G Wiv wrote:

Da Beef wrote:Grouper Sandwich

Looks delicious, coconut a nice touch.

Agreed.

I did something unusual (for me) today and I thought I'd share as it was super easy and delicious. Took about 20 minutes start to finish.

I made my annual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner last night and as such had leftover CB and also some colcannon / champ (a mashed potato cabbage scallion concoction). I decided to make CB Hashcakes and top with a poached egg since it's gone all cold again and I needed some cozy lunch. Couldn't have been easier or cozier.

Mince up corned beef quite fine, add to a lump of potatoes. The ratio should be roughly 50/50 ... mine was a little meat-light but I'm saving some CB for a reuben later this week. I have it aaaaallll planned. Anyway, season well and add a beaten egg and a little flour just to bind it together. Form the mixture to the best of your ability in to a round cake shape and slide it into melted butter in your skillet. Smoosh it down with a spatula and cook gently until the bottom begins to brown and you can begin to wiggle it and prepare for the flip. Then just man up and flip it ... worst thing that could happen is it will break and you can put it back together again a la Humpty Dumpty. Cook the other side and then turn down and go slow for a while so the insides are nice and hot too. Top with a poached egg and voila! Enjoy.

So I returned from a weekend trip yesterday to find a half eaten pork roast in my fridge...not that notable except:

The night before, the BF had called at around 9:30 at night asking how to "cook" a beef roast. I was a bit taken aback by this question because BF insists he doesn't like and doesn't ever want me to cook beef. I only make it when he's not around. Not knowing exactly what he had dug out of the freezer (and knowing that he's DEFINITELY not a very adventurous cook/eater), I was a bit stumped as to what to tell him to do.

Upon further inquiry, I determined that he had a) pulled said "roast" out of the freezer and put it into the oven frozen at 400 degrees and b) that it had been in for at least an hour already. Still trying to figure out what piece of meat he was talking about (not having much freezer space, I take a pretty frequent inventory of what's in there and couldn't remember a roast). I figured maybe it was actually a top round or tri-tip or something like that.

When he told me how big it was, I told him to go ahead and cut into and tell me what he saw/felt. Said it was pink but cool and "how much looooonngger, I'm hungry!!" Figuring he wouldn't really care what it tasted like, I told him to cut it in half, baste it with some olive oil and season with S&P and keep going another 15 minutes then take it out, let it rest for 10 minutes and hope for the best.

Returned from the airport last night and found the half eaten PORK roast which he had seasoned perfectly (not sure with what) and cooked perfectly--in fact it was melt in your mouth tender and wonderfully flavorful, even cold.

Lunch at home today was toasted sourdough bread, spread with the drippings from the roast, several nice thin slices of the pork and the first freshly snipped arugula from my garden. Fantastic!!

Today's lunch:
Pulled pork sandwich--Freshly pulled pork from my take-home bag of Jimswide's piggy stewed a bit with a sauce made from Toon's BBQ sauce, Cholula and some deli mustard, topped with Cholula sauteed onions and freshly picked mesclun and arugula from the garden. Served with a small salad of the same greens & thinly sliced sweet onions tossed with fresh squeezed lemon, grapeseed oil, salt and pepper.

I always keep packages of pesto tortellinis and chicken and mushroom and sun-dry tomato raviolis from Trader Joe's in the freezer section of my fridge and a couple of small jars of Classico pesto sauce in my pantry that I buy when it is on sale for $1.89 at Target's .
So quite often for lunch I boil a pot of water cook about 6 or 8 raviolis or 12 tortellinis in it for 6 or 8 minutes, while I mix the pesto sauce well and gently reheat it in another sauce pan. I put about 3 to 4 Tbs of the sauce on the pasta and that's it.
Delicious, quick and inexpensive lunch.

Ream's Elburn Market German wiener, Nicole's Divine Crackers hot dog bun, diced onion/jalapeno, cheap yellow mustard and chips.

I love working from home. It doesn't work for everybody, but it sure works for me on days like today. I made larb earlier this week (buffalo, nicely spicy, tons of tangles of herbage and plenty of heat). Even though I snacked myself silly the night I made it, there was quite a bit leftover and I decided to turn it into a larb omelette (a larblette if you will) for lunch.

I felt rusty with my om skills, but the thing came together perfectly with still moist eggs and a nice filling of larb. And it took me literally 7 minutes. Quicker than a trip to the local sub shop.

Enjoy:

Nice idea porklet ! Sounds much like another Thai dish, kai yat sai ไข่ยัดไส้ - consider the idea bumped for the next rainy day calling for snuggles.

kai yat sai

My favorite work from home lunch is often a pile of steamed green veggies - kale, green beans or something like that, tossed with oil and vinegar, maybe a tomato from the garden and a fried egg on top =) Simple but it does the trick for me.