I had a fleeting moment of paralyzing fear earlier this week when I experienced something unfamiliar and totally new to me: a refrigerator – my refrigerator – without… cheese. We hadn’t been grocery shopping for some time (which for me is about 8 days) and were low on lots of things. I’m sure many of us have experienced this before, but it all just became so horrifically apparent for me when I saw no cheddar, no Colby, no Swiss – nothing on my designated cheese shelf. However, this seeming tragedy did challenge me to create a few meals that I may not have come up with otherwise. Here’s what I made:
Alleluia Salad
We had some items my mom sent back with us from Easter dinner which proved to be the savior of this meal. I happened to have some spinach on hand too which really helped. So, tossed with spinach we had julienne ham, hard-boiled eggs, red onion, some dried cranberries, and a few sliced baby heirloom tomatoes that were on their final day and needed to get used. I dressed the salad in a simple vinaigrette. This salad really provided a satisfying meal and pretty healthy meal! Alleluia!
Black Bean and Ham “Quesadilla”
We had a few friends stopping by before we were off to a ball game at Wrigley Field one evening. Everyone was in need of a quick snack… but without cheese what would I do??? Cheese is so essential to a quick snack. Then I remembered we had a few large tortillas, black beans, some onion, and more of that Easter ham. Then a light bulb went off and I remembered that we did have one kind of cheese left in the refrigerator: cottage cheese! So, for the filling, I took my rinsed black beans and mashed them slightly. I mixed in some diced onion, the cottage cheese, and seasoned the mixture with cumin, salt and pepper. I spread this mixture on half the tortilla, sprinkled some diced ham on top, folded it in half and let it all melt together on my griddle. This actually turned out to be a real crowd-pleaser and it was super fast to put together. Nice to have this dish in my out-of-cheese-but-not-out-of-cottage-cheese arsenal.
Seared Salmon with Coconut Curry Rice and Steamed Vegetables.
There’s a dish from The Chopping Block’s Winter Seafood 101 class called Sesame, Fennel and Mustard Seed-Crusted Salmon with Red Coconut Curry Sauce. I had made about a week previously when we had friends over for dinner (a hit!). I still had several of the ingredients on hand but did I have any salmon?… yes! I’m one of those buy-in-bulk-when-it’s-on-sale-and-stock-the-freezer kind of people, which really came in handy when we were getting low on lots of the basics. What also came in handy was a bag of frozen vegetables (carrots, broccoli, and water chestnut mix). This added at least a few extra vitamins to our plate and did help round out the meal. So, for this dinner I riffed on this Chopping Block recipe. While my jasmine rice was cooking, I simply seared the salmon on the stove top. To make the Coconut Curry sauce, I mixed about a 1/2 cup of coconut milk with about 1 tablespoon of red curry sauce. I added some brown sugar (about 2 teaspoons), and lime juice, and seasoned to taste with salt. This is such a quick sauce with so few ingredients (and it is tasty!). Thank you Chopping Block! You totally saved my dinner here. This sauce with the seared salmon, rice, and steamed vegetables was delicious. I probably would not have thought to make this meal had my more common go-to ingredients been easily in reach.
Whew! Crisis averted. We did not starve without cheese, and in fact, we ate quite well! I have to give The Chopping Block lots of credit for my survival – how wonderful to learn in our hands-on classes and adapt those recipes – and create new ones – in times of crisis (very minor crisis, but in my mind, crisis none the less). Thanks for throwing me a life preserver, TCB!
Coincidentally my husband, Mike and his family, also had taco night back in the day. Two weeks ago, thanks to my father-in-law, I was reintroduced to that memorable meal. He comes over for dinner about twice a month and we let him pick the menu. Low and behold, to our surprise, he requested taco night the way we used to eat it 25 years ago. I was so excited.