January 17, 2012 Lunch – Seafood Soup and Salad; Dinner – Chopped steak with Bleu Cheese, Phylo leek tart and Acorn Squash

January 17, 2012 Lunch – Seafood Soup and Salad; Dinner – Chopped steak with Bleu Cheese, Phylo leek tart and Acorn Squash

Another day of leftovers.

For lunch I fixed a simple salad of organic greens and cucumber slices; I sliced in half and toasted one of Suzette Dawson’s lovely sourdough rolls and heated the leftover seafood soup.  The flavors of the soup had blended nicely upon its third heating with the tomatoes going more into solution so the soup had a merged flavor of tomato and seafood with a lingering spicy Prudhomme kick at the end.

At around 5:00 p.m. I became engrossed in reading my book club selection, Caleb’s Crossing, and did not really mind delaying dinner as Suzette went to her girl group’s meeting and did not return until after 8:00 p.m. 

At around 7:30 p.m., I began to get hungry so I put the bundles of aluminum wrapped PPI phylo tart (that Cynthia had sent us home with from Saturday night’s dinner party at Cynthia and Ricardo’s) and the leftover half of the fruit filled  baked acorn squash (prepared last night) into the oven to heat at 350°F.. 

When Suzette arrived at around 8:15, I took the thawed chopped rib eye patties out of the fridge and fired up a skillet and threw them in.  Suzette took over their cooking as I sliced several slices of Bleu cheese.  As Suzette tended to the cheese covered chopped steaks cooking covered on the stove, I opened a bottle of Canoe Ridge Merlot that was given to us as a Christmas gift.

This simple dish of leftovers was a delicious complement of flavors. I particularly liked the texture of the phylo tart with its soft goat cheese combined with the oniony and tactile and vegetable flavor of the whole leek strips in the stuffing blanketed by layers of crisp phylo on the top and bottom.  The pleasant cooking smells of the cheeses and meat lingered in the house into the night.

Let me encourage you to wrap leftovers that benefit from re-heating in the oven in aluminum foil so they can be quickly and easily reheated in the oven   The phylo tart would have lost its crispness and the acorn squash its texture if they had been reheated in a microwave oven.

After a little more reading of my book as I nibbled a few chocolate truffles and finished my glass of the smooth, mellow Merlot, I made my way to bed at around 10:00 p.m. after a very comfortable evening of reading and eating comfort foods cooked with little effort.

Bon Appètit