The "L" Word: Curried Coconut Chicken Soup

It may still be sunny, but there's a chill in the air. I hear leaves crunching underfoot as children walk by the house on their way to school. Agriculturist and author J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur first coined the term "Indian Summer" in 1778 in his Letters from an American Farmer, describing it as a season when "the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth…its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokiness."

Tatsoi, an Asian brassica.

It's the season to turn on the stove again after a long, dry summer and think about soups and braises, stews and one-pot suppers. I'm back to my weekly habit of roasting a chicken, making sure to buy the largest available so there are leftovers for salads, tacos and soups, not to mention slowly simmering the picked-over carcass in water to make stock—yes, that's what "bone broth" is—that'll go into risottos, soups and myriad other dishes.

As I was casting about for something to make for dinner the other night (a situation that occurs all too often around here) I came across some of that leftover chicken in the fridge then found a couple of cans of coconut milk in the pantry. A glance in the vegetable bin revealed a bunch of spinach-like tatsoi (photo, above left) and a finger of ginger, and I was off to the races.

Thai-Style Curried Coconut Chicken Soup

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1-2 Tbsp. curry powder, to taste
2 c. chicken stock (or corn stock or water)
2 13.5-oz. cans coconut milk
2 c. cooked chicken
2 kaffir lime leaves
2” finger of ginger, peeled and halved
4 c. tatsoi, chopped (or bok choi, spinach or other greens)
1 Tbsp. harissa (or 1/4 tsp. cayenne or to taste)
Juice of 1 lime
Salt, to taste
Cilantro leaves, chopped roughly (optional)

Heat oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onion and sauté until tender and translucent. Add garlic and curry powder and stir to combine. Add remaining ingredients except for lime juice. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer and cook 30 minutes to an hour*, stirring occasionally. Just before serving stir in lime juice and adjust salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

* If you like, while the soup simmers, put on a pot of rice and serve a scoop of it in your soup.

Read more The "L" Word posts about creative (and delicious) uses of leftovers.

The "L" Word: Leftover Salmon Makes a Salad

Salmon season is in high gear with wild Chinook and Sockeye salmon and their cousin, the Steelhead (really a large trout), running in the Columbia River. Out in the ocean there are Pacific Ocean King and Ivory King, both Chinook salmon, being troll-caught off our coast, with Kenai Red—a Sockeye that is new to me—and Coho being hauled onto the doughty fleet of boats in Alaska's Pacific waters. (I know this because Lyf Gildersleeve of Flying Fish Company shared the salmon update in his latest newsletter.)

Kenai Red salmon.

The other evening Dave had smoked a luscious fillet of Kenai Red that I'd been given as a sample from the Kenai Red Fish Company, which offers a subscription—instead of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) it's called a CSF (Community Supported Fishery)—for a season's share of the salmon caught in the Cook Inlet near Homer, Alaska.

There were a couple of cups of the fillet left over from dinner, so I put it away thinking I might throw it into a chowder or use it for a batch of salmon cakes in the coming week. Then, when my brother asked us over for dinner a couple of nights later I queried him about what we could contribute. He said, "How about an appetizer?"

Hmmmm…

The ingredients, pre-tossing.

That's when I remembered the salmon I'd stowed in the fridge, and after rummaging in the vegetable bin I came up with half a fennel bulb, some green onions and two local yellow plums. Maybe a fresh, crunchy salad to put on crackers or crostini would fit the bill.

Salmon Salad

2-3 c. leftover salmon, flaked
1/2 med. bulb fennel, sliced thinly
1 Tbsp. fennel fronds, chopped
2 med. plums, halved and sliced thinly
1-2 Tbsp. capers
2 green onions, sliced thinly
3 Tbsp. pine nuts, toasted
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Juice of 1/2 lemon, added to taste
Salt, to taste

Put salmon, fennel, fennel fronds, plums, capers, green onions and pine nuts in large mixing bowl. Drizzle olive oil over the ingredients and add half of lemon juice. Toss gently to combine but don't break up the salmon too much. Adjust lemon juice and add salt to taste.

