foodperson.com

I haven’t been in much of a cooking mood lately. (I’m blaming the weather.) So when I was the store on Sunday, I decided to pick up a couple of things I don’t ordinarily buy in hopes of being inspired. One of them was Beeler’s ground pork.

After I got it home, I realized I had no idea what to do with it. I had a bunch of work and not a bunch of time, for one thing. I found a recipe for pot-stickers that sounded yummy, but I lacked some ingredients and most of the time. I settled on Tourtiere, a French-Canadian meat pie, and the recipe for it in Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook. His recipe amounted, essentially, to seasoned ground pork in a double-crust pie.

My daughter came over and did most of the prep while I edited in the other room. We made a smaller pie than the recipe called for, due to my smaller quantity of pork, so we baked it in a 7-inch iron skillet. Daughter did a fab job, as you can see.

It was a thing of beauty. Note the piggy steam holes.

It was also very dry, even when I tried combining it with the sauteed Swiss chard I had on the side. We surmised that our having drained the grease might have been part of the problem. Daughter didn’t take home any leftovers. I stuck the pie in the fridge and wondered what I might do to make it better.

Well, yesterday I was still editing madly and decided to try the leftover pie. I cut a generous slice, removed the top crust, and topped the filling with a generous (3/4 cup?) helping of cottage cheese. Then, I zapped it in the microwave. (I can hear her gagging at the thought of it.)

The result: It was very, very good, although definitely not pretty. I’ll probably have it for lunch again today. Which just goes to show, sometimes failure leads to good things, at least in the kitchen.