Eating Down the Fridge Challenge: Day 6 (Friday)

Delicious french toast

After a few beers, I am highly suggestible. Friday was yet another work happy hour for a departing colleague. As it had been a dreary day and it was still my birthday week, I had several beers then happy strolled through Dupont to catch the bus home. While I was waiting for the bus, I cracked open Orangette's book -- A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg -- and read the chapter about her father's french toast. This immediately made me want french toast. Her dad's trick was to use cook the bread in oil rather than butter. CCO was skeptical of this idea (or perhaps skeptical of semi-sober Leah and hot oil?), but it turned out pretty well. The oil sears in the flavor and makes the toast crispier than butter. Super delicious. See her recipe for details, but a good mix is 1 egg for every 2 pieces of bread. So we used 2 eggs for our 4 pieces of toast.

Eating Down the Fridge Challenge: Day 5 (Thursday)

You may have noticed that there is no Wednesday. We cheated (sort of). When I got home from work, I ran into our upstairs neighbors. It came out that this week was my birthday, also that she had been home all day with her sick (not contagious) son and had spent the day cooking. So she invited CCO and I to dinner with her family. We had delicious Korean food. We did eat food from a fridge, just not ours. And in the spirit of EDF (and being good guests) we brought them a bottle of wine.

To make up for my lapse, though, I promised myself I'd be adventurous for Thursday's dinner. So this can of salmon has been around for awhile (don't worry, it doesn't expire till 2010). I think it was my mother's. She accidentally bought it one time, mistaking it for tuna, then got home and stuck it in the back of her cupboard. When I moved to my new place last summer, she brought me a bag of all this food to help fill my cabinets. It was supposed to be things I requested -- spices I had left with her after moving back from Chicago, important pots and pans like my pressure cooker. Instead I ended up with canned salmon. But never fear. I remembered we had a couple red bliss potatoes sitting around. Also, as used in previous recipes, tons of bread crumbs. So why not salmon croquettes?

Adapted from the New York Times

Eat Rating: Good. CCO commented that the croquettes were a little short on salmon. If I were making it again, I would probably use 2 cans of salmon.
Difficulty: Easy-to-medium (no strange utensils, but does require breading and frying)

3 medium-sized red-skin potatoes
1 can salmon, drained
1 shallot, minced
2 eggs
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 cup sour cream
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup fresh chopped dill (or about 1-1 1/2 tbsp dried dill)
1/2 tsp salt
Oil for frying
Flour

Boil potatoes in medium-sized saucepan until tender. Mash with masher or electric beaters until smooth. Mix in can of salmon, shallot and one egg. Shape into patties and place on a cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Beat remaining egg in a small bowl. Place breadcrumbs in a separate bowl and spread several tablespoons on a plate. For each patty, cover with flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. Set aside. Heat oil in a frying pan until hot, the edges will just begin to bubble. Fry the patties in the oil until brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Dry on a paper towel before serving.

Salmon patties, frying

While patties are cooking, mix sour cream, garlic, salt and dill to create a garlicky cream. Serve salmon croquettes with a dollop of cream.

With a dollop of garlicky dill cream

Eating Down the Fridge Challenge: Day 3 (Tuesday)

Turkey Burger

I have a bad habit of going to the store and buying ground meat. I think this stems from my childhood where we practically ate ground beef every day of the week: tacos, goulash, Bisquick "pies" of meat and cheese. So I apologize for having a second day of ground meat, but that is what's really in my fridge.

Today we had a package of ground turkey. I had proposed empanadas. CCO thought it was a lot of work since the dough would take an hour to rise. * So we settled on turkey burgers, in that burgers would allow us to use the turkey, massive amount of nun cheese and some of the barbecue sauce I opened for the meatloaf.

Eat Rating: Pretty good -- for a turkey burger.
Difficulty: Super easy.

1 lb ground turkey
1/4 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, diced
1-2 tsp parsley
2 eggs
1/2-3/4 cup bread crumbs

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with your hands until thoroughly combined. Shape into patties. Grill (we used the Foreman) or pan fry until cooked through. Serve between two slices bread, with cheese.

* Correction: An earlier version of this post attributed to CCO the thought that ground turkey is not flavorful enough for empanadas. He maintains this was not his objection. IL2E regrets the error.

Eating Down the Fridge Challenge: Day 2 (Monday)

Butternut before

My favorite rediscovery this year is butternut squash. When I was a kid, my family always did acorn or spaghetti squash, probably because butternut is irritating with all the peeling involved. Recently I've been putting butternut in everything, whether that be roasted and chilled on top of salad greens or mixed with pasta and cheese. One of my all-time favorite dishes is quiche, so I decided to try it for meatless Monday. I couldn't really find a recipe, so I made one up.

