Daily Express – Hot Dog Pilaf

Yesterday, Sunday, I had thawed some nice New York cut steak. Late last fall I had bought an entire piece of New York and butchered it myself into some steaks and two small roast. I still have one of the roast frozen and those were the last of the steaks. We were planning to have those yesterday, but we had an emergency and had to go out late in the day. When we returned we were both too tired to cook and the weather was not cooperating as it was to windy for the barbecue.

In keeping with last week’s pattern I tried to creatively used what was at hand in the larder and use leftovers in creative way. I look into what I had around and found some rice, leftover sausages, chopped onions and tomatoes from Friday’s hot dogs, a few small zucchinis, a bit of frozen corn and chile poblanos, and another head of romaine lettuce. My devious plan was done in quick order. I decided to make some rice pilaf. Since I used the hot dog sausages as part of the ingredients I called it a Hot Dog Pilaf.

Making a pilaf is very easy, you put a bit of oil in a pot and brown the rice in it a bit, add your liquid and cook until absorbed. I first added to the oil the leftover onions and tomatoes as well as the zucchini. Then I added the rice and browned it a bit, then added the water with some powdered chicken broth and seasonings and herbs, and a tab of hot chile paste. I mixed everything and added the sausages cut in cubes to the mix, and cooked until the water was absorbed and the rice was tender.

It turned out surprisingly good, as my expectations were not high. We enjoyed the meal a lot as it was no problem to prepare and used up a lot of things we would not have know what to do with. today we will finally have the steaks and I will write about that later when I have a bit more time.

Lucito