The Good Plate

Archive for the ‘Sandwiches’ Category

Recipes in this Post

• Curried Egg Salad Open-Face Sandwiches

I have a very good friend who said to me once, “Does everything with you have to be gourmet?” and I said, nonplussed, “Yes!”. Why do you have to go to a restaurant when you can make gourmet food at home, for a fraction of the cost! I was reminded to this today when I started to make egg salad sandwiches for lunch, and decided to make this a Curried Egg Salad Sandwich.

Probably, one of the reasons I can do this is because I have a good pantry, a good spice rack, and I’m not afraid to try new foods. That means I usually have good curry powder in the spice rack, and Major Grey’s chutney in the refrigerator. I have to watch the chutney, though, because Spane likes to eat it by the spoonful, right out of the jar.

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The past few days have been full of left overs. That’s a good thing, and a good way to save money, but you have to get creative.

When I made the Veal Marsala Meatballs, I made enough to freeze some for another time. Spane and I were at the market on Thursday, and I was thinking of making enchiladas, but Spane didn’t seem to enthusiastic about it, so I asked him if he wanted spaghetti and meatballs, and he said yes.

I had everything I needed to make it, the veal meatballs, a large can of diced tomatoes, basil and garlic. The only thing I needed to make a good meal was a baguette of French bread to make garlic bread to go with our pasta, so I bought a long baguette. It was large enough that I cut it in half and made my garlic butter, intending to make another half on Friday. I bought some large frozen shrimp to have on Friday.

I served the meatballs separately from the pasta, and we ate all of those, and the garlic bread. There was still spaghetti and sauce left over. I had made enough garlic butter for both halves of the bread, and had left the left over in the refrigerator.

I took some of the garlic butter, put it in a pan, and heated the shrimp in that garlic butter. By doing that, I didn’t have quite enough garlic butter for the other half of the baguette, so I added a little olive oil and balsamic butter, whirred it around, spread that on the bread, topped it with a little Parmesan cheese, and threw it in the oven for a few minutes.

We ate all the shrimp Scampi, and all the spaghetti and sauce, and were a little to stuffed to finish the garlic bread.

So, now I had left over balsamic garlic bread. Today, Saturday, was cold and rainy, so soup sounded like the perfect meal. Originally, I was going to make macaroni and cheese as an excuse to turn on Bertha, but grilled cheese sandwiches sounded like a better idea.

What kind of soup could I make and use up the left over garlic bread? Why French Onion, of course. That is such a simple soup to make, and is really fool-proof.

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Recipes in this Post

• Three Pepper Spicy Meatloaf
• Cowboy Salad

A lot of people don’t like meatloaf. I don’t blame them, I hated meatloaf as a child because it was bland and the only thing that was even a tiny bit tasty was the dried ketchup on the top. That all changed when I went to dinner with a friend who raved about the meatloaf and Cowboy salad. I tried it, and I was a convert.

What made this meatloaf different was that it was spicy, and it had little pieces of vegetable inside. I loved it. The restaurant is long gone, but the meatloaf is here to stay.

Of course, the best thing about meatloaf is the sandwiches the next day. Some people heat up the meatloaf, some people, like me, do not. For me, there’s nothing better than a thick slice of cold meatloaf on a slice of crusty sourdough bread, slathered with mayonnaise.

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Recipes in this post

• Curried Chicken Roll-ups
• Cucumber Tomato Salad

It’s Been a Hard Time

It’s been hard on me since Spane was diagnosed with Dandy Walker Syndrome. I seem to think about nothing but that, I don’t want to clean my house, do laundry, cook, etc. I’m way behind. But, today, things are getting a little better. Things are looking up.

I love to find bargains. Last Wednesday night, after coming home from the Emergency Room after 8 hours being there, and being starved, I stopped at Ralphs and got one of those rotisserie chickens. Spane didn’t feel like eating, I ate some of it, and so there was a lot left. So, tonight when I was thinking about what I could make on a hot night, I thought of that poor chicken sitting in a bag in the refrigerator.

