Grocery Shopping Eve Meal: Vegetable Rogan Josh

I wish I had a picture of the fridge in our house growing up to show you. My dad is a very structured man, Lord love him, and our fridge had a shelf for leftovers, a door on the fridge designated for jelly, a designated place for the eggs, lettuce, bacon, etc. to go and on and on. It was a wonderful system and one that virtually eliminates food waste; however, I have yet to meet another person or family that successfully employs a similar system. The rest of our relatively small galley kitchen in my parents' house is beautifully organized as well, even the ubiquitous Tupperware cabinet displaying Tupperware neatly stacked back to front from smallest to largest and no toppling to fear when you open the cabinet door. I'll have to take pictures when I go home for Thanksgiving.

I am firmly in the other 99% of society, however, which opens the fridge with one hand and thrusts a newly filled Tupperware on that second shelf on the left that seems a convenient landing place for everything.

Full disclosure: I just got up and took a picture of my fridge. Semi-organized--Pickles are a vegetable, right?

 I am also in that 99% of folks that find themselves with 3 stalks of celery and a quarter of a squash at the end of the week and I'll be darned if I'm going to throw away any food, at least not without giving a valiant effort. I view expiration dates as a trick of the food industry to trick us into throwing away our food and get more money out of us at the grocery store. Not really, but I do pay very little attention to expiration dates and instead tend to wait until there's mold somewhere to admit that any particular food item cannot, in fact, be eaten. Marriage has been good for me in that sense; my husband does not share my iron stomach and views expiration dates as fact, which has caused some bouts of secretiveness thus far. Vegetables, however, bear no expiration date, and that is how I arrived at my Saturday night dinner: Veggie Rogan Josh, or sauteed veggies with bottled Rogan Josh sauce stirred in for flavor. This is what happens when you are starving at 9 pm the day before you go grocery shopping.

I'm generally a bit of a whiz when it comes to making something out of nothing from the random bits of leftovers in the fridge. That night, though, I was merely determined to not let the bits of veggies I'd been accumulating rot in the fridge and I have a hard time thinking straight when I'm really hungry so I can pretty much forget being brilliantly creative.

This is the most appetizing picture I have of Saturday night's dinner, cooked at 9 pm with a glass of wine as an appetizer. That would be one leek, cleaned and chopped in the pan, half a cabbage, half a bag of (expired) shredded carrots, and one quarter of a red pepper. After a little more fishing in the fridge I pulled out a container whose top had an interesting bulge going on, indicating some carbon dioxide action or something going on in there. I really have no idea why I'm being so honest. I poured off the broth, which seemed to be where the fermentation was occuring, rinsed the chickpeas and tried one. It had a little bit of tang to it, just a hint, and I figured there must be some traditional dish out there in which fermented chickpeas play a role, so in they went.

The finished product was much greater than the sum of its parts and oddly satisfying, although they say hunger is the best condiment.

That would be a dollop of sweet chutney on top and a little tangy Greek yogurt hiding underneath. Sweet+Spicy+Tangy=Deliciousness. Side note: if you're interested in making this, that particular sauce I bought is quite spicy in a slow lovely after burn kind of way but I love it.  Word of warning to the spice averse.

The next day I was not quite as hungry and a little more creative so I seared some tofu in a cast iron skillet, cooked up some brown rice, and stirred all that together with the leftover vegetable mix and a little more sauce. Now that was delicious.

Now my morbid curiosity begs the question: do you organize your fridge or shove everything in there willy-nilly? What is your standby grocery shopping eve dinner?


Grocery Shopping Eve Vegetable Rogan Josh

• Lots of veggies, in my case: 1/2 a cabbage, coarsely chopped; 1 leek, trimmed and chopped, 1/2 bag of shredded carrots, 1/2 bell pepper. Potatoes or sweet potatoes would have been a welcome starchy complement in this mix (if you use potatoes I would parcook them in the microwave for a couple of minutes because they take so much longer to cook in the skillet than the rest of the vegetables).
• Indian Simmer Sauce: I used Spicy Tomato and Ginger or Kashmiri Rogan Josh, but any of the prepared Indian sauces would do nicely, especially with some rice.
• A protein: I added chickpeas because that's what I had but the next day it was delicious with some seared tofu. This mix would also go nicely with chicken or of course lamb, but if you have lamb in your Saturday night leftovers repertoire I'm jealous.

1. Heat 1-2 teaspoons of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute your veggies (in the particular mix I used the cabbage takes the longest to cook so I put that in first and let it wilt a bit. If I had used onions those would have gone in first). I added mine to the skillet in the order listed.
2. Let your veggies cook to your desired doneness. I wanted my cabbage with a bit of chew since the rest of the dish was fairly insubstantial so I cut it in large chunks and let it cook until just tender.
3. Add your sauce and heat until heated through.
4. Serve over rice or with naan if you have it, or wine and your Hulu show of choice if you don't.