Here, at the end of all things

The end of a law school year is not the end of all things. But it is the end of at least one thing, and deserves comment for that alone. As a matter of food, though, the last few days of any period present a far more interesting sort of puzzle. How is one to finish off the last bits of food in the fridge and the pantry before leaving for a new home, or vacation, or school? On Sunday morning, I'd be on a train bound for New York, and a summer of hopefully fruitful apprenticeship. But what would I eat till then?

The question is particularly troublesome in my case - there aren't any ready made meals in my freezer, for which the simple remedy involves either the microwave or the garbage, nor are my cupboards full of cereal - to the extent I have anything lying about, it's flour, grains, butter, and other such staples. To be exact, as I realized when I decided to take a look at my thankfully dwindling provender at the start of last week, I had the following items.

1 baking potato, a jar of (store bought!) mayonnaise, a small block of unpasteurized Roquefort, One organic Anjou pear, Flour, Olive oil, honey, Oats, Milk, Butter, A block of cheddar, and a few eggs.

Not, it might seem to someone unwilling to stretch their imagination, the best bunch of ingredients. But that's where so much of the fun of cooking is to be found - it's one thing to produce delicacies with access to mounds of truffles, endless jars of caviar, and a team of busy hands to help you, all subsidized by the wealthy consumer. It's quite another to produce tasty things at home on a limited budget and in the cramped confines of a typical student's kitchen. Though the professional chef is an artist, and a real representative of the best of cooking, the latter cook is a guardian of yet another great tradition of kitchen heroics- It's said, for example, that the French revolutionary chef Dunand invented Chicken Marengo from whatever he had on hand after Napoleon's great victory in that Italian city, and the dish has had a particularly long life for all of that.

In that self-important mood, I set to thinking about the ingredients I had. It occurred to me that the best luxuries one can eat at home aren't the most expensive ones, necessarily. Indeed, the more expensive the ingredient, often, the less the cook's skill has anything to do with the finished product - the freshest raw oyster needs neither lemon nor hot sauce to be tasty, but only a sharp knife and a brave slurp. But to convert the humble potato into a knobly, crunchy, snowy white french fry, that to me takes skill and care. As so I cut the lonely spud, leaving the skin on for both flavor and texture, into thick uneven wands. The delicate crunch of shoestring potatoes or frites are not, I think, for the home cook; rather, it seems to me that the British have the right way of it with their robust chip. Like the best recipes, it is both unpretentious and forgiving, and it's my first choice when left to fend for myself in what is normally the domain of a fast food joint.

I dried the starchy batons carefully, as anyone making chips should, and then lowered them tremulously into a bubbling pot of olive oil. Yes, indeed, I said olive oil - anyone who hasn't ever used it to make fried potatoes is missing out on some deep flavor, and the last week before vacation is the best time to experience the difference free of wallet induced guilt. I let them fry slowly for a number of minutes, until soft but uncolored (just pinch them with tongs to find out if they're ready), and then rolled them out onto a great swathe of kitchen paper to dry before tossing them back into the now furiously hot oil until golden and crunchy. I know that some of my friends can produce great results with only one frying - and some recommend starting the chips in actually cold oil instead. But for whatever reason, I've only been able to produce the starkly contrasted pillowy interior and crisp exterior that commercial french fry makers so tawdrily try to duplicate by using dried mashed potatoes, with a double frying, and in my opinion the result is worth the extra effort. Almost painfully hot, and sprinkled with the barest few large grains of salt, I dipped them mischievously into refrigerator cold mayonnaise- I like ketchup too, especially since Mark Bittman of the New York Times has recently shown us that it too can be a noble condiment - but in this case the mayonnaise was both available and appropriate, and really very good.

The second meal was equally obvious to me. As I've said before, cold Roquefort isn't worth eating just like that. But I'd also never throw it away, and if I had had some pasta, perhaps the solution would have been to crumble it into a pot of fettucine with a few squares of ice cold salty butter. But there wasn't any pasta, and I had no puff pastry to stuff it in and paint lightly with egg wash either, so none of my usual uses for a spare end of cheese were available. But I did have oats and self rising flour, both of which ingredients literally scream the word biscuit to me at the highest possible pitch. So the Roquefort was crushed indelicately, and mixed with some of the rolled oats, and flour, a little salt, some butter cut into the flour with two knives, an egg or two, and just enough milk to bring it all together into a crumbly, potentially flaky dough. I then rolled it all out, cut out considerable rounds with a sharp knife (since I don't own a biscuit cutter, and a sharp cut is necessary to ensure even rising), and put them quickly into the oven until they were golden brown. Cut into halves and served with the juicy, room temperature Red anjou pear, and I thought to myself that I had found a new candidate for primary cheese rescue option, appropriate for the block of cheddar as well. My only regret was that I didn't have some crisp, tart, green apples, or some grapes or a melon to go with the biscuits also - though someone with more time could well provide those worthy accompaniments.

Made in sufficient quantity, the dishes above were enough to finish off my stores of food, and to provide me with admittedly repetitive lunches and dinners for the rest of the week. When I leave New York later this summer, I'll be able to play this same game again, hopefully with new and different ingredients. But my point in writing this is to show that cleaning out one's fridge shouldn't be a pain, but an opportunity - less of a chore than a chance to eat some very simple but interesting food. I certainly enjoy the challenge, and if I convince someone else to try it as this year ends for most college students, and vacation season starts up, I'll have accomplished most of what I set out to do. Enjoy!