Got leftover steaks and baked potatoes from last night’s dinner? Turn them into breakfast GOLD by making an easy, delicious hash.

Here’s the how to: Chop potatoes and steak (or chicken, pork chop, meat loaf, whatev) into roughly equal size cubes (1/2 inch-ish). Chop a couple shallots or onions finely. If you’re like me, then for some odd reason your leftovers also fortuitously include a ziploc containing 5 cooked bacon slices and you should definitely chop those up as well. If you’re lucky enough to own a vegetable, like a bell pepper or broccoli or something, well then your fridge is better stocked than mine. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back, then give that the chop chop as well.

Heat some butter (or lard, duck fat, olive oil, whatev) in a large saute pan over high heat. Add the potatoes- those should get crispy so they need to cook the longest. If you have some hard vegetable like broccoli then throw that in with the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Toss or stir to brown the potatoes on multiple sides. When you’ve got some nice browning on at least a couple of sides, add the shallots (and your softer vegetable if you’re using one: I’m talking bell pepper or zucchini-type stuff) and cook another couple minutes until the shallots soften but not so long that they brown. Add the meat(s) and cook just until heated through, tossing or stirring, a couple minutes. Check the seasoning and adjust. If you really want to clog your family’s arteries, fry some eggs and put ‘em over the top. What the hell. You only live once.

I like to eat this with some Greek yogurt mixed in, but then again, I’m weird like that.

I was bizarrely having a spaghetti and meatballs craving, which is probably, oh, the first time EVER that I have had one (and no, I am not secretly pregnant.) So without further ado, I present an extremely satisfying down-home meal that will compel your guests to ask if you learned all your secrets from a fabled Italian nonna. Although to be fair, it helps if you ply your guests with a couple bottles of wine and maybe a few shots of tequila before sitting down for dinner, which may or may not have happened before I served this meal. I’m just sayin’.

I used my new favorite thing, quinoa spaghetti from Whole Foods. It tastes almost exactly like regular spaghetti but imparts the nutritiousness of my favorite pseudocereal. One more note: the recipe combines many meats (3 to be exact) but you could just use all beef if you like.

Spaghetti and Meatballs
This will serve 4-6 easily.

Ingredients:

for the meatballs:

• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 slices bread (any kind) crust removed, torn into pieces
• 1 Tblsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped finely
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1 Tblsp roughly chopped Italian parsley leaves
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1/2 pound ground veal
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup parmigiano-reggiano
• salt and pepper
• vegetable oil

for the sauce:

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped finely
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 20 ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
• salt and pepper

Method:

Make the sauce:

• Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook a couple minutes, until soft and opaque.
• Using your hands, pull the tomatoes out of the liquid in the can and crush them up with your hands a bit before adding them to the pot. Add about a cup of the liquid from the tomato can. Season with salt and pepper and cook at a simmer for about 20 minutes, at which point the sauce should get thicker.
• Reduce heat to lowest possible setting and cook another 20-30 minutes. Taste sauce and add more salt and pepper if necessary. If desired, add in some chopped fresh basil or oregano at the end and stir in.

While sauce is cooking, make the meatballs:

• Put milk in a large bowl and add torn bread pieces to soak. Set aside.
• Heat olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and parsley and cook until soft and opaque, about 8-10 minutes.
• Add onion mixture and all meats into the large bowl with the bread and milk, along with the egg, parmigiano, and some salt and pepper, and mix with your hands until mixed together. (Reserve the onion pan for cooking the meatballs.)
• Preheat the oven to 350.
• Heat about 1/4 inch of vegetable oil in the onion pan over medium high heat. Form meatballs that are between the size of a baseball and a golf ball. Brown them on all sides, about 15 minutes total.
• Put about 1/4 of the sauce in a 9×13 pan. Add meatballs. Put another 1/4 of the sauce over the meatballs. Put into the oven and cook for about 15-30 minutes, until they are cooked through.
• Meanwhile, cook your noodles as directed.
• When the meatballs are done, mix the drained noodles with the remaining 1/2 of the sauce. Spoon the meatballs on top of the noodles and sprinkle with extra parmigiano if desired.

My last couple posts have been kind of weird and gross! As individual posts, they are OK, as a gestalt, notsomuch. I’m pleased to say that things are looking up for everyone, as I have something that is decidedly NOT gross and in fact  SUPER delicious- a recipe for Pancake Ice Cream with Bacon Candy.

I put this beloved recipe up as a guest post on Thursday Night Smackdown, which is known for its witty proprietress Michelle, who swears like a stevedore. Ergo, don’t be surprised if I seem a little grittier over there. Or funnier. I think I tried harder to be funny because she’s really funny and I wanted to impress her, and you. Hopefully it worked. If not, just think about the bacon candy some more. Bacon. Plus candy. Bacon candy!

