Our Christmas Eve dinner was a very hefty T-Bone steak from our local butcher, lobster tails, baked sweet potatoes and a lovely lamb’s lettuce salad with fried smoked bacon and champagne vinegar. SO delicious and way too much food. We all ate the lovely filet cut out of our steaks and left the rest, which resulted in about a pound of leftover steak from the four of us. We usually throw together a salad the next day and slice the steak to be put on top. But we had a huge salmon and potato pancake breakfast the next day and goose for dinner, so there was no more space in our bellies for steak. Stefan’s parents returned home and there the steak still sat…way too much for the two of us to just throw on salads. So I started looking for other ideas to use up all that delicious steak. Ayla had a few of her own ideas in mind, but she was out of luck this time.

After salvaging the steaks from the bone, I threw the bones into a bag in the freezer. Once we’ve got about 10 bones collected I’ll be making my first batch of beef stock. I am all about making stock from bones these days. I also made a delicious batch of goose stock from our Christmas dinner goose bones. Got 12 cups of goose stock from it which will happily reside in our freezer until I figure out what to use it for. I’m eventually going to have to start canning all the stock I make. Our freezer is insanely full as it is…and it’s just a whole lot easier to find on the pantry shelf instead of a huge trunk freezer.

But back to the leftover steak. Grillades is a dish out of New Orleans that is actually quite popular for brunch (or so I hear). It’s usually served over grits but it can also be served over rice. The true southerner in me would have loved to do this on grits, but Stefan was a bit hesitant. But since we have another 2 meals worth in the freezer, perhaps I will spring the grits combo on him one weeknight. For those of you who think grits are hard to get your hands on in Europe, just look for polenta. Polenta is the very close Italian cousin of corn grits (not hominy) that will cook up the same as grits.

Grillades is flavorful and delicious. We used red bell peppers in ours but you traditionally use green. I just tend to throw whatever color bell pepper into dishes based on what I have in the fridge. You can also add mushrooms and tomatoes to this dish…but I personally think it’s missing okra. The latter is definitely not usually in grillades but the dish tastes a bit like gumbo in my opinion, so gumbo would be a natural. Plus it would make it thicken up very nicely as well.

Find more great recipes on A Southern Fairytale’s Mouthwatering Monday link-up.