I am so proud of myself...

So, on Friday, Good Friday, I wanted something to eat and the only thing I had in the fridge was some old Pizza Hut pizza and breadsticks, which were stale from 3 days old.  I was thinking about chefs who at their height could come up with a dish out of anything and I wanted to be a chef who could do this.  Chefs who have to sit and work off of recipes or cook the same thing baffle me.  On cooking shows like Chopped or Top Chef, the chefs are asked to come up with new and never before seen dishes.  So you know what they come up with 90% of the time?  Dishes from their restaurant.  If they cook a dish with the secret ingredient of beef, then it shouldn't be a dish from their menu.  That would be like cheating.


Well, what did I make?  Stuffing.  I took the garlic breadsticks and chopped them up.  I then added one chopped up celery stick, one diced onion, 1 egg and some Chervil.  I chopped it all up and added it to a bowl to mix it together.

 

So, I slapped it all in a pan, cooked it at 450 degrees for 20 minutes and out came some tasty bread stuffing/dressing.

That is why I am proud of myself because it tasted so good.  I took a dish, that was likely going to be thrown away and made something delicious out of it.  Try that Iron Chef!  They should have a secret ingredient of "Leftovers" and have whatever food was in the green room before taping.

The falling leaves....fall past my window....the falling leaves of red and gold...

I will admit that in my limited cooking education, seeing how I have had no real formal classes and work, very little has been instructed to me on what to do when you have something with an open cavity and something that can be cooked inside.  Much like the stuffing inside of a turkey, many great things can have a great stuffing and therefore make for some delicious food.  I decided to take a risk and in doing so, tried to make some Lebanese food, probably the most tricky Lebanese dished to make, for those not familiar with the style, technique or the cuisine.  What dish could this be?  It involves leaves and a filling.

I know it looks like we just pulled some leaves off of any old deciduous tree but these are in fact pickled grape leaves.  You take these leaves and stuff them with a mixture of ground beef, rice and cinnamon. 

Make sure the rice is uncooked.  Now, you take out a single leaf, place some stuffing in it and roll in up.  Then carefully place them in the bottom of a pot.

How weird is that?  It looks like a pot of leaves.  While the grape leaves do have a leafy flavor, overall, they take on the flavor of the filling, as well as the garlic and lemon juice that you place in the pot, with the water to cook them.  They are delicious and as weird as the leaves are, it was definitely worth trying to cook with them.