Leah's Butternut Squash Quiche

Eat Rating: Delicious. The squash and the cheese both melt into the egg base, giving the quiche a delicate but awesome flavor.
Difficulty: Easy.

Butternut after

Savory pie crust, prebaked*
1 medium-sized butternut squash
1-2 tbsp olive oil
3 oz. goat cheese crumbles
1/4 red onion, minced
2 tsp rosemary (dried or fresh)
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Peel and seed squash, then cut into chunks. Toss in 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to coat and cook for 25-30 minutes until soft. Allow to cool slightly. (This step can be completed ahead of time to reduce prep time.)

In a medium-sized bowl, mix roasted squash with onion and cheese. It should be mushy. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and milk together with a fork. Add milk and rosemary to the squash/cheese and mix thoroughly. Pour into prebaked pie shell and cook for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and cook an additional 15 minutes or until egg is set.

*Savory pie crust
I do not believe in store-bought pie crust. Here is an easy recipe for a low-fat crust:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil -- olive or canola oil work fine
1/4 cup water

Mix flour and salt in a medium-sized bowl. In a measuring cup, whisk oil and water. Pour all at once into flour mix and combine with a fork. The mixture should begin to form a ball of dough about the size of a baseball. Add a few more drops of oil if necessary to make it come together. Remove dough from bowl and place on floured surface. With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle large enough to fit a pie dish. To prebake, cook for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Eating Down the Fridge Challenge: Day 1 (Sunday)

Cheese from nuns

So Sunday officially began the Eating Down the Fridge Challenge, a week-long adventure where I will refrain from going to the grocery store and instead cook meals solely out of what I have stored up in my refrigerator and cupboards. CCO thinks this isn't really a challenge, but then again he thinks I keep too much stuff in the cabinets anyway.

Lunch:
So at one point last week, we happened to have 9 lbs of cheese from Cistercian nuns in our fridge. Yeah... Back in November, I was trying to find someone local to get some good quality cheese from, the idea being I could give half of it away as gifts and use the rest for my Christmas baking. Someone suggested the Our Lady of Angels Monastery down in Crozet. The monastery is run by Cistercian nuns (CCO tells me that its called a monastery rather than a convent because of their order). It had some good reviews and I figured I was supporting a good cause by giving money to nuns. So I ordered a bunch in mid-November. Their form said that as long as you ordered before Thanksgiving, you would be ok for delivery before Christmas. Not actually true. In their defense, it was a bad year (higher costs for stuff due to the crazy prices during the summer) so I got a postcard from them mid-December that I would not be receving my cheese until February or March. I was a little bummed, but figured I could at least give it away as Valentine's Day cheese... and in the meantime the nuns have been keeping me up-to-date on their goings-on. They sent me pictures of their visit to the Vatican earlier last year and frequently send me letters about how they are praying for me. They look like such nice nuns in the pictures that I haven't had the heart to throw away their newsletters and keep them on the fridge. (I freaked someone out a couple months back because one had a large picture of the Pope and the person began to worry that I was secretly devout) Anyway, the cheese arrived last week, all 9-lbs of glorious smoked gouda. I obviously can't eat 9-lbs on my own, so I took a wheel in to my office where it was promptly devoured by swarms of hungry reporters. The cheese is super good, a really light gouda flavour. This whole long story has really been to convince you to buy their cheese. Just make sure to leave plenty of time for delivery...

Grilled cheese

For lunch, we made grilled cheese sandwiches with the nun cheese and ate them with leftover carrot-ginger soup.

Dinner:

Leah's birthday meatloaf

For my birthday dinner, I really wanted meatloaf. Except my birthday falls on a Monday, which would violate Meatless Mondays. Instead I insisted on eating meatloaf on Sunday. The Pat Nixon meatloaf was good, but I was feeling lazy and didn't want to wait the hour it has to sit in the fridge. Instead I made up a barbecue meatloaf recipe.

1 lb ground bison (beef will do as a substitute)
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs
3/4 cup bread crumbs
3-4 tbsp barbecue sauce (LN: I used a Hickory-smoked blend)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and mix with your hands until thoroughly combined. Spray 9x9 inch square pan with cooking spray. Shape meat into loaf in pan. Bake 45-50 minutes or until meat is browned throughout. Serve with extra barbecue sauce.

Eating Down the Fridge Challenge

As several people noted on Friday, my house will be participating in the Eating Down the Fridge challenge sponsored by Kim O'Donnel's A Mighty Appetite blog. For seven days, you cannot go to the grocery store but must prepare all meals from things in your fridge or pantry. As I go to the store at least four or five times a week, this may be difficult. All of our meals for the week will be chronicled here, so send comments or suggestions. The challenge starts Monday, March 9.