I have been really busy lately, but one of the bright spots of my recent days was making this cornbread and then eating it all.

Cornbread can be too sweet or too mealy or too dry or too boring, but this cornbread is none of those things. I’m guessing it’s largely because of the copious amounts of bacon and bacon grease that go into it, but there could be other reasons. I like it warm out of the oven or lightly toasted. With all the fat in it, even I don’t need to put butter on it… and that’s saying quite a lot since I like to put butter on EVERYTHING. But it’s not solely enhanced by the pig products- it’s rounded out with caramelized onions and a measure of parmesan cheese just for the heck of it. So swine up your cornbread- one bite and you will wonder why you have spent all these years eating stupid regular non-porked cornbread.

Props to my friend Rodney for the bones of the recipe, who wants to try this with pork sausage instead of bacon and turn it into stuffing, which makes me ask, great, what time should I be there for dinner, pal?

Swinetastic Cornbread

Ingredients:

• ½ lb. thick cut bacon or pancetta, cut in small squares
• 1 yellow onion, sliced thinly
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 tblsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• ¾ cup sour cream or plain yogurt
• ½ cup milk or buttermilk
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup bacon grease (liquid) + more for greasing the pan and cooking the onions
• ½ cup grated or shaved parmigiano

Method:

• Cook bacon over medium heat until brown and crispy. Remove to paper towels with slotted spoon and set aside.
• Pour out all but about 2 tsp of bacon grease and reserve for later. Turn heat to low and add onions. Season with salt and cook, stirring often, until onions are caramelized, about 20-30 minutes. Remove and set aside.
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a loaf pan or square 9×9 pan with extra bacon grease.
• Mix together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, and parmesan in a bowl.
• In a separate bowl, mix sour cream or yogurt, buttermilk, and egg.
• Mix together dry and wet ingredients, being careful not to overmix. Add liquid bacon grease and stir to combine.
• Gently stir in cheese, bacon, and onions. Pour into prepared pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean.
• Serve warm or let cool and toast lightly before serving.

My parents lived in Queretaro, Mexico for a couple of months 2 years ago- and ever since then my Dad has been OBSESSED with something he ate there ONE TIME. He does not stop talking about it! Using his descriptions, I did some detective work via my Diana Kennedy cookbook and figured out he probably ate Chiles En Nogada- a very interesting and admittedly somewhat challenging Mexican recipe. I’ve been promising him that I would make it, and when I finally did, it was really rather time-consuming and I wasn’t sure it would be worth it.

The main issue that I had is that the recipe calls for fresh walnuts. Here’s where I admit I don’t actually know what a fresh walnut looks like. It also said to skin the walnuts, ie remove the papery skin part… which sounded really vexing and actually totally completely WAS vexing. That is because I felt like I was in a walnut skinning sweatshop with my tiny fingers painstakingly working the skins off of walnuts for hours on end. Welcome to my sweatshop. Note the tiny pile of hard-won naked walnut pieces on the bottom left. Ugh.

In the end, it was all totally worth it. The dish was beautiful, unusual, and super delicious. It didn’t taste strictly Mexican, and in fact had shades of the Middle East in the flavor profile. It was also absolutely gorgeous. Even for a lazy slacker like me- it was totally worth the effort!  Next time I will try just NOT skinning the walnuts… or try to track down those fresh walnuts once and for all.

Luckily for me, and for you, Elise from Simply Recipes posted Diana Kennedy’s recipe in full right here! For the record, Elise doesn’t skin the walnuts. Of course, if  you’d like to open your very own walnut sweatshop… be my guest!

I didn’t originally make this dish with the intention of post the recipe, since it was just something I threw together. In the end, it turned out pretty fabulously so I decided to share it. In fact, Ross said it was “one of my favorite things you’ve ever made, ever” and then stuffed his face with seconds. In fact, before bed he said “I want to eat more pasta.” In fact, when he woke up in the morning, he went straight to the fridge and finished it off. So I can’t promise that YOU will love it, but some people certainly do.

If you like pasta dishes which feature the noodles more than the other stuff- then this is not for you. If, however, you like pasta dishes in which the presence of noodles provides a vehicle to get giant chunks of salty pancetta, earthy vegetables, and fresh ricotta into your face, then you should give it a try. It’s like a bowl full of fall, and extremely satisfying on a chilly night.

A few notes about the ingredients: It’s best if you can get slab pancetta or slab bacon and cut it into cubes, but you could use regular thick-cut bacon if you have to. The ricotta must be fresh, not in the tub from the supermarket. (At the risk of sounding terribly haughty I had actually made my own ricotta, which I’ll talk about in a future post, as it’s actually pretty simple to make at home.) You can get fresh ricotta at an Italian market or a kind of fancy store like Whole Foods. You could also omit the ricotta if you want; it definitely rounds out the dish, but it would still be tasty without. As to the pasta, I used fresh pappardelle, but I wouldn’t recommend it- I think a smaller pasta shape would work much better. Finally, if the pancetta is very salty you may want to be conservative on salting the rest of the dish.

