Something Old, Something New: Example 1

There is no greater time to learn – or at least to think really hard – about how to cook all the items in your fridge or pantry. I want to share with you some of the bad and ugly of my fridge, and how I manage to salvage my ingredients and create something my husband and I want to eat. By no means is this anything fancy, but it gets the job done – and that is most important right now!

The contents going bad:

1. Mung Beans 
2. Beans, mixed (cooked 4 days ago)
3. Three carrots 
4. Fresh Ginger
5. Half of a fresh chili
6. Frozen, seasoned meat cooked with rice (last week’s dinner)

To supplement the meal, I’ll use in addition soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, honey, and 2 eggs.

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Salad: Mung Beans, Carrots, Mixed Beans, Red Onions, Ginger, Red Chilis.

I lightly sauteed the carrots (sliced into moons) with the fresh ginger, chopped chilis, salt, and pepper, adding the red onions once the ginger and chilis were fragrant.

I lightly sauteed these ingredients only for them to inhale a bit of the seasoning, though I preferred they maintain their crunch so I took them off the burner before they could brown.

I combined the sautee mix with the mung beans and mixed beans and brought them to room temperature. To create a dressing, I mixed white vinegar, soy sauce, spicy honey, and sesame oil and combined it with the vegetables. I made this in very small batches, as not to waste, until I was content with their coating.

“Fried” rice:

I first began by thawing my rice and meat mixture on a pan over medium heat. Once the rice and meat have regained their form, I removed them from the pan.

In the meantime, I beat two eggs and added a bit of soy sauce (I did this as I did not want to overseason the meat. It was previously seasoned from another meal. I thought if the eggs could carry the soy sauce, the salty taste would not disperse heavily throughout the rice, but would still provide the flavor I sought – this did, in fact, work).

Over medium-high heat, I melted a chunk of butter into the pan a poured in the egg. Once the egg had set like a nice round pancake, I poured the rice and meat over the eggs. With chopsticks, I scraped from the outer edge of the pan to the middle, going around in a circle, to release the egg from its form underneath and allow them to fluff into the rice.

To “fry” a little more, I added a small amount of butter and neutral oil. The rice sizzled as I continued to fluff the mix with chopsticks and immediately portioned this out onto plates.

Diagonally sliced green onions made the perfect, and an appropriate garnish, and I served the ‘fried rice’ next to mung bean salad.

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Tip: In the morning, evaluate what’s in your refrigerator. Is there something/multiple items that need to get used? Is there a theme amongst any of these ingredients that I can pair together can supplement with something shelf-stable? Put them to the front of the fridge or take them out into a preparation area.