Hi everyone!
With my husband working from home, and my job in the event industry on pause for however long, my family has been spending a lot of time together as we practice social distancing! I’ve been able to cook more, play with my daughter more, and have been also trying to keep active with various bodyweight exercises and walking outside while its nice out. I wanted to share some of the pantry meals that we’ve been cooking here in our household.
When I lived in Korea, I fell in love with this meal simply called ‘Toast’. During our honeymoon, we arrived into Korea at 4 in the morning at the airport and headed into the city towards our lodging. It was too early to check in, so we dropped our luggage in the subway lockers, and I took him to get ‘Toast’. He wasn’t excited, and didn’t understand why I was! Toast is actually a melt, with toasted bread, a vegetable patty and cheese. You can normally get it with added toppings for a little extra, but each vendor has their own sauce and style of Toast that they’ll do. This is a fantastic pantry/leftover vegetable recipe.
Veggie Toast
- 2-3 eggs
- 1/4 cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1 carrot, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks
- 1/2 onion, sliced
- 3 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
- 3 green onions, sliced on the bias
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- Butter
- Pinch of sugar
- Sandwich Bread
- American Cheese
- Mayonnaise
- Ketchup
Combine cabbage, carrot, onion, garlic cloves and green onions in a medium sized bowl. In a separate small bowl, whisk eggs briskly together. Add a pinch of salt and pepper then stir the egg mixture into the vegetables. Try and coat the vegetables entirely with the egg. Please note, the egg will still settle at the bottom.
Preheat a nonstick pan to medium heat. Add a small tab of butter and swirl around to evenly coat. Carefully create small rectangular patties with the vegetables and make sure to include a small amount of the egg in the bottom of the bowl on top of each vegetable patty to help hold together. After the bottom of the patty is set, flip and cook until done on the other side. The patty should mostly hold together. Take the patties off the heat and on each patty, sprinkle a small pinch of sugar.
When all vegetable patties have been cooked, it’s time to assemble your sandwich! Butter two slices of sandwich bread. On one slice, add a couple slices of American cheese, on the other add your vegetable patty. Place on a nonstick pan at low-medium heat. Once the bread is grilled and the cheese is melted, take off of the heat.
Optional toppings include additional thinly shredded cabbage for crunch, a drizzle of ketchup and mayonnaise, grilled ham, bacon, or any other protein you’d like to add! If you prefer your patty to be more similar to an omelette, you can keep some additional whisked eggs with a little bit of water on the side and pour on top of the patty when cooking, or combine additional whisked eggs into the vegetable mixture. I prefer mine to be more vegetable forward, so the recipe reflects that.
Finally, as I mentioned, this recipe is great to use up vegetables. Have a leftover bagged kale crunch salad in the fridge that you haven’t used up? Throw it in! Have some broccoli slaw? Throw it in! Maybe some sliced up apples that your toddler didn’t want to eat? Do it!
I would love to encourage again anyone to make their own bread. As I’ve gone to the grocery store, it seems that bread has been sold out everywhere lately. My husband makes homemade sourdough bread, and it is so good as a melt, as a snack with just some butter and jam, croutons, or to make Strata! He uses the Tartine Bread recipes (I like these ones as well, but I also enjoy Flour Water Salt Yeast.
I recently tried out making bagels and it went really well.
We’ve frozen them in Bagel Bite form so we can throw those in the toaster oven when we want food fast!
With the grocery stores running out of our ‘preferred’ items, I also bought up a couple portabella mushrooms and a bag of potatoes. Normally, I would rather buy tater tots, but I tried my hand at making tater tots from scratch. They turned out very good, and I made them into a tater tot casserole with homemade cream of mushroom soup. Did you know that my Breakfast Mushroom Gravy recipe thinned out works as a wonderfully flavourful cream of mushroom soup as well? Just add a bit of water, and you can mix it into shredded chicken or ground beef with some vegetables, and you have yourself a great base!
I hope everyone out there is staying healthy! Stay at home and wash your hands ❤
Laughter and Cooking 