From Scratch

I’ve been writing a couple pieces about supermarkets and the tricks of the their trade, which I’ve written about often over the years. But this is different, a concept Jacques Pépin calls cuisine d’oppportunité. He employs it and so do I, enjoying significant savings and little waste.

Only two things are required: the willingness to try something new with food, perhaps experiment, and — more important for me — memorizing key ingredients and steps of several recipes. Armed with the latter, I rarely run across a good mark down but stand there wondering what to do with the food, whether it’s produce on the quick sale rack or meat. Even rarer is wasting gas for trips back to a store for an ingredient I don’t always use.

Let me share with you a real example of cuisine d’oppportunité in action, one leading to an extraordinary meal for several people at a not-extraordinary price.

I make a fabulous roast based on a Tyler Florence recipe. It’s an impressive dish that uses one very specific cut, a center-cut, bone-in pork roast. It’s not the cheapest cut in the case and roasts are big, but the other day I ran across it on sale. I’m not a huge pork fan, but I could eat this every week if money were no object. Of course I put one in my cart and you see in the photo I saved more than 50%.

But — I remembered the recipe requires the butcher to cut between the chine bones to make carving into chops easier, and the fat cap has to be left on. I wheeled back to the butchers and asked to have this done while I thought about the recipe and what else I needed. The brine uses brown sugar as well as kosher salt, both on hand at home. The apple reduction uses apple juice, not on hand at home. How much? Not sure, but more than a little. I got a half gallon to be safe. Store brand. A fresh herb is needed for the brine, but which one? Oh right, thyme. Goes with almost everything. Into the cart.

Now, while I’m writing, the pork is brining in the fridge and dinner’s going to be special indeed for little more than the cost of two pounds of hamburger.

The other aspect of cuisine d’oppportunité involves using what’s on hand, whether it’s leftovers or just what happens to be in the fridge. In his book Cooking with Claudine, Pépin devotes a chapter to this to demonstrate how much can be done with ordinary ingredients we might have around. Claudine, his daughter, asked him to make dinner for her and some friends with bits and bobs she had in her frugal grad school fridge. His menu included a vegetable soup with grits, a colorful salad, a French country omelette and, for dessert, banana fritters. 

Granted, not many people have his experience, talent and knowledge, but nothing on that menu is beyond the reach — or imagination — of a home cook. “The good cook,” he says, “welcomes the challenge of creating inspirational dishes from simple foods combined in interesting ways.”

His first cooking show was so low-budget, he happily admits that the debut episode was a case of true cuisine d’oppportunité.

The payoff can be large for a little learning. Some foods, pork and apples for example, have a natural affinity. If you know that, when they’re both on sale it’s a big opportunity. If you peer into the refrigerator and cupboards and wonder what to make, use your imagination or hop on line for inspiration. Most large recipe sites, such as epicurious and allrecipes (both in my blogroll), have advanced search functions that enable you to find recipes by specifiying ingredients you’d like to use. Recipe software can do the same, and that’s helpful when one has a large collection of recipes, as I do. I tend to forget about many of them till I enter some ingredients and an old friend pops up.

I’ve said it often: a few good ingredients, simply prepared. Julia Child said it better: “You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.”

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