January 3, 2013 Dinner – Ham Loaf, stir fried Baby Bok Choy and squash soup

January 3, 2013 Dinner – Ham Loaf, stir fried Baby Bok Choy and squash soup

There comes a time when you have to say we must use up the PPI ingredients from Christmas or throw them out and tonight that time arrived.  We took the PPI baked ham, the squash casserole, and cranberry relish from Christmas Eve, the PPI Pasilla steak sauce from last night, the blue potatoes from our Christmas Day meal at Amy’s and a bag of baby bok choy that had been languishing in the vegetable drawer for three weeks and determined  to make a meal with them.

I wanted to use my new immersion blender.  Suzette suggested that we make a soup with the PPI squash casserole, blue potatoes and pasilla steak sauce (see January 1, 2013) which sounded great to me, if for no other reason than it used up so many ingredients.   

Then she said that she could cook a ham loaf, which is meat loaf made with ham.  I said I would stir fry some bok choy.

So we launched into cooking.  Suzette put the PPI squash casserole, potatoes and steak sauce into a large enamel coated Le Creuset 4.5 quart casserole and poured about two cups of water into it and started heating it.  I started chopping bok choy one leaf at a time so I could separate the green leaves from the heavier white base of the stalks.  Then I chopped 1 Tbsp. of ginger and 1 Tbsp. of garlic and 3 oz. red onion and took them to the kitchen when Suzette called inquiring the whereabouts of the container of breadcrumbs (Whole Foods’ 365 brand) and I then broke and mixed three eggs for Suzette as she was folding the ham she had blended in the Cuisinart with chopped onions and the breadcrumbs and eggs.   She then stuffed the ham mixture into a bread pan and covered it with BBQ sauce and put it in the oven at 350˚.

We then turned our attention to the squash soup.  I stuck my immersion mixer into the squash soup but it was less than 2 inches deep in the casserole and I could not immerse my hand blender, so we ended up with a soup with clumps of potato and squash, which seemed okay to us.

Then I heated my wok over medium high heat and poured in 1 tsp. of sesame oil and 2 Tbsp. of peanut oil and then tossed in the diced pieces of the white stalks of the Bok Choy, ginger, onion and garlic.  Suzette said, “Don’t make the bok choy too Chinesey, so it clashes with the ham loaf and soup.”, so I only added a dash of Japanese brown rice vinegar and some Chinese cooking wine and a bit of sugar and salt to give it a more European flavor and align it with the vinegar and sugar flavor of the ham loaf’s BBQ sauce coating. 

After cooking the Ham Loaf for 50 minutes, it was still not solid, so I threw the green tops of the bok choy leaves into the wok and stirred it some more and covered the wok with the wok lid to steam the bok choy and decided to bake the ham loaf for another twenty minutes.  We also agreed that we had put too much egg into the mix and that it would be better the next day.   We decided to drink beer and got a few out and then decided to eat the soup while we were waiting for the ham loaf, so I turned down the heat on the bok choy to allow it to steam slowly and Suzette served cups of hot squash soup.  The soup had a lovely balanced flavor, even though one could taste the constituent ingredients.  The soup had a kind of New American Southwest flavor, thanks mainly to the ingredients and Robert Del Grande’s Pasilla chili steak sauce.

Finally, we decided to eat, regardless of the condition of the ham loaf, so we scooped wedges of it onto plates and scooped bok choy onto the plates and sat down to a very pleasant dinner, albeit the ham loaf was a little runny and the bok choy had softened to less than crisp.

Bon Appètit