoes to chop for the salad, even though I love them with the blue cheese dressing. Although my dad makes awesome quick pickled red onions for the wedge salad, I’ve never tried to follow that part of the recipe. I’m always just so eager to get to my salad!

Tagliatelle with Champignon Sauce

Almost as soon as I thought of this idea to use up the extra mushrooms, I had been craving tagliatelle with champignon sauce. However, the momentary craving for baked ziti after my cider works adventure won out - probably because baked ziti is quick and simple, and this recipe is time consuming and complex. So I couldn’t make the tagliatelle until after all the leftover baked ziti was gone.

Unfortunately, by the time I had finished the leftover baked ziti, the mushrooms leftover from my party had turned. But I really wanted the tagliatelle, and I had all the other ingredients, so I just bought more mushrooms specifically for this recipe. The only challenge would be to find the energy to make it after work.

Happily, right before the holiday, my executive director decided to kick everyone out of the office early and my trainer decided that his day was too much in flux to work with me that evening. So I left the office shortly after the executive director came by, swung by the local cider works to take home a cute baby growler, and arrived home with plenty of time to make the tagliatelle.

My first (and last) attempt at this recipe was to recipe test the Kristen Kish cookbook that I had received from Blogging For Books. So that time I went through the trouble of making homemade pasta. Thanks to the gift of time from the executive director, I should have been able to make homemade pasta again. I had the flour and eggs that I needed. However, I also had good pasta in the refrigerator. So I decided just to focus on making the sauce.

As soon as I started making the sauce, I remembered how tedious it was. First, two pounds of white mushrooms had to be sautéed to the point of weeping and then left to drain for twenty minutes. Naturally, I bought sliced white button mushrooms so that I didn’t have to go through the drill of quartering them. But I still had to sauté them in three separate batches so that I wouldn’t crowd the mushrooms! As each batch was finished, I dumped it into a colander in my sink so that the excess water could drain off. When the last batch of mushrooms was turned into the colander, I started a twenty minute timer.

Once the mushrooms were drained, back into the pan they went for a second sauté, the purpose of which was to bring them to a lovely golden brown. I did that, but that was about the last thing I did by the book. I completely skipped the pearl onions and the shallots (cutting about eight minutes off the cooking time). Not because I wanted to get done faster, but because I didn’t want to deal with the fussiness of blanching the pearl onions and chopping the shallots. I freehanded minced garlic from a jar and roughly measured dried thyme from another jar. That’s what I had on hand! I wasn’t about to make another trip to the grocery store. Of course, I did open a bottle of inexpensive red wine to use in the sauce and almost finished off my dry vermouth into it.

Once the wine and vermouth had basically evaporated, I added the chicken stock. I could have substituted a different kind of vinegar for the red wine vinegar - I had several different ones - but I just skipped it instead. It took about another fifteen minutes for the stock to reduce to the point that I felt comfortable adding the heavy cream. That took about fifteen minutes to get thick enough to coat the back of my wooden spoon. At some point during the cream reduction process, I dropped the pasta into a very large pot of boiling water and let that cook for a few minutes.

I’d like to say that I timed the pasta and the sauce perfectly, but I didn’t. My sauce was waiting on my pasta! That’s probably better than the other way around. I was a little concerned about how it would taste because the sauce was still thin after I added twice the amount of creme fraiche called for in the recipe. But it was so good! The sauce had an excellent flavor to it, and was much lighter than an alfredo cream sauce. The mushrooms had some substance to them still, which I really enjoyed, It was so good that I debated going back for seconds, but I knew that I had served myself a fairly large portion to begin with, so I refrained. And it was good that I didn’t because I was then able to enjoy the pasta for a few more meals that week.

Fennel Minestrone

I checked my three-quarters of a fennel bulb on the weekend, and it was still in awesome shape. So I would definitely be having fennel minestrone for dinner that evening. Since the heat wave had broken and the weather had turned cooler, it wouldn’t be unbearable to be in the kitchen this evening.

