Reprise

Maybe I'm obsessed with the idea of making leftovers delicious because, growing up, just about half of my meals at home were leftovers.  And not necessarily good ones.  There was a lot of day-old chicken and dry pork chops and cold green beans re-steamed in the microwave.  I'm not unhappy that chapter of my life has closed. 

Yesterday, the rain brought out the homemaker in me and I made turkey chili, the same version I made for the Superbowl in January.  To refresh tired memories, that recipe involves ground turkey, poblano peppers, green peppers, corn, tomatillos, kidney beans, onion, and a tomato base.  It's spicy, hearty, and perfect for wet weather.  

But after a day of chili, I was sufficiently bored.  I started thinking about this sandwich I had a few weeks ago at Baoguette.  It was a banh mi made with the filling from a Sloppy Joe.  

Could I do it?  Could I make a knock-off banh mi with leftover chili?  

I had to make pickles first.  My pickles were a sweeter kind that I thought would be closer to the Vietnamese style.  I didn't use daikon, but I did use thin-sliced pickling cucumbers, shredded carrot, sliced hot green peppers, and white onions.  I salted them to draw out the moisture and then rinsed and dried them before putting them in the brine I had boiled and then cooled.  The brine was an apple cider vinegar-base brine, with the addition of kosher salt, cane sugar, allspice berries, cloves, mustard seed, a bay leaf, whole corriander, and water.  Most pickling recipes will tell you that pickles need to sit for days or weeks before they're done.  But with a mild sweet pickle recipe like this one, a few hours is more than sufficient.  

Next, my own version of kewpie mayonnaise.  Kewpie mayonnaise is the Asian condiment of choice and it appears on sandwiches everywhere.  It's mayonnaise with MSG added and it's pretty delicious, but not exactly good for you.  I made my own spread with olive oil-based mayonnaise, sriracha, and a teaspoon or so of fish sauce (a traditional condiment used on banh mi).  

I used whole-wheat baguettes, sliced and toasted, as my banh mi base.  Then the mayonnaise, the pickles, the chili and, finally, fresh-torn cilantro.  The sandwich tasted very much like the banh mis I know and love.  

Game Night

My all-girls Superbowl party, held at the house of a friend, included some activities that probably would have faced ridicule had there been men around. In the afternoon, we played Hearts and drank Malbec. My friend cooked up fresh sausages, nabbed from her downtown restaurant. We wrapped them in biscuits and topped them with mustard, relish, sauerkraut, and ketchup.

Phase two involved a Mexican dip, courtesy of another friend. It seems my red meat-free diet was torn to shreds in the face of one whopping pound of ground beef, topped with melted cheese, sour cream, taco seasoning, black olives, tomatoes, and scallions.

Luckily, we had the whole afternoon. Next up was a mean game of Taboo accompanied by shrimp lettuce wraps, host's courtesy. She poached a pound of fresh shrimp in hot water and chopped them into bite-sized pieces. She then added a can of drained, crushed pineapple, one chopped scallion, red bell pepper, a few tablespoons of light sour cream, sriracha, cilantro, lime juice and tossed the mixture together with a few ripe and sliced avocado. We put the spicy shrimp mixture on wide leaves of iceberg lettuce and rolled them into miniature burritos.

My chili was a hit, as was the end product of project healthy cookie. When those chocolate chip monstrosities failed to meet my admittedly high standards, I decided to convert them into a bread pudding. I whisked together one egg, a cup of skim milk, some ground nutmeg, and ground cloves. I crumbled the cookies and put them in a glass baking dish and poured the egg mixture over them. At 350, I let the cookies re-bake for about 20 minutes, until I was sure the egg had cooked through. I then added sugar-free vanilla pudding to the dish, mixing the whole thing together in the pan once it cooled. It came together nicely and the whole-wheat flour actually offered nice textural integrity to the dish. My one complaint was that the chocolate chips melted on the second bake, which meant that the desired crunch of chocolate was absent from the final product.

We were all rooting for Arizona, but they lost. Of course, the entire day was nothing more than an excuse to hang around in sweatpants and eat our faces off, which, in my estimation, was a resounding success.