Wednesday was a good example of a rummage through the freezer to decide on dinner.
Last week we bought a piece of salmon that was on offer in the supermarket. I’d cut off two nice portions for a lunch and was left with a thin strip of belly section, that I chucked in a bio-freezer bag for later.
It’s bits like this that can be great for a cheap improvised meal.
Meat and fish are important resources and we should really appreciate the value of every aspect of an animal, both to not be wasteful, but also to respect the value of the life they once were.
In a professional kitchen you aim to be as efficient as possible and use every last scrap of each ingredient to meet your targets of a good GP ( Gross Profit). At home you may or may not be under similar financial pressures but I feel it’s important to have a more mindful awareness of the ingredients you eat and to value the resource it represents.
Not long ago I listened to “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy on Audible (it’s also a film now). I listened to it a couple of times, once whilst decorating and again in stages as a wind down before bed. It’s a great story, wonderfully written and was brilliantly narrated.
Very simply it tells the story of a father and son as they wander the roads in a post apocalyptic world, searching for safety and survival. Fundamentally their days revolve around the search for food, whilst staying safe from the elements and marauding gangs of cannibals.
It is a great reminder of the luxury we have in the West of abundant food and the stark reality that despite this abundance, so many on the planet still go hungry. We should never forget this and consider every food item that hits the bin.
Scraps and bits of fish are great to use in fishcakes, soups, curries, parfaits and savoury mousses, even pasta dishes and ravioli, so always worth keeping. Similarly bones and carcasses from Sunday roasts are great to use in stocks or added to casseroles or braises to enrich the sauces. Bits of meat you’ve cut off during prep or the last pickings from a finished meal can always be added to other dishes later, in the meantime buy some biodegradable freezer bags and just bag them up. They can be a great “Get out of jail free” when you are rummaging for a meal.
Once I’d found the salmon, frozen peas were nearby. I new we had some lingering potatoes (we are watching the carb intake at the moment) so fishcakes were an obvious option. I’d recently read about a doing a pea soup just through the microwave on Chefsteps, so that was a perfect solution to the pea integration (and an opportunity to give it a go). Lastly I needed a finishing touch; peas and potatoes are fundamentally sweet so we needed a bit of acidity and maybe a creaminess to balance it all. A version of tartare sauce seemed obvious and I had all the bits I would need.
The cupboards had spoken.
The hard part was done. Now I just had to make it.