This would be a great lunch salad or light entrée served on a bed of fresh-from-the-garden (or farmers' market) lettuce. It would also be terrific combined with pasta or a cooked grain like farro, barley or parched green wheat (frikeh).

The "L" Word: Leftover Squash? You've Got a Party!

Confession time: I almost always make too much food. Instead of cooking for three, I somehow think I'm cooking for a dozen. And big eaters though we are—a pound of pasta barely feeds the three of us—when I roast a big, meltingly tender and delicious squash, there tends to be some left over. And I'm a real stickler (OK, some might say a Nazi) about not wasting food, so there are always bits and bobs of leftovers hanging around.

My best kitchen helper with the Sibley.

So the other afternoon, when we got an invitation to join my brother and his family for braised lamb shanks that evening, I volunteered to bring a nibble for sharing before dinner. With no time to go to the store, I was digging around in the fridge for ideas (what, you don't do that?) when I ran across some roasted Sibley squash we'd had a couple of nights before. Thinking that if a bean spread is good enough for Italians, if a chickpea dip is good enough for the Lebanese, then maybe a puréed squash dip might solve my evening's challenge.

I checked out a couple of resources online and found a New York Times recipe that sounded like a good place to start. Subbing in a couple of ingredients and adding a couple of others, I think it's a winner, garnering admiring "mmmmmms" and "yummmmms" from the crowd of critical tasters gathered around the counter. See what you think!

Roasted Squash Spread

2 c. roasted squash

2 green onions, light halves only, roughly chopped; finely chop the greens for garnish

1 clove garlic

1/4 c. roasted, unsalted peanuts

1/4 c. parmesan, grated

Dash of freshly grated nutmeg

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Salt to taste

Place roasted squash, whites of green onions, garlic, peanuts, parmesan and nutmeg in bowl of food processor. Pulse a few times to get ingredients broken up, then process while drizzling in the olive oil. Add more oil if necessary to get a fairly smooth, thick purée. Serve in small bowl showered with chopped green tops of green onions. Goes well with simple crackers, pita bread or pita chips.

The "L" Word: Clearing the Fridge

The other night I was totally stuck for something to make for dinner and didn't want to make a trip to the store. We had lots of odds and ends of leftovers (the "L" word around here) in the fridge, like a bit of roasted chicken that needed to be used, about three halves of various peppers that Dave had roasted on the grill the night before, four mushrooms and a half bunch of green onions that were looking a little sad.

There were also some garlic scapes a friend had given us from her garden, six baby Yukon Gold potatoes, a bag of greens from our own garden and several dozen eggs that had multiplied due to generous friends.

It was the eggs that finally made the lightbulb pop on. Since there weren't enough potatoes to make hash and I wanted to use up about a dozen eggs, the idea of a frittata seemed like the perfect solution. So I chopped up the veggies and threw them in our big nonstick skillet. When they'd cooked down to a tender pile, I threw those dozen or so eggs in a bowl, whisked them briefly and dumped them in the pan to seep into the hot vegetables.

While the frittata cooked, I rinsed and dried the greens and tossed them with my favorite dressing of olive oil and aged balsamic. When the eggs were mostly firm, all it took was a sprinkling of cheese, a brief visit under the broiler and dinner was ready.

Oh, and that roasted chicken? I'm having a curried chicken salad on the leftover greens for lunch as I write this.

Fridge Frittata

As mentioned above, this can be made from whatever vegetables or meats you happen to have on hand, sautéed and combined with eggs. Quick and easy, forgiving and always delicious, it's almost the perfect meal!

2 Tbsp. butter, margarine or olive oil
1/2 each green, red and ancho peppers, or about a heaping cup finely chopped
4 green onions, sliced into 1/8" slivers
4-6 mushrooms, halved and sliced thinly
5 garlic scapes, sliced in 1" pieces, leaving the bulbs intact
6 baby Yukon Gold potatoes (or the equivalent of 1 whole, chopped in 1/4" cubes)
12-14 eggs
1/2 c. cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter over medium heat until it sizzles. Add potatoes and sauté briefly till slightly tender. Add rest of vegetables and sauté until very tender. While vegetables are cooking, break eggs into a mixing bowl and stir until well-mixed, adding salt to taste. When vegetables are done, pour the eggs over the top, sprinkle on the cheese and cover the pan, reducing the heat to low.

