Vintage Mondays - Clean Your Fridge `Recipes´

With some free time came some much needed summer house cleaning. In this sort of sabbatical months I took after selling my coffee shop, one of the things that became clear was that when you have time you notice things. Little things. And when it comes to a clean or not-so-clean house, it´s all in the details.

It started a month and a half ago, and it just doesn´t end, does it? The deep cleaning I mean. But the feeling of getting rid of old stuff is invigorating. And the kitchen of course was the recipient of a major overhaul.

The fridge and freezer were one of the first targets. Because everything looks different when they have extra space. It makes me feel my life is lighter. So here´s what went on in the cleaning-the-fridge category.

Of course the first step is to throw away all the small jars/bowls/containers that have those leftovers you very well know by now that you´re never going to use. In my case it included things like a few tbs of a crumble and ganache that I have no idea when I made, to jam that was almost solid in the bottom of the jar, to some mixes that, though they smelled fine, I had no idea what they were. All went into the trash. 

Next came the roasting of every vegetable that had a few days before they started to become too wrinkled and soft. I knew I wasn´t going to use them soon, so I chopped or sliced them, drizzled some olive oil, sprinkled salt and pepper an roasted them in a 180º F oven for about 1 hour. 
This included grapes too, which I put in aluminum foil so they would keep their flavor intact and not get mixed with the juice of the vegetables. They went into a cake that I will post in the coming weeks. 
You can snack on them too, they`re amazing, like a candy. 

Now, you have to use these veggies soon, otherwise what´s the point? You´ll be exchanging raw for roasted and your refrigerator will be in the same situation as before. So I make soup.
Throw any roasted vegetables that you like together, add some stock, spices, blend and you have wonderful soup. In my case I used roasted carrots, butternut squash, onion and spinach, added chinese curry and turmeric, chicken stock and blended everything.
It´s one of my favorite soups, to which sometimes I add a poached egg. And grated parmesan of course.

Then I made a red wine tomato sauce with another set of leftovers. Onion, celery, shallots, carrots and garlic went into a skillet with broth and red wine. Two cans of chopped tomatoes, bay leaf, some thyme that used to be fresh, a lonely piece of hard parmesan for flavor (a tip from Jamie Oliver), a few tbs of tomato paste, and I had tomato sauce for a few meals. You can blend it or leave it chunky.
It can be frozen too, which I do in individual servings, that way I have a pasta dish in no time.

By now, the volume of ingredients in my refrigerator had decreased considerably. 
There were a few other things I made, like a hummus with the roasted eggplants and some crackers with leftover dough from yesterday´s brie and grape galette. 
And a layered tortilla chicken and corn casserole. Those will be up in a post soon. 

In the end, I got rid of most vegetables, fruits and leftovers I had lying around. And I had made myself soup, tomato sauce, eggplant hummus and tortilla casserole to last me all week. So I didn´t even have to think about what to cook.

Next stop was the freezer, but that is for another post.

How do you approach your clean-the-fridge days? What `recipes´ come out of it?