Friday, August 26, 2011

Playing Iron Chef with the fridge


Tonight's session is going pretty typically.
I've been eyeballing my basket of heirloom toms for more than a week - at this point they're saucers, so I've parboiled them and set them aside to peel. I have a big zucchini that needs tending to, so I've cut it in half and scooped out the middle bits & set the halves aside. I've minced the middle bits, a leftover half-onion, the last 5 good cloves of my garlic bulb, and some fresh minced thyme I had saved back from last weekend's project, and sauteed the mixture; I used the parboil water to cook up a little orzo pasta; I peeled the toms and saved the peels and juices (along with leftover onion bits and the garlic cloves that were too small to bother with) for veggie broth, currently coming to a boil along with the bits I had frozen till I had enough for a broth-batch.
I chopped one of the toms and let it burble down to a paste in the sautee; I've added the orzo and stirred it together to simmer briefly together; I rescued the last bit of pesto dressing from last week (which was itself leftover pesto with a little more olive oil & red wine vinegar) and tossed it over the rest of the parboiled, peeled and chopped toms - and put that in the fridge to add to salad later in the week. To snack on, I saved back a scoop for myself and added a handful of overflow roasted pumpkin seeds I had from yesterday's Esalen-style kale salad.
I used the oil clinging to the pesto dressing jar to coat the exposed surfaces of the zucchini and a little baking dish; I scooped the finished sautee into the zucchini in the big baking dish- and the leftovers of that into the little baking dish. I mixed together some breadcrumbs (which I had from a stale baguette I didn't get to while it was still fresh), salt, pepper, and the last of my grated parmesan and sprinkled that over the zucchini and the little baking dish; and set those in the oven at 375 degrees (thinking a little melted butter should have gone over the crumbs, enh).
Once the broth scraps have given up all their goodness I'll remove them from the broth and let it simmer down into a boullion so it's easier to store in the fridge. At some point the zukes are coming out the oven - I doubt I'll be hungry for them tonight, but they'll be easy eats between weekend activities or lunch on Monday.
Presently my neighbor is coming over for a homemade mojito and a little apartment complex gossip. Maybe she'll want a stuffed zucchini.