Easy leftover recipes to help clean out the fridge
It’s January, and if you’re like most rest of us, the household budget is suffering from post-holiday stress syndrome.
To make matters worse, the kitchen pantries and spice shelves are begging for a deep cleaning, and the refrigerator has accumulated so many bits and bobs that we can’t really find anything anymore, let alone identify it.
It’s a new year, time to launch a detox plan for the fridge that starts with using up the edible leftovers while getting rid of all those random, unidentified objects.
In the NYT Cooking newsletter, editor Sam Sifton suggests throwing a couple of tablespoons of butter into a pan, then combining jams from all the nearly-empty jars to make a delicious syrup for waffles or pancakes. (Just make sure you taste the syrup before serving it, so you can blend in another jam for balance, if needed.)
In his cookbook, “Cuisine Economique,” cooking teacher Jacques Pepin offers all kinds of ideas for making your food dollars go further by using humble ingredients and reusing all kinds of leftovers.
One of Pepin’s favorite childhood memories involves Fromage Fort, a cheese concoction he spread on a piece of country bread, then heated in the fire. This “strong cheese” is made from garlic, white wine and a mixture of all kinds of leftover cheeses pieces, such as brie, cheddar, Swiss, blue, goat and mozzarella.
“Uncontrived economy is standard practice in a good kitchen,” Pepin wrote in “Cuisine Economique” (William Morrow and Company Inc., 1992). “Like a well-choreographed ballet, there is a natural flow in this style of cooking, where no motion is wasted, no ingredient discarded.”
It’s a plan that most restaurant chefs know all too well, since they operate on some pretty narrow profit margins.
“Every chef has to be proficient at using up leftovers, or your very thin margins go away,” said Colleen McGlynn, who owns DaVero Farms & Winery with her husband, Ridgely Evers, and has worked in restaurant kitchens.
At home, McGlynn is a magician with culinary odds and ends, often taking a few vegetables, a bit of bacon and an egg and transforming them into a tasty pasta dish. Leftover beef, lamb or chicken morphs easily into soup or a tasty hash, and extra rice often invites an Asian stir-fry.
Jeffrey Madura, owner of Jeffrey’s Hillside Cafe in Santa Rosa, has also developed a few tricks for turning leftover proteins, vegetables and cheese into new-to-you dishes.
“My wife, Diana, doesn’t like leftovers, so I change it up on the second day,” he said. “I always have a plan for something.”
In his kitchen, leftover pork loin often gets repurposed into fried rice; steak and onions may resurface in a frittata; and leftover chicken gets chopped up and thrown into enchiladas, which also help clean out the cheese drawer.
Mark Dierkhising, owner of the Midtown Cafe and Parkside Cafe in Santa Rosa, likes to prep his leftovers before tucking them into the fridge for eventual resurrection as hash, a casserole or an open-faced sandwich.
“I will trim the meats a little bit, whereas I leave the vegetables whole because I’m not sure how they are going to fit into the dish,” he said. “That way, I find they store better, and smaller.”
At the Parkside Cafe, baker Kylie Minto has been experimenting with a savory Vegetable Bread Pudding made from the cafe’s array of day-old bread, along with whatever cooked vegetables the kitchen has not used up.
“The veggies really need to be chopped finely,” she said. “I use vegetable broth, eggs and cornstarch to keep it vegetarian and keep the butter down, and then I use baking powder as a leavening agent (instead of cream) ... so it puffs up a little more.”
Lia Huber of Healdsburg, the creative force behind the online meal planning program Cook the Seasons, has perfected a potato cake recipe that uses up extra mashed potatoes or a root vegetable mash. They are nicely bound together by a bit of cheese and an egg.
“I love them topped with sautéed spinach and a fried egg,” she said.
As an economical and easy way to use up leftover protein and vegetables, cooking instructor Mei Ibach of Homeward Bound of Marin in San Rafael favors a hearty Asian dish, Sweet Potato Congee, also known as “jook.”
“This is my go-to, under-the-weather comfort soup that helps warm up the winter chill,” she said. “It’s eaten for breakfast, lunch and as a late-night snack in many parts of Asia.”
The following recipe is from Chef Mei Ibach of Homeward Bound of Marin.
Sweet Potato Congee with Leftovers
Makes 4 servings
For congee:
1/2 cup white rice (preferably jasmine), long or medium grain
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