When the eggs are cooked on the bottom and still runny on top, put the pan under the broiler briefly (don't walk away or get distracted like I sometimes do!). When eggs are lightly browned on top, remove the pan from the broiler.

To serve, run a spatula around the inside of the skillet to loosen the eggs. Then invert a serving platter over the skillet and, holding them firmly together, turn the platter and skillet upside down. The frittata should plop out of the skillet onto the platter.

The L Word: Double Down

The two-fer is such an American idea, isn't it? Buy one, get one free. Whether it's toilet paper or, in this case, a recipe.

I was stuck for something to make for dinner the other night. I wanted something light and wasn't in the mood for meat, a tough task with two voracious carnivores drooling all over my kitchen counters. And no, I'm not referring to the dogs here…they're too short to drool on anything but my toes.

There were some leftovers (the L word) in the fridge: a bit of really good tomato sauce, a few marinated castelvetrano olives from a dinner party, a bunch of kale, a few Meyer lemons I hadn't got around to using yet. Hm. Then it hit me…kale…lemons…olives!

A quick check of the pantry revealed pasta and (yes!) a tin of anchovies. Victory!

At this point you have to picture me dancing around the kitchen, pumping my fists in the air, hearing the theme from Rocky bouncing off the kitchen cabinets. Now the more psychologically stable among you may be thinking that I need something more meaningful to do with my life when coming up with a plan for a weeknight dinner is considered a quest on a par with King Arthur's grail, Hannibal's elephant parade over the Alps or even Indiana Jones's women…um…I mean mythical antiquities. But there you have it…I come up with an idea for dinner and I'm Rocky Balboa. But back to the subject at hand.

What had suddenly turned me into a down-trodden, working-class boxer from Philly was the raw kale salad I'd perfected last fall, based on a raw Brussels sprout salad I'd had at Olympic Provisions. Would it taste as amazing if I used Meyer lemons and combined it with pasta? It sounded reasonable enough to me, so just over twenty minutes later we sat down to what I have to say was one knockout of a dinner.

Meyer Lemon and Kale Pasta

1 lb. dried pasta
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 2-oz. tin anchovies in olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 small bunch kale (I love lacinato, though any will do), sliced into chiffonade
10 castelvetrano olives, pitted and roughly chopped
Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
Juice of 2 Meyer lemons
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan, finely grated

Bring large pot of water to boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente.

Heat oil over medium heat. Add anchovies and stir until they dissolve (stand back…they can splatter). Add garlic and heat but do not brown it. Add kale and sauté till wilted. Quickly stir in olives and remove from heat.

When pasta is done, drain off water and place in large serving bowl. Add kale mixture, lemon zest and juice (chopped preserved lemons would also be terrific). Toss, adding salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle it lightly with parmesan. Serve with more parmesan in a bowl for sprinkling.

The "L" Word: Leftover Turkey in Posole

The first words out of Dave's mouth when I mention ordering the holiday turkey are, "Oboy! Turkey enchiladas!" That's because after we've reprised the meal the next day to use up the leftover gravy and mashed potatoes, as well as a couple of turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce, there always seems to be enough for a batch of enchiladas.

I normally use my basic chile sauce, but I got to thinking that maybe a posole rojo would be a nice change, since I've always liked the way that chiles tend to mitigate the sometimes overbearing flavor that turkey can have. Plus the smokiness from the turkey meat (thanks to Dave's mad skills with the Weber) and the stock from the carcass would lend a woodsy, hearty flavor to the corn and chiles.

