Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Single ingredient inspiration

You should always try to use all the leftover ingredients when you're cooking. It can be both the inspiration for a tasty meal the next day, or it can bring back childhood memories of a relative saying, "Eat up! There are children starving in Africa." If you're lucky, both.

D said our meal this evening was not noble enough to warrant blog, but don't worry, I wasn't planning to. (green leaf lettuce salad with mushrooms, grape tomatoes, pepitas, and raisins alongside a big, thick sirloin burger with a side of sauteed onions.)

I just wanted to advance the idea that you can always find use for your leftover onions, chives, scallions, ginger, garlic, or parsley. Or eggplant.

There's about a cup of sauteed onions left from dinner, and I put them in a jar in the fridge to use for tomorrow night's dinner. Sometimes its fun to build a meal around a single ingredient, kind of like a home-version of the Iron Chef. If I had a dedicated fan base, I'd have you all write in with suggestions for how to build a gourmet meal out of leftover sauteed onions, a little bit of feta cheese, and some cabbage. 'Cause that's what's sitting in the fridge.

2 comments:

Chance said...

You have a dedicated fan base, but this part of it is at a loss for culinary inspiration...sorry. I am so not a cook, I always put everything in soup. I wonder what would happen if you made a roux of feta and cream and a little flour, and added it to sauted onions and some bacon, thinned it, stirring constantly, till it was soup and added um, corn? Tiny ...Diced carrots? A splash of lemon? Hot peppers Personally, I find old cabbage revolting so I would add it to the compost pile, but if you wanted to be a purist, shred it very finely. Just noodling here -- let us know what you did do.

MysticGypsy said...

oh my goodness. did you just say you weren't a cook?