As I read through “The Everlasting Meal Cookbook” by Tamar Adler, I felt little twinges of regret.
It’s not just the wasted food, although that’s a big issue. It’s the throwing away and pouring down the drain of all that flavor. As Adler writes, “thousands of culinary delicacies rely on what seems useless.” They include fried rice (day-old rice), ribollita (leftover beans or greens) and stock (the trimmings from herbs, vegetables and the animals eaten).
But then I read perhaps her best advice: “Do not feel guilty if you forget to do any of this. Remembering when you remember will suffice.”
Adler’s new book could be viewed as a workbook or companion of sorts to her 2012 one, “An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace,” in which the former restaurant cook shared what she learned in professional kitchens on how the end of one meal can be the start of the next.
At that time, lyrical essays felt like the best way to communicate with readers, but 10 years later, with a child and “more life under my belt, I felt like I wanted an encyclopedia,” she said.
She describes the new book as a “compendium of what to do with what you have,” supporting the age-old practice of using what’s left over to begin your next meal. The difference here is that by the time I read through all 537 pages with their more than 1,500 tight, efficient recipes, I felt my prospects for follow-through were better than ever. That’s because Adler dishes out real-world examples of this philosophy in action, one after another after another.
“You’re not making a salad now, but if you add vinegar and olive oil to the almost empty-mustard jar and shake it rather than rinsing it out, when you do make a salad, there the vinaigrette will be,” she writes about mustard jars.
Other ideas that stuck with me:
- Scale up mirepoix or sofrito (or, in my case, the Cajun trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper) and then refrigerate or freeze what you don’t use for a head start on your next meal.
- Save the juices from canned tomatoes to use as a braising liquid for meats or a base for soups or stews.
- That salty nut dust at the bottom of a bag? Taste it and then judiciously sprinkle it over beans, greens or fried rice or add it to pesto.
- If you make herb oil (or vinaigrette), but want a different taste from the day before, add grated lemon zest, chopped olives or another herb.
- What to do with leftover smoothie? Freeze it to make ice pops or tasty ice cubes.
I often divide cookbooks into two piles: “shelf-space worthy” and “giveaway.” This one will not only go on my shelf, it will go on a shelf in my kitchen — for reference. I want quick access to the little gems like these that Adler tucks in throughout the book.
She said she wrote the cookbook for “everybody who has wondered, had a moment of hesitation as they were throwing something away.” Her goal is for people to close it feeling like: “Now, I have the tools to be able to make a different choice, to make something new out of something leftover.” (This includes popular restaurant dishes, too. Look up lo mein, tikka masala or even french fries in the index and you’ll find clever ways to make them delicious again.)
For Adler, this way of cooking is second nature, so she does go a little far afield for me — and perhaps other harried home cooks: Boiling avocado pits to make a dusty rose dye for cloth or Easter eggs? Drying corn husks to use as kindling?
But the point is, the book brought me many more aha moments than it did maybe-not shrugs. It energized me to look at the ingredients in my freezer, refrigerator and pantry in a fresh way. Instead of sighing, now more often I’m conjuring a feeling of adventure when I stand in my kitchen wondering, “What can we have for dinner?”
Once you start thinking this way, it becomes second nature — like muscle memory.
“You feel ingenious and resourceful,” Adler said.
Any Vegetable Minestra is a fine example of this concept. Adler’s recipe calls for any liquid, any vegetables, any beans or starch. I made it twice and discovered, of course, if you use leftover homemade broth and seasoned, roasted vegetables, it is delicious, but if you use water and leftover frozen mixed vegetables, it’s a bit dull. It’s easy, however, to make it work, by adding a tablespoon or so of miso or tomato paste to the aromatics, as a colleague suggested, and then, as Adler recommends, top it with tapenade, a spoonful of chili crisp, a few shakes of sriracha, dashes of herb oil or squeezes of fresh lemon.
Thirty minutes. No shopping. Dinner. No waste.
I’m into it.