leftovers Archives - Good Food St. Louis

Foraging in the Fridge

There’s a difference between recycling leftovers and cleaning the refrigerator. A cleaning means you toss the ossified remains. Out goes the strawberries wearing little gray jackets. Same for the limp lettuce and the cheese you can no longer find under the mold.

Leftovers, on the other hand, require more creative treatment. When I’m inclined to donate an earlier meal to the garbage disposal, I can hear my mother gasp. She was especially good at recycling icebox remains (yes, we called it an icebox back then). In her honor, I try to be somewhat frugal, remembering her “waste not, want not” admonition.

Recycled Mashed Potatoes

I was amused recently to see Brenda Gantt make potato cakes. She’s the spry ol’ gal from Alabama, who amuses us with her chatter while she flits around the kitchen, tossing flour hither and yon. (She uses a knife the length of a saber to chop vegetable, which causes me to fear for her fingers.)

Her potato cakes are nearly identical to the ones I grew up eating on the days after we had leftover mashed potatoes.

Wok Those Vegetables

Sometime I toss in a few udon noodles for greater authenticity.

We’ve all had the experience of dressing up meat and vegetable remains by tossing them into a skillet (or wok) and reconstitute the mélange with one of the condiments we stashed on the icebox door several years earlier.

Get Saucy

Should your sauces be five years past their “Best Use” date, you might want to consider making your own. Here’s a favorite sauce I make from scratch. You’re likely to have all the ingredients on hand— though when I made the dish recently, I found that my fresh ginger had fossilized.

Another recipe that will add sauciness to your kitchen leftovers is entitled Stir Fry Anything.

I know, foodie fans, that you’ve created some “designer” concoctions, either intentionally or accidentally, over the years. Share your discoveries.

Robin puts the finishing touches on Pan-Roasted Eggplant with Peanut-Chile Sauce. The recipe is the brainchild of Chef Cal Peternell, formerly of the Berkeley farm-to-table mecca, Chez Panisse.

My daughter, Robin, called to invite me for dinner recently. She was pairing leftovers from a dinner party with some new recipes from the New York Times.

“Great!” I said, “I just put a peach cobbler in the oven. I’ll bring it along.” In no time at all, we’d thrown together a fine meal.

This Corn Soup can be served slightly warm or chilled. The recipe is from Chef Samin Nosrat’s blockbuster cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, as is the fennel-radish salad shown in the center of the photo below.

Vegetables Galore

We began with a chilled corn soup featuring a cilantro-onion topping, a perfect starter for a warm summer evening on the patio.

An eggplant dish caught my eye, as I watched Robin saute the slices and arrange them on a platter with a spicy, ginger-peanut sauce. The rustic dish looked and tasted like one you might be served in a village cafe in the south of France. (More of my favorite eggplant dishes here.)

The meal unfolds.

A Persian salad of sliced fennel and radishes had a colorful and pleasant crunch. Now I’m not a fennel fan, but it was a cool, tangy dish that was quite tasty. (Robin thought the fennel should’ve been more thinly sliced, both for looks and texture.)

I’ve since found a Southern Living recipe for Shaved Carrot, Asparagus and Apple Salad, a mixture that also includes angel hair cabbage. The shaving is done with a vegetable peeler. When mixed with the honey-red wine vinaigrette, the vegetables maintain a light crunch.

Shaved Fennel and Radish Salad (upper left) and oven-roasted vegetables (center).

Vine-ripe tomatoes, the glory of summer dining.

Hmm. . . I don’t think there’s a hundred calories on this entire plate. 🙂

This time of year no day is complete without slices of vine-ripe tomatoes, preferably with a balsamic drizzle. And because Robin is a vegetable enthusiast, there were also some tasty slices of oven-roasted squash.

A Sweet Touch

The finale, the cobbler used up the last of those wonderful peaches that Cyndy brought me earlier in the week. I tucked the dessert under a scoop of ice cream and let the goodness ooze all about.

Peach Cobbler. Sometimes I add a few blueberries, but this time I was long on peaches, short on berries.

The kitchen mashup made for such a wonderful evening. I love those “last-minute, bring-what-you’ve-got meals.” They have a way of working out just fine.