BRATTLEBORO — I woke on Jan. 1 with cheery anticipation to carry out my very favorite New Year's ritual: cleaning out the refrigerator.
I challenge anyone to best my collection of little jars filled with half-used condiments and more than the usual dying and moldy chunks of cheese and abandoned bread. I managed until that morning to ignore the bag of sad, limp greens that had never made it into a Christmas salad.
On the little narrow shelves of the icebox door there were the shaved and hard bodies of six lemons snuggled close to the two dozen eggs that had unexpectedly avoided eggnog.
For a brief second, I considered closing the door and going back to bed. Instead, I poured a cup of coffee and set to work.
I took every single jar out of the refrigerator and lined them up on the counters. What to keep and what to toss?
Did you know that Green Mountain Salsa is actually now made in Winston-Salem, N.C.? I picked up the jar and, in wiping off the top, started reading the label.
Originally made in a home kitchen in Chester, it is now manufactured by the TW Garner Food Company. The website says that TW Garner is “a family-owned business in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which has been dedicated to the commitment of producing quality products since 1929.”
I always end up with a half a bottle that is really old and moldy around the lid, so resolution number one was to make my own.
Salsa
Take 4 ripe ordinary plum tomatoes, seed them and finely dice them, skin on. Put them in a bowl. Add 1 small red onion, finely diced, 1 small jalapeno pepper, finely diced, a big handful of minced cilantro, salt and pepper, and the juice of 1 lime. Stir this all together and let it sit for a bit. Taste for seasoning.
That's all that's necessary to make the question of whether there are Green Mountains in Winston-Salem a non-issue.
Makes around 1 cup.
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My 25-year-old son puts sriracha on everything from scrambled eggs to hamburgers, so I always have a big bottle on hand when he is home.
Sriracha is an Asian-style hot sauce made in Los Angeles from red jalapeños, garlic, sugar, salt, and vinegar, all ground into a paste. It comes in this great, clear plastic bottle, made red from the color of the sauce showing through, with a green, pointed, squeezable spout, the shape of the stem of a chili pepper.
In the U.S., sriracha almost exclusively comes as the American invention of Vietnamese immigrant David Tran. His family had made a living selling “dipping” sauces in recycled baby food jars in Vietnam and ultimately saved enough money to come to the United States in 1979 and start a business in L.A.
More than 10 million bottles are sold each year. Tran calls it “a rich man's sauce sold at a poor man's price.” It has been named one of Saveur's Top 100 Foods.
Here's a great way to use a little more of this sauce. Fantastic stuff and just a squeeze will do: hot, sweet, tangy, garlicky, full of flavor.
Incredibly Easy Sriracha Sauce
For a really terrific sauce for just about anything, combine in a food processor 1 cup of mayonnaise, 1/3 cup of Sriracha, 3 tablespoons of heavy cream and a tablespoon of good sea salt. Pulse until smooth. Very, very good with veggies, on a burger, really divine with fries or crab cakes.
Makes about 1½ cups.
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I find many half-empty containers of anchovies. Sometimes it seems as if they breed at night while I sleep, but I think because the jars are so little, multiples of them are easily lost on the back shelves.
Anchovies are a staple food in the diet of the world. They start out as lovely little silver 2 to 3 inch Mediterranean fish, and it is the preserving of them in salt or oil that turns their color the reddish brown we associate with those we find on pizza.
Anchovies have an undeserved bad reputation. If treated properly, they have a not-overly-salty, subtle fishy taste when added to a pasta sauce or mixed into tapenade, and they provide a mysterious and usually-hard-to-define depth to many dishes.
What to do with all the anchovies I find in my fridge? Make Pissaladières! Pissaladière is like a French pizza made without cheese and with puff pastry as a base. Pre-made puff pastry is readily available in the freezer section of the Brattleboro Food Co-op, which makes this savory delight very easy as well.
Pissaladières
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium low heat and add 2 large onions (red, sweet, whatever you have around), halved and thinly sliced, and a good handful of fresh thyme leaves.
