I had a bee in my bonnet this week to try out some Greek inspired cuisine (ok I just wanted an excuse to eat olives) so I put together two quick and easy meals loosely reminiscent of the Greek style of cooking. Tuesday night I kicked it off by heading to trusty Trader Joe's and picking up a jar of what they called Artichoke tapenade, Kalamata Olives, fat free Feta cheese, mushrooms, grape tomatoes, Spinach and ground turkey meat. Obviously, I was also running low on food in the house. I did, however, have a yellow pepper, a random jalapeno, a red onion, garlic and a collection of fresh Parsley, Oregano and Rosemary. Leftover groceries are always strange in our house.
I started by crushing three cloves of garlic and slicing and chopping maybe an 1/8th of the red onion. I added this to a hot pan with tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a little salt and pepper. As the garlic and onions started to turn translucent, I added two tablespoons of the artichoke tapenade to the pan. Then I got lazy. I started to realize that my pan was too small for all of the turkey meat, but I wanted to cook it all for leftovers for lunch. So, refusing to dig out my huge saute pan, I just added it all to the too small pan. It worked, the meat cooked- but word to the wise- just dig out the bigger pan if this happens to you- it is SO much easier to stir things.
After the meat was cooked it became a lovely fun time of adding all sort of ingredients as I wished. I started by
This was a delicious meal- that honestly could not have been any easier! The flavors blended really nicely
Last night- having many leftover ingredients, and once again without much time to spare- I made a quick dish with
When the pork was done and had rested about 10 minutes, I sliced it thinly, laid the slices out on a plate with some slices of tomato, spooned the puree on top and then sprinkled a little red onion over the top.
Another quick, incredibly easy, delicious meal on a weeknight where time was not on my side. This had many of the same flavors as the nights previous dinner, but was a completely different application. It's always nice to find different uses for the same ingredients -especially tasty ones. It cuts down on waste without getting bored of the same thing over and over again.
What are your favorite twists on "leftover" ingredients?
1 comment:
Oh my YUM! I LOVE Greek food and this gave me some excellent inspiration! Those tomatoes look gorgeous!
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