The Turkey is gone. The leftovers decimated. All I can do now is stare at an empty fridge. But Ruth Reichl seems to have no such problems. The former editor of the now shuttered Gourmet magazine and one of the most influential food restaurant critics in America, has her fridge runneth over.
Salon.com raided her frige to see what is in it. Check this out
Image Courtesy Salon.com
Apart from milk, and bottles of beer, that I approve of – she also has two large bowls (presumably leftovers) and two small bowls ( wonder what’s in them.)- plus one large pumpkin (eh?) – all adding up to make me extremely hungry.
Exhibit no: 2
Image Courtesy Salon.com
All types and shapes of bottles. If this was my fridge, I would take the mayo, the ketchup, the pesto and make myself some sort of a burger.
From Salon.com
What are all these leftovers?
Some pasta puttanesca. Michael made it for me when I came up the night before last. Michael doesn’t cook, so it was a very nice surprise. I got here, and dinner was here.
Mashed potatoes I made with local Yukon Golds, with lots of milk and more butter than I like to admit. I like to put the milk in first; I’m trying not to do the whole Bouchon thing, where you put in more butter than potatoes. I like the flavor of potatoes, and milk doesn’t mask it. You add enough milk to the point where the texture is right, and then add the butter till it tastes good. My way of making them changed completely when I got one of those great potato ricers — they just make these wonderful fluffy potatoes.
It drives me crazy that I don’t have a container of leftover rice up here. It’s my favorite go-to meal, fried rice. (Mine too! How do I get Ruth to make me some?)
What food items do you always keep around?
We always have Durkee dressing.
You never know if you have to make dinner in a flash; I always have bacon, eggs and pasta, so I can always make pasta carbonara. Cans of black beans, cans of good tomatoes, because that’s the other go-to, you know? Tomato sauce for pasta.
But lately, I’ve been buying frozen banana leaves; you can wrap anything up in them. They’re beautiful and cheap, and they use them in so many parts of the world. Wrap anything up in them and they suddenly look exotic. You run them over the flame a little bit, and they do this wonderful thing where they get all glossy, and you get this vegetal flavor that’s really nice. (Salon.com)
Nice. Thanks for the ideas Ruth – But I don’t feel like eating a banana leaf right now.
Read the rest of the piece here.
Last year, Ruth Reichl was at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Check out my write-up for the Huffington Post here.
