January Challenge Part IV: Reinventing Leftovers
Congratulations my ambitious Home Cook, you have almost made it through an entire month of pushing yourself to rethink your approach to consistently getting dinner on the table… from scratch. A month of trying out time-saving tips, meal planning, and making breakfast for dinner may have left you with a refrigerator full of bits and pieces of your previous nights’ efforts. And as any lover of the Thanksgiving holiday knows, there is nothing better than the meal itself except for maybe digging into its remnants the day after. One man’s refrigerator full of leftovers is another man’s jumping off point for a whole new meal.
Any country whose people have struggled through times of scarcity can attribute some of its most beloved dishes to efforts of reusing leftovers. Leftovers that form the base for new and exciting dishes range from the extra white rice from one night’s chicken curry to the stale stump of a loaf of bread that accompanied another night’s soup, all begging for new life in another night’s dinner.
One man’s stump of stale bread is another man’s Panzanella. Italian cuisine is renowned for finding ways to use up every bit in the kitchen from stale bread to animal innards that are tossed away by most butchers. For most Americans, it is the day-old bread we could afford to learn a trick or two about. Day old bread has lost moisture and thus becomes too hard for most of us to find appealing to eat on its own.
However, the loss of moisture makes it a perfect base to act as a thickening agent for soups or a chewy absorber of dressing in a salad. Try using cubes of crustless bread in a tomato basil soup for a classic Tuscan take on the dish, or toss those cubes with tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, capers and just about any other bits hanging out in your vegetable bin for a Panzanella salad.
Rice today, fried rice tomorrow. If there were no rice for dinner, there would be no opportunity for fried rice the next day, perhaps reason enough to serve rice as a side dish in the first place. Rice freshly made is too moist and sticky to work well tossed with oil in a wok. However, by Day 2, the rice has dried to a consistency begging to be tossed in hot oil with scrambled egg, scallion, shrimp, chicken, or just about anything else that is collecting dust in a Tupperware.
Other rice dishes, like risotto, also call out to be made in such quantities as to necessitate resurrection the next day. There is nothing as good as risotto freshly made than perhaps a risotto cake made the day after by mixing egg with the risotto and frying it into patties to serve alongside any variety of dish from pork chops to grilled chicken.
Give me a stone, and I’ll make you soup. Almost every European culture has a fable about a traveler who comes to a village and announces that he needs nothing more than a stone (or button, nail, wood or axe, depending on who’s telling the story), and he can make a pot of soup. The intrigued villagers, who initially denied him food and help, eventually come together to make the soup from contributions from each of their kitchens as the traveler continues to announce that the soup is “almost there” but needs a little more seasoning before it is ready.
It is a tale of scarcity and community, but it is also a lesson in what can be created when you yourself look around your kitchen and decide that there is little more than stone to eat. At the end of a week of cooking there are probably enough leftover morsels of things to make your own Stone Soup with just a pot and some creativity. Add some random vegetables and some sausages and your pot of soup becomes a legitimate Sopa de Pedra, the Portuguese stone soup that is a part of that country’s culinary heritage.
Leftovers do not have to be scary like those Tupperware contents that are growing fur in the back of the refrigerator. Some foresight on Day 1 and some creativity on Day 2 can lead to new recipes for delicious leftover dinners. And when you think there is nothing left to cook, remember that if little more than a stone and a pot can feed villages all over Europe, then your pot, plus a fridge full of odds and ends, might be able to feed you and your family.
Made with fennel bulb, garlic, bay leaf, paprika, red chili flakes, garbanzo beans, green cabbage, tomatoes, chicken stock, parsley
Serves/Makes: 6
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 pound spicy Italian sausage
- 1/2 white onion
- 1 stalk celery
- 2 medium carrots
- 1/2 fennel bulb
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes
- 1 cup garbanzo beans
- 1/4 medium green cabbage
- 2 plum tomatoes
- 8 cups chicken stock
- 1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley
- 3 cloves garlic
- 6 tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper
Heat a large soup pot over medium high heat. Add vegetable oil to the pot. Cut sausages into 1 inch pieces. Add sausages to hot oil and brown.
Meanwhile cut onions in a small dice about 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch. Slice celery lengthwise in 2 pieces then dice about 1/4-inch long. Peel carrots and repeat dicing to make pieces about equal in size to the celery. Slice fennel down the middle lengthwise, to form 2 even quarters. Then slice the quarters across to form slice about 1/4-inch thick.
When sausage is browned if not totally cooked through, remove from pan with a slotted spoon and transfer to a plate. Add onions, celery, carrots and fennel to the oil left in the pot and reduce heat to medium. Saute vegetables for close to five minutes until all the vegetables have begun to soften.
Mince two garlic cloves, drain and rinse beans if using canned beans, and slice cabbage into pieces about 1/4-inch thick and 2 inches long, and roughly chop tomatoes. Add garlic, bay, paprika, and chili to the softened veggies and saute for another two minutes until garlic has begun to soften. Add beans, cabbage, tomatoes, browned sausage and chicken stock to the pot. Cover with a lid and bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
Finally, while soup is simmering, mince remaining two garlic cloves and finely chop parsley. Mix parsley with garlic, olive oil, salt and some pepper.
When soup is done simmering, adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. To serve ladle soup into bowl and top with a dollop of the parsley mixture.
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