Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Tidbits

I'm going to talk about risotto yet again. I know, I know, I do go on about risotto. What can I say, I really like it, it's cheap, quick and tasty. What's not to love?! Today I just wanted to share with you a wonderful ingredient I added to last night's risotto - Pancetta! Fan-freakin'-tastic. I diced up 2 ounces and sauteed it at the start with the onions. What a beautiful flavour it added to the dish. I'm just sayin'....



Okay, enough about risotto, on to the next tidbit. We had a delicious Jigg's Dinner on the weekend. This is also knows as a Boiled Dinner, a New England Boiled Dinner or Corned Beef and Cabbage. It involves boiling corned beef, carrots, turnip, potatoes and cabbage in a pot. What makes it Jigg's Dinner is that you add a pudding bag with split peas to the pot and make a peas pudding (it's the best!). After dinner I save the liquid from the pot for pea soup and the rest becomes hash. This is why I make a Jigg's Dinner - for the hash!




But you don't have to make a Jigg's Dinner to get hash. Any leftover 'cooked' dinner (that's what my Newfoundlander parts call it) will do. Making a roast and veggies? The leftovers will do nicely in a hash. Basically any leftover roasted, boiled or mashed root veggies will do. You can just cook them together and use them as a side dish later in the week. Or add you leftover meat, beef, pork, ham, even chicken or turkey will work. Don't have leftover meat? Buy a small ham or get some thickly sliced lunch meat, like roast beef, pork or ham from the deli counter. Make extra veggies when you are making a big dinner so you can toss them in a hash! We're 'Hash Happy" around here these days. I'm getting hungry.


Speaking of the pot liquor, again, a term from my Newfoundlander parts, as I mentioned I save the liquid out of the pot when making a Jigg's Dinner. It is awesome as a broth for the base of pea soup. And coincidentally, I happen to have a pea soup in the works as we speak. My crock pot is peculating and the soup will be ready for dinner tonight. Easy, cheap and healthy. Because I let the pot liquor sit for a day or so in the fridge, all the fat congealed on the top and I just scoped it off. There wasn't much. I diced some celery, onion and carrots, tossed in a bag of peas and that's it. Peas pudding also converts nicely into a base for pea soup but we never seem to have any leftover for soup... It makes a lovely late night snack.

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