NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State
University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
May 7, 1998
I like to make something new out of leftovers rather than simply rehashing food whose original purpose has passed. But my culinary efforts to revitalize are based more on necessity than on passion. When I'm cooking at home, portion control usually is not a priority. Our refrigerator, then, often serves as repository for plenty of possibilities.
So I conduct experiments, most of which are quite successful, if I do say so myself. I believe my wife, Nicki, would agree. In fact, she might go so far as to say that I'm sometimes a little overconfident about my ability to rejuvenate.
Call it overconfidence if you will, but I truly believe a crafty cook can make—anything—more palatable, just by adding the right pinch of this or the proper dash of that. Every time Nicki hears me boast that—through seasoning alone—I can get anyone to eat anything, she offers fours words of contradiction: wieners and beef gravy.
I still maintain that had I had some sour cream and bay leaves on hand that fateful day now years ago—and more Worcestershire sauce and onions—she would have eaten my wiener stew and liked it. But so much time has passed that to belabor the point only serves to beat a dead horse, which is another reference Nicki has used for characterizing my wiener stew.
The lesson I took from the wiener stew incident is to plan ahead whenever possible to minimize the problems of portion control run amok. In short, think how ingredient extras from today's recipe might work in tomorrow's. That way, you'll have fewer leftovers and more fresh starts.
Here's an example from my recent cooking experience. As I was assembling a homemade vegetarian pizza just before popping it in the oven, I discovered that I could have gotten by with about half the amount of toppings I'd prepared. So I simply bagged what I didn't need. The next day I was strolling by the seafood section at the grocery store and was struck with a culinary inspiration. You might call it creativity via deveined intervention.
With my dicing and slicing done the night before, I put this salad together literally in the time it took the pasta to cook. Note: I used frozen shrimp that had already been peeled and deveined; defrosting time for the shrimp, sitting in cold water, was five minutes.
Quick Pasta Salad Supreme
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients:
1 16-ounce bottle fat-free Italian salad dressing
1 3-ounce package dried tomatoes
2 cups diced green peppers
1 cup diced yellow peppers
1 cup black olives, halved lengthwise
½ cup diced red onion
1 pound cooked shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans
1 pound ziti rigati pasta (1 box)
8 fresh dill weed or parsley springs (optional)
Procedure: Put salad dressing and tomatoes in a blender and whirl until tomatoes are finely chopped. Toss dressing with next six ingredients in a large bowl. Set aside. Cook pasta according to package directions, or personal taste, drain and cool slightly. Add pasta to other ingredients and mix well. Place in storage container and refrigerate for several hours before serving. Garnish individual servings with dill or parsley, if desired.
What's Your Take on This, Julie?
Whether it includes a "deveined intervention" or not, pasta in any form is a versatile, nutritious and economical food with strong North Dakota ties. In fact, North Dakota generally leads the country in durum wheat production, and the semolina produced from durum wheat is of top quality. Pasta gets its golden color from the amber color of durum kernels.
Pasta is manufactured by mixing semolina, a granular product, with water and then extruding the resulting dough through a die and drying. The size and shape of the holes in the die determine the size and shape of the pasta. A variety of other ingredients such as spices, tomato powder or spinach powder may be added to the dough to enhance flavor and appearance.
Pasta is high in complex carbohydrates, commonly termed "starch," and fits perfectly with the recommendations of the Food Guide Pyramid. While carbohydrates are often blamed for weight gain, eating too many calories from any food can pack on pounds. Pasta is a low-fat food, but the sauces served with pasta aren't necessarily low-fat. An equal weight of fat has 2.5 times the calories of carbohydrates.
Choosing your salad dressing wisely can make a big difference nutritionally. When made with fat-free Italian dressing, a serving of this recipe for pasta salad (1/8 of the recipe or about 1½ cups) contains 400 calories and 5 grams of fat. If you use regular Italian dressing, the per-serving total is 680 calories and 37 grams of fat. Remember, this comparison is based on averages. Calories and fat contents of dressings vary by brand, so make sure you read the nutrition label to know what you're buying.
If you're not ready for fat-free dressing, try one of the numerous reduced-fat dressings on the market. Due to consumers' interest in lightening up their diets, food companies have greatly improved the quality of lower-fat products. In mayonnaise-based pasta salads, you could also cut fat and add calcium by using plain yogurt in place of the mayonnaise. Or try a 50-50 mixture of yogurt and mayonnaise or salad dressing.
A serving of this recipe also provides one-third of the recommended daily iron from the shrimp, pasta and beans, a full day's supply of vitamin C from the peppers, and 6 grams of fiber from the vegetables and garbanzo beans.
Pasta salads are a summer favorite. Preparing your ingredients—plus a little extra—ahead of time is a major time saver in today's fast-paced world. These "planned-overs" will save you from having to eat wiener stew when the time is short. And we won't need the recipe for that one, Dean.
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Sources: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136 & Julie Garden-Robinson (701) 231-7187
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