Method in the Madness

There are a lot of dishes that I make, where I don't follow any particular recipe.  Some things, like pizza dough, that are so very familiar to me that I do not need to look at the recipe, but I am still following an established and specific formula; these are the things that I can whip up without much effort or thought, with minimal creativity and, while they are tasty and dependable, are more rote than inspired.  This is the benefit of years of repetition and, for the most part, I originally had to fetch the recipe card and follow it faithfully to be sure of my results.  It is a very good thing, to have a small arsenal of recipes that one can blindly pull off while fighting a headache or deadline or other menace, but it is a far, far better thing to be able to apply the principles that one has learned in the perfecting of those dishes to the ingredients at hand and come up with a brand new, interesting dish, or a happy variation on a standard method.  These methods are what will rescue you from letting good food go to waste.

I hear many of the same comments arise again and again, whether in face-to-face discussions, food forums, or online discussions of any stripe.  The first is that it is expensive to set up a kitchen, ingredient-wise, to cook from scratch, and the second is that when one does go to that effort, it seems that much of the fresh produce and perishable items expire messily before they get used.  They are both true, and they are both unnecessary.

If you are starting from zero, and I have done this a number of times and know whereof I speak, it can be a bit costly for an initial outlay of things that you will need in your kitchen.  Just what those staples are will depend on what you like to eat.  There is no rule, however, that insists that you must purchase everything at once.  In fact, it is wiser to make your purchases incrementally, one recipe at a time, and gradually build a repository of ingredients.  If your first week of meals is going to rely heavily on a big pot of chili, you probably don't need to buy soy sauce this week.  Even if you use soy sauce frequently, it can come next week, when you think you might have the time to do some stir-frying.  I don't know how many times I've heard someone tell me that they bought all kinds of condiments and relishes and jams that they then never end up using, and chuck out the next time they move.  The truly undaunted might even then go on to replace those items, suffering from some sort of condiment Stockholm syndrome where they feel obliged to give fridge space to things they don't use.  It's so unnecessary that it is almost painful.

So, having stocked your cupboards and your fridge with foods that you do actually like, and will actually want to use, the clock is ticking as you try to use them up before they spoil.  This is both harder and simpler to manage than simply buying the right things: if you fail, you throw out what was once perfectly good food, and therefore money.  This is where method cooking comes in handy.  If you have a grasp of the fundamentals, you can easily turn a few random vegetables and some eggs into a tasty frittata - suitable for any meal of the day.  If you enjoy raw vegetables, chop them into sticks ahead of time and they will be ready for a recipe (such as soup or stew) or snacking, or packing to work as lunch.   I maintain, as well, that almost any leftover can satisfactorily be made into quesadillas, as long as you have tortillas and some cheese on hand.

The key to using things up on time is to know what you've got on hand, and what can possibly be made from them. The only possible solution for this is to look in your fridge and cupboards every couple of days, make a note of things that need using in the near future, and figure out a way to use them.  It's sort of an Iron Chef event, but there's a slightly longer time limit - ideally, anyway - and instead of one ingredient there may be many.  You need some methods to deal with them.

A lot of student classics are armour in the supply closet of kitchen waste minimization.  Meat, vegetables, and condiments can be used in stir-fry dishes - bite sized bits of everything that are fried up quickly in a pan and served over rice or noodles.  It is a matter of practice to get the timing down - what cooks more quickly than what - but even a haphazard attempt will probably be pretty good. 

Leftovers are the bane of most kitchens.  I tend to take mine to work as lunch, freeze them in portion-sized containers stacked neatly in the freezer, or re-invent them a couple of days later.  Re-invention is the thing that keeps leftovers from getting tedious.  As I write this, I have a pot of chili simmering on the stove.  I make at least six different kinds of chili, depending on what mood I'm in and what ingredients I have on hand, so this one is a beef and black bean chili that uses up about three cups of leftover Cuban black beans that were lurking in the fridge.  Two days from now, the leftover chili will get tossed with some macaroni and a little tomato sauce, sprinkled with cheese and devoured for a very easy dinner.  Those black beans will have been a part of at least three different meals, by that point, plus a breakfast quesadilla that I didn't mention before.

Not everything reinvents so tidily, though.  Chili is an exceptional case that can become pasta, be spooned over hot dogs, or even be the filling for an omelette or pizza topping.  Some foods just aren't that convertable.  When you find yourself with a fridge full of odds and ends of leftover meals, it's time to have a frankendinner.  Like Mary Shelley's monster, a frankendinner is stitched together out of dissimilar parts.  It may not be something that you want to readily invite guests to share, but it should meet the twin needs of "What am I going to do with this?" and "What's for dinner?"  Plus, you clear some space in your fridge for fresher groceries.

You'll need to experiment, of course, to see what works best for you.  I tend to ask myself, can I make it into a) soup - even just adding some sauteed vegetables to a tinned soup makes it better all around, b) quesadillas, c) pizza, or d) frittata?  If it's none of the above, I just take it for lunch (I've had a few frankenlunches, too) or make it part of a frankendinner.  Ultimately, you just need to be aware of what is in the fridge, and what the possibilities are for utilizing it.

Does this mean that you'll never have a cucumber liquify in the crisper?  Of course not.  But you'll find you're eating the food that you buy more often than you're tossing it down the garbage disposal.