Amazing Refrigerator Food

Debora Weber-Wulff
Happenings

Some days I love to create food feasts that are primarily made out of stuff I happen to have around in the refrigerator. On this page I want to give the recipes for the ones that turned out well. The not so good ones (like when I added a bit of red cabbage to a vegetable stew and ended up with blue potatoes) we'll just not mention.

Cheese Polenta with Veggies and Basil Horseradish Sauce
Polenta: Melt 2 good tablespoons butter in a saucepan and add a cup of polenta. Add 3 cups of water, cook to a boil while stirring until it thickens. Add 200 grams of feta cheese cut in cubes, a good dose of salt, some cilantro and as much Texas Gunpowder (cayenne pepper) as you can stand. When the feta begins to melt, remove from heat, put in a buttered oven form, slice a package of Mozzarella cheese on top, and bake at 200 degrees C for 25-30 minutes.
Veggies: Take some potatoes that have not yet sprouted, peel and cube them. Go through the vegetable drawer looking for non-perished veggies. Use this chance to throw out the yucky carrots. I had bought a bag of red/green/yellow peppers, a zucchini, and some mushrooms with the idea of doing "something" with them for dinner this evening. I decided to just use the peppers and the mushrooms, as there were two more bits of pepper just on the verge of turning bad. A red onion was left over from some other recipe, and one little clove of garlic was to be found. I sauteed the chopped garlic and red onion in a generous amount of olive oil, added the cubed potatoes, found two big mushy tomatos in the basket and chopped them in as well. I needed some more liquid so I added some of the white wine we had opened last night and found not to our liking, but too expensive just to pour down the drain. A good teaspoon of thyme and lots of salt and pepper (freshly ground) were added, and left to simmer. I made the Basil Sauce while this was simmering. Five minutes before the Polenta was done I threw in the 'shrooms and peppers, gave it a good stir and reduced the heat. I found half a lime while rummaging for the parmesan cheese, squoze it and put the juice in as well.
Basil Horseradish Sauce: Two containers of sour cream were fast approaching their due date, so I took one and pinched off all the basil I could find that still looked edible. I put both with some salt in the little plastic container that came with my puree stick (I never used one in the States, got acquainted with it preparing baby food, and can't live without it, I have one at home and one up in our cabin). I wizzed it on high, and it turned liquid. Hmm. Need something to make it more creamy. Added some parmesan cheese. Tastes good, but still runny. No whipping cream, no mayo to be found. But there is a package of unopened horseradish cream cheese. Never tried horseradish and basil before, but what the heck. Put 1/3 a package in the runny mess and fired up the puree stick. It's still a bit too liquid, but it tastes *great*. I hereby take credit for discovering this lovely combination!
When the polenta has a nice brown crust, take it out of the oven and serve. Polenta on the right, Veggies on the left, Basil Horseradish across both, and a nice cold glass of champagne to wash it down. Yum!
This is so good it gets its own link: Kohlrabi soup
Reincarnated Refrijoles
Up at the cabin I was rummaging through the freezer for food. Since there had been a lot of power outages this winter, the food that was there was rather freezer-burned. Also, all of the packages had somehow lost their labels (or did I forget to put labels on?). So I pulled out a smallish box and let it thaw.
Hmm. Dried-out bean mash (or refrijoles, refried-beans). Great if you have tacos or tortillas in the house, but I didn't. So I put some olive oil in a pan, fried up the half of an onion left from yesterday, sliced a couple of fresh mushrooms and sauteed them for a bit. I dumped the bean mash in, and then added the rest of a hunk of cheese which had seen better days (after removing the mouldy bits) in cubes, did some garlic pepper and some herbal salt and slowly warmed the mess. The rest of the mushrooms, a piece of cucumber and a bit of lettuce made a nice salad, when the cheese was melted I slid the mash onto the plate. It was delicious (okay, make that fattening and high-caloric...)!
Note 1: If you are trying to recreate this, make the refrijoles by warming up a can or two of kidney beans in their juice. When they are warm, take the puree stick to the pot and mix it up fine. Now add grated cheddar cheese and let melt.
Note 2: Wash the dishes right after dinner. This stuff also makes great glue.
Orange Julius
There used to be this store in the mall where I worked as a teenager called Orange Julius (I see that they still exist). Their speciality was a kind of milkshake made with orange juice. There were these getting-older-by-the-minute oranges sitting around on a blistering hot day. I took three, squoze all the juice I could get out of them, rooted through the freezer for vanilla ice cream, settled for a frozen mess of vanilla/chocolate chip/lemon, put the juice and 3 scoops of the ice scream in the blender and gave it a whizz. Mmmmmmmm! Has enough calories to replace a meal, but nice, liquid and cold.