We went to the local vegetable store and got some tomato and these lovely, long Persian cucumbers. I have never seen them so long and big! The Italian plum tomatoes were large, too, and ripe and really red and juicy. When I asked about bread, the proprietor pointed to the Lavash¹, and I thought that would be perfect for roll-ups.

Recipes

Curried Chicken Roll-ups

Ingredients

1 cup chicken, cooked, bones and skin removed
2 tablespoon spring onion, sliced
1/2 cup flat Italian parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon good curry powder
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 leave Romaine lettuce, whole
1 slice Lavash¹

Directions

You can easily do this by hand, and just mix the chicken, onion, parley, curry and mayonnaise together. I put mine in a food processor and pulsed it four or five times until the mayonnaise was thoroughly incorporated.

Take the slice of Lavash¹ and cut it half through the middle. On each piece, put two leaves of lettuce, and then put half of the chicken mixture. Start rolling up the sandwich at the lettuce side, tightly.

When you have made both roll-ups, you can cut them on the diagonal or cut them into smaller slices for appetizers. Each half is more than enough for one person.

Cucumber Salad

The Persian cucumbers are the best for salads. They are crisper, more flavorful, and have a thinner skin than the regular cucumber you buy in the market with their waxed skin. Find Persian cucumbers in Mediterranean markets.

Ingredients

– Salad –

2 Persian cucumbers, 1/2 inch sliced
1 Roma tomato (or two if they are small), sliced or large dice

– Dressing –

1 teaspoon good French mustard (NOT yellow mustard)
1 teaspoon Spicy Globe Basil ²
1/4 cup Red Wine vinegar
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive oil

Directions

Get a bowl and put in on something that will keep the bowl from moving when you are whisking. If not, find someone to hold the bowl (a child is a good choice).
Put the mustard in the bowl, with the leaves, and mix. Add the vinegar and mix thoroughly.
Now, take your whisk and slowly start adding the olive oil, a slow, slow drip, all the while whisking (see, how helpful that child is?). When the oil and vinegar have emulsified, you can put the dressing on top of the cucumber and tomato and chill until ready to serve.

Enjoy!

¹ Lavash is a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flat bread. It is best served the day you purchase it as it dried out very quickly.

² Find out more about Spicy Globe Basil, and plant some in your garden.

Turkey burgers should be moist, and well seasoned.  There is nothing worse than a flavorless, dried out burger,  I don’t care how much mayo you put on it, it’s still nasty. Turkey burgers are one of my favorites, and I just can’t stand it when they are not cooked property.

A lot of people use Worcestershire sauce for regular hamburgers because it makes them flavorful and moist. Well, it’s a little over powering for turkey, but, the Lee and Perrins does make a wonderful alternative, White Wine Worcestershire Sauce.  Quite often I have found this wonderful sauce hard to find at my local super market.  It seems not that many people know about it, and it is my mission here to help them find out!  This sauce is essential to making really good, moist turkey burgers with good flavor.

The other essential thing, I think, is dehydrated onions.  Burgers and dip about the only things that I use dried onions for – usually I chop them by hand.  However, dried, minced onions go wonderfully in burgers, why?  Because they are small so they won’t break up delicate ground meats, and whilst absorbing liquid in the meat, they impart subtle flavor.

A long time ago, the Spice Islands brand used to make something called Herb Pepper – it was great, but like all things too good, they are soon off the shelf.  It took me a while, but I finally figured out the substitute was Herbs de Provence and freshly ground pepper.  Herbs de Provence is a famous French herb blend of savory, rosemary, basil, marjoram, wild thyme, lavender.  It is a great herb with chicken, fish and is essential for my brined Turkey in a Nesco with Injection and Rub.

If you are going to make this, let me suggest mushrooms sautéed with shallots and sherry in butter? A good bun for this is a potato bun as it has a delicate flavor. 

Enjoy and happy cooking!

Red Moon

Recipes in this Post

• Star Party Sandwiches

Last night we went to a Star Party. No, I don’t think there were any celebrities there, just amateur astronomers with their telescopes on the lawn at the Griffith Park Observatory letting the public have a chance to see the rings of Saturn, and the moon up close and personal. If you have not been to the Griffith Observatory, I highly recommend it.

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