The leftover "extras" from Cooper's finally were incorporated into dinner last night: a panade based on a recipe in Judy Rogers' Zuni Cafe Cookbook. (You can read more about that particular recipe, and find a link to a blog post summarizing it, here. As it happens I have a Kindle version of that cookbook and used it as a guide.)
One reason it's taken me so long to do something with that leftover bread is that by the time the afternoon heat rolls around I'm too hot and dispirited to do anything in the kitchen. My darling has done most of the dinner cooking as a result.
So yesterday I got smart. Before it got too hot I set to clearing out the refrigerator and finding what needed to be put into the panade. Fennel bulb, half a pickled onion, a pickled jalapeno, 8 slices of white bread (including a heel), 3 onions, a bunch of chard, a wilting bunch of scallions, a chunk of sharp cheddar, some grated parmesan. A red pepper was too far gone to use, more's the pity. I set to work washing, chopping, dicing. I pulled some corn stock out of the freezer to thaw.
Then I took a break, mixed a fresh batch of salad dressing, and had lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to non-cookery. After our evening walk...
...and some time out on the deck enjoying a beer, I set to work cooking.
This photo collage shows sort of a time-lapse of what happened to all those vegetables. The large plastic bowl, barely visible in the upper left corner, was nearly full when I started. By the time I'd finished sweating it down and caramelizing, I was thinking about the discussion here about Vivian Howard's R-Rated Onions.
The result was a very filling meal.
We had intended the panade as the vegetable side for leftover pork steaks from the night before, but neither of us needed or wanted more to eat. The astute observer will note that my darling still insisted on toasted bread with his panade, but that's the way he swings. We'll probably have leftover panade and leftover pork steaks tonight, but who knows? It's shopping and errand time today, so dinner will be simple.
