Thursday, April 16, 2009

Cause I'm free.....free forming!


Today I continued my "eat-the-entire-contents-of-my-fridge" quest. The mothership and I are big grocery shoppers, and as we do not generally consult with one another before purchases, we tend have a lot of stuff in our fridge. A lot. The "always buy" items include milk, eggs, and bread, and we generally go mid-week to buy these. But other than that - it's a free-for-all as to who gets to stock the fridge. As the more motivated cook, I tend to lead expeditions to the local food goods distribution centre and I take careful notes of what the mothership needs for the week. So in preparation for the next big purchasing trip - I am attempting to cook everything we have in our fridge AND freezer.

Tonight's dinner was a cream of chicken and vegetable soup and free form tomato and mozzarella tarts.

The soup was a complete mismash of items we have: bacon, cabbage, half a zucchini, 2/3 peeled carrot, one onion, two old stalks of celery, frozen peas and corn and one can of cream of chicken soup. Deeelish. Hey, at least it was chock full of veggies.

In the zucchini and carrot shared space in the Frigoverre (medium square) with half a tomato. (did I mention that I had half an apple for breakfast? I like to eat half of things and leave it for 'later'. Which the mothership interprets as 'never' and most of the time tosses it in the bin - I have to literally point to the half-eaten food item and say, "I WILL return to eat this. Do not throw this half-eaten banana/apple/cookie/tomato/sandwich away".) Also taking up real estate space in the fridge was a thawed piece of puff pastry. And some fresh mozzarella from Bosa Foods. What to do...what to do.
Free form tomato and mozzarella tarts! I was going to do the soup a la pot pie, but that would take too much time, and the original idea was turnovers, but I thought that tarts would be much more aesthetically pleasing. And they were!

Method:
-roll out puff pastry, cut into two and space apart on the cookie sheet
-dot centre with bits of cheese
-top with tomato slices (membranes and seeds removed to avoid slushy mess)
-sprinkle generously with salt and pepper
-top with more cheese
-bring one corner of pastry to the centre (or near centre), pleat and fold the rest of the pastry for a free-form shape
-bake in a 400F oven for...eh...until golden brown, for me - about 35 min.
-let cool slightly (it is bubbling lava hot) and bon appetit!

No comments:

Post a Comment