Autumn-Is-Here Pasta

serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. fresh pasta
• 1/2 lb slab pancetta, cut in 1/4 inch cubes
• 1 large or 2 small carrots, peeled and cut in small cubes
• 1/4-1/3 lb chanterelle mushrooms, chopped finely
• 2 leeks, sliced thinly and rinsed free of dirt
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup chopped sundried tomatoes in oil, drained
• about 1/2 cup fresh ricotta

Method:

• Cook pasta according to directions.
• Meanwhile, in a large saute pan, cook pancetta in a single layer over medium low heat, until crisped and browned. Remove to paper towels.
• Pour out grease, leaving a light coating in the pan. Reserve remaining grease in a bowl.
• Raise heat to medium high and add carrots. Cook until soft and a bit caramelized. Remove to bowl.
• Add 1-2 teaspoons to reserved grease and cook mushrooms over medium high heat until browned and crunchy. Remove to carrot bowl.
• If you still have grease, add another 2 tsp to pan, or if you’re out of grease add 2 tsp olive oil. Add leeks and cook 2-3 minutes, until bright green. Add white wine and lower heat to low. Cook until wine has evaporated.
• Stir in mushrooms, carrots, bacon, and sundried tomatoes. Mix with pasta.
• Top each serving with about 2 Tblsp ricotta.

Method:

I have no idea where this recipe came from, it’s scribbled on a scrap of paper- but I changed it a lot from the paper scrap version because it had what I perceived to be too much sugar and too many unnecessary steps. It is quick, easy, and colorful, and the figs and pork are a fantastic combination.

I bought luscious Black Mission figs for this at the Farmers Market, but then I let Ross eat them all as a snack. So I had to buy figs at Safeway, and all they had were the green Kadotas. But shockingly they were pretty good figs, even from Safeway.

For a side dish, you want something that can sop up the yummy sauce. I sauteed finely chopped mushrooms with thyme and mixed them into couscous for an easy and fast side dish, but mashed potatoes or a crusty loaf of fresh bread would be good too.

Pork with Balsamic Figs
This is pretty fast, as well as easy- start to finish, around 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 4 thin-cut, bone-in pork chops
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 T butter
• 4-6 fresh figs, cut in quarters
• 2 T balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup beef broth
• 1 T brown sugar
• salt and pepper

Method:

• Season pork chops liberally with salt and pepper on both sides.
• Heat olive oil and cook the pork chops on high heat, 2-3 minutes per side. Remove to platter.
• Put butter in pan and melt. Saute figs a few minutes, until a little browned. Remove from pan.
• Add balsamic vinegar, broth, and sugar to pan. Cook on medium until reduced and a little thicker. Season with salt and pepper.
• Add figs back to pan for a minute. Pour sauce and figs over pork and serve immediately.

In honor of July 4th, I give you… a German recipe! My paternal grandfather had a couple of specialty dishes and one was to make schnitzel. His family hailed from Germany and he had learned this from his mother. I hadn’t eaten it for years, but now that I’ve become reacquainted with it, I won’t make that mistake any longer! It’s easy to make and you can often cobble it together with things you already have in the house.

My mom said that with veal this is called wiener schnitzel but with pork my Grandpa called it jaeger schnitzel. I got to thinking that if jaeger means pork then Jaegermeister means pork master and that seems odd. So I looked it up and my Gramps was wrong. Jaeger means hunter so jaeger schnitzel is this recipe made with hunted meat, usually venison. Etymological mystery solved! Too bad, though, because it’s more fun to say jaeger schnitzel.

I was with my mom and my aunts and we were all cooking together, and we noticed that this is a lot faster and easier to make with 2 sets of hands- one person to do the breading and get their hands messy, and one to do the frying. There is no official recipe for this so I’ve explained the technique but not given specific amounts. In addition to pork, you could use chicken or veal cutlets. We used panko because it’s pre-crumbed, but my grandpa used crushed Ritz crackers, which add a buttery sweetness. You can use any kind of bread or cracker crumbs.

Pork Schnitzel

Ingredients:

• pork cutlets or tenderloin sliced thinly
• bread crumbs, panko, or cracker crumbs
• flour
• eggs
• salt and pepper
• butter-flavored crisco and butter (or oil and butter) for frying
• lemon wedges for serving

Method:

• Using a mallet, pound pork until very thin.
• Prepare three dishes, one with flour and salt and pepper, one with a couple beaten eggs mixed with a splash of water, and one with the crumbs.
• Heat a large skillet over medium high heat with about 2 teaspoons each of butter and crisco (or oil.)
• Dip pork in flour, then eggs, then crumbs and place in hot pan. Cook each side until golden brown and remove to platter. Serve with lemon wedges.
• Note: You will need to add more fat with each round or every other round. If you make a lot, at some point if there are too many burnt crumbs in the pan you should clean the pan out with a paper towel and start with fresh grease.

