SUSTAINABLE PANTRY » Leftovers

Fridge Clean-Out Dinner

Alexa — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:58:12 +0000

These are my favorite types of dinners. You never know where your ingredients will lead you. Tonight, I was inspired by a small container of goat cheese that I impulsively picked up when I was walking around the Union Square Greenmarket this afternoon in the 62-degree February sun. So what did I have in my fridge that could play well with goat cheese? I found a container of leftover cooked orecchiette from last week that I really needed to use, so I decided I was going to be making something with pasta. Hmmm, lentils and goat cheese is a great combination, and I had a small amount of french lentils that would cook quickly, and hence, the dinner was borne.

I threw on a pot of water to cook the lentils, and heated a skillet to sauté some vegetables as a base for the lentils. I ended up with a great quick braise of onion, garlic, carrot and rutabaga (from our CSA) with white wine and herbes de Provence, to which I added the cooked lentils and a little balsamic vinegar. Thrown on the re-heated cooked pasta and garnished with crumbled goat cheese, another episode of clean-out-your-fridge-dinner is complete!

Soup and Sandwich

Alexa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:03:08 +0000

After cooking for guests both Friday and Saturday night, our kitchen is stocked with the makings for some pretty stellar leftover meals. Tonight we had a simple soup and sandwich dinner: Pumpkin soup and grilled cheese on homemade sweet potato challah with arugula and pickled red onions (those onions are making it into EVERYTHING these days).

NOTE: This was a different type of post for us. While we often use Twitter (@PantryTweets) and Facebook to share pictures of recent meals, cooking updates, and various other deep thoughts, sometimes we want to share these brief posts on the blog itself. Well tonight, we decided to finally go for it. We hope this will improve the experience at Sustainable Pantry by allowing us to post more frequently, and try new things, even if only a picture and a brief thought make it onto the blog. Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy!

Leftovers Pancake

Alexa — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:07:57 +0000

We always keep leftovers, even small amounts, and this is the kind of dish that makes use of all the little bits of leftovers in the fridge. This is a quick savory pancake for an easy lunch or dinner. This time, I was working with leftover brown rice, scallions and kimchi (spicy Korean pickled cabbage), but you can use ANY leftover grain, and ANY cooked vegetable.

Leftover Grain Pancake:

Leftover brown rice (up to 1.5 cups)
Chopped scallions (2 or 3)
Chopped kimchi (to taste)
Eggs (3 or 4)
Tofu (optional)

Beat the eggs. Mix in the leftover rice, scallions and kimchi.

Heat your largest skillet over medium high heat for a few minutes. Add canola oil to the pan. Ladle in the pancake batter. As tempting as it is, don’t touch the pancake for at least 5 minutes, until it has time to set up with a crust, which will make it much easier to flip. I use the same technique for flipping all large cumbersome items which I am frying—to see a vintage Sustainable Pantry silent video of my flipping technique wrestling a beast of a potato pancake click HERE. After the pancake is flipped, cook for another 5 minutes or so, until cooked through and crisp on the bottom.

The pancake was sliced into 6 pieces and garnished with a slice of tofu and extra kimchi. I served it with a dipping sauce made from 2 parts tamari, 2 parts rice wine vinegar and 1 part sesame oil.

SUSTAINABLE PANTRY » Leftovers

Fridge Clean-Out Dinner

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Leftovers Pancake

Leftover Grain Pancake:

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