Friday, August 15, 2014

‘Playing’ with Our Food - Again!

Laurie and I keep experimenting with our food.  Sometimes we ‘play with’ and modify what we’ve seen others create and sometimes, we just wing it!  Most of the time our ‘creations’ aren’t fancy, time consuming, or complex.  Keep it simple and ideally use what you have in the house… 


Laurie and I had put together a dinner using penne pasta with Alfredo sauce, garlic, crushed red pepper, canned chicken and a few thin slices of pepperoni… I always brown the canned chicken with a little butter in the frying pan ahead of time… The end result wasn’t the most pretty entree but it had lots of flavor!

What you see in the photo are the leftovers from that meal…back in the frying pan.


Big Dude’s (http://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com) philosophy is just that if you add an egg to leftover this and that…and you’ve got breakfast!  So what the heck… I scrambled a couple of eggs and added some shredded sharp cheddar cheese to the mix shown in the previous photo.  Before consuming this plate of food, I of course added Tabasco!  While the eggs didn’t contribute too much to this creation, they didn’t hurt it any either… The browned bits of chicken, cheese and pasta from the fry pan added texture and enhanced flavor…


Back in July, Big Dude and his better half, Bev, treated us to a fish fry down on their dock.  Laurie’s sister Bonnie and her husband Bill were the ‘guests of honor’ from St. Louis Missouri. (See my earlier blog site posting at http://bigdaddydavesbitsandpieces.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-casual-feast-on-lake.html) Part of that feast involved pole beans and ham hocks...

In any case, Laurie and I really liked the pole bean and ham hock side dish.  So, we decided to try our hand at something similar.  We had some long beans and a big ham slice on hand…no ham hocks available.  We added chunks of the ham slice to the beans.  Then a lot of dried garlic flakes and a liberal dose of crushed red pepper flakes were thrown into the mix.  We love garlic and we really like the heat from the pepper flakes!


This is what the beans and ham looked like without the broth…


But I must admit that you don’t capture the overall 'flavor' impact of this dish unless it’s served in the broth!  For us at least, this experiment came out perfectly… Laurie said that she’d definitely make this again.


We probably didn’t need to eat anything else after the beans and ham…but I’d browned up the rest of the ham slice in the frying pan with a bit of butter and pepper.  The ham ended up being a tasty ‘side dish’ to the beans and ham combo.  I also had some leftover ham for another lunch…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!


Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

2 comments:

  1. You guys are having too much fun in the kitchen. I seem to remember Laurie brought a delicious pasta dish to Larry's blogger get-together with Alfredo sauce.

    Have a nice weekend.
    Sam

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  2. Thanks for all of the press Dave. I always use an over very easy fried egg for my leftovers so I can bust the yolk and spread it over everything - I can usually taste it that way. We also use country ham when we don't have hocks and glad yours turned out well - I'm with you on the need for broth, especially when I have some homemade bread to sop it up with.

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