Smoked Beef Brisket Sandwich - Leftovers [Zack]

A brisket is a huge hunk of meat to smoke.  Therefore, you'll probably end up with some leftovers.  Instead of just chucking it into your next batch of smoked beans, why not make a nice sandwich?

Ingredients:
Sliced smoked beef brisket
Slaw (shredded cabbage, greek yogurt, sour cream, lemon juice, other veggies)
Dijon mustard
Swiss Cheese
Toasted bread

Song: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Funky Monks

Sun Dried Tomato and Basil Pesto [Zack]

For me, the coolest thing about cooking is the ability to break outside of normal conventions.

If you took a poll on home cooks, I’d wager that 99% of people would be able to list a few of the normal ingredients to “pesto”.  You’d hear: basil, pine nuts, cheese, olive oil, and garlic.  A few people would deviate and put their own spin on the traditional recipe by adding walnuts or pecorino or shallots.

But pesto just means “paste” in Italian. Culture and restaurants have led us to believe that it’s a requirement to use the normal ingredients.   You can make pesto out of anything you like: parsley, cilantro, carrots, etc.  One of my favorite cooking shows (River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtsall) even had a stinging nettle pesto!

Don’t be bound by fancy French words or implied meanings.  The nice thing about cooking is that people can’t tell you that you are doing something incorrectly as long as it tastes good.

Here I decided to add some sun-dried tomatoes to the normal pesto routine for a different spin.  This is a simple deviation, but feel free to go nuts! (pun intended)

Process:

Turn on your kitchen tap and let the water get hot.  Fill up a glass and place the sun-dried tomatoes in the water while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

Place a dry pan (with no oil in it) over medium heat and toast your pine nuts.  They burn quickly, so keep them moving about once per minute in the pan.  It should take about 5 for them to turn nicely brown and smell like nutty popcorn.  Take them off the heat.

Drain your tomatoes and put them into the food processor with the garlic cloves.  Let it run until it turns into a paste.  Add your pine nuts and process as well.  Then add the basil, olive oil, and cheese.

Serve over pasta, on rounds of toasted bread, on top of grilled chicken, in sandwiches, or anything else you can think of!

Ingredients:
10 sun-dried tomatoes
1 large handful basil (as large as you can grab with one hand)
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
freshly cracked black pepper
3 cloves garlic

Creativity Options:

• cilantro pesto with quesa fresca (on fajitas)
• basil with walnuts and blue cheese
• spinach pesto
• kale and walnut
• chive/leek pesto

Rock it funky:  D'angelo - Soul Mate by Funkadelic

Limited Kitchen – BBQ Chicken Sandwich [Matt]

My office is great. Nice people, free beverages, located right near the beach – all round pretty awesome… well minus the kitchen.

We have a microwave and a toaster. This poses a problem. What can you do for lunch with such limited resources? Answer: Hack together a bomb BBQ Chicken Sandwich.

On your next weekly trip to the grocery, pick up 1lb of low sodium sliced chicken, favorite BBQ sauce, sliced mozzarella, dill pickles, and whole wheat buns.

Packing the sandwich is essential.

Use three sandwich baggies or a large-divided tupperware container. Place 1/3lb of sliced chicken, 1 slice of mozzarella, and a large squirt of bbq sauce into one baggie. Place a whole wheat bun into another baggie. Place 3 – 6 dill pickle slices into the final baggie.These ingredients MUST remain separate for anti-soggy sandwich success. Place the three baggies into your favorite lunch pale and shove it in the fridge when you arrive to work.

Oh hey, now it's lunch. You hungry? Me too. I really hope this sandwich doesn't take more than 5 minutes to make, otherwise I'll eat my hand (don't worry it only takes 2.345 minutes to make).

1. Put the whole wheat bun in the toaster - set to your darkening preference.

2. Place the chicken/ cheese/ sauce pile onto a plate. Put that into the microwave for 1 minute.

3. Open pickle bag.

4. Now that the bun is toasted, take your warm pile of awesome out of the microwave. Plop it onto the bottom half of the bun.

5. Place your pickles in some geometric pattern on top of the deliciousness.

6. Drop the top bun on. Compress slightly to convince co-workers that you have a panini press hidden somewhere in the office.

7. Enjoy.

Chicken Salad Sandwich [Rhonda]

Degree of difficulty: easy
Time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4

With some of the roasted chicken you have left over from the previous night, make a fresh chicken salad for sandwiches. And in true Koulermos fashion, add a few strips of bacon on the sandwich to bring up the flavor beautifully. Bacon'll do that for just about anything.

Chicken Salad
Ingredients:
3 cups or so of left over roasted chicken, shredded or chopped
1/4 to 1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 to 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1 stalk celery, diced
2 tablespoons diced red onion
1/2 cup grapes, cut in half longways (prettier)
1/4 cup sliced almonds (or 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts. Any nuts. Nuts are good.)

Several (or more) strips of bacon, cooked and drained
Buns or toasted bread

Mix together the mayo and tamari.



Dice the veggies and add them.





Mix in the chicken, sliced almonds and grapes. Check the seasonings (I love a few grinds of fresh black pepper at this point), assemble sandwiches and serve.






Suggested soundtrack: "Spin" by Boney James