Quick Friday night dinner?

By Friday night, I usually have to get creative when it comes to feeding myself. I venture into the pantry trying my best to use up ingredients that have been sitting in the fridge all week. This past Friday was no exception.

I ended up falling back on a recent favorite quick meal which I have yet to have the chance to write about: pasta with garlic, bacon, and fried chickpeas.

Fried, whole, chickpeas (garbanzo beans, whatever) are a recent discovery of mine that I made on a whim a few weeks ago while search for some accompaniments to pasta. I didn't much care for the texture or flavor of the bean straight out of the can, so I figured I should just fry it up along with some garlic.

Wow! The chickpeas, fried in a combination of olive oil and bacon fat that had rendered from cooking the bacon, were crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, and had a great beanie taste to them. This dish has quickly become a go-to dish when I have nothing sitting around but pasta, garlic, bacon, canned chickpeas, and some Parmesan cheese. When I made it last Friday, I served it with some steamed broccoli.

Beer-glazed black beans

So I would have posted Tuesday night's dinner of pork chops and polenta, but I forgot to take a picture. Then I thought my lunch yesterday of the leftovers would make a cool post about reheating food without a microwave. But a second look at that photo made me realize that polenta with corn doesn't photograph well on a Blackberry. Let's say it didn't look very appetizing.

So after the Gucci pork chop dinner, I went for a more economical meal centered on beans and rice. I thought I would make just a normal rice and beans sort of dish, but leafing through How To Cook Everything, I came across an interesting variation on that: beer-glazed black beans with bacon and tomatoes served over rice. I used canned beans, so it was a pretty quick meal, done in under an hour. Satisfying and hearty, too.

Tuesday Night Dinner Scrounge: Braised Potatoes with Wine and Bacon

Pork Glut: FIN. Pork ribs: gone. Sausage: gone. Risotto: gone. Bacon: All but 1 slice, gone.

The past several days have been a success in skillfully eroding away at my leftover cache. For lunch, I finished the risotto by warming it in a small cast iron fry pan over a single layer of thinly sliced Yukon gold potatoes. Covering the pan with a lid, the potatoes became browned and crispy on the bottom, while the risotto was gently heated up to a creamy doneness. I was pleasantly surprised by my clever use of leftovers and pantry ingredients.

For dinner, I was mostly out of leftovers, and instead had to put a meal together out of pantry ingredients. I had plenty of small red and gold potatoes I purchased a week ago, but hadn't used until lunch. I also had an opened bottle of cheap white wine that I had left uncorked on the counter since cooking Friday's dinner. A taste of the wine revealed that it hadn't yet turned, so I looked through Bittman for some ideas to put it to use.

Through some luck, I came across Bittman's recipe for braised potatoes with white wine and bacon, a recipe that couldn't have been more perfect for the situation. I started by crisping the bacon, some garlic (which ended up burning), and the potatoes in the above cast iron pan. After a few minutes, I added in a few ounces of chicken stock I had left in the fridge, and a few glugs of the pleasantly-not-gnarly white wine, along with some salt, pepper, fresh thyme, and mustard. As the liquid cooked down, I added more wine to keep the potatoes submerged. I took the picture above about halfway through the cooking process.

After about 40 minutes, the potatoes were soft and ready to eat, and the liquid had cooked down to a very flavorful (possibly could have used some water instead of all that wine) and thick sauce. Just like lunch, a surprisingly efficient use of my leftover and pantry ingredients that resulted in a satisfying and flavorful meal.

Meat-crazy Pizza

So I made a Berkeley Bowl run this afternoon on the way back from the Ashby BART station, so it was time for some meat! What you see to the left is a pizza (I bought the pizza dough, I didn't make it) with BBQ sauce, moz cheese, bacon, BBowl-made pork sausage, and zucchini. I was clearly overcompensating for a meat-deficiency over the previous 24 hours. To be extra indulgent, I spooned some bacon/sausage fat over the crust before I cooked the pizza, but that didn't appear to have any influence over the final product. It was indulgent enough as it was, though, and was completely delicious.

To drink, I had the last of my Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPAs (I can't believe I found DFH on the west coast!!!). A very satisfying meal.