Adobo is one of my favorite easy recipes and one of the tastiest ways to enjoy pork. In this case, Adobo refers to a common Filipino dish that combines just 4 ingredients: soy sauce, vinegar, black pepper, and garlic, to create a spicy, tangy sauce. A lot of Adobo recipes are saucy to the point of being more like a stew, but I like this one because it produces a rich, reduced, almost caramelized coating over the pork.

What’s surprising about this combination is that once everything is cooked together it doesn’t taste how you would expect it to taste. To wit: the pepper is spicier than you expect, the garlic is mellower, the soy sauce isn’t as salty, and the vinegar isn’t as pungent. It all marries together in a sauce that is greater, and more complex, than the sum of its parts.

There are probably thousands of Adobo recipes out there, and as you may have guessed I’m totally not Filipino so I make no claims to authenticity. I will, however, make claims to deliciousness! I like to serve it over rice to neutralize the spice of the sauce.

Pork Adobo
serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 2 lb. boneless pork roast
• 1 cup soy sauce
• 2 cups white wine vinegar
• 2-3 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Tblsp vegetable oil
• 12-15 cloves garlic, sliced as thinly as possible

Method:

• Trim the major fat off the pork roast and cut into 1/2 inch chunks.
• Put pork, soy sauce, vinegar, and pepper in a saucepan and bring to a boil, ensuring all pork is submerged in liquid. Lower heat to medium and boil 30-45 minutes.
• Heat oil in saute pan over medium high heat. Use a slotted spoon to transfer pork pieces to oil. Saute 10 minutes, stirring or flipping often, to brown on all sides.
• Add garlic to pan and cook 30 seconds, stirring. Add adobo sauce and cook about 10 more minutes, until sauce thickens.
• Serve over rice.

My friend Robert (of oatmeal cookie fame) also makes amazing homemade chilaquiles for a hearty weekend breakfast. He makes everything without measurements, which he refers to as doing it “Mexican style”, so it was a little tricky to pin down the measurements. After a few years of prodding and cajoling, he finally allowed me to shadow him in the kitchen and try to furiously transcribe his methods.

If you’ve never had chilaquiles before, it’s a traditional Mexican breakfast dish that consists of fried tortilla chips coated in a green or red sauce, layered with scrambled eggs and chorizo, and baked with cheese on top. While it makes it something of a royal pain in the butt, the key to this recipe’s tastiness lies in frying up the tortilla chips yourself. If you have an avid and patient kitchen helper (even one who lacks culinary skillz), this chip-frying task would be a good time to call on them.

Chilaquiles are also commonly lauded as a hangover cure. To that end, Robert always makes this on the Sunday of our yearly Spring wine-tasting weekend. To protect his precious family recipes, I have made some key changes in this version! Robert: you can sleep easy knowing that while now everyone can enjoy some delicious chilaquiles, they will never be exactly the same as the ones you make.

Robert’s Chilaquiles
serves 8

Ingredients:

• 1 pound fresh corn tortillas
• 2 – 29 oz cans tomato sauce
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 Tblsp chili powder
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 3 chicken bouillion cubes
• 1 Tblsp flour, shaken in a jar with 2 Tblsp water
• 1 pound fresh Mexican chorizo
• 12 eggs, beaten well
• 1/2 pound grated cheese (Monterey Jack, mild cheddar, or shredded Mexican blend)
• 1 cup queso fresco, crumbled
• salt and pepper to taste
• vegetable oil for frying

Method:

• Cut tortillas into chip-sized wedges. Heat about 1 inch of oil in a large saute pan. Fry chips in batches until golden on both sides, removing to drain on paper towels.
• Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine tomato sauce, cumin, chili powder, garlic, and bouillion. Heat over medium heat until bubbling. Lower heat and leave to simmer. Stir in flour/water mixture and salt and pepper. Taste and add more seasonings if you wish.
• Continue simmering over low heat for about 30 more minutes, stirring to make sure sauce doesn’t stick to pot.
• Preheat oven to 350.
• Combine half of chips and half of sauce, tossing to coat well. Lay in 9×13 pan. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, until chips have dried out a bit.
• While chips are baking, cook chorizo, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until browned. Add eggs, salt and pepper to taste, and cook until scrambled.
• Spread egg and chorizo mixture over chips. Mix remaining chips with remaining sauce and spread on top of eggs.
• Sprinkle grated cheese on top, then crumble queso fresco over the top.
• Bake for about 20 minutes, until cheese is melted. Serve with refried beans, Spanish rice, avocadoes, and sour cream.