Formidable Leftovers 

Formidable Leftovers 

So read the definition of ‘leftovers’ below and I put it to you:
I make a roast chicken and, dining alone, I eat one of the dark-meat quarters.

As I clean up, as planned from the start, I carve three dinners from the remaining chicken and prepare three plates with it: two of single breasts and one of the remaining dark-meat quarters.

Each dinner plate has the piece of chicken, some potato, vegetable, and gravy.
I plastic-wrap the plates and put them in the refrigerator for a small dinner party I’m hosting tomorrow night.

Are these leftovers?

I think not.
I think leftovers are unplanned or are used in a secondary recipe developed for random leftovers, although that seems to me a redundancy.
Every portion of a meal that is assigned to someone from its inception is the dinner.
What’s left after these plates are made up are the leftovers.

No leftovers here.
_____________________________________________
Today’s post is a series of tweaks to recipe pages.

I’ve added a verse from Ogden Nash corroborating our enthusiasm for Gin and Tonic, Making love to.
And added to the use of Marinara Sauce, i.e. converting it to a seafood sauce.
Note that the recipe called “The Gravy” points out how we convert the Marinara to the classic Spaghetti and Meat Balls.
To both recipe pages we’ve added some imaging to make the pages more attractive.

________________________________________
Today is Tuesday, August 28
This is my 140th consecutive daily posting.
Time is 12,10am and today’s heat will pose health threats if we’re not careful.
Today’s dinner is pizza, store bought.
 

___________________________________________
Photo of the Day
Seafood Marinara

Light and tastyLove Italian handling of seafood of all kinds

Light and tasty
Love Italian handling of seafood of all kinds

_________________________________
Encyclopediacs

What are the five great sauces of French cuisine?

Find the answer just before today’s Post below.
Give yourself partial credits for partial answers.
 

Codifier of the five great sauces of French cooking

Codifier of the five great sauces of French cooking

__________________________
Thumbnail Biography
Georges Auguste Escoffier ( 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods.
Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine, but Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style.
In particular, he codified the recipes for the five mother sauces.

Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings"—though this had also been previously said of Carême), Escoffier was France's preeminent chef in the early part of the 20th century.

Alongside the recipes he recorded and invented, another of Escoffier's contributions to cooking was to elevate it to the status of a respected profession by introducing organized discipline to his guests.

Escoffier published Le Guide Culinaire, which is still used as a major reference work, both in the form of a cookbook and a textbook on cooking.

Escoffier's recipes, techniques and approaches to kitchen management remain highly influential today, and have been adopted by chefs and restaurants not only in France, but also throughout the world.

_________________________________________
Reader’s Comment:
On Friday past, Kat posted an essay on yoga.

Tommie Toner responded:
Yoga teaches me to live in the moment and appreciate it,  to take care of my body, mind, and spirit, to let go of trivialities. Kudos to Katherine for pursuing this journey.

And Lauren Capossela responded:
Wonderful blog. Loved Kat’s addition.

SweetThis movie is great fun

Sweet
This movie is great fun

____________________________
Movie Details
Mostly Martha (original German title: Bella Martha) is a 2001 German romantic comedy drama film written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck and starring Martina Gedeck, Maxime Foerste, and Sergio Castellitto.

Filmed in Hamburg, Germany, and Italy, the film is about a workaholic chef who is forced to adjust to major changes in her personal and professional life that are beyond her control.

The film won the Créteil International Women's Film Festival Grand Prix Award, and was nominated for the Goya Award for Best European Film in 2002. It was also nominated for the German Film Awards Outstanding Feature Film.

Synopsis
Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck) is a chef at Lido, a gourmet restaurant in Hamburg, Germany.
A perfectionist who lives only for her work, Martha has difficulty relating to the world other than through food. Her single-minded obsession with her culinary craft occasionally leads to unpleasant confrontations with customers.

Consequently, the restaurant owner, Frida (Sibylle Canonica), requires her to see a therapist (August Zirner) to work out her poor interpersonal skills.
Martha's therapy sessions, however, turn into monologues on food, and her approach to stress management usually involves briefly retreating to the restaurant's walk-in refrigerator.

Martha's life takes a dramatic turn when she learns that her sister is killed in a car accident, leaving behind an eight-year-old daughter, Lina (Maxime Foerste).
Martha must now look after her niece, who is understandably depressed, withdrawn, and refuses to eat. The girl's Italian father, Giuseppe Lorenzo, has been out of the picture for years living somewhere in Italy.
While coping with her sister's death and raising the young girl, Martha's world is further complicated when Frida hires fun-loving and unorthodox Mario (Sergio Castellitto) as a sous-chef to replace Lea (Katja Studt), who is expecting a child any day.
Martha looks on in horror as Mario transforms her kitchen of precision and logistics with his relaxed banter and eclectic jazz music.

Unable to find an acceptable babysitter, Martha starts to bring Lina to the restaurant with her.
Lina begins to emerge from her depression in the presence of Mario's playfulness, and even begins to eat when Mario leaves her unattended with a plate of spaghetti he's prepared.

Touched by Mario's kindness and concern for the child, Martha becomes more accepting of Mario.
She even asks for his help in locating Lina's father in Italy and translating a letter she's written to him.

Just as Martha's strained relationship with Lina seems to be improving, she forgets to pick the girl up from school while helping Lea, her very-pregnant sous chef, get to the hospital to deliver her baby.

Lina is angry at being forgotten at school, and the incident appears to cause a serious setback between her and Martha.
To make amends, Martha offers to grant Lina any wish.

For her wish, Lina wants Mario to cook for them.
Mario agrees, and prepares a picnic-style dinner in Martha's living room.

Despite the mess left behind in the kitchen, the evening of stories and games brings the three closer together.