Cook while stirring every now and then, for about 45 minutes, until the onions are very soft.
Turn the heat to medium high and add 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of good red wine vinegar, then some salt and pepper. Cook until caramelized, about 12 minutes.
Throw in a handful of pitted black wrinkly olives and let the mixture cool.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees, roll out a square of store-bought puff pastry to about 1/8-inch thickness, and place on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.
Prick the pastry all over with the tines of a fork. Cover with the onion mixture and add however many anchovies you like, scattered about or arranged in a crisscross pattern, evenly spaced around the onions.
Bake for 20 minutes or so until the pastry is brown and thoroughly cooked. Cool briefly and serve.
Serves 6.
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The crystallized chutney, fermented onion jam, and dead sun-dried tomatoes made it no further than the compost. The cornichons and the capers, the Tunisian sundried garlic paste, the extra-virgin fish sauce, the banana chutney, the bottle of Heinz ketchup, the two (!) opened jars of mayonnaise, and the many pots of jam were all tidied up and put back in the fridge in some semblance of order. More coffee helped.
I tackled the cheese drawer which contained a variety of cheese in various states of ill repair: a rather smelly, very wet blue, a dried-out cylinder of chèvre, a chunk of rock-hard cheddar, a wedge of a local sheep tomme that was moldy on one face, four healthy ends of parmesan, and the sad remnants of a once-sublime bloomy rind.
I always believe the best cooking is taking whatever you find hanging around in the kitchen and turning it into a lovely dinner.
Here's how to transform old cheese, old bread, old greens and eggs into a rich and delectable meal.
Savory Bread Pudding with Cheese and Greens
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and butter an 8- or 9-inch baking dish.
Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat in a heavy skillet and sauté 1 thinly sliced onion with 3 thinly sliced garlic cloves until soft.
Add some fresh herbs if you have some on hand: parsley, rosemary, thyme, a pinch of crushed red pepper.
Add a big pile of chopped old tired greens (or about 1 pound of chopped lovely new ones) and cook until everything is soft. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, mix 3 or 4 large eggs with 1½ cups of milk, or cream, or half and half, or a mixture. Add the onion mixture. Take all your cheese, clean it up, shred it, and add to the egg. You should use around 1½ cups total cheese.
Add 2½ cups of torn-up stale bread and let the mixture sit for a while until it becomes moist throughout. Transfer it all to the baking dish and cook for 1 hour, until it is puffed and golden and beautiful.
Let it cool for 15 minutes and serve.
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I still had more eggs and those hard lemons whose insides were filled with juice. Here is a dessert that my Great-Aunt Pete loved: lemon pudding cake. It is old-fashioned, homey, rich, creamy, not heavy, and filled with the light and fresh flavor of citrus.
I don't quite understand the magic of chemistry that creates a layer of sponge cake on top and a layer of creamy lemon pudding below, but it has something to do with the ratio of liquid ingredients to dry and the binding of the egg white with the flour and the yolks with the lemon juice and milk.
But who cares? It's delicious.
Lemon Pudding Cake
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter 6 six-ounce ramekins. Place them in a small roasting pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk 3 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons very soft unsalted butter. When well blended, add 1 cup of milk and 5 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, then a healthy amount of grated rind.
In another small bowl, mix ¾ cup of sugar with 1/3 cup flour and a pinch of salt. Gently blend these two mixtures together until smooth.
Beat 3 egg whites into firm peaks and fold into the wet mixture. Divide the mixture among the ramekins and pour in enough hot water to come halfway up the sides.
Bake for 35 minutes until the tops are golden and risen, then transfer the ramekins to a rack to cool.
I like them best at room temperature or cold for breakfast the next day.
Serves 6.
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And that's that. I even feel slightly virtuous as I close the door on my tidy and organized icebox. What could be better on New Year's Day than a clean refrigerator ready to absorb all the wonderful foods I will amass over the next 12 months? I can't wait.