Poor beet greens. They get so little love. Or probably more realistically, they are misunderstood. Most of the time, they go straight from the grocery bag to the trash bag.
But beet greens are so much more than just leafy tops of beets. They come with such great potential that they give their famed roots a run for their money.
Perhaps this is to be filed under the “obvious” category, but still, I feel the need to post this. The other day, I was wandering around my local supermarket looking for something – what I can’t remember anymore. There were two ladies talking behind me, and one lamented that she’s been all over this neighborhood trying to find matzo meal, but no one had it. What was she to do this weekend, come Passover?
Normally, I don’t eavesdrop on others’ conversations, and in the rare case I do, I certainly don’t walk over and give them advice. But in this case, I felt that it would be wrong not to say something.
“Sorry to butt in,” I said, “but your problems are easily solved if you have a food processor.”
The ladies were listening.
“Well, you just stick some pieces of matzo in your food processor and pulverize them until you get them finely ground. Sort of like making your own breadcrumbs.”
“Are you serious,” one of the ladies was incredulous, “that’s all that matzo meal is? You’ve just solved a huge problem for me!”
And with that, she grabbed a few boxes of matzo and headed towards the check-out.
This made me think that perhaps it’s not a widely known fact that matzo meal is simply ground up matzo – a breadcrumbs substitute over the holiday.
So, if you find yourself in need of matzo meal and only boxes of matzo lying around, just grind them up – and voila! Matzo meal in mere seconds.
There’s no one single way to make chicken stock. Sometimes I do it with odds and ends from a chicken: wings, neck, gizzards, other random bits. But most often, and by far my favorite way to make stock – is to use 2 carcasses of roasted chickens. You roast a chicken and then you wind up with the carcass. Instead of throwing it away, you make that chicken work for you in double time. You can freeze it until you get another chicken carcass, which you then throw together with water and aromatics and cook it for a few hours. There’s very little hands-on time needed – just your presence around the house to keep an eye on the stock. The result – rich and flavorful stock you can’t get from a carton. Plus I get a kick knowing I can use one chicken for two separate purposes.
This is a great way to stretch that chicken further than just one meal. I add little salt here because I want my stock to be as much of a pure distillation of the chicken flavor as possible. Later, when I use stock to make soup, I will add as much salt as the recipe calls for, but this way I get the flexibility on how much seasoning the future soup will need.