The renewed warmth between Martha and Lina is immediately tested when Martha is told by the school principal that Lina has not been attending school regularly, and that when she does come to school, she falls asleep.
He also tells Martha that when he asked the girl why she was always so tired, she told him that she was forced to work in a kitchen for her room and board.

Angered by Lina's behavior, and also having been warned by the restaurant owner, Martha tells her she can no longer come to the restaurant.
Lina storms off, nearly getting hit by a car, and later attempts to run away to Italy.

Mario continues to support Martha emotionally, and their relationship becomes romantic.

Lina's father, in answer to Martha's letter, finally arrives and takes his daughter to Italy to live with his new wife and family.

Distraught and conflicted by the separation, Martha rejects Mario's loving support, and after another confrontation with a customer, she quits her job.
Soon after, Martha asks Mario to accompany her to Italy to retrieve Lina.

After reuniting with the girl, Martha and Mario get married, and the three begin their lives together as a loving family.

Thank you, Wikipedia
____________________________
Word of the Day
leftovers

something, especially food, remaining after the rest has been used or consumed.

Now these are leftovers

Now these are leftovers

synonyms: residue · survivor · legacy · vestige · trace · leavings · uneaten food · remainder · unused supplies · scraps · remnants · remains · scourings · slops · crumbs · dregs · excess · surplus
 

------------------------------------------
Answer for Encyclopediacs

Sauces in French cuisine date back to the Middle Ages.
There were many hundreds of sauces in the culinary repertoire.
In cuisine classique (roughly from the end of the 19th century until the advent of nouvelle cuisine in the 1980s), sauces were a major defining characteristic of French cuisine.

Fundamentals of French culinary artistry

Fundamentals of French culinary artistry

In the early 19th century, the chef Marie-Antoine Carême created an extensive list of sauces, many of which were original recipes.
It is unknown how many sauces Carême is responsible for, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds.
The cream sauce, in its most popular form around the world, was concurrently created by another chef, Dennis Leblanc, working in the same kitchen as Carême.
Carême considered the four grandes sauces to be espagnole, velouté, allemande, and béchamel, from which a large variety of petites sauces could be composed.

In the early 20th century, the chef Auguste Escoffier refined Carême's list of basic sauces in the four editions of his classic Le Guide Culinaire and its abridged English translation A Guide to Modern Cookery.
He dropped allemande as he considered it a variation of velouté, and added hollandaise and sauce tomate, defining the five fundamental "mother sauces" still used today:

Sauce béchamel, milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux
Sauce espagnole, a fortified brown veal stock sauce, thickened with a brown roux
Sauce velouté, light stock-based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison, a mixture of egg yolks and cream
Sauce hollandaise, an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon (or vinegar)
Sauce tomate, tomato-based

A sauce which is derived from one of the mother sauces by augmenting with additional ingredients is sometimes called a "daughter sauce" or "secondary sauce".
Most sauces commonly used in classical cuisine are daughter sauces.
For example, béchamel can be made into Mornay by the addition of grated cheese, and espagnole becomes bordelaise with the addition of reduction of red wine, shallots, and poached beef marrow.
 

________________________________________________________
TODAY’S POST
 

What a thirst quencher.

What a thirst quencher.

Here’s a tweak to the post “Making love to my tonic and gin.”
It’s the first verse of Ogden Nash’s “A Drink With Something In It”

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.

There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth—
I think that perhaps it's the gin.
____________________________

And now a tweak to the post called Marinara Sauce, Background:

Seafood Marinara, any seafood
An easy way, and totally delicious.

Make the Marinara Sauce

Come on!Fess up!We weren't all born Italian.

Come on!
Fess up!
We weren't all born Italian.

Add the seafood to the sauce in waves, the pieces needing more time to cook going in first, adding the others as common sense dictates.

Simmer until the seafood is cooked.
Serve over spaghetti or linguini or some such.
Easy and totally delicious.

NOTE: 'En bianco' literally means 'a white,' but it's not really white, it's simply ‘not a red sauce’

Seafood en bianco, any seafood
An easy recipe and totally delicious.

Follow the Marinara Sauce recipe though flavoring the oil.
Add the seafood to the flavored oil in waves, following the sequence that those needing more time to cook go in first, adding the others as commonsense dictates.
With the first seafood, add ½ cup dry white wine, stir the pot to coat the seafood with the oil, and cover the pan.
Cook covered over medium heat adding the other seafood and stirring the pot when appropriate; adding more dry white wine as needed to keep the pan very moist.

Serve over spaghetti or linguini or some such.
Before adding the sauce or seafood to the pasta, lightly coat the pasta with a judicious pour of extra virgin olive oil.
Easy and totally delicious.

How I wish pasta contained fewer caloriesChe peccato!

How I wish pasta contained fewer calories
Che peccato!

Seafood Rose
My favorite.

An easy recipe and totally delicious.

O rapture!O bliss!

O rapture!
O bliss!

Follow the Marinara Sauce recipe, stopping at flavoring the oil.
Add the seafood to the flavored oil in waves, following the sequence that those needing more time to cook go in first, adding the others as common sense dictates.
With the first seafood, add ½ cup dry white wine, stir the pot to coat the seafood with the oil, and cover the pan.
Cook covered over medium heat adding the other seafood and stirring the pot when appropriate; adding more dry white wine as needed to keep the pan very moist.

Open a small can, 14oz, of small Italian tomatoes and pour into a bowl.
With your fingers or a fork thoroughly break the small tomatoes from the small can..
As soon as the seafood is cooked, add the finger-crushed tomatoes and juice,and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve over spaghetti or linguini or some such.

Before adding the sauce or seafood to the pasta, lightly coat the pasta with a judicious pour of extra virgin olive oil.
Easy and totally delicious.