Instagram Post 5/3/2020

 
👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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The last of the corned beef (yay! 🙌) plus barley from the pantry (toasted before cooking) went into this warm salad along with sautéed onions, carrots, and yes, mushrooms (finally made it to the market!); dill, parsley, and scallions pulled it together.

BUT I still have one more use-up-whatever-there-is-in-the-freezer challenge to go. Watch this space!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Instagram Post 5/2/2020

 
👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Another attempt to use up some of the leftover corned beef brisket. Not going to try for clever this time, just good old corned beef hash accompanied by its traditional significant other.

A corner of my freezer is dedicated to fats: goose, chicken, turkey, duck, Chinese duck, and bacon; for this application, bacon fat was the frying medium of choice. And since I always have to be at least a little unconventional, I reached into a remote region of the icebox and extracted some ‘nduja. Beyond enjoying my spellchecker’s attempts to wrestle with the word, I reckoned it would kick up the corned beef a degree or two. Like anchovies, it melts into whatever you’re cooking so depending upon how much you use it either brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the dish (🤔 the spellchecker didn’t flag that) or overwhelms it; in this case, discretion triumphed.

And yet, there’s still a small amount of corned beef left. Should I try for one more experiment?
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Instagram Post 5/1/2020

 
👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳
…wherein we make do with whatever we have and improvisation is the name of the game, in this case, leftover corned beef.

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And speaking of games, remember the “What’s Wrong with this Picture” puzzles we played when we were kids? You know, drawings of scenes where houses had lots of windows but no doors, or the calendar displayed September 31, or birds flew upside-down, or the sun and the moon were out at the same time? Oh wait, that one really does happen.

Well anyway, here’s your chance to release your inner ambitious child, this time playing with a picture of lunch that I made from whatever I had on hand in the kitchen. It’s an old fashioned deli style sandwich with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and mustard, homemade macaroni salad and coleslaw, pickles on the side – but there’s one thing wrong with this picture.

Here’s a closeup of the food.

Reply below and be the first kid on your block to get the right answer!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Instagram Post 4/30/2020

 
👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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A continuation of yesterday’s post, “Fixing Dinner”, a personal challenge to see what I could do with lackluster store-bought corned beef and cabbage.

I chunked up some of the meat, slathered it with barbecue sauce augmented with some spices and a dash or two of liquid smoke, and stuck it in a hot oven to crisp up a bit. Now, I’m not suggesting that this tasted precisely like burnt ends brisket, but it was a damn sight better than the original.

You’re probably wondering about those pointy things at the top of the plate where boiled cabbage previously held sway. Raw cabbage is relatively versatile, but once it’s sunk to the depths of drowning in a pot of boiling water, all bets are off. So I chopped and sautéed some onions along with a bit of jalapeño pepper, then chopped and added some of the cabbage (couldn’t use it all – boo 👎). Previously, I had laid in a supply of flour tortillas for quickie tuna or chicken salad wraps so I cut a few triangles out of one, patted in a small amount of the sautéed vegetables, smeared some beaten egg around the perimeter, sandwiched it with another triangle, and briefly fried them in hot oil. Unexpectedly, it worked! (My kingdom for some sour cream. 🥺)

Turning the leftover plain boiled potatoes into potato salad was a cinch compared to that isosceles extemporization, but see the bits of egg in there? Leftover beaten egg, cooked and chopped, subbing for its hardboiled cousin. Waste not, want not.

And the plain boiled carrots transformed effortlessly into buttery cinnamon maple glazed sweeties.

The photo from yesterday’s post for the sake of comparison.

The inner workings of those pointy things.

So that’s the saga of how I fixed mind-numbingly dreary corned beef and cabbage and turned it into something appetizing.

Of course, there’s still some corned beef left. So stay tuned for more fun and games. 😉
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Instagram Post 4/29/2020

 
👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Some of you who are seriously into cooking will occasionally order in or pick up takeout or purchase some kind of heat-n-eat no-muss-no-fuss dinner – and after tasting only one tiny bite realize that it falls horribly short of what you could have made yourself. With one hand tied behind your back. In the dark. You know who you are.

So we “fix” it. I’m thinking about writing a cookbook detailing guidelines for making the best of a bad culinary situation. I call it “Fixing Dinner”.

Anyway, I finally made it to the supermarket for my once-every-three-weeks-because-COVID shopping spree and I bought one of those preseasoned corned beef briskets that come sealed in plastic packaging. You know, just bring it to a boil then knock it back to a simmer, add your choice of veggies, plate it up – maybe a little horseradish cream or mustard sauce on the side – take a picture, and post it on the Instagram? Jever taste one of those?

I did. But I can fix it. Watch this space.