Lover of Leftovers

Lovingly, I just polished off a bowl full of the past three days leftovers. The first layer was the last spoonful of

Chioggia Beet and Sweet Potato Gratin over Orange Juice Stewed Lentils

After the thin slices of these beautiful pink and red vegetables, I added the totally out of season

Summer Squash, Kidney Bean and Walnut Salad

Yes, March is not the time to eat yellow squash in Philadelphia, but hey, they looked so beautiful at the Reading Terminal Market, I bought one anyway.

To top it all off, I added a touch of carrot slaw. My favorite way to eat carrots is raw and julienned. This time they were dressed in the last spoons full of almond butter dressing.

Carrot Slaw in Almond Cilantro Vinaigrette

As I sat at the kitchen table and devoured the layered leftovers, the images of two women came to my mind: a northern African woman whose story I heard during a course on Cuisines of the Mediterranean, and the expeditor at my first job as a line cook.

The northern African woman's daily routine of caring for her home and children is so involved that she barely sneaks a moment to hide behind the wall of her kitchen and revive herself with lentils bundled in warm flatbread.

This morning, I felt a warm intimacy with my food that I imagine the northern African woman might share. As my week has been more active than usual, preparing lunch and dinners for my love, working as a breadmaker and attending gardentender workshops, my body needed all the warmth from the leftover dishes whose outer beauty had faded.

Making a meal from small remnants of previously composed dishes has defined my personal eating style since my first experience as a line cook years ago. My expeditor, a robust vibrant brown woman, laughed at me each time she saw me making a plate out of the extra slices of lamb, eggplant tomato chutney, potato gratin, tomato salad and bits of whatever other dishes had just been plated on the line.

"You eat like someone who lived through the Great Depression," she would laugh and yell across the line in my direction. Far from depressed, I was enlivened by the bits of sweet red meat, salty cheese and potatoes and anything else that would have otherwise been tossed away as waste.

I am reluctant, these days, to serve my loved ones the exact same food from the evening before for the fear that they will be unenthused. I often think I should also treat myself to better food than the remains of foods that have lost their outer beauty. Today, the thought faded when I tasted the warmth of lentils whose flavors of orange juice, cumin, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and sea salt had intensified over night.

Rather than feel mistreated when I sit down to a meal of dinners past, I raise my head high as one who lovingly eats and appreciates leftovers.

Photos of Chioggia Beet and Sweet Potato Gratin over Orange Juice Stewed Lentils

A vegetarian cookery weekend

Throughout each day, I find myself imagining and creating recipes for what I think might be good tasting food. Often times my mental creations do not taste as good as I envision. I suppose I haven’t quite reached that level of chefdom that will allow me to taste foods in my mind. Over the past week I have struggled to pull a recipe together for a recipe contest but my mental journeys have taken me in all sorts of directions. Part of the difficulty to focus came from outside restraints. Testing any recipe these days must involve at least a few ingredients that I already possess or relatively inexpensive ones. After all, I’m only a budding cook (not nearlychef) and there is a pretty good chance that my experiments may not turn out as I desire and end up in the garbage can instead of my stomach. So I try not to spend too much money on food that may not be eaten. Although I did spend $6 today on a 1-oz bag of agar agar flakes that spilled all over the place. What a mess!

The other challenge to putting together a recipe is the kitchen space and equipment. Never before have I needed to plan out every detail of a cooking project: where and when I will purchase ingredients, what kitchen I will use with the optimal equipment and what are the kitchen’s hours of operation. Who would think that at a culinary school it would be such an ordeal to use a kitchen. Most chefs I have met are ok with me coming in to try my mad scientist experiments as long as I work clean and stay out of the way of the students in class. You may wonder why I do not experiment while I’m in class. While in class I am mostly concerned with cooking the food we will serve and nothing more.

With the space secured, ingredients purchased and the time blocked off in my schedule, I finally came up with three recipes to try over the weekend. On Friday, I tested two recipes. The first was a duchesse potato appareil (mixture) made from sweet potatoes. If you’ve ever eaten a duchesse potato you know it should be creamy and smooth. Boiled potatoes are put through a ricer or food mill to achieve this consistency. Sweet potatoes are naturally fiberous and MUST be processed through a food mill when making a duchesse appareil. I also understood that their fiberous nature lends to a low yield for any sweet potato preparation that requires a smooth texture. Envision this: I started with two pounds of sweet potatoes and after they were steamed and put through the food mill, I had maybe one pound of smooth potato left to work with…enough for about 4 duchesse potatoes.

Lessons learned: use twice the amount of potatoes you will need to feed your family or guests and do not boil the sweet potatoes first. They have enough of their own moisture should be peeled, cubed and placed in an appropriate size pot with a touch of oil or butter and cooked with a cover over low heat. They excrete their own moisture and will steam without adding any liquid. A touch of oil only prevents them from sticking.

The second experiment involved flavoring pancakes with coffee extract and calming the bitterness with a little soy sauce. I attended an Asian sauce seminar last month that showed how dark chocolate combines well with soy sauce. The way I mixed the two with pancake batter didn’t work so well. Plus I took the experiment even further by making the cakes vegan by using tofu in lieu of eggs. The result was less than tasty. Palatable yes but tasty, not so much. I ended up tossing about half of the samples I made, but I learned a good deal about the changes in pancake texture when you substitute tofu for eggs. The batter becomes quite doughy and heavy.

My other weekend experiments involved making a white bean and toasted almond hummus, sweet potato tofu (made with agar agar, a vegetarian relative of gelatin), soy orange braised kale, creamy quinoa timbales with plantain filling and braised fennel with sweet savory sushi rice. I won’t bore you with all the details of my experiments but I will share the winning recipe of the weekend: White Bean and Toasted Almond Hummus. This a guestimate of the amounts of ingredients because you know how I always forget to measure as I cook. Enjoy this with melba toast, table water crackers, as a spread on a sandwich, as a dip for crudité vegetables or with whatever else you might enjoy. Un abrazo!

White Bean and Toasted Almond Hummus

1 cup Small white beans (cannelini work well), cooked until soft but not mushy
1/3 cup Almonds, toasted in the oven
1/2 bunch Cilantro, leaves only
1/2 cup Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp Soy sauce
2 each Limes, juiced
to taste Salt
to taste Ground white pepper

Equipment: Small saucepot (beans), two sheet trays or baking sheets (beans and almonds), blender or food processor (everything at the end).

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

2. You may use canned beans if you do not have time to soak and cook the beans. If you use canned beans be sure to rinse them well before blending them. For the method I used, soak the beans in cold water over night. After the beans have soaked and absorbed a good deal of water, add the beans and water to a saucepot over medium heat. Make sure the water level covers the beans by at least 1-in. Simmer for one hour. After the first 30 minutes, add a bay leaf or two, a clove of garlic, an thick piece of onion and a short stick of celery if you have these things handy. If not, the beans will still taste fine in the end.

2. Once the beans are fully cooked but not mushy, remove them from heat. Strain the liquid from the beans and cool them on a sheet tray or baking sheet.

3. While the beans cool, place the almonds on a dry sheet tray. Do not use any oil, butter or salt on the nuts. Toast them dry for 5 minutes until they become aromatic and acquire a slightly darker color. Remove the tray from the oven.

4. In a blender or food processor blend beans, almonds and cilantro first. While the blender is on, slowly pour in the oil until the mixture becomes smooth and creamy in appearance. Add lime juice and soy sauce. Taste. Add salt and white pepper if needed.