Eat Drink Man Weblog

Leftover Theatre: Grilled Vegetable Salad

All too often the ease of modern refrigeration turns an innocent leftover into a science fair project on the life cycle of mold. The half-stalk of celery that didn’t make it into the tuna salad is invariably bagged and dumped into the vegetable drawer. And why not? You can’t just throw out food – it would be wasteful. But the high-minded bag-and-dump strategy has a side effect: a teeming throng of amputated vegetables, awkward scraps of meat, and scant teaspoons of leftover sauces all jockeying for position in a nightmare kaleidoscope of food. When you need that half stalk of celery later odds are you won’t use it. It’s been buried under the sediment of your culinary life. A handful of jicama, julienned. A half a lime, zested. Three quarters of a green pepper. The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” may have been coined centuries before The Frigidaire hit the home appliance section, but it certainly reached its zenith in the modern chill chest.

Refrigerator manufactures are forever tweaking their wares, offering newly expanded vistas, adjustable shelves, and other thoughtful innovations that help you keep more of your food at your fingertips. And apartment organizing gurus design helpful charts so that you won’t forget last Monday’s rice pilaf. But these steps only go halfway. They help you remember your leftovers, but don’t help you employ them.

I proudly introduce my blog’s first recurring feature: Leftover Theatre. I will tackle my own refrigerator, solving the problem of edible odds and ends and documenting the results. Hopefully we’ll all learn something about saving food and money.

My vegetable drawer is a little bit like me – a lot of promise in a shocking variety of directions, but lacking in focused application. This week a handful of beets caught my eye: two red and three yellow, de-greened and bagged, patiently awaiting use. I love beets, but these were on the small side. They simply didn’t have the volume for a starring role. I began to cycle through my favorite beet dishes. Donna’s Roasted Vegetables immediately came to mind. It’s a salad adorned with a variety of roasted vegetables, including the rich, earthy beet.

Salads are the perfect leftover strategy. In a roasted vegetable salad, I could give all my leftover vegetables a chance to shine. As I learned from an NPR interview with Mollie Katzen, nothing enhances the brussels sprout quite like a good roast. So too with broccoli.

Only one issue: the weather has begun to heat up. Roasting a mess of vegetables is a sure way to turn a summertime kitchen into a sauna. So I swapped out the oven for the grill. Grilling produces an intense, dry heat that promotes caramelization, same as roasting. But it can be done outside. And it adds a smoky goodness to the food that you can’t achieve in the oven. Good news, because I had a surplus of zucchini to dispatch. Zucchini is the water balloon of the squash world. It’s light on flavor. But a hint of smoke perks it right up.

Also, while Donna’s salad offers roasted vegetables served over greens, I decided to make a pasta salad. I was making a main dish, and wanted a starch component.

I gathered my ingredients:

Two small heads broccoli

Three Medium Carrots

Handful of asparagus

Handful of Brussels sprouts

Five beets

Handful of new potatoes, boiled

Two large zucchini

One cup homemade vinaigrette

One large box of pasta.

A few pinches of chopped parsley

I cut the vegetables into manageable pieces. You want your vegetables to be as uniform as possible. The smaller the vegetable, the faster it will cook. But if you cut too small your vegetables might escape capture through the grates of your grill.

Once the vegetables were chopped, I threw them into a bowl with the vinaigrette to marinate for 20 minutes. While the vegetables were in their bath, I started my coals. You’ll need a hot grill surface ready about thirty minutes after you’ve finished cutting the veggies.

The only thing that surpasses homemade vinaigrette’s delicious taste is its ease of perpetration. I’ll write out my thoughts in a future post, but for now this resource seems promising.

Once the vegetables had marinated, I fished out the densest characters: the root vegetables. They cook so much slower than asparagus, zucchini and broccoli that they need a head start. Carrots and beets went into a microwave safe bowl. I nuked them for about seven minutes, until they were slightly tender. Your time will vary based on vegetable size and microwave strength. You’re looking for vegetables that have a slight give when squeezed.

Save your marinade. You can throw it on your pasta later to add flavor and prevent clumping.

While my root vegetables were pre-cooking, I put my brussels sprouts on a skewer. I didn’t want them to roll around on the grill.

I also put big pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

With my grill prepped, I roasted my vegetables for about four minutes on each side. Time varies by grill, so don’t go far. You want a nice, toasty char on your vegetables.

When the pasta was done, I drained it and dressed it with the vinaigrette that had once marinated the vegetables.

Then you just top the pasta with a selection of roasted vegetables, garnish with a pinch of chopped parsley, and you’re ready to eat.

Thank you for stopping by leftover theatre. More leftover adventures will follow.