Dinner Redesigned

“May you live all the days of your life ~ Jonathan Swift

Most restaurants in the UK don’t have “doggie” bag, as taking home restaurant food is seen as a bit gauche in many places outside of the U.S. It’s an American Puritan idea, eating everything on one’s plate, and not wasting even restaurant food which is somewhat of a luxury. It’s also a ridiculous euphemism, as most of us just eat the portion belonging to the alleged “doggie” for lunch the next day… Anyway, if you’re lucky enough to be at a restaurant that also does take-out, they’re perfectly willing – though admittedly confused – to box up your leftovers and let you take it with you.

On our weekly jaunt to the Big G, we take advantage of the cheap and excellent tapas at Cafe Andaluz or the specials at Sarti’s. This week we miscalculated hunger vs. time in which to eat, but were lucky enough to take one entree away with us. A lovely stuffed pepper gave us instant inspiration for supper the following night.

At home, we had leftover brown lentils, seasoned only lightly, and added chopped fresh green onions. We added the pepper stuffed with the very luxurious ratatouille made traditionally with tomatoes, garlic, onions, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, marjoram, basil, and thyme. There seemed to be some sort of a creaminess to it that we couldn’t account for – maybe from a randomly added carrot? Maybe just tons of olive oil? Who knows – it was amazingly good. We added black pepper and a bit of grated sharp cheese – a dry Parmigiano would have been great, but we only had white cheddar – and tucked it into a leftover bit of pastry from the freezer. Thirty minutes later, we had a really tasty meal.

(ASIDE: Does anyone make their own ratatouille at home? We’re going to need to work on perfecting our own – this was a better one than we’d had in a restaurant in a long time. One reason possibly was because the pieces were cut into bite-size bits, yet nothing was overdone. The other may have been that it had clearly been drained after simmering, so it wasn’t watery, and was somehow both creamy and not oily. The Complete Robuchon advises each vegetable be sauteed separately for best results; we’ll have to experiment and see if we can recreate this…)

We, like so many other of our friends, are still using up stuff from the freezer from the holidays. The great January tradition of “first footing” (which starts officially at the New Year, but really just carries on throughout the holidays) means that drop-in visits from friends are fairly common. When you have people come over and tell you, “oh, we didn’t get around to having lunch,” and you get to put together a meal in just a few minutes, shortcuts like frozen dough and Tesco’s store-brand (surprisingly – far tastier and well and away less expensive than Quorn) frozen veggie chicken filets are really nice to have, and were happily on special. Because it is much more common in the UK to eat a meat main course with some kind of jam — mint with lamb, various cuts and cookings of beef with … er… various jammy things — around the holidays there were some great prices on preserves, too, including our favorite French and fruit-juice sweetened jams from St. Dalfour.

St. Dalfour has some imaginatively weird flavors for their spreads – kumquat, royal fig, cranberry/blueberry, raspberry/pomegranate, and pineapple/mango. Clearly, not every one of their blends is a hit (cran/blue tastes to us like cough syrup), but D. rather likes their marmalade, so when T. saw marmalade with ginger, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

It ….er, wasn’t. Not on toast, anyway. Nor did the orange and ginger match well with peanut butter in a sandwich (although, inexplicably, ginger and peanuts go perfectly well in Thai food). It went slightly better with cream cheese – the bite of the ginger somewhat ameliorated, allowing the flavor of citrus peel to come through – but it was not winning a lot of friends at our house. Somewhat miffed at this, it languished in the fridge, until T. determined to use it in a savory application. The first jar found new life on a crock-pot baked gluten roast, which was baked atop apples and onions — very tasty.

The second jar graced us last night for an impromptu dessert. T. took some old and not-very-sweet blueberries — far too early to have any flavor, but bought on a desperate I-need-summer impulse — combined them with leftover container of half-fat créme fraiche, added the harshly flavored jam, and tucked it into the other half of the pastry crust, and — voila, and wow. The ginger shards softened under the influence of the blueberries; the créme fraiche set up as a light custard, and the berries – tasteless and drying out from having sat in the fridge – plumped, taking on the ginger and citrus flavor, and somehow becoming creamy and toothsome, and, dare we say, “moreish?” (We had to say that – our friend Jac says it all the time, and it always makes us smile. All food has certain elements of “more-ish-ness,” but desserts… well, they’re more moreish. That’s just how it is.)

All of us create the most mundane alchemy in our kitchens on a daily basis, combining and recombining basic ingredients into surprising magic. Though we’ve been marginal food bloggers for years – granted, since the move to Scotland and the whole PhD thing, it’s been much less food, and much more “Oh, my goodness, Scotland,” — it’s funny how it often doesn’t occur to us to really blog about the “normal” things we make. Eh, crock pot roasted gluten? Meh, that was just Tuesday dinner. Roasted broccoli with pumpkin seeds and toasted sesame? Our usual side on Fridays. A great sandwich with shredded carrots and Moroccan mint hummus and slivers of apple and cranberry studded cream cheese? Red pepper pesto stuffed celery? Well… that was just lunch on a regular weekday. We only just remembered to take a picture of these “rustic” (READ: Slapdash) pies because we’re once more trying to pay careful attention to the food that we eat, and make it memorable in flavor and appearance and be sure it’s worth the calories expended. Part of living “all the days of your life” is taking the time to actually look at what’s before you. So, we hope to remember now and then to look more closely, and to share what we’re looking at with you.

This rustic pieces baked beautifully. Next time we’ll let the savory one brown up a bit more – but we were quite proud of it, as it looked a bit like something one could get in a restaurant with a bit of radicchio and curly endive on the side. The peppers, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes just merged so harmoniously with the lentils– and had unusual flavors and textures as well. It was, in a word, yummy.

We ate all the lentil pie in one go, but prudently divided the smaller blueberry dish into four pieces, so we’ll have another piece tonight while T. has her writing group, and D. sits and finishes the last of his dissertation corrections – three more days on that. T. is actually planning to seek out those less popular St. Dalfour jams, and see what else she can do with them. Really – kumquats. What don’t they go with??

Until next time we dig through the leftovers…