fridge foraging
un-baked beans and fried rice for when you're out of groceries
It’s funny how fast a week goes by when you’re off work, isn’t it? I felt like I had so much time for chores and leisure, and then before I’d finished half of what I’d intended to do, it was Sunday again. But I had a lovely time visiting Katie in Nanaimo, and we were blessed with beautiful sunshine both days I was there; in fact it was so nice on Saturday that I actually sat outside on the ferry home. We went rockhounding on the beach and were lucky enough to see a raven up close, and drove to Parksville and visited one of the best thrift shops I’ve been to in ages. I tried a couple of beers from White Sails, which I really liked (their space is gorgeous, too)— the last time I was in Nanaimo in 2018, Longwood was the city’s only brewery, and now there are 3 others!
The night I arrived we ordered two huge New York-style pizzas from Carbone and ate them out of the box, standing at the kitchen island and talking (we did put our wine in glasses, though, don’t worry). I really liked their White Vesuvio, which had fennel sausage and roasted mushrooms. The next night we made a broccoli and smoked tofu rice bowl with miso-tahini dressing, a standard of mine, but made even better with the addition of chili crisp and ginger-garlic paste to the tofu, and Katie has the air fryer lid for the instant pot so the broccoli was extra crispy, tossed with a little sesame oil and mirin. Katie had never tried the miso-tahini sauce before and loved it, and we used the leftovers to make breakfast fried rice the next morning. During my visit we didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary, but any time spent with a friend lately feels so special and refreshing.
Jeff picked me up at the ferry and we got stuck in a very particular type of horrible North Shore traffic that occurs on the first nice weather day in awhile, so we escaped the freeway to eat dinner at Queens Cross, a British pub I really like to visit mostly for the vibe, but also because of their local beer list and perfectly cooked fries. I hadn’t been there since pre-covid times, so it felt like a reunion to sit on the mostly-empty second floor watching the sunset, drinking a beer and enjoying my fish and chips (which come with a side of mushy peas), listening to the cheers of those watching the hockey game on the floor below.
We failed at getting groceries other than eggs and bananas on the weekend, so there were definitely some pantry-raiding meals on deck for the week. There was a little of the pierogi filling left, but only a handful of dumpling wrappers, and I struggled to find something else suitable to fill up the plate. What the hell do you eat as a side with pierogis, besides sausage? I ended up throwing all propriety out the window and making some baked-style beans in the instant pot. I know I’ve eaten almost this exact meal during university, and there’s something comforting about recreating from scratch the convenience food that got me through some of my tougher days.
When I’m trying a straightforward dish that has a lot of variations and my usual trusted sources don’t have one, I tend to default to something basic on allrecipes and then adjust to my own taste. With this recipe, I used grainy mustard instead of yellow, subbed half the ketchup with barbecue sauce, and added a little liquid smoke and malt vinegar in place of a few tablespoons of the water. I also listened to a bunch of the comments that said they doubled the sauce ingredients, but how saucy you like your beans is subjective.
I might reduce the sugar next time since there’s also plenty of molasses in the recipe, but overall these were just about perfect: smoky-sweet and tender without being mushy. I think you could also skip the bacon and increase the liquid smoke for a good vegetarian version, maybe with mushrooms or bell pepper for a bit of texture. I can’t believe I haven’t made beans this way before; it was incredibly easy and tasty. And the leftover beans were delicious with toast for lunch the next day.
Opening a pack of bacon for the beans then meant I was responsible for using the rest of the pack, so I chopped up a couple slices for kimchi & bacon fried rice, inspired by a recipe in Milk Street: Tuesday Nights. This book has a nice mix of weeknight recipes that aren’t so easy you wonder why they bothered making a recipe for it, but not so specific you need to go out and buy a bunch of new stuff for them (I often use them as a starting point for what I’ve got around instead of following them to the letter). Fried rice is meant to use up leftovers and odds & ends, right?
I added oyster mushrooms from our second harvest of the mushroom growing kit (this one was not quite as plentiful, but still gave us enough to add to a meal or two), plus some carrots, peas, and green onions for colour. One great thing about using a bunch of kimchi in fried rice is that it automatically adds brine and heat, so you can keep the sauce simple: just soy sauce and maybe a little sesame oil. The kimchi and bacon work really well together here as a contrast to each other, but kimchi fried rice is a next-level meal whether you use meat or not.
I made a pizza dough with my sourdough starter last week and put it in the freezer, and then kept forgetting to take it out the night before I wanted to use it. So when I got home from work and realized this was once again the case, I looked at my nearly-empty produce drawers, trying to cobble together something else to eat. I tossed a golden beet and some potatoes in garlic powder and olive oil and roasted them, and heated up a few vegan Sol nuggets during the last little bit of roasting time. As we all know the sauce choice is the most important part of any meal that includes nuggets: on my sister’s suggestion, I mixed together last week’s leftover romesco with mayonnaise for a smoky, tangy, creamy dipping sauce. I’ll spare you the photo since this was a very beige dinner that was basically off the kids’ menu, but it was excellent for eating in front of the tv on a Monday night.
We did eventually remember to thaw the pizza dough, and made a lovely one with a red sauce base, lacinato kale, olives, a couple last slices of hot salami, and roasted red pepper. The sauce was a pomodoro Jeff had taken out of the freezer for pasta while I was away, and I remembered making it in August with tomatoes from our garden harvest. It made me feel such longing for spring and my vegetable garden that I actually dreamed about gardening that night.
Also this week I was craving double chocolate cookies but was almost out of butter. Shockingly, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar only had a chocolate-oatmeal cookie recipe, and my search for a vegan recipe online didn’t turn up anything that felt quite right, so I made up my own. I chopped up a bar of 70% dark chocolate instead of using chocolate chips which felt pretty decadent. I think the texture could have been better (I may have used too much flour) so I’m still workshopping these before I share the recipe here, but they definitely satisfied the craving in the meantime.
Media:
I liked this piece by Alicia Kennedy for Serious Eats, about the science of nutritional yeast and some of its best uses. The “nutritional” part of the name is because it’s one of the best ways for plant-based eaters to supplement their vitamin B12 intake, and luckily, it’s delicious. Nooch has been a pantry staple for me for at least a decade although I have never been vegan, but as the article shows, it has so many possibilities that it’s worth having around even if you do eat cheese. So it’s not hard to see why it’s been gaining popularity in omnivorous kitchens for some time. I love it for making vegan pesto (it freezes better than the cheesy kind), creamy sauces and dressings, and of course, popcorn.
I also appreciated this by Mahira Rivers: about what it means to be a historic restaurant that chooses to modernize its menu, keep it the same, or become something completely new. The article focuses on several restaurants in New York, but here, I’m thinking of places like Helen’s Grill, a former hangover brunch haunt of mine, which has been open and largely unchanged since 1961; the draw now is presumably less about the food and more the classic diner ambience— the ability to put a quarter into the tabletop jukebox and hear The Sufaris’ “Wipeout” with your hash browns isn’t something you can get just anywhere. Then there are places like Pepino’s, which offers a more updated menu but still captures the importance of the space’s former host, Nick’s Spaghetti House (open from 1955-2017). The sentiment that “because every community is unique, there isn’t one way to grow as a restaurant” is true all over.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. And whether or not you like Valentine’s Day, I think we can all appreciate this culinary masterpiece.