Sometimes when you buy a nice cut of meat, your eyes are bigger than your and your beloved's stomach. So what to do with the leftovers?
In Tyrolia (Austria) they make a "Gröstl", in Solothurn (Switzerland) they make a "Gnusch", in the Seftigenamt (a region in the Swiss canton Berne) they make a "Gmüder", and we (Pedro and SWAMBO) make a varying concoct using ideas from all of the three. We call it "Gröstl", but it is not necessarily a typical Tyrolean Gröstl, and it is different each time, and we usually do not top it with a fried egg as they do in Austria.
Ingredients
- All your meat leftovers
- Onion (compulsory)
- Any hard vegetable (we prefer celery stalks, or zucchini)
- Any salad (iceberg lettuce or endive/chicory or any other salad leaves, may contain carrot julienne)
- Fried potatoes, or alternatively sweetcorn kernels
- Sherry or wine or bouillon or the gravy you preserved from your last LTLT.cooked meat for simmering (I usually prefer Sherry)
- Eventually some cream (or crème fraîche)
- Salt, pepper, parsley, caraway seeds (typical for Tyrolean Gröstl), paprika, condiment (in Switzerland we use "Aromat" by Knorr, which contains sodium chloride, sodium glutamate, lactose, starch, yeast extract, vegetable fats, onions, spices, E552)'
- vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil)
- cut your meat in small cubes or slices
- cut the onion(s) not too fine (place the first cut below your tongue to avoid tearing during cutting)
- cut the vegetables about 3-4 mm thick
- cut the salads to pieces smaller than 4 cm, distribute on the cutting board and season deliberately
- cut the potatoes to 1 cm cubes
- place 3 heavy skillets with ample oil on the stove
Cooking
- in skillet 1, stir-fry the onions, add the hard vegetables still stir-frying, add salad, add sufficient liquid (Sherry or wine or bouillon or gravy) for simmering under a cover until soft. If desired, reduce heat and add some cream at the end.
- in skillet 2, stir-fry the potatoes until soft (in case of sweetcorn kernels, add to skillet 1 after stir-frying and use skillet 2 for skillet 3)
- in skillet 3, as soon as the vegetables and the potatoes are soft, sear the meat in just smoking oil for 30-60 seconds, then add to skillet 1
Serving
You may mix the potatoes with the vegetables and meat to make a rather typical Gröstl, or serve the fried potatoes separately; we prefer the latter, as the potatoes stay more crunchy.
Do not forget to serve a glass of good dry red wine!