In the past I've made posole as a thick stew, but thanks to the incredible soup my friend Linda Colwell made with her verde version, I decided to try something like it with red chiles. It could also be made with chicken and chicken stock, but the turkey made it so much richer, and was so good we may just have to alternate it with the enchiladas from now on. Is that OK, honey?

Turkey Posole Rojo

12 oz. dried posole or hominy
6-8 dried ancho chiles
1 onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. oregano
Salt to taste
4 c. leftover turkey, shredded
8 c. turkey or chicken stock
Juice of 1 lime

Put dried posole into non-reactive bowl or Dutch oven and cover with water. Soak overnight. Drain posole and put back in Dutch oven in enough salted water to cover. Bring to boil and simmer for at least 2 hours until softened.

Remove seeds, ribs and stems from chiles and tear into large pieces. Place in heat-proof bowl and cover with boiling water. After half an hour, when chiles are soft and somewhat cooled, drain them, reserving the liquid. Put chiles, onion, oregano and garlic in bowl of food processor and process, adding reserved chile-soaking liquid to make it a thick sauce. Season to taste with salt.

Add meat, chile sauce and stock to cooked hominy in Dutch oven and stir to combine. Bring to a boil on the stove, lower heat and simmer, covered, for one hour. Add water if needed to thin to desired consistency. Stir in lime juice.

Photo of uncooked posole (hominy) from the James Beard Foundation.

The "L" Word: Leftovers…Again?

Once again I pulled out the "L" word for dinner. As in "leftovers." And why, you might well ask, does a dinner made from leftovers deserve a post rather than some fabulous new food item used in some unusual way that I ran across on an arcane food blog?

Because leftovers are, I suspect, highly under-discussed as a means of feeding ourselves. I mean, how creative can anyone be if they have to put dinner on the table seven nights a week? The expense alone would kill a regular budget, not to mention a normal spirit. Plus, I don't know about you, but there are always bits of this and pieces of that floating around in plastic tubs in our fridge.

Like the other night. Dave had come home from work, I had nothing in mind for dinner and I couldn't really justify spending the bucks to go out since we'd already done that a few nights before. In other words, it was a pretty typical evening.

So, like on other evenings, I strapped on my pith helmet and opened the door of the fridge. Hmmm. A stack of heirloom tomatoes slices left from a platter I'd served guests. A large russet potato that had not been used in a potato salad. Some luscious grilled leg of lamb that wasn't enough for dinner by itself.

A picture was forming in my mind, but I couldn't quite bring it into focus. I opened the veg bin and pawed through its contents. Then I remembered two bags of fenugreek greens I'd bought from Ayers Creek the week before that may, just may, still be usable. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

An onion, some chopped garlic and a tablespoon of curry brought it all together into what I have to say was a pretty fine dinner. Considering I had no idea where I was going when I started.

The "L" Word

I have a friend whose son, now in his 20s, will not eat leftovers. He calls them "old food," as in "I don't like old food."

I, on the other hand, have always loved leftovers, though growing up in a family of five (parents, myself, two younger brothers) there wasn't a whole lot left over after dinner, especially when those boys became adolescents. Not that they were grabbing food out of my mouth, mind you, but because I did some of the cooking I made sure to make things they felt were a little questionable. Like straying from their strict "meat and potatoes" regimen and using vegetables and spices, thus assuring myself of plenty to eat plus leftovers. Diabolical, no?

So when I was stuck for something to make for dinner recently, I did what I always do: open the refrigerator door and scan the shelves and bins, looking for inspiration. Kind of like Lynn Rosetto Casper of The Splendid Table does with her "Stump the Cook" segment, where she has to come up with a dish made from five ingredients given to her by a caller.

The five ingredients I found? Chorizo sausage leftover from pizza-making, leftover duck and part of a pork chop from a terrific birthday dinner at Alba Osteria, rice and smoked chicken stock. All I had to do was add some saffron, onions and garlic and I had the makings of a fine paella.

What five ingredients have you used lately to make an inspired dinner? Leave your solutions to this age-old conundrum by clicking on the Comments button below!

Photo of salametto piccante from Fra Mani Handcrafted Salumi. Great product, btw!