Catching Up...

This is the time of year when holiday parties take over evenings and weekends, making the quiet night at home a rarity until next year sometime. When not out making merry, we have both been putting in the hours in the lab to bring things to a good stopping point before leaving for New Zealand for the holidays.

Nonetheless, there are a few dishes to catch up on. First there's the inevitable Thanksgiving leftovers: Melissa made a great turkey sandwich that we didn't get photographed, but it was on thin artisan bread, oiled and oven toasted to a hefty crisp with shredded turkey, avocado and saffron-butter gravy from the Big Day. The best use of leftover turkey, however, was in the turkey pie she made a couple of days later. A nice thin pie baked in a springform pan, Melissa filled it with a stew of turkey, peas, carrots, celery and caramelized onions and topped it with a thick layer of pastry dough. Served up with a spoonful of her cranberry sauce and a glass of chardonnay, it kept me going back so many times that we only left a sliver of it for another day...



A couple of weeks ago Melissa tried something she's never done before -- stuffed pork loin. A pork loin is not easy to stuff since the meat is rather dense, but she sliced into them like pita pockets and jammed in a mixture of avocado, salsa and crumbled peccorino cheese (it's what we had in the fridge). They were held closed with bamboo skewers and lightly coated with bread crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. In order to maintain the shape and breading, Melissa cooked them suspended in the rack of a roasting pan. My food photographs are not as good as Melissa's (it's usually pretty obvious who took them), but the dish came out really well. The pork was tender and juicy, the cheese savory, and the salsa added a nice, clean bit of fresh spice. Served up with some extra sliced avo. Next time we'll add a nice garnish for better presentation.




To use up the extra angel food cake we had leftover from Thanksgiving Day dessert (mixed berry and Amontillado trifle), Melissa generously buttered some thick slices and pan fried them to a delicate crisp, then stuffed them with a simple mixture of sliced bananas and fresh whipped cream. Yes, it was every bit as good as it looks. The amount of butter and heavy cream in this dish might disturb the more health-conscious among our readers, but then that's why I tend to have coffee for breakfast and steamed broccoli or yogurt for lunch. My colleagues at work must think I'm on some silly diet, but those who have joined us for dinner at home understand that I'm just saving my caloric intake for Melissa's concoctions.




Finally, on a recent night last week Melissa asked me to pick up cat food and something green on the way home from work. I was pretty sure who the cat food was for, but I knew that what I chose from the produce aisle would play a large part in determining what we had for dinner. I decided to try something I had never seen before: Chinese long beans. Once they were chopped up in the beef stir fry Melissa made for four (Evan and Amanda came around for drinks, so Melissa fed us all), they looked fairly innocuous, but they resembled a squirming handful of huge, green night-crawlers when I removed them from the bag and brandished them for Melissa's inspection.



The garlic and curried beef stir fry was a huge hit, and the now-abbreviated long beans were a clean, herby complement with a denser consistency than regular green beans. Exotic produce is always great fun...

Notes on the Beef Curry:

This was a fairly simple recipe but came out wonderfully.

1/2 can of coconut cream
1 tbs of Red John West Thai Curry Paste
1 stalk of lemon grass
1 onion - chopped in half rings
olive oil
250gms of Eye Fillet (Beef Tenderloin) - Sirloin or Rump is also good, but boy is eye fillet tender
1/2 cup of almonds ground in blender to the consistency of bread crumbs
~300gms of Chinese Long Beans - chopped into 2 inch lengths
1 tsp of chicken stock paste

In a large pot fry the onion in olive oil until tender. Add lemon grass and continue to fry for a minute or so. Add the curry paste and thinly sliced beef and toss quickly until the beef is lightly browned. Add the coconut cream, almonds, chicken stock paste and Chinese long beans. Bring to the boil and put a tight fitting lid on the pot. After ~5 minutes the beans should be steamed and the dish ready to serve with rice.

Frozen green beans really can't compete with the Chinese long beans for consistency and flavour, but you could get away with fresh green beans if you can't find these beans at your local supermarket.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yardlong_bean