I haven’t used the wok for a while, so the other night I was thinking about some sort of Sichuan stir-fried situation for dinner using the napa cabbage and fennel I had in the fridge. There was also a package of goat stew meat, which enjoys those highly aromatic spices, so perfect, right? But because these goat chunks had some fat and connective tissue on them, they weren’t great candidates for quick cooking; those things tend to be pretty chewy or worse unless they’re cooked long and low and I didn’t feel like trimming them all and ending up with a pile of stringy scraps fit only for stock. So I came up with a sort of hybrid, using slow-roasted goat in an otherwise speedy stir-fry.
Category: The Circle of Leftovers
This bowl is the third in the new set; it’s an almost disaster that I salvaged into a candy dish sort of thing with a flat bottom. My limited skill on the wheel is greatly enhanced by my post-wheel surgical chops and willingness both to coax things back from the brink and celebrate their lopsided uniqueness. I suspect that after I throw a hundred more I will be a lot less precious about the process. In any case, this duck confit made a worthy passenger for the bowl’s maiden voyage.
When your kid loves yogurt, making it at home makes a lot of sense. When your kid loves Greek yogurt, straining it makes for a more or less inexhaustible supply of tangy whey; the yield is roughly 50/50 so our weekly gallon of yogurt makes a half of each. There’s always some stock around too, either in fridge or freezer, so between that and the whey I never want for rich liquids with or in which to cook dinner.
This soup described an interesting trajectory over the course of a week, culminating in a pretty spectacular finale the other night.
I made some pretty good chicken pho last night. Muggy heat notwithstanding, the Kid wanted chicken noodle soup because he wasn’t feeling well. So I dutifully trudged off to the weekly market, procured a bunch of chicken wings, and trudged home. Wings make good stock. Normally, I make, you know, wings with them, saving the tips, and then cook the cooked second and third segments with the raw tips to make a wonderfully flavored but still gelatinous stock later on. This time there was no time, so in the pot they went, whole and unjointed, with all the pho-requisite flavors.
This meal was made, upon late return home, entirely with things that were already in the fridge and needed using up. It was not in any way sexy or elegant, but it had profound utilitarian appeal: it made for very good, nutritious eating and cleared some space in the fridge. Those containers of various remnants can be pretty sexy if you look at them with the right mindset. If it’s not working for you, drink seven beers and try again.
As promised, here are the arancini made from the quinoa salad/pilaf thing. They handsomely balanced two opposite poles of culinary compulsion: one the one hand, they’re quinoa, and on the other, they’re deep fried. Yin and yang, righteous and decadent, trendy and timeless. I contain multitudes, dude.
Among the many pleasures of spring are the season-straddling meals, which retain some of winter’s rich comfort quality while opening up to the verdant splendor of new growth. And morels. Lots of morels. Throw in a duck leg, some transformed leftovers, and kumquat/absinthe marmalade, and you’ve got yourself an exemplary dinner.
There is no more useful thing to have on hand at all times than good homemade stock. Witness this meal, a hurried response to lingering sickness and general wintry malaise that no cardigan can allay. I have written a lot about risotto, because I make it pretty often, though not because I love it particularly more than other things. I make it often because it is so easy; all it requires is rice, stock, and a condimento: an herb, a flavor, a vegetable or three for color, depth, and direction.
