Another Two Dinners’ Worth

Wednesday menu: Leftover steak * polenta with sauteed yellow cherry tomatoes * sauteed spinach

Thursday menu: Dinner at Maudies. Bad margaritas, okay tacos al pastor and chiles rellenos

Meat, Veg, Salad, Salad

Menu: Grilled ribeye with cowboy rub * roasted beet salad * lemon cucumber and tomato salad * eggplant relish

M fired up our grill for the first time since we moved to Austin, and we grilled four ribeyes so we could have leftovers. The “Cowboy Rub” is from Robb Walsh’s Texas Cowboy Cookbook: fresh-ground sea salt, fresh-ground garlic, fresh-ground black pepper, dried thyme, pasilla chile powder. M grilled them to rare.

The lemon cucumber salad was lovely. The farmers market yesterday yielded two lemon cucumbers and four green zebra tomatoes; I sliced them all into crescents and tossed it with lemon basil, olive oil, salt, and a splash of white wine vinegar. It was all yellow and pale green, very pretty.

The roasted beet salad is the usual, but it may be one of the last time it appears for a little while; Tecolote Farms’ last week of beets was yesterday. And the eggplant relish is leftover from our pasta/leftovers/fridge clean-out repast last night.

Leftovers At Last

Headache, and M is working late. I just heated up one little leftover lamb chop and had it with leftover pink-eyed peas, cucumber tomato artichoke salad, and the last eggplant relish from several days ago. There are three chops left for M and plenty of peas.

Repurposed

Menu: Black beans with pork and cherry tomatoes * baked sweet potato fries * Indian-spiced kale * 2005 Peter Lehmann Barossa shiraz

We had a leftover pork chop in the fridge and a whole lot of leftover kale. I cubed the pork chop, heated a little olive oil in a saute pan, and dumped in the pork cubes. Then I dumped in at least a dozen of the fresh farmers market cherry tomatoes and let it all saute for a few minutes until the tomatoes started to split. I added 2 cans of black beans; ground salt and red pepper over; and finished with a splash of lime juice. Turned the heat down to medium-low and left it while the sweet potatoes cooked (these were the toughest: I opened the bag of Alexia sweet potatoes from the freezer, thank you Central Market). Reheated the kale, served it all up.

Cook’s sustenance:
1/2 glass champagne
1 salad cucumber, quartered and munched on

Cook’s soundtrack
Bob Schneider, “Gold in the Sunset”
Stevie Wonder, “As”
Lyle Lovett, “Simple Song”
The Mavericks, “Hot Burrito #1″
Hayseed with Emmylou Harris, “Farther Along”
Fleetwood Mac, “Never Going Back Again”

How did it turn out?
The kale still needed salt and Crystal sauce. But the beans… how did I do that? They were velvety, unctuous, a tremendous combination of flavors. Was it the leftover olive-oil laced pork fat? The celestial cherry tomatoes? The citrus splash? I will be trying to replicate that every time we have leftover pork chops.

Would I make it again?
I would certainly try!