Ok, so, yeah, yesterday was a really fantastic #onbrand day — but, given that this is more diary than blog, I can’t not write about tonight’s dinner.
This past week, we had burgers, thanks to our frozen stock from our amazing local butcher. We tend to wait for a sale and buy two pounds, portioning it it out into six burgers. #protip when cooking for two. Fun fact — I recently won Smoke City’s National Butcher Week giveaway! That is a $50 gift card we are super excited to spend.
Anyway — making burgers one night always means we will have two extra rolls to use up another. We debated various options but nothing stuck. Until this afternoon.
We have on hand Trader Joe’s Cracked Olive Salad. It’s basically kindof the spread Central Grocery uses for their famous muffulettas. And yes, I know both have the dreaded celery, but you really can’t tell so don’t @ me. I didn’t want to do a full muffuletta with allllll the cured meats and cheese, so I started to think of options.
The first thing I thought of was oven roasting turkey cutlets in Tony Chachere’s. But when Hampton got off work, his TJ’s didn’t have such a thing, and I didn’t trust my chicken cooking skills to not dry it out. Instead, I had him pick up a pack of deli turkey. It got simmered in the end of a jar of homemade chicken stock with a solid hit of Tony’s — just enough to almost cover all the meat.
Even though we keep the low-sodium version of the spice blend on hand, Hampton also took it upon himself to pick up low-sodium turkey, which is definitely for the best. Low-sodium not being *no* sodium and all that. The turkey picked up a surprising amount of the Cajun spice and was a dang delight! We topped it with some salami that I cut into strips and crisped up in a pan.
SO, all in all, the sandwich was burger buns toasted with butter and garlic powder, the warmed, spiced turkey, crispy salami, the pickled veg salad, and also the leftover creamy mustard sauce from last night’s brussels sprout salad.
On the side, we did Hampton’s new favorite trick, duck fat shoestring potatoes — beefed up with some shredded carrots we had on hand that needed to be used up and also some shredded radishes bc why not? The fried veg got got tossed with TJ’s pickle seasoning because the vibes felt right, and to balance out all this richness: a quickle of cucumber tossed in red wine vinegar, dried oregano, and a half pinch of sugar.
This dish made me feel like I won GUY’S GROCERY GAMES… it wasn’t quite as random as CHOPPED — which I do love playing out of the Flat 493 fridge and pantry — since I asked for the turkey and salami. Sidenote: we use Bring for our shopping lists: both TJ’s and non-TJ’s. It syncs perfectly well, despite our Apple/Android split family. Not an ad, just fans!
Ann Davis-Rowe 