Meal Planning and the Pantry for One

Unlike my mother, who usually plans meals for the whole week and mostly sticks to the plan, I tend to have only the vaguest ideas about what I will eat during the week. Often I'll make some kind of dish in the weekend that lasts me for multiple meals through the week. Too frequently, I end up with some forgotten vegetables and fresh herbs wilting their life away in the fridge. I hate throwing food out so some may end up in a soup pot, but too often some of it hits the trash.

I wouldn't feel so bad if we had a decent composting program here, but that went the way of the dodo. To be fair, I think a green waste collection program is pretty tough in a city where most people live in apartments. There is no garage or outside bin where you can store the stuff until it gets collected.

Anyway, that's a side issue. The real issue is that I want to do a better job of planning my eating so that I can reduce waste, make better use of the things I have, reduce the amount of food I need to store in fridge, freezer and cupboard, and ensure that I eat balanced meals throughout the week. Many of my Dutch friends manage with only one small cupboard as the pantry, a small half fridge, and no freezer. I assume the only way they can do it is to cook with a very limited variety of things (no jars of Thai curry paste, hoisin sauce, and harissa accumulating in the fridge). That would be difficult for me. My spice cabinet and pantry are ready for almost any cuisine.

Ah yes, the pantry. My pantry would be do for a family of 4! But a family of one still needs the same basic things on hand. Even when I plan a pasta dish, for example, I still have 2/3 of the pasta that needs to be stored and used up. And perhaps the next past dish I cook uses a different kind of pasta (whole grain instead of white, lasagna instead of penne).

This is of course, a luxury issue. We have so much choice in our supermarkets, and as an individual cooking for one, I can indulge almost any whim, trying out new products and brands, spontaneously deciding what I want to cook or eat, almost whenever I want. But sometimes it nags me that this behaviour seems to be lacking in respect to those who produce the food, and to those who can't afford what I can.

So this year, I want to make better use of my pantry and reduce its size. This should be an inspiration to creativity!

Pantry items to be used up

Beans	Pasta and Rice	Condiments
Aduki Navy Chickpeas, dry Chickpeas, canned Black beans, canned Yellow split peas Green split beas Brown lentils Le Puy lentils Urid dal Cappucijners, canned Black beans, canned	Canneloni Lasagna Penne Penne, whole wheat Macaroni, whole wheat Vermicelli Mihoen Soba Couscous Thai red rice Risotto rice Pandan rice Brown rice	Thai red curry paste Thai green curry paste Mango Chutney x 2 Tahini Sambal manis Sambal badjak Sambal brandal Red pepper paste Ajvar
Meat (Freezer) and Dairy	Vegetables	Other
Lamb kidneys (fresh) Entrecote (defrosted) Biefstuk Rosbief Stewing beef Ground beef Ground beef, lean Cottage cheese Old gouda Culinary cream Cream cheese	Potatoes Yellow onions Shallots Leeks Carrots Celery Celeriac Green pepper Red pepper Butternut squash Mushrooms Corn, canned Spinach, frozen Pumpkin soup	Falafel Puff pastry Rice wrappers Tortillas Wonton wrappers Dried apricots Dried figs Raisins Sultanas Currents Pecans Coconut

Meals for week of 31 January 2011

Morocaan Roasted Vegetables, for week-day lunches
Celeriac soup for lunches, freezer
Low-fat Falafels for pre-dinner nibblies
Sunday:   Lamb kidneys in mustard sauce with mashed potato-celeriac
Monday: Pepper steak, with stir-dried green pepper. tomato, onion, mashed potato-celeriac
Tuesday: Vegetable dal and rice
Wednesday: Beef stir-fry with red peppers, Pandan rice
Thursday: Steak and kidney pie, spinach, mashed potatoes
Friday: --Plan a mostly vegetarian week of meals for next week!

Spiced Cabbage Rolls

Today I was trying to find a way to use up the rest of a savoy cabbage that was wilting fast. I also had some ground beef defrosting in the fridge, so cabbage rolls immediately sprung to mind. The beef is quite high in fat, which is great for flavour and tenderness but not so great for my waist line, so I decided to mix it with some bulgur and vegetables to bulk it up and spread the load.

The bulgur made me think of tabouleh and middle-eastern dishes with raisins, which lead me to a new twist on cabbage rolls. The actual spices I used could be considered Moroccan or Indian. I just consider the result very good!

I only had enough cabbage leaves to do a half recipe (enough to serve 2 people) of cabbage rolls, so the rest of the meat mixture is now macerating in the fridge, ready to be turned into a little meat loaf tomorrow.

Cabbage Rolls

1 Savoy cabbage

Filling
1/3 cup bulgur
1/2 cup boiling water
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 onion, minced
1 small carrot, grated
1/2 stalk celery, minced
2 teaspoons dried mushrooms, crumbled
1-2 tablespoons of mirin (rice wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper, to taste
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
2 pinches nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon paprika, smoked
3 tablespoons bread crumbs

Sauce
2 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
2 pinches cinnamon
3 cups water or stock

Make the filling: Pour the boiling water over the bulgur and raisins and let soak for 15 minutes until the bulgur is plumped up. Combine the meat, bulgur and raisins, vegetables, egg, tomato paste, mirin, and spices. Let macerate in the fridge for 4 to 24 hours. 

Prepare the cabbage leaves: Bring a large post of water to the boil. Split the leaves off the cabbage and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and run the cabbage leaves under cold water, then carefully dry in a tea towel. Cut the thickest part of middle rib out of each leaf, like cutting out a thin piece of pie. Reserve the ribs for the sauce.

Assemble the cabbage rolls: Take a leaf and put 1 or 2 tablespoons of the filling in the center. Fold the corners over, then roll the leaf into a ball. Roll it into another leaf. Put it into a tea towel and gentley twist to compress the cabbage roll into a round ball and squeze out some excess moisture. Repeat until the filling and cabbage leaves are used up.

In a large pot, saute the onions until translucent, then add the garlic and cook for another minute or so. Add the spices, cooking for another 2 minutes, then add the water and reserved cabbage ribs, and stir. Gently nestle the cabbage rolls into the sauce, ensuring that the sauce comes almost to the top of the cabbage rolls. Cover tightly and simmer for a half hour.

Serve over rice with your choice of vegetable. 

Vietnamese Pho

It's not that I haven't been cooking the last few weeks, it's just that with my little point-and-shoot camera, I can really only get decent pictures during the day. In the late afternoon and evening, when I'm usually cooking, I need to rely on artificial light (and standing absolutely still!) or on the flash, and that leads to orange blurry pictures or to garish glistening ones. My birthday is coming up next week so maybe I should gift myself a better camera and decent flash.

Anyway, one of the dishes I have been living off of for most of this week is a Vietnamese beef soup called Pho (pronounced like French feu).

It starts with charring the ginger and onion over an open flame for 15 minutes. I used the grill from my old toaster oven for this and feared the worst with regard to smoking up the place, but it worked better than I had expected (I did open some windows!). After parboiling some beef bones, you throw all the ingredients in a big pot and simmer for 3 hours uncovered, taking the beef out after 1.5 hours. Keeping the pot uncovered lets more liquid evaporate and intensifies the flavour, which is something I plan to do more often. The broth produced is delicious and wonderfully fragrant, and the cooked beef is fabulous—completely imbued with the wonderful flavours of star anise, cinnamon, ginger, garlic and onion.

My biggest caveat is that it ended up being much too salty for my taste. The recipe calls for a lot of salt in making this stock, reasoning that the noodles and other ingredients it goes over are bland, but I had to add boiling water to reduce the salt levels, and for a stock this good, that was a shame.

I varied the vegetables and noodles that went into the broth a lot—depending on the day, it could be savoy cabbage and bean sprouts, or mushrooms and green peppers that had been stir-fired in sesame oil first. Today, I thinly sliced some fillet of beef and put it on top of the noodles and vegetables before pouring over the hot stock. It was great.

Vietnamese Beef Broth

Adapted from Viet World Kitchen
I am just providing the broth ingredients and an abbreviated method here.
I've reduced the salt by half, added some garlic, and given a range for the star anise, since I found it was a bit too strong in the balance.
Check out the original source for all the authentic vegetables and garnishes and a more detailed method.

2 medium yellow onions
4-inch piece ginger
5-6 pounds beef soup bones
6 liters of water
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
3-5 star anise
6 whole cloves
3-inch cinnamon stick
500 grams beef chuck cut into 1 inch cubes
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons fish sauce
1 -inch chunk) yellow rock sugar (I used Indian jaggery)

1. Over a grill or flame, char the ginger and onions, turning them from time to time. After 15 minutes, rinse the ginger and onion under cold water, peel and slice the ginger and remove the charred outer layers from the onions.
2. While the ginger and onion char, parboil the beef bones (there should be no or little meat on them) for 2-3 minutes. Then discard the water, rinse the bones and rinse the pot to get rid of impurities in the stock.
3. Now put all the ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil, then turn down to a bare simmer. Simmer for 1.5 hours, then remove the beef with a slotted spoon. Let it cool in cold water for about 10 minutes before draining and refrigerating it. (This is to prevent it from turning dark.)
4. Simmer the broth for another 1.5 hours. Strain the broth through a sieve lined with cheesecloth and let it cool down so that you can easily remove the fat. (At this point, if you've got good marrow bones, scoop out the marrow and spread it on some melba toast and eat right away. Cook's treat—marrow has to be hot and it doesn't keep that well.)
5. When you come to serve the soup, soak some rice noodles (or ramen, or use wok noodles). Heat the broth to boiling point. Add the reserved beef to warm it up. Julienne some vegetables, and stir fry them or simmer them briefly in the broth until tender. 
6. Place the noodles, vegetables, and beef in serving bowls and add the hot broth. Garnish with cilantro, chillis and mint.