So, the night before the party, my husband and I were working in the kitchen. I had made the filling for the roll-ups (the recipe, by the way, comes from Joyce Lamont's Minnesota Recipes), and Doug's job was to spread it on the deli roast beef slices, add the cucumber strips, and, well, roll them up!
Imagine my dismay when I saw that the deli person sliced the roast beef too thin, and it disintegrated as he tried to spread it with the filling. Of course, the delis were all closed, and there was no way I was going to first run to the store and then do this in the morning.
All right. What to do now? I thought I could turn the filling into a dip, by adding some mayonnaise and chopping up the roast beef to stir in. We started doing that, and it seemed like it was working really well. But the mixture just didn't look very appetizing, even after I added chopped red bell peppers.
Luckily, I had bought a lot of frozen miniature filo cups to use in a recipe we had decided not to make. A new recipe was born - we would scoop the filling into the cups and sprinkle everything with some chopped parsley. This was done one platter at a time at the party, so the filo cups would stay crisp and be a nice contrast to the creamy filling. Voila!
But there was still a lot of filling left over. Doug had this brilliant idea - use it as a sandwich filling! So we slapped some filling between two slices of whole wheat bread, buttered the outsides, and grilled them on the George Foreman Grill. They were wonderful - creamy, crisp, rich, and flavorful.
The moral to the story is that almost all kitchen flops can be fixed with a little work and imagination. The Roast Beef Filo Cups were a huge hit, and one of my new favorite recipes! And we're definitely making Grilled Roast Beef Sandwiches again! Keep these recipes in mind for using your leftover roast beef during the holidays.
