013: Leftovers on the Verge
Zucchini-Chickpea-Tomato Pasta
Welcome to Home Cooking Diary, a newsletter on my journey as a home cook. Part cooking log, part recipe recommender, and part chronicler of my thoughts as I feed myself and my family.
This entry is about a meal from some months ago.
Dinner from My Diary, 6.22.22:
🍆🍅 Zucchini-Chickpea-Tomato Pasta (aka A Leftovers Pasta)
I’m a bit of an obsessive—always doing the most, even when a hobby or interest is short-lived. Thankfully my interest in cooking is going the distance, and I find myself all the more obsessive for it. It might seem objectively good to cook at home as often as I do, but my cooking habits are unhealthy in one respect. Since there are always recipes I’m dying to try—there are so many recipe writers and cooks that I follow—on days when we might have leftovers in the fridge I invariably end up cooking something new anyway. The leftovers usually get eaten by me at lunchtime, and often go with Reed to work, but sometimes there are containers of tomato sauce or cooked vegetables—expiration looming—that I need to find a way to use. Making pasta out of them is a great way to do so while also creating a new dish from scratch.
One week over the summer, during peak tomato and green bean and summer squash season, I had a homemade tomato sauce, as well as leftovers of Molly Baz’s Braised Beans Fra Diavolo in the fridge, both delicious and needing to be eaten. I also had summer squash, because it being the season, I always found myself having some on hand for moments like these. If I’m being honest the zucchini had also been languishing.
I investigated the Fra Diavolo and decided that the green beans were looking questionable, so I removed them one by one. The tomato sauce and chickpea mixture looked great, perhaps even better than before, due to the starchiness of the beans settling in for a couple extra days.
On a lazier night I might be tempted to cook up some pasta, heat this up, and toss, calling it a day, but the key to making a dinner incorporating leftovers just as good as a brand new meal, is to begin from scratch before layering the leftovers in. In wanting to create a meal that felt equal to any other I decided to thinly slice the zucchini and use a bit of the homemade tomato sauce to amplify the tomato from the fra diavolo. And for the same reason it felt important to begin with a fresh sofrito, so I put my saucepan on medium heat with a tablespoon of butter and one of olive oil, two thinly sliced garlic cloves, and a finely chopped shallot. Once that became aromatic, I added the raw/fresh ingredients first (zucchini) and seasoned it with kosher salt. I cooked the zucchini long enough for it to emit its water and become tender and a bit translucent. Next, I added a half cup of the tomato sauce, allowing it to simmer, melding the flavors together. Only at that point did I drop in the leftover fra diavolo of tomato and chickpeas. Since those ingredients were fully cooked I added them last of all.
Once everything had been simmering for a few minutes, the sauce having reduced a bit, I used a pair of tongs to add my spaghetti, which had been cooking in a pot of heavily salted water. I added about a quarter cup of pasta water to give it all a bit more starch and loosen up the sauce, as well as a handful of freshly chopped parsley and a nice heap of parmigiano. Once the pasta was fully coated in the sauce, I removed it from the heat, tasted for salt and added a few grindings of pepper. And just before serving, because in a pasta you can’t have too much cheese and fat, I added a dusting of more parm and a healthy drizzle of nice finishing olive oil. You would never know that half of the ingredients were leftovers—the dish felt completely fresh and new. It felt good to get a bit creative in using them, rather than just consuming them cold standing up in the kitchen like I normally do. I think this method could potentially be applied to many different dishes. Pastas and soups if the leftovers are saucy or have a lot of liquid, or perhaps a salad if not. Options! Endless!
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While I have you . . . a few recommendations:
*The Joan Didion Estate Auction viewing at Stair Gallery in Hudson, NY / if you’re within easy distance of the Hudson Valley, I suggest making a drive over to Hudson to view items being sold in the Joan Didion estate sale, which is currently in progress (on view until Nov. 16). For any fan it will be a joy to see her possessions (it was for me!), her iconic wicker chair, a replica of her writing area (two IBM typewriters are for sale), many books from her personal collection, and a ton of incredible post-modern art.
*An Alex Mill jumpsuit / At nearly 8 months postpartum I’m still a long way out from fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothing (yeah man, a longer road than I thought). I’m trying to avoid acquiring too many new things, but it’s becoming important to me to figure out how to style my new figure. This zip flight suit has proved to be flexible in all of the right ways, and I think will work even as my body continues to recover. So comfy and easy.
*The Paris Review / Having admired TPR’s latest redesign since being taken over by a new, female-driven staff, I finally became a subscriber. The current issue is really wonderful, with an interview with Helen Garner, short fiction from Michelle de Krester, Katherine Dunn, and so much wonderful poetry. And that cover! Impossible to resist.