Cooking the Blog

We've worked our way through a few recipes from Three Squares this week and I thought I'd include my own two cent's worth, now that I've actually cooked the blog.

1. The Serious Eats Leftover Meat Salad
Let me tell you. This was seriously spectacular, and I had it ready, kind of, in 30 minutes. Now, I cheated a bit. I used steak, leftover from last night. I threw some dried dark red kidney beans in my little crockpot last night and let them stew till morning on low. That's right, no presoaking, no salt, no nothing. Well, I used a bay leaf. They were divine. So the steak and the beans were ready when I walked in the door. I had leftover homemade vinaigrette (with a standard 1:3 vinegar to olive oil ratio plus a little mustard) I quickly chopped a red onion in half, then sliced it thin and threw it in some olive oil with a little salt and oh, maybe a teaspoon of brown sugar. Those cooked on medium high for about 25 minutes, till brown. Once that was on, I flipped on my toaster oven, strolled out to my potager and grabbed five tomatoes, all perfectly ripe. They were sliced in half, thrown on a small baking tray, dowsed in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roasted till runny and sunken. Oh, divine, and I HATE tomatoes. The whole thing was thrown together along with some chiffonaded basil and pine nuts. I didn't even bother to toast them. SERIOUSLY spectacular, quite possibly company good, especially with a loaf of crusty bread. Especially if the steak were hot off the grill and sliced thin. Note: I didn't have any rosemary and this was still spectacular.

2. Vegetable tostadas
Not bad. I used leftover black beans (which I threw in the crockpot without presoaking on high for about five hours and they were PERFECT) which I blitzed in the food processor with a little mild salsa. We used prepackaged guacamole from a market. Lettuce I had prepped a few days before. We topped with Greek yogurt and a little cheese. The makings literally took me about 10 minutes to put on the table. The kids helped. We served it all on top of Charros yummy precooked stacks of tostada shells, in a make-your-own fashion. Quite easy and yummy.

3. Hominy and me casserole
I turned this into a not-pretty but quite delicious everyday meal. I didn't have quite enough hominy, so I added some fresh corn and some beans (see item #2). I used a bit less cheese inside the casserole, but did toss in an egg to bind everything together. One big pan made more than enough for two meals. For one it was the main dish; another it was a side with sliced apples and grilled sliced flank steak.