This week, A. and I ended up making an impromptu Sunday lunch with his parents – and the results were tasty!
I thought the cooking adventure was worth sharing since we essentially used a hodge podge of ingredients from A.’s mom’s fridge to make the meal. And we saved some ingredients that were slightly past their “best by” dates from going to waste!
Here’s what we made:
Apricot-Apple Turnovers
It started with a roll of refrigerator puff pastry.
This immediately made me think of turnovers, so I asked A’s mom if she had any fruit preserves or jellies that needed to be used.
While she most certainly had a variety of fruit spreads in the house (since they are big jelly people), she also had two cans of apricots that needed to be utilized.
I made a quick compote by pureeing the apricots with cornstarch and a little vanilla extract and placed a dollop on squares I cut from the puff pastry roll.
I ended up adding some sliced apples as well because they had a small bag of apple wedges in the fridge too that were starting to brown.
We egg washed the tops of the turnovers after folding them over and crimping the edges and baked them in a 400 degree convection oven for about 15 minutes.
The turnovers were pretty delicious if lacking sweetness. None of us minded, but if you ever try to improvise turnovers for a dessert, I’d recommend adding a sweetener to your compote/filling and/or adding coarse sugar to the tops when you egg wash them.
You could also wait for them to cool and dust them with powdered sugar as well.
Pineapple Fried Rice
Now I have previously shared my love of fried rice as the ultimate fridge-clean-out or shelf cooking recipe.
So when leftover brown rice was offered as one of the lunchtime possibilities, my mind immediately jumped to this dish.
Since A’s mom also had a few miscellaneous vegetables (some red onion slices, half a bag of snap peas, and some baby carrots) and rotisserie chicken in the fridge, the meal promised to be flavorful and well-rounded.
We ended up adding in a can of pineapple tidbits too (also nearing expiration) for a bit of a twist.
In the frenzy of prepping turnovers and chopping the ingredients to add to the fried rice, I didn’t get many pictures.
And the rice turned out tasty enough that we scarfed it down (and had no leftovers)!
But I got one quick snapshot of the last scoop left in the pan after we dished up our initial bowls.
It might have benefited from a more robust sauce (since I made this one using only soy sauce, rice vinegar, and some garlic and ginger powder) or from some fresh scallions and cilantro on top, but none of us were complaining.
I love a great Sunday afternoon spent with family, and one where we share a great meal-turned-Chopped-challenge is even better!