Jan 31st, 2009
Posted on: February 1, 2009
- In: dinner | lunch
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Lunch
Since I still had two of the Sweet Italian Turkey Sausages from Longo’s left, I decided it was high time to finish at least one of them off (the second I am still planning to cook with potatoes in a hash!) I just wanted a sandwich, so I decided to cater to my Polish roots and do something with cabbage. Longo’s also sells half heads of cabbage for 79 cents (woot!) so I had one of those tucked in the fridge. I sliced some off into super thin strips and tossed it into a frying pan to sautée until soft with some butter. The sausage I removed from its casing and smushed around into a patty shape, then seasoned one side with cayenne pepper and the other with salt and pepper, rubbed both sides with a small amount of olive oil, and tossed it on the George Foreman grill to cook. I’m out of rye, so I used two thick slices of French bread. When the cabbage had softened up, I mixed some paprika and hot sauce into it.
The sandwich turned out really well! In retrospect I should have sliced my cabbage up a bit more rather than leaving the strips so long since it made eating a bit messy. I also think that toasting the bread would have been a good idea, and I found myself wanting some sort of condiment to complement the flavours I had — but since I’m not a fan of ketchup, mayo, or mustard, I don’t really know what I could have used.
Dinner
All I knew when I started to think about dinner for tonight is that I wanted caramelized onions (I cooked them using Elise’s method and they turned out fantastic). Since I had chicken breast thawing in the fridge, I just had to come up with something on the side. I ended up going for mashed potatoes, but I think that a nice green salad would likely have been a better idea.
The chicken breast I pounded thin (with the bottom of a frying pan!), put salt & pepper on both sides, and left to marinate in some Paul Newman’s Balsamic dressing for two hours. If I had been cooking just for myself, I would not have marinated it in this and would have cooked it up with a real balsamic glaze, but Chris doesn’t seem to be too much of a fan of the balsamic glazes I’ve churned out before and I didn’t want to make his differently from mine. I started it in the oven once the onions had been cooking for about 30 minutes…. and three minutes later, our apartment lost power. Again. Two burners on along with the oven seems to be too much. Our landlady is sending someone out to look at the stove, I presume on Monday, although we’ve had problems with it in the past and really they ought just to replace it but they’re probably too cheap for that. I ended up finishing the chicken on the stovetop, in the pan I used to caramelize the onions (deglazed with a bit of butter). I hadn’t wanted to cook it on the stovetop since I wanted everything to finish at the same time, but the onions stayed just warm enough by being wrapped in tin foil and set to the side.
Mashed potatoes were a little watery, but I blame that on losing power and being completely unable to see what was happening with them (or anything). I tossed the last of my cracked black pepper cream cheese and regular cream cheese into them, although it probably only amounted to two tablespoons or so altogether, along with a generous amount of milk & butter, and sliced the tops of some green onions in for colour. Chris loves mashed potatoes and he was quite happy with them… I found them to be too damned grainy, despite trying my best to make them creamy.
Presentation-wise, I put the potatoes down on the plate and spread thin, then topped them with the caramelized onions and put the chicken breast on top of that. This was not a great idea and if I made this again, the onions would go on top of the breast. Since it was pounded so thin, you couldn’t see the onions at all and it made for a kind of bland looking plate.
It Was a Very Good Meal... 
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