Refrigerator Graveyard

I love denial. I apply it to just about every area of my life and remain blissfully and ignorantly content, that is, until shards of reality begin to puncture my happy dream. When I look into my bulging fridge, I don’t see the leftovers that I ate 5 nights the previous week, the half bunch of scallions that show the first signs of shriveling, or the half-full sour cream container. I only see and select what’s fresh and delectable, foolishly assuming that I will soon find use for the skeletons of meals past that are collecting in my refrigerator graveyard.

Being a true New Englander, I have an inherent distaste for waste. Thrift and resourcefulness are instinctive, and I loathe to see anything, especially food, tossed aside unceremoniously. This instinct is difficult to reconcile with a burgeoning refrigerator graveyard. The solution was to put together a list of fresh recipes that could easily make use of left over ingredients without the accompanying “left-over” blandness and sense of self-sacrifice.

Pancakes –

Everyone knows that omelets are a great receptacle for scraps of cheese, meat & veggies, but pancakes are my favorite way to use up bits of left over fruits, nuts, and dairy. Adding fruit and nuts to pancakes is as easy as tossing them into the batter right before they go on the griddle, or, my favorite way is to pour the batter down on the griddle, wait until the bottom has just started to firm up, and add slices of apple, peaches, banana, or strawberries to the top. By the time you’re ready to flip the pancake, the fruit is firmly entrenched and won’t go slip-sliding away, and when the fruit-side is cooking, it caramelizes the fruit deliciously. Add a few more raw slices to the top of your pancakes and drown in syrup.

For dairy left overs (i.e. milk nearing its expiration, sour cream, crème fraiche, butter milk, etc.), any sort of dough, but, in this case, pancakes, are a great way to use it up. Remember, the basic building blocks behind every dough, from pizza to pancakes, is fat and flour in varying proportions, and you can make substitutions somewhat liberally. I love adding either sour cream or crème fraiche to a pancake recipe (take out a bit of the milk, and just make sure that the consistency remains pancake-batter-esque.) Or, sub in the buttermilk you didn’t use up for the regular milk. Pancake recipes are extraordinarily forgiving – you can also toss in corn meal or ground nuts for a somewhat denser, richer pancake.

Salsas, crudo and cooked –

Salsas are a tasty way to use up extra veggie parts, olives, beans, and the remains of those outrageously-overpriced packets of herbs, and they’re not just for chips anymore. (As an aside, I hate seeing recipes that call for 5 or more different herbs. You only need 1 teaspoon of each, and yet each little packet costs $3 or more, making the meal ridiculously expensive, and contemplating leaving out one or two always makes me feel guilty, cheap, and lazy. It was a no win, until I planted my herb garden… more on that later).

Salsas are versatile – they can be made cold or cooked – and go with a variety of items, not just chips. Pour a cooked salsa over chicken or fish, mix it in with mashed potatoes, pour over a bagel and cream cheese, anywhere that needs a little freshness and lightness.

Whenever I make one, I pull all of the ingredients that I need to dispose of onto the counter and pick out what will go together best. You can easily pair onions of any variety, olives, garlic, tomatoes, Italianate herbs, zucchinis, radicchio, corn, and any vegetable that can manage a bit of heat together to make a warm salsa. Just sauté the onions in a pan for 5-10 minutes in olive oil, add the rest of your ingredients until mushy, salt, pepper, a little balsamic vinegar, some parsley or arugula at the end, and pour over a bit of meat.

Alternatively, lighter ingredients can all be chopped up and added together with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and lime and/or lemon juice for a raw salsa. I would always keep tomatoes as a main ingredient in this, but mangos, cherries, pomegranates, celery, spring onions, shallots, radishes, and chili peppers could all be combined in different ways to prepare a light, fresh salsa. Use this one on seared tuna, over a bagel and cream cheese or crackers, or as a spread in a sandwich.

The following are my favorite pancake recipe and cooked salsa recipe. Enjoy!

Strawberry Hazelnut Pancakes:

2 Cups Flour
3 Tbls. Sugar
1 1/2 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Baking soda
1/4 tsp. Salt
2 Cups Milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla extract
1/2 Cup ground hazelnuts
Dash of cinnamon
Handful of strawberries, sliced thin
Butter for frying

Sift all dry ingredients into a bowl (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). Whisk the wet ingredients (milk, eggs, and vanilla) together in a separate bowl and combine with the dry ingredients. Add the ground hazelnuts (I recommend grinding them in a food processor to get them very fine) and a few shakes of cinnamon.

Heat a pat of butter over medium heat on a skillet or griddle. Ladle about a half cup of batter onto the skillet. If the pan is hot enough, the pancake should stretch out, but start to firm up within a few seconds; once it has, lay your strawberry slices on top of the pancake. After 3 minutes or so, you should start to see the pancake pull up from the pan; lift it gently with your spatula to check that it’s done to your liking, and flip the cake onto the other side. It won’t need quite so much time, and you’ll want to be careful that the strawberries don’t burn; 1-2 minutes should do. Continue through the rest of your batter; stack your pancakes, add a few strawberry slices on top, cover in syrup, and enjoy!

Salsa Crudo –

1 cucumber
1 Mango
1 Cup Cherries
3-4 Radishes
1 Bunch Spring Onions (Scallions)

Dressing:
1/4 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Juice of 1 Lime
Salt
Pepper
1 Tbls. Honey

Super easy. Chop all of the fruits and veggies together and place in a bowl. Whisk all of the dressing ingredients together, and pour over the veggies. Toss and serve, as a salad, over meat, over flatbreads, you name it. Enjoy!