Fennel minestrone is a fairly straightforward recipe: dry sauté the fennel seed, sauté onions and garlic in olive oil, sweat that with the fennel bulb and spices, simmer in chicken broth, simmer with white beans, serve. I’ve made it several times, including an Atkins friendly version for a team dinner at my house several years ago. There isn’t a whole lot of fennel bulb in the soup - you aren’t chewing a lot of the stuff - but what there is of the fennel bulb really gives a nice flavor to the broth. I was actually kind of looking forward to having it for dinner.

Did you know that soup can get burned? Have you ever known someone who did? Well, you do now! My fennel minestrone was cruising along just fine. I toasted the fennel seed without burning it. I got the onions and garlic to a nice translucent light brown while I was chopping the fennel bulb. I lowered the heat before covering the vegetables to sweat. I even tossed the pot multiple times while sweating to keep the vegetables moving. And then I opened the cover of the pot…and the bottom was black! I had actually managed to burn soup!

Never fear, I kept a level head. Rather than risk scraping burnt bits into the mix as I deglazed the pot, I just grabbed a slightly larger pot and dumped whatever would fall out. I dropped the burnt pot in the sink (with some soap and water) and tried to carry on like nothing had happened. I lowered the heat even further, added the chicken broth and chopped tomatoes, and left that to simmer for thirty minutes. During which I took a tactical pause and fixed a drink! That was my second major kitchen faux pas of the day and I needed to collect myself.

Once the timer for the simmer barked, I added the white beans and reset the timer for ten minutes - just long enough for the beans to warm up and impart some of their starchy goodness into the broth. At the end of it all, the pot of soup looked good, but how did it taste?

By this point, I was actually hungry. So I immediately ladled out a bowl of soup and dug into it. Not smart. All I tasted was scalding hot liquid. I might have actually burned my tongue. Wisely, I decided to let the soup cool off in the bowl for a few minutes while I looked for some bread (no luck) or wheat pitas (also no luck) to satisfy the need for starch with my meal. When I got back to the bowl, it was finally cool enough to taste something. The broth was really good! Nice strong fennel flavor, with none of the acrid notes that I would have expected from my misadventure in sweating the vegetables. Overall, I was quite happy with it - and even happier that I had almost a full pot of it to cover me for the next few days.

The Verdict

I really enjoy getting creative with leftover food, especially if I can prevent waste due to spoilage. I know the right thing to do is to not overstock in the first place, but that’s really hard when I’m planning a party and worrying about whether everyone will get enough to eat. Not that I’ve ever run short, but every so often I do come close!

The Recipe

Fennel Minestrone
Smells terrific on a winter day, and is much lighter than you would expect

6 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
1 white onion, coarsely chopped
~1lb bulb fennel (anise), coarsely cubed
2 leeks, thinly sliced
3 tsp fennel seed
cracked black pepper
1 qt chicken or vegetable broth
1 28oz can diced tomatoes
2 15oz cans cannellini beans, well rinsed
1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni (optional)

1. Toast fennel seed in dry soup pot. Remove and coarsely crush with mortar and pestle.
2. Heat olive oil in soup pot over low heat. Sauté garlic and onion until translucent.
3. Add fennel bulb, leeks, and fennel seed. Dust lightly with cracked black pepper. Cover tightly and sweat until soft, approximately 10 minutes. Toss occasionally to prevent sticking.
4. Deglaze soup pot with a little chicken broth. Add can of tomatoes. Rinse tomato can with chicken broth and add to soup pot.
5. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Set aside if not serving immediately.
6. If desired, cook macaroni al dente in a separate pot. Drain well, rinse off excess starch and drain well again.
7. Add cooked macaroni (if desired) and white beans to soup.
8. Cook for another 5-10 minutes. Serve warm, with a little Parmesan if desired.

For an even lighter version, substitute one shallot for the garlic and skip the onion, leeks, tomatoes, beans and macaroni. Skip Step #1. Add two green apples, peeled and cubed, at Step #3. Skip Steps #6 through #8.