Using up Produce: My Cooking Process

​Last week, I posted this photo on Facebook with the caption - 

Busy and productive day in the kitchen! Had so much produce to use up, so I pulled it all out of the fridge and started chopping. Challah for tonight and some for the freezer. Vegetable stock. Chunky Vegetable Soup. Hamutzim - Israeli Pickles. Apple Sauce. Fresh squeezed Mandarin Orange juice. Banana Bread. Broccoli Kugel / Casserole for tomorrow. Now to make a simple dinner - Picante Cod. Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts. Roasted (or maybe mashed) Purple Sweet Potatoes. Shabbat Shalom.

​So I decided to write about what I found in the fridge and my process. Overall, I spent about four hours doing all of this.

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I did a curbside grocery pick-up earlier in the week and ended up with three huge broccoli crowns. So my motivation was to use up as much of that broccoli as possible and a fridge full of produce, most in good to great shape, but also including some past its prime.

I love Debbie Meyer Green Bags and Boxes. I started using them years ago, when I had a CSA farm share. I was getting so much produce every week, that I couldn’t go through it all quickly enough.

I don’t know the science behind them, but they really work. In the fridge, I had some things that I bought before Thanksgiving that were still fresh in their boxes!

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What I had to work with
Mandarin oranges, 1 lime & 1 lemon that were kind of shriveled | Apples, also shriveled | A bowl of pears that were pretty fresh, but a couple were starting to get soft | Two giant broccoli crowns | Two parsnips | About 10 small carrots (not the baby ones, just small) | One zucchini | One shriveled yellow bell pepper, half of another one & a couple of whole peppers in good shape | Half a head of cabbage | About half a pound of Brussels Sprouts | Celery | About half a pound of baby turnips | One Jalapeno | Two little bags of peeled garlic – one open and a little funky, one still sealed | On the counter, two very brown bananas and 2 dried up red hot peppers | In the freezer,  one bag of vegetable scraps saved for stock and a cup of pomegranate seeds | Plus, a bag of onions and a bag of potatoes

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Step 1
Put on some good cooking music. I definitely believe the food tastes better when I cook with music. For Jewish holidays, I have specific playlists, but today I put on my go to - Classic Rock. 

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Step 2
Put challah ingredients in bread machine. The recipe is adapted from a Susie Fishbein recipe. My machine takes an hour and a half to make the dough.
For the full recipe, click here.
 

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Step 4
The shriveled mandarins were rolling around the counter too. So, squeeze them + the lime and lemon that didn’t look so hot. Pour into a bottle to be used for cocktails.

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Step 6
Get the stock going. Dump the bag of frozen scraps into a large pot; cover with water. Throw in the pomegranate seeds, which I discovered freeze well, but get mushy when they defrost - they will give the stock good color. Toss in the peeled garlic cloves from the open bag. Put lid on at an angle to leave it open at the top; turn heat to high to get it boiling.

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Step 8
​Stock is boiling, so turn the heat down to low. I’ll add more scraps as I work through the pickles, soup, and kugel. Turn off soup and remove from burner; leave in pot to cool. 

​Make the pickles. I don't have cauliflower, so I substitute some of the broccoli. I know I want to use the cabbage for the soup, so I use the Brussels Sprouts here. And added some celery. Also stuffed a shriveled red hot pepper into each jar. Followed the rest of the recipe exactly, except made only half as much liquid as called for. It just seemed like it would be too much and I was right; I still had some left over.
Thanks to The Kosher Cowboy for sending me this recipe by email, which gave me the idea. Click here for the recipe.

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Step 10
Braid the challah. My recipe uses more than five cups of flour, so it makes two large loaves. I'm not having company, so I divide the dough in half; from each half I make one small challah and eight little rolls. They all go on two parchment-lined baking pans. I cover one pan with a tea towel and set it on the counter to rise. The second pan goes into the freezer, uncovered. Later I will move the frozen challah to a freezer bag for a week when I don't have time to make fresh.

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Step 3
Apples are rolling all over the place, so get the applesauce going. Peel and chop all the shriveled apples + a couple of slightly too soft pears. In a small pot, I put in a cinnamon stick, 2 star anise and the dust from the bottom of a bag of whole cloves. Throw in a splash of apple cider (left from Thanksgiving). Set heat to low, but leave uncovered so I can hear when it starts to bubble.

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Step 5
Check the apple sauce, which was bubbling. Move to smaller burner, turn heat way down and cover.

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Step 7
This is what the counter looks like after about an hour.

​Make the banana bread. Start by preheating the oven and lining my loaf pan with parchment paper. Recipe calls for 3 to 4 bananas; I only have 2, so I open a can of pumpkin puree and throw in about ¼ C. I use oil instead of butter, to save the melting step. I use about 1/3 C of sugar and another 1/3 C of Truvia baking blend, to reduce the sugar. Add the last bits from a bag of chocolate chips and a bag of chopped walnuts from the freezer. Mix, pour, into the oven. Set time for 50 minutes.

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Step 9
Make the soup. I follow the recipe pretty closely. But because I used the turnips for the pickles, I substitute one of my parsnips. Although Jacques recommends using a food processor, I didn’t want to wash it, so I chopped everything by hand. Everything goes into the pot; bring to a boil, move to smaller burner and turn down to low.

My husband got me Jacques Pepin's new book, Quick & Simple, for Hanukkah. It's a lovely little book that is true to its title - the recipes use simple, easy-to-find ingredients and don't take a lot of work or time. 

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Step 11
Now to make kugel and use up that broccoli. I chop it very small, so it would cook without having to be blanched first. Same with the carrots. I shred the parsnip for the same reason. Sautee the onions with some garlic; toss them in. I had the five egg whites left over from the challah, to which I added 6 whole eggs and about 2 cups of soy milk that was also in the fridge. I remember that my noodle kugel recipe calls for oil, so I add about 1/3 C of canola. Season with salt & pepper + throw in a few good shakes of Tabasco to bump up the flavor. Mix it all together; put it into a glass baking dish with a lid and put it in the fridge to bake the next day for dinner.

I'm not gonna share the recipe now because I didn't measure the ingredients and it came out a little wetter than I wanted. I'll retool the recipe and post another time.

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Step 12
Finish up. Turn off stock and remove from burner; leave in pot to cool. Remove cinnamon stick and star anise from apple sauce. Use immersion blender to break it all up; put it into a jar. Preheat oven again to 325; bake challah for 20 minutes; pull rolls out to a cooling rack and bake loaf for about 4 minutes more. Remove banana bread from pan; peel off parchment and place on a glass plate. Cover with a tea towel; this will live on the counter until it’s gone. Wash all the dishes that I didn’t wash already; set table for Shabbat, including putting challah on its tray. Move frozen challah to a silicone bag for freezer storage. When pickles, apple sauce and soup are cool, put in fridge. Strain vegetable stock; also wait to cool and put in freezer. Clean up; wipe counters.

Open bottle of wine and start dinner. But that’s another post.​