Refrigerator Orphans

If you're like us, you tend to accumulate little bits and pieces of leftover foods in the refrigerator as the week goes on. We're a household of just two people so we often have the typical leftovers but we are also savers of the little things -- sauces, components of other meals and vegetable pieces and parts. We try hard not to waste food, although sometimes something gets mysteriously hidden in the fridge, only to be discovered after it has developed a wonderful rainbow of colors (but that's why we compost).

Once a week we usually try to put together a meal from these pieces/parts before they reach the end of their usefulness. The other night, Cynthia managed to cobble together a particularly delicious one that I felt deserved to be memorialized here. I'm not going to try to write this as a recipe - it's more of an inspired invention.

Earlier in the week she had purchased some ground turkey. When we eat burgers these days, they are much more likely to be made from turkey than from beef. We appreciate the lower fat and cholesterol content, higher protein and fewer calories,  and have learned some tricks to make them juicy and delicious. As the week progressed, we realized the turkey needed to either be cooked or frozen after sitting in the fridge for a few days. Cyn saw it as a perfect opportunity to do one of our fridge clean-outs. Here's how.

On the previous Monday she had made won-ton wrap ravioli stuffed with a ricotta and fresh pea filling. You'll read more about this when I get around to writing this Meatless Monday gem up (yes, yes, I know, I'm behind). There was leftover ricotta and spring pea filling stored in a little baggie in the fridge just begging to be used up. Since she typically mixes ricotta into our turkey burgers to keep them moist, using the leftover ravioli filling blended in to the ground turkey was a no-brainer. (1/2 c whole milk ricotta to a pound of 6% fat ground turkey) A couple of teaspoons of the fabulous Pickapeppa sauce (you can substitute any sort of steak sauce), a tablespoon of Worcestershire, a little ground coriander, black and white pepper and voila!  Juiciest turkey burgers ever.

The second component of the dish, a slaw, came together from a variety of pieces and parts of veggies. She tossed together the remains of a yellow pepper, an orange pepper, a red pepper, a grated carrot, some snow pea pods, a couple of radish and a red onion, all julienned, mixed with the last ounces of a bottled Greek salad dressing and a little mayonnaise.

Finally, there were the cherry tomatoes sitting on the counter looking a little past their prime. Now what? Well, how about a quick homemade ketchup for on top of the finished burger? Shallots, part of an old onion (concentrated flavor in old fruit and veg) and a couple of cloves of garlic got a quick saute until golden and beginning to brown. Cherry tomatoes were added along with some salt.  After 5 minutes or so,  a little brown sugar and apple cider vinegar hit the pan.  Once the tomatoes 'pop' and release their juice, you're ready to whoosh.  Into the Vitamix it went for pulverizing and then back into the pan where it was allowed to thicken as the water content cooked out. We pan seared the 1/4 pound burger for 6-7 minutes on each side (internal temp = 160) and viola! a dinner made from foods that were almost ready to go over the edge.

Honestly, these types of meals are some of my favorites. They alleviate the guilt of throwing away food and they are really pretty quick and easy to assemble.  Not fancy but really delicious.

Building a Better Taco - From Leftovers!

Some of the best meals come from leftovers because, at least in my opinion, many foods seem to reach their peak of flavor a day or even two after cooking. In our house, with only the two of us to eat what we cook, there are almost always leftovers - this makes me happy.

The other day I wrote about the Spicy Pork Tenderloin that we had for Valentine's Day dinner. There was plenty of pork left over that we knew would only get better after a few days. On Thursday we decided to make tacos using the pork, but in keeping with our commitment to less meat in our diets, we decided to use  the pork more as a flavoring than as the featured element.

So, we waded into the refrigerator and started pulling out a little of this and that to construct our tacos. It didn't take long to realize we would need tortillas and that we didn't have any - that's when Cyn decided to make them from scratch. It was actually a pretty simple matter of combining flour, salt, non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening and water to make a dough. It was then divided into golf ball size pieces and allowed to rest. When it was time to eat, the rounds were rolled out into flat circles and cooked on the stove top on medium high heat in a DRY pan.

The first side took about 30 seconds and the second side less. Cooked tortillas were moved to a damp kitchen towel in a 200 degree F oven to keep them warm.
 
OK, back to the taco fillings. We found an avocado, some onion that had been picked with beet juice added for color, fresh pineapple, radish, red cabbage and yellow pepper. Our refrigerator is often a minefield of little covered dishes, plastic containers and  partially used veggies. To us, that's a good thing.

We blended the avocado with Meyer lemon juice and sea salt to make a spread and simply chopped everything else into manageable pieces. Prior to construction it looked like this.

Putting together a taco like this is great because you can pick as many or as few of the ingredients as you like. Mine went together like this....a generous helping of the avocado spread went down first. A modest amount of the pork (I'm sure it was no more than 1/2 ounce) was followed by cabbage, pickled onion, yellow pepper, radish and my personal favorite, pineapple. 

Each bite of the taco had distinct notes of sweet, sour and spicy. The cabbage and the radish added a great crunchy texture too. Here is what Cyn's looked like.

We each ate a whole, really stuffed taco and split a third. All in - probably 1 1/2 ounces of meat for two people. Not vegetarian, but clearly we were using meat more as a flavoring in this dish.

We often eat our salad course last, and that's what we did for this meal. It was a simple plate of roasted red and yellow beets, blood orange sections and Cherry Glen goat cheese, all drizzled with our homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

See, aren't left overs great?