Greetings followers!

I've moved the site to something bigger, better, badder, and fancier too. You can now find all of my posts at: www.exploringames.com 

Enjoy!
-A

Leftover Roasted Vegetables? No Problem!

For those of you who love roasted vegetables, I'm sure you're a lot like me and you never make the perfect amount for your recipe. You always have leftovers! Well, I've come up with a few different recipes for what to do with them. One of my absolutely favorite things to do with them is to make a soup. The soup receives its formal name depending on which roasted vegetable takes center stage. Roasted potato soup, creamy roasted garlic soup, roasted squash soup, roasted carrot soup. I've also been known to make cold salads out of it, like nothing beats a roasted potato salad, or a roasted carrot and raisin moroccan salad.

This morning though, I had a new idea. I wanted to make something decided breakfast out of these. Now, you could easily just heat them up and have them along side sausages or eggs, but I.F. loves breakfast skillets so I decided to try my hand at this.  If you've read the Best Ever Roast Chicken post,  these are the veggies from that.

The one kitchen utensil you really need for this is a frying pan that you can put in the oven, but individual cast-iron skillets make the nicest presentation. I do not have one so I made a family-style version instead.

The skillet ends up looking better than because I have a cheap camera and a dimly lit kitchen. Also, when I cook eggs over easy, to get them to the plate without breaking, they end up flying really fast. In short, I'm terrible at feed presentation. 

So here's what you do:

First, sauté the leftover roasted veggies until a good brown crust forms, they are heated through, and much of the moisture. Do not add oil unless they seem dry. They should have enough lubrication from the oil used during roasting and in this case, from the chicken fat during cooking.

In this particular roasted veg combo I have potatoes, carrots, onions, mushrooms, and whole cloves of garlic.

To this mixture add copious amounts of fresh ground black pepper, and Lawry's seasoning salt or some other flavor that will give you a more rustic and savory taste to lessen some of the sweetness you get from the carrots and onions. Other suggestions are cumin, paprika, chipotle, chili powder, cajun seasoning, Old Bay, etc.  Once its done, take this mixture out and put it in a bowl. At this point you should also preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Then, chop up your favorite sausage - I used chicken andouille for this for two reasons: 1. To cut through the sweetness of roasted vegetables and 2. because that's what I had.

Also, chop up a bell pepper and a medium vidalia onion (any white onion. No red). I added extra onion because a sauteed onion provides a different flavor that is fresh and has some bite for the breakfast skillet. It pairs well with roasted onions and also helps to cut some of that sweetness.

Man, do you see the steam coming off that skillet? Oh yes...

Once the peppers have started to soften and the sausage is getting that lovely crust to it that only sausage can, remove this mixture from the skillet and put it in a bowl.

Now, its an assembly-line process.

Oh that third thing? Yeah, that's grated sharp cheddar cheese. 

To the pan you've been using, add the potato mixture spreading evenly to fill the pan. Then put the sausage mixture on top of this. Finally, top with cheese. To this I also placed some campari tomatoes around the sides to heat up with the skillet. I didn't add to the saute because I didn't want the tomato juices to make everything soggy. While I don't have it in pictures, I diced up the warmed tomatoes after I removed the skillet and added those on top of the eggs.

Then, sprinkle the cheese all over the top. Your goal in baking this is to melt the cheese and keep it warm until the eggs are done.

Fry two eggs per person. Really, as many as you want. 

Also, don't forget to salt and pepper liberally. 

Before the eggs are done, take out the skillet making sure that the cheese is melted. You'll want to flip the eggs, cook for a few seconds just to get a skin over the yolk and then place on top of the skillet.

Like I said, eggs fly and flop all over the place in my kitchen. So, excuse the presentation, its really all about the taste anyway. 

Also, I chopped up the tomatoes after I had already plated the goods so I don't have a picture of the diced tomatoes on top, but DO THIS. It is an absolute MUST.

There you have it. The best reuse of roasted vegetables I've ever made. Enjoy!

-A

Best Ever Roast Chicken

Okay.. So it seems that this blog is going to be about cooking as well as everything else I've put in here.

Recently I've just been in love with cooking again. I'm feeling inspired and challenged by making great food. This is my Best Ever Roast Chicken which has evolved from an amalgamation of tips and tricks from a variety of sources. I cannot tell you which items came from whom so I'll just credit them all here: Rachel Ray, Ree Drummond, Paula Dean, my grandpa, and of course, my mom! My mom is probably the most influential person in this list. She has this amazing ability to cook animals. Really, you can't be an herbivore when she's cooking. I know because I've tried!

My roast chicken begins in the traditional (I'm guessing Irish? Who knows, I'm such a northern european mutt) way with a bed of root vegetables. Cut everything so that it cooks at the same rate.

Dislaimer: I won't tell you quantities of each item or chop sizes because the way I cook is very much an instinctual process whereby quantities, proportions, and seasonings just manifest as I go. The best I can tell you is that I decide which item is to be the star (in this case, potatoes) and how much I want of that and then everything else becomes a supporting actor. I am experienced enough to know what flavors will be produced with each cooking method so I make my decisions based on that. Thus, onions are a very bold sweet flavor when roasted. Mushrooms become more intense with their beefy-ness. Carrots become dessert sweet and garlic gets more earthy.

I prefer the earthy flavors so there is more garlic and mushrooms than carrot or onion, but onion wins over carrot in my book so that is also taken into consideration.

I put olive oil down on the roasting pan - ditch that roasting rack you get with it. If you're not soaking up chicken flavor with vegetables, then you're wasting the chicken's juices. Then I toss all of the vegetables in the oil. Sprinkle salt, pepper, rosemary, dried parsley, dried basil, and Old Bay (or some other seasoning salt) all over the vegetables and toss again. Make sure the star of this medley is the rosemary giving the least amount of presence to the Old Bay.

Now, the chicken. Rinse the bird in cold water - remove the giblets and other yucky things. Honestly why do people eat that?!

Rub olive oil all over the bird. I use this because it gets into every single crevice and roasted olive oil just creates the best flavor. Then, I separate the skin from the breast and shove softened butter and whole garlic cloves under the skin. With the bird breast-side up, I rub the top of the skin, the legs and wings with butter. Then, rosemary is sprinkled all over the bird, inside and out. garlic cloves are placed inside the cavity. The wings are tucked under the breasts.

Place the bird, boob-side up, on top of the vegetables. Put this in a 400 degree oven for roughly an hour for a 4lb bird, and then add 15 minutes per pound after that.  Place a meat thermometer in the crook where the leg meets the breast and leave it there for the cooking process. You're looking for 170 degrees before you pull out the bird.

When our lady friend is ready, pull her out of the oven and remove the thermometer. Watch the hole the thermometer made closely. Are the juices running clear? If not, even if there's the slightest discoloration, put her back in the over. That hen ain't done yet! When the juices run clear, bring her out to rest for about 15 minutes. Then slice her up and eat!

Since I never measure my ingredients, I always end up with way too many left overs. I.F. hates this so much. He says "Why are you cooking for 10? Theres only you and me." To which I say, "I'm a country woman. This is the first time in my life that there has been less than 5 people at my dinner table. My mother doesn't know how to cook for two and neither do I."

Thus, I've become quite creative with leftovers. Check out the next blog post on what to do with leftover roasted veg!

-A