The New Yorker Radio Hour - Helen Rosner Takes the Office-Fridge Challenge

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

Helen Rosner is known for her high degree of resourcefulness in the kitchen: she once broke the Internet with an article about the ingenious use of a hair dryer to help roast a chicken. So the staff of Radio Hour threw down a challenge: we asked Helen to make a meal out of whatever food she could find in The New Yorker’s communal fridge, with whatever cooking equipment she could scare up around the office. The result (spoiler alert): a marinated-vegetable salad with sardines, a whole-grain risotto topped with charred broccoli and chimichurri, a bread pudding with whiskey sauce and ice cream, and a rather unique cocktail—a Bloody Mary made with John McPhee’s vodka and a rim of crushed caterpillar.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is a special episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour. A pretty special episode, as a matter of fact, something we've never tried before, and I'm not really going to bet my paycheck that it works. It's the New Yorker Radio Hour Office Fridge Challenge, and our contestant is Helen Rosner, food correspondent from the New Yorker. And we gave Helen a challenge.

Make a meal from whatever she could find in there. Fearless and resourceful writer that she is, Helen accepted. I feel like I should clarify that I don't come into the office that often. like this is not my home turf. So I'm learning about this kitchen as I go. And our producer, Rianne and Corby, was there both to assist and to enforce the rules. The thing that's off limits is that fridge over there.

Okay. This fridge, this fridge, this freezer, anything on the counters. Yep, exactly. Great. You have one lifeline, which means we have a producer stationed at Target, ready to receive a phone call from you. Appliances or ingredients is, but only one thing. Yes.

You're sure that people know I'm using their food. People know. Okay, so we have our dairy section. I've got half and half fat-free milk. That's going to be useless. Four single-serving packets of Smuckers Concord grape jelly. What I think is the remnants of a chocolate milkshake. A salad from Pret.

Ooh, ew. It looks like this was once a Caesar salad with chicken. Maybe some sort of an iced tea or a dishache. Juice? Yeah, it's like V8 or Bloody Mary Mix or something with that. Oh, my God. It's a tomato juice. The dregs of a cup of chicken noodle soup.

That could be useful. Sardines. Okay. Okay, this is the container of mysterious brown stuff that David Remnick told me not to open. Chard broccoli, some kind of grain barley or something. I'm picking on it. Those are mushrooms?

I can't tell if those are mushrooms or chicken. Let's find out. So are you going to make something from what you find here? Like, theoretically, yeah. You know what? You know what's wicked good? It's, smell that. Oh, my God, that's fantastic.

What is that? It's a garlicy sauce. Yeah, like a chimmy churry or something? Yeah, it was wