Foody Friday: quiche galore

The more I make quiche, the more I love just how versatile it is. It's a breakfast equivalent of nasi goreng (fried rice) in the sense that you can throw in whatever's available at the moment, you know, finish off leftovers and such. I also recently tried a targeted quiche, i.e. trying to actually replicate a certain taste/combination.

Here's a list of my recent quiche permutations:

• Leftover slow-cooked Catalina Cranberry Chicken (a recipe from mochamomma) with spinach and other veggies. This was particularly hearty and tasty: having flavorful chicken really helps pull it all together!
• Spinach, artichoke & diced tomatoes with habañeros. This was my first try ever at artichokes. I used the canned variety. I knew it would complement the spinach. I made mega-cheesy because this was for the potluck end-of-semester "party" for my massage course. It was a hit.
• Spinach, artichoke & orange peppers. I felt bad because Kosh had missed out on the goodness of the previous quiche, so I made this one for him :) I'd only used half of the canned artichoke (kinda on purpose), and while I was out of diced tomatoes, the peppers worked just as well. I eased up on using an entire bag of shredded cheese tho, LoL!
• Spinach, orange peppers, onions & hot giardiniera relish. I was still in a quiche mood (hey let's face it, it's real easy to make, it's really hard to ruin, and I love love love eggy breakfast-type dishes!), so this was a more 'normal' quiche, i.e. throwing together what I happened to have on hand. Yes, my quiches tend to be vegetarian.
• Philly Cheesesteak Quiche. My massage classmate speculated about making one of these, so I surprised her with one for her birthday. I'll expand on it below.
• Crustless veggie quiche. After a few weeks off (I *did* get tired of quiche after a while, LoL!), and after deciding I needed to cut some unnecessary refined carbs (i.e. the crust) out of my diet, I tried my hand at a crustless quiche. I also used a whole lot more egg whites than I did whole eggs. It turned out fine, but looked a bit ...small... and the crust really did lend a nice touch to the overall taste and composition, so in this case something was missing... I'll have to experiment a little bit more with this, and also figure out the difference between this and a fritata :)

Okay... so now... let's delve a bit into the Philly Cheesesteak Quiche, shall we?

I found this recipe, and totally tweaked it :)

I started by attempting to carmelize half a white onion, sliced. Ended up just kinda burning the heck out of the onion instead :p Made that the first layer, followed by thinly sliced green peppers, and the drained contents of a small can of mushrooms. For the beef, I used two portions of what I found at Walmart. I kinda burned the things too, and had difficulty getting them to separate out into individual strips. Oops!


In the photo above you see the layers of onion, peppers, 'shrooms, beef *and* some philly cream cheese that I decided would add something unique to the dish.



When researching this dish, I found out that Philly Cheesesteak sammiches are made with provolone cheese. Well, either that or Cheese Whiz (is that the stuff that comes in a "spray can" like whipped cream?) (ugh!), it seems. So I found some sliced sharp/strong provolone, cut 'em into strips, and that made another layer.



Then I remembered I'd intended to add some shredded cheddar cheese BEFORE the sliced cheese. Oh well. So that went on top. Then in went the egg and half-and-half combo, and the dish was popped into the oven (350F) for 45 mins.

It came out looking just like any other quiche...
... and this is how it was delivered to the birthday girl.

I was really anxious about not only giving away a total experiment (which included kinda burned onions *and* beef!), but giving it away as someone's birthday present to boot! Thankfully she said it was good, and that everyone who had a slice gave rave reviews (she only got to eat perhaps a sixth of the dish, because of those other mouths, poor thing!).

I still have two portions of the frozen philly-style steaks: whether I do another round of PCS quiche, or try to fix an actual Philly cheesesteak sammich for Kosh & myself, we'll have to see... in the meantime, if you try your hand at your own Philly Cheesesteak Quiche, do drop by and tell me about it, k?

Have a great weekend!

Foody Friday: Middle Eastern Rice with Black Beans and Chickpeas

Yes, that's quite a mouthful. But tastes great! Earlier this week, I was on the hunt for a recipe that would use the cans of black beans and chickpeas I'd had in the cupboard for ages, and finally decided on this Middle Eastern Rice with Black Beans and Chickpeas because I had most of the ingredients on hand, and those that I didn't, well, I'd just do without.

Here's a crappy picture of the finished product:

And here's how I prepared the dish:

Recipe called for heating 1-1/2 teaspoons olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, then adding 1/2 clove garlic, minced, stirring for a minute.
IRL, I accidentally poured a lot of oil (I use Smart Balance) -- oops! -- into a medium saucepan. Added a LOT of minced garlic from the bottle plus half a red onion, diced. Stirred at medium/high heat for a while, until the onions were translucent.

Recipe called for stirring in 1/2 cup of uncooked basmati rice; 1 teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander; and 1/2 teaspoon each of turmeric and cayenne pepper. After 5 mins, add 2 cups of chicken stock, bring to a boil, then cover & simmer for 20 mins.
IRL, I had the uncooked (brown) basmati rice, but threw together a heaping teaspoon each of cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, chili powder and allspice altogether with the chicken stock. Robbed it of that 5mins of non-stock cooking. Oh well! Brought it all to a boil, then reduced heat and covered. It took a lot longer than 20mins for the rice to be cooked: perhaps as long as 40mins!

Recipe called for placing 3/4lb ground turkey in a skillet over medium heat, and cooking until evenly brown.
IRL, I used a package of MorningStar Farms fake ground beef in a huge pot/saucepan, and flavored liberally with fish sauce as it heated up.

Recipe called for gently mixing the turkey, drained & rinsed garbanzo beans & black beans, (and optional cilantro, parsley, and pine nuts) into the cooked rice.
IRL, I added the beans and a handful of spinach leaves to the cooked fake meat, and made sure to heat them all up well. Then I added the rice to the meat/bean/veg mixture, and stirred well.

Recipe called for seasoning with salt and pepper.
IRL, I almost never do this step, just as a matter of principle. In this case, it really wasn't needed anyway: I think the fish sauce was more than salty enough to make up for any other taste deficiencies there might have been in this dish!

Kosh liked it, but felt something was missing, ".. like a big chunk of meat." If I make this again, I might use ground lamb instead (Kosh's eyes totally lit up at that statement, so I think I'm on the right track LoL!), it would fit with the region's choice of dead animal anyway, right?

WARNING: I was farting up a storm no thanks to the beans, so if you're planning on making this, just be aware, k? :p

Happy Friday, and have a great weekend!

Foody Friday: the butternut squash edition!

Last month I noticed bags of fresh cranberries on sale, and impulsively grabbed one. Then weeks passed, and I still had no idea what to do with it. So I went a-huntin' for cranberry ideas, and found this Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake recipe that seemed simple enough for me. Once I prepared that, however, I ended up with quite a bit of leftover butternut squash, which I decided to make into "fries". I also decided to process the seeds. All in not just one day, but in one friggin' morning.

Procrastination *is* a wonderful thing, isn't it?

(butternut squash & seeds)

Here are the details:

1. Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake
Pretty much followed the instructions, except, since I had so much of 'em, I used a whole cupful of cranberries LoL! It could probably do with a sprinkling of nuts; another improvement would be to dice the squash into much tinier pieces: the 1" chunks were a little too large and overpowering, and I tired of the taste really fast - Kosh ended up eating most of it.

2. Butternut Squash Fries
I thick-sliced the remaining squash into a mixing bowl, then poured a generous amount of oil over them and mixed to coat all surfaces. Then I liberally sprinkled ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg into the bowl and mixed 'em up again. Didn't need to spray the pan/foil because I'd been generous with the coating oil. Followed the instructions about turning them over twice, and putting the heat down at the last stage. This did not come out good at all, they were soggy, unappetizing. Shoulda puréed them and made a soup or something instead.

3. Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds
I was surprised: I got about a half cup of seeds from this one squash. Separating the seeds from the membranes was ... interesting: can you believe it actually strained my thumb a little? LoL!! I probably wouldn't have bothered with the seeds at all except that I'd already had the oven going for the previous two dishes, so why not just keep going? Waste not, want not, right? Thing is, just a few minutes after popping the tray of seeds into the uppermost rack of the oven, it sounded like I had some popcorn going in there ... the seeds were popping/exploding, and the shells were starting to litter the bottom of the oven! Yikes! So I took 'em out well before the minimum 10 minutes! Thankfully, they were nice and crunchy, and worth the mess in the oven :)

... so there you have it ... a cranberry adventure turned into a butternut squash excursion instead. Two out of three were edible - according to Meat Loaf, that ain't bad :)

Foody Friday Sunday: recycled meatloaf! (Part Two)

Last week I blogged about how I recycled some of my leftover meatloaf by wrapping biscuit dough around strips of the stuff. Today I'll share my other recycle strategy: QUICHE!

As always, a good place to start for getting proportions right is 1 Blog & 2 Sides' Quiche recipe that I discovered almost two years ago.

Here's what I did:

Warm up and unroll 1 deep dish unbaked pie shell. Place it in your pie dish. I have a nice glass one now, whee! Preheat the oven to 450F. Generously prick the bottom and sides of the crust with a fork. Place in heated oven for 6-8mins, to get the crust slightly cooked. Remove immediately, and let cool.

Reset oven to 350F.

Sprinkle bottom of the pie with some cheese.

Add a layer of well-drained diced tomatoes.

Sprinkle chopped fresh basil.

Add another thin layer of cheese.

Crumble leftover meatloaf into the pie.


In a separate bowl whisk together 6 eggs and 1 cup of half-and-half, and pour carefully over the pie contents (the portions this time were perfect! Filled to the rim without spilling!!). Sprinkle with the remaining cheese.


Pop it into the oven for about 45mins. The quiche was nice and puffy when I took it out, but soon fell once it cooled.

If you're not sure about doneness, you can use a toothpick, or stick a thermometer in there (mine shot up past 160F so fast I figured it was fine!).

Let it cool a little before gorging. It could have done with perhaps more egg/less half-and-half, but the excellent cheese mixture more than made up for any slight lack of egginess.


Bon appetit!

Here's a proper list of ingredients:

• 1 deep dish unbaked pie shell
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups grated cheese (I used Kraft's Italian Five Cheese with a touch of Philadelphia Cream Cheese creaminess)
• 1 can diced tomatoes (I used Ro-Tel's hot with habañeros)
• 3 leaves of fresh basil, chopped fine
• 1 thick slice of leftover meatloaf, crumbled

The beauty about such a dish is you can totally mix it up and chances are you can't go wrong. Just need to keep an eye on the volume so you won't overfill the pie. Gonna try this out? Take pix, blog about it, and come tell me in a comment here, k?

Have a great week ahead!

Foody Friday: recycled meatloaf! (Part One)

So last week I shared my latest meatloaf experiment. That was a lot of meatloaf, and I grew tired of it really fast, despite it being really pretty good! So by the time Wednesday rolled around, I knew we had to run through the rest of the leftovers quick!

Notice the thick vein of cheese in the meatloaf? Yummmmmmm!



Recycle #1: Meatloaf biscuits

1 can Pillsbury simply buttermilk biscuits (10 biscuits)
2 thick slices of leftover meatloaf, each cut into 5 strips

One at a time, flatten a biscuit to about a 6 inch diameter
Place the strip of meatloaf in the middle

Fold it up

Place seam down on an ungreased cookie tray (I always line with foil because I hate cleaning up burned stuff!), and cook as per the biscuit instructions (I think it was 350F for 20mins)

Verdict? Here I quote my hubby who finally tried some last night: "Oh my god babe these are GOOD!" :)

Part Two will feature Recycle #2: Spicy meatloaf & tomato quiche. I'm about to get cracking on that now. Will update either tomorrow or next week. Stay tuned!

Foody Friday: another meatloaf variation

Hey hey hey, this is my first Foody Friday installment in a long long time! And what do I feature but that old versatile favorite, MEATLOAF! The one you pop in the oven and eat, not the one you (well, *i*) listen to, LoL!

About a year ago I talked about my turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf experiment, which ended up a little oily/slimy. I'm sure I've revisited it since then yet I have no recollection of doing so. Anyhoo, yesterday I decided to whip up some meatloaf, à la lynne, of course.

Here's what I used:

1 packet Jewel Onion Soup mix
½ cup milled flaxseed
½ cup instant oatmeal
2 raw eggs
¼ cup hot bbq sauce from Lil Porgy's
¼ cup sweet vidalia onion relish
¼ cup diced celery
1 can petite diced tomatoes with green chiles, undrained

1 packet Morningstar Farms fake ground beef
1.25 lb ground turkey

1 cup shredded cheese (I used mexican fiesta blend)

Instructions:

Mix the first 3 ingredients well in a (very) large bowl, then add the subsequent 5 ingredients. Mix well.

Add the meat & fake meat, mix well.

Slop about half into an aluminum foil-lined loaf pan, press down well.

Spread the cheese on the meat mixture in the pan.

Fill in the rest of the meat mixture, making sure to mash everything in well, I think that helps reduce the crumbliness of the cooked product.

Pop it in the oven (preheated to 350F) for what turned out to be about 1.5 hours. I got the internal temperature to 150+F, ideally it should have gotten to 160F but it had been cooking so long I didn't want it to dry out. Perhaps I should have upped the overall temp to compensate for the greater volume of stuff I put in there!

And here's the finished product:

MmmMmmmMMmmmMmm cheeeeeeeeeeese!

It was cheesy with a bit of a bite thanks to the chiles *and* bbq sauce: delicious!

It was also rather crumbly,
but this usually improves once it cools / is in the leftover stage

Here's what I would do differently next time:

• Mix the cheese in with the other dry/wet ingredients, which was what I had meant to do but forgot until I had already dumped half the mixture into the pan :p
• Look into what makes a good binder: I like not using nutritionally-worthless breadcrumbs, I wonder if I could just up the oatmeal used?

I enjoyed this experiment. Tell me if you try this out for yourself, k?

Have a great weekend!

Tweet tweet!

So last night was my first ever tweet-up in Malaysia!

Getting to the venue (Makcik chicken wing in front of Lee Hin Motor, Sunway Mentari) wasn't too bad, but genius that I am I'd gotten myself there but hadn't taken note of the exact place to go, thankfully @kruel74 had had the foresight to give me his h/p # earlier: a quick sms and he came to get me from where I was waiting: I was just like half a block away only... but omg ramainya orang??!! I think at our peak we were 5 tables' worth of people (about 20 pax?)... and y'all know me and my aversion to stranger overload...

So I ended up sitting at one end of the tables, and of the many people there, talked a bit with @dilaariff @brenkenlee @flyguy729 @azri83 @euveng --- later @loveykatz joined us at that end ... also there but not really talked with (totally me!) were @altimet @rararawr @icednyior @kazwan @rainingheaven.

The weather was really muggy though, sometimes I felt I could barely breathe in the thick air... so much so that I made three bad decisions that I'm still paying for today... ugh ... read more about that here... The chicken wings were good, a bit oily but also sweet... I was too warm to eat much tho. If I end up there again I'll try the koey teow, it looked amazingly good :)

It was great to put faces to @loveykatz and @kruel74, and to have the opportunity to meet folks who would otherwise be strangers, but are united via the geekness of Twitter and foursquare :) Here's to more tweet-ups before I leave!

Photos? I didn't take any.. there were plenty taken tho, so hopefully I'll get to steal one or tw to feature here soon, so check back in a day or two, k?

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Foody Friday: Dhal Bukhara

It's been a while since my last Foody Friday post! A big hold-up is the fact that my phone and PC tend to not want to communicate with each other via bluetooth, and I have my phone more handy than camera, so for a while now I've had overdue pix sitting in my phone, unable to get sent to the PC.

Yesterday, by some miracle of miracles, I managed to get them all to the PC!

Yesterday also, I experimented for the first time with lentils! After looking around for some recipes (including at this site, thanks to a tweet!), I decided to try my hand at dhal bukhara.

Started off with a bag of the legumes:


Soaked them in water for many hours; they expanded a bit. Rinsed them out, put them in a pot with plenty of water, and let 'em boil until the beans were soft.

Then came the problem. .. The instructions say to mash them. Was that in the pot with plenty of water? Or drain 'em out first? And how on earth does one mash lentil beans, especially when one doesn't have a blender? Arrgh!

I ended up draining and rinsing the now-soft beans in a colander, taking small batches of the beans in a bowl and smushing them as well as I could with a fork, then transferring back to the pot.

Then came the other problem - from the instructions, it seems like there would need to be more liquid in the pot (leading me to believe the previous instructions for mashing the beans were to take place in the pot?), so I dumped a can of beef broth that I happened to have on hand, along with the two cans of diced tomatoes, butter, grated ginger, and heaping tablespoons of minced garlic & chili powder, and brought everything to a boil.



Then I realised that in spite of my smushing efforts, it looked like over half the beans were still intact. Oh well. If there is a next time, I'll be more prepared somehow - maybe a masher should go on the shopping list?

It was also pretty runny - partly because of the added broth, partly because the beans weren't all smushed. So I let the contents of the pot boil down quite a bit.

Once it looked ready, I spooned myself a bowl's worth of the stuff, and added two spoons of half-and-half in place of the "thickened/double/heavy cream whisked until smooth".


I had it without any accompaniments, although it's recommended you eat this with naan or rice. There is certainly room for improvement, and I wouldn't serve it to guests just yet, but I liked it enough for a second helping.

How about you? Have you experimented with lentils before? Do you have a favorite recipe? Tell me, I might just try it out!

p/s: Have you signed up for The Postcard / Link Exchange of 2010 yet? You could also be in the running to receive a Malaysia-themed gift (I've decided on a box of Seri Songket Passion Fruit Tea by Boh, a local tea manufacturer)! Wait no more, sign up now!

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Foody Friday 2010-01: enchiladas & cappuccinos

Life After Work welcomes you to the first Foody Friday of 2010! Today we cover enchiladas!! and cappuccinos!!! With liberal sprinkles of exclamation points!!!! All over!!!!!

Enchiladas!
This week I once again fixed us some enchiladas. This time around it was a particularly easy prep because almost everything came out of a tin can, even the chicken!

I snuck in fake chicken as well: can you figure out which is shredded canned chicken vs shredded fake-chicken soy strips?

Another variation this time around was the use of green spinach and herb tortillas, which added another dimension of taste and texture to the dish. I felt they made it a bit mushy; Kosh didn't think so.

There was also a side of refried beans (non-fat and therefore lardless, yay!), and hospital cafeteria shredded lettuce (notice the takeout container?)!

I only managed to squeeze five tortillas into the baking pan this time around: we each had one fresh, and the leftovers will probably be for dinner tonight. Yum!

Cappuccinos!
Gas station cappuccinos have been one of my many downfalls. Then a few months ago, when staying over at an Irish-Italian family's house one weekend, I discovered the existence of a personal cappuccino maker. Was all excited, went to amazon to look for it, and was taken aback by its price. Ouch. Never mind, it went on the wish list with a low priority flag and a comment "I'd really like to make my own cappuccinos.. but I'm not sure if I know how to use this... seems kinda pricey too..."

Fast forward to a few days ago:

Here's the pic I was pointing to:

It specifies "use espresso ground coffee only!" but I'm a n00b and didn't see any immediately available at the store (I'll build up the courage to use the in-store grinder one day...) so bought three different tiny packs of regular ground coffee instead. Last night I finally cracked open the box ... and was disappointed to find that its dinky plastic measuring cup was broken! :( It still held water though, so I decided to forge on and use the main contraption.

Round One:

Once on the burner, it only takes about 5 minutes! And yummmm look at all that froth!!

Threw it out, though - the instructions said to discard at least the first two rounds, and I obeyed.

After another round or two of rinsing and redoing, I finally got my cuppa:


Some thoughts on the drink produced:

• I'll need to not snatch it off the burner as soon as it starts doing its thing, otherwise it delivers a too-perfect drink at the temperature where could I gulp it all down in a swig or two!
• It says it produces two ~7 oz cups, but in reality it's more like a large single serving: to share, or not to share, that will be the question!
• The hazelnut-cinnamon blend I used gave a hint of taste and flavor to the drink, but I wonder how different/similar it would be with the "correct" coffee in place. I'd rather not have to add sugar/sweetener, so more flavor would be a plus.

Some thoughts on the contraption & process:

• Ugh lots of coffee grounds to discard every time - should look up uses for 'em?!
• The steps are simple and straightforward - only when I was sloppy with measuring out the water needed did the thing threaten to overflow. So use full attention when preparing, and there should be no problems
  

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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21 days to 2010: Foody Friday: turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

I've shared my meatloaf adventures before (not to be confused with my Meat Loaf adventures, LoL!), but today I'd like to highlight my most recent experiment: turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf.  Yeah try saying that three times fast:

. . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

. . . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

. . . . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

The soy part was, as usual, a pack of fake ground beef soy crumbles from MorningStar Farms.

The turkey was a roll of 97/3 Honeysuckle White.

But I was out of breadcrumbs!! fyi, breadcrumbs are used to add bulk and moisture, and to kinda hold things together, so I couldn't just leave it out... So I looked for a substitute ... Found a suggestion to use oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs, and another suggested flaxseed.


Seeing as I had recently bought us a box of Milled Flax Seed, I figured this would be a good way to sneak in some Omega-3 oils into the dish, especially considering the previous box took years to get finished!

But precisely because flaxseed is mega-rich in oils, I knew it wouldn't be wise to do a 1-to-1 substitution: instead of 1.5 cups breadcrumbs, I used about 1 cup milled flaxseed.  All other ingredients remained pretty much the same.


Because I was worrying about breadcrumb substitution, I forgot about my usual diced celery addition.  Oh well.  Totally remembered the "bonus" boiled eggs, tho, yay!  You can see them here, picture taken as I was transferring the soy/meat/flaxseed/etc mixture into the loaf pan.

Then genius that I was, I forgot to set the timer while it cooked.  Once again I'm very glad I got us a meat thermometer, it's come in handy in cases like this, making sure the internal temperature was high enough.

The end product was definitely oilier than usual:




Here's a glimpse of the meatloaf we'd helped ourselves to it for dinner: that's a bit of egg peeking out at ya, and you can see the pooled slime excess oil at the bottom:




All-in-all it was still a decent experiment, although because of the excess (good) oil, the meatloaf felt a little slimy. Still good, though. Maybe next time I'll try the oatmeal substitute, since that would add some good fiber to the dish.

How about you -- have you had any substitution adventures before? How did they turn out?

NOTE: Images of MorningStar Farms' Meal Starters Grillers Recipe Crumbles, Honeysuckle White 93/7 Lean Ground Turkey Roll and Hodgson Mill's Brown Milled Flax Seed products were taken from their websites.

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28 days to 2010: Foody Friday Lamb Shanks!

This week's edition of Foody Friday started a few weeks ago, actually, when I moaned on Facebook that all of a sudden I was craving the lamb shank at Secret Recipe, and wondered if I should attempt to experiment with that, especially considering I'd never ever noticed lamb shanks being sold in the supermarkets before. To my surprise I had quite a few responses from a wide spectrum of pals who essentially said "mmMmmMmmmm lamb!" and "Yes! Experiment and blog about it!"

So on Monday, I happened to pass the correct place in the dead animal section of Wal-Mart and hey whaddayaknow they had lamb shanks for sale! Each individually wrapped, going for about $7 a pop. Yes, you read that right: SEVEN bucks! That's like TWENTY-TWO RINGGIT! Each. Can you say "Ouch!"?

Lamb shanks - before the "fun" begins

Dahlah mahal... then you realise maybe a quarter of the weight is all bone, and another eighth all fat. See all that white on the "back" of the piece on the left? That's all fat, baby!! Bleeaahhh!! I think I hacked away at two pieces for almost twenty minutes just trying to trim as much fat as I could because we don't have a proper meat-cutting utensil.
[NOTE TO SELF: before attempting to process the other two pieces, GET A PROPER KNIFE!!]

Moving on....

The experiment would be based on this Crockpot Lamb Shanks Recipe from about.com. I (thought I) studied the ingredients carefully, taking note of what I lacked, and what I could substitute. Of course, once I got back from yoga & final shopping on Wednesday, I realised I'd overlooked a whole bunch of things. Typical. But I had to rush and process everything, because it would take 8 hours of slow cooking, and it was already 11:15am! That would make dinner a really late one!!

So, as mentioned above, I hacked at the fat, taking way too much time. Then I started subverting the recipe to become entirely my own: no Worcestershire Sauce, so I used Fish Sauce along with salt and pepper to rub the lamb before the next step: braising. I don't know how much time was spent braising the pieces one-by-one. Not that I could tell you the different between braising and just trying to brown all surfaces of the meat and for the blood to not run red. It was a challenge trying to get the meat on the bone to get browned/braised/whatever.

During that time I also struggled with the crockpot liner bag thingy I also wanted to try, since the model we have is the type where the post isn't detachable/removable, so cleaning it later is always a pain. I ended up wasting one bag because for the life of me I didn't see that one side was open (I did the scrunching at every side, nothing gave! grrr!!).

I then scooped about half a bottle of Vidalia Onion Relish (found at County Market) to spread on the bottom of the crockpot.

Finally decided the braising was good enough. Put the lamb in the crockpot, and wondered if the lid would close: looked like it would but only barely.

Not wanting to think about the implications of the other possibility, I went ahead with the other ingredients: two heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic, and a liquid comprising cooking red wine, chicken stock powder, a can of diced tomatoes, and a heaping teaspoon of cumin, allspice, parsley flakes, and Italian seasoning.

Then I tried to close the pot. ... ... nope! Not gonna happen!!

This is so wrong!!! The bones should be IN the pot!!!!

So I was forced to hack the meat off of the bones and dump 'em into the pot; looked like I was going to end up with a stew? I didn't bother to make nice bite-sized pieces -- remember that the clock was ticking big-time! I was really pissed, though... part of why I-who-am-not-a-fan-of-red-meat can salivate over lamb shank is because it falls off the bone and melts in your mouth. I could only hope that without the bone, the meat would still end up with melt-in-your-mouth properties.

So at a little after 12:30n, the crockpot was started, on Low, for 8 hours.

I was all ready to tell Kosh we'd have the lamb the following day because I wouldn't make sense to have dinner so late... ... ... but of course as luck/fate/theUniverse would have it, Wednesday was a day from Hell for Kosh, so much so that he was done at ~8:30pm!

What timing!

And by that time, the house was filled with the aroma of lamb... yummmmm...!!

So we scooped ourselves a bowl of the stuff...
The final product

Verdict? Awesome!

Sure, there was more liquid than necessary (I forgot to halve the ingredients -- did you notice the recipe called for four lamb shanks but I was only using two?) but that didn't detract from the dense taste of the melt-in-your-mouth lamb. Yay!!

But the crockpot liner bag leaked... might have been from when I was trying to force the lid shut on the bones, or, more likely since it wasn't burnt, from when we were scraping at the bottom trying to scoop up all the pieces of meat.

We finished it all, btw. I have perhaps a cup and a half of sauce/stock which I saved: I could use it to add flavour to fake beef soy crumbles, maybe? And there are two other lamb shanks in the freezer: they'll stay there for another month or so before I start digging around for another (non-crockpot?) recipe to try :)

... and so, how about you? Ever experimented with food the way I did with these poor pieces of lamb? Inspired to try? Do drop me a line in the comments, I'd love to hear from ya.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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29 days to 2010: What's in my freezer?

Yes, I'm going to continue with the Food/Health topic a little while longer... today how's about a peek into my freezer?

Here's what's in the freezer door:



You may recognise a few Morningstar Farms products there: I have indicated I am trying to move Kosh and I away from dead animals, so I always have some sort of soy-substitute product at hand. Here you might see three packages of fake ground beef (one of which will probably be used in making meatloaf tonight!).

I'm not impressed with their fake breakfast sausage patties tho, and the fake italian sausage links are crumbly and meh: you might spot one open box each in there.

There's also half a box of Banquet's Heat n Serve turkey sausage links (majorly high in sodium tho, beware!), and maybe one more serving left of Tater Tots (will not be replacing this, since they aren't organic and therefore probably chockful of bad chemicals - bummer!).

And now for the main part of the freezer:
.. a little crammed, ainnit? LoL! Well, I admit I've been on a frozen vegetable spree lately, and I would say about 80% of the stuff in there is frozen vegetables.

You see, despite having the best of intentions of eating healthy, I found that whenever I opened the fridge looking for something for lunch or for a snack, the fresh veggies and bagged salads just didn't appeal to me... and if I spied Ben&Jerry's ice cream, heck any ice cream, or Kit Kats, well let's just say I'd scarf that "easy food" down, only to feel hungry again soon after, so back I went searching for something to munch, not finding the fridge contents appealing... etc etc etc.

So I decided to give myself other options: processing fresh broccoli is a pain, but if I were to have steamable frozen broccoli cuts that I just had to pop in the microwave for a few minutes? Then transfer the broccoli to a bowl and add a bit of fake butter, cheese and perhaps cinnamon or seasoned salt? Overall still a much better option than ice cream, candy or chips! And food would less likely to be wasted, thrown out because they went bad before anyone got to them.

Making radioactive mac&cheese out of the box? Add in a bag of peas! Okay so I usually add stuff like diced capsicum, onions, leftover chicken, or tuna anyways in an attempt to add some nutrition to the dish, but when you dump 4 servings of peas? That's a LOT of veggies to temper the mac&cheese with! It's an interesting combination I wouldn't serve to dinner guests, but if you want to try it at home, please tell me what you think, k?

There's also a box of individually wrapped chicken breasts; a large serving of chili from a few weeks ago; an opened box of No Name salmon; an opened package of Morningstar Farms fake chicken strips; a few steam-in-the-bag dinners-for-two (also high sodium, ugh!). The plastic bag contains two lamb shanks ("spares" - I already cooked 2 yesterday, look out for a writeup on that tomoro!).

Yes those are ice cube trays, LoL!

There are probably multiple bags of 4 or 5 types of bagged frozen veggies. It's not immediately obvious because everything's kinda stacked on top of one another, but take my word for it, there are A LOT of this in there:
Courtesy of Sam Walton, this is their Great Value Mixed Garden Medley: sugar snap peas, roasted red potatoes and red peppers seasoned with garlic herbs. Only 160 cals per bag. And it's delicious!! Seriously. After tasting one of these, on my next tip to Mal-Mart I went ahead and pulled like 8 into my cart!
Okay so the potatoes here aren't organic either, so I'll have to not overindulge. But still. So much better than one-third of a package of Golden Oreos, right?

... I know there had been a meme for fridge or larder contents going around the net a while back... maybe here we can start one for the freezer? Let's call it The Freezer Meme! So if you'd like to show off your freezer's contents too, please go ahead, and don't forget to drop a link in the comments so I can come visit! A link back to Life After Work and this Freezer Meme page would be nice too, hint hint! :D

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