MY REFRIGERATOR’S MENUS
What to do about to leave on vacation
Heading off to the beach or mountains for vacation? What to do with what’s in the refrigerator, especially if you have one of those really large ones with the freezer packed tight enough with food enough for a month.
One of those that when you open the freezer door out tumbles onto your feet a gallon or two of ice cream, or a jumbo pack of hamburger meat.
When I had my restaurant Stars in San Francisco, my fridge was always empty. No good time to eat there and no one at home. Much easier to stop on my way home at Zuni Café with its chilled champagne and soprasetta sandwiches at the bar. And that wasn’t even the marinated anchovies or some potato and rosemary ‘white’ pizza and a glass of Oregon pinot noir.
The fridge empty except for eggs for a midnight snack of truffled scrambled eggs French style on buttered toast. Oranges for juice, butter for the eggs. Belgian endive in case the eggs seemed too much. And hazelnut oil to dress the endive, lemons. Left-over roast chicken for the cat.
The freezer was packed with enough decanted ice for several Sidecars (my favorite cocktail since Harvard and the Ritz Bar), Russian buffalo grass vodka (Zubrovka) because a nip of that is the perfect start to any party, no matter how reluctant at first and with or without blini. Chicken and veal stock for any emergency menu, and fresh herbs frozen in ice cubes, so, though no longer ‘fresh,’ almost.
But I no longer live alone or work in a restaurant 15 hours a day, so today, faced with a trip, I am faced with a full and not very orderly refrigerator and freezer. Faced with my own advice that if you really want to shock yourself and do yourself a favor at the same time, empty out the refrigerator.
But not to waste anything that you can’t take with you to that summer rental or Airbnb. Choose what can go into the freezer without ruining it (anything that will make a quick soup or pasta sauce when you get home), and have a nip of the vodka so you can face the next challenge.
The day before leaving fill the cooler with those ice packs and get it chilled for the voyage. The frozen stock on the day you’re leaving and super chilled gin or vodka will act as the ice.
As for the refrigerator, what’s in there? Not so much in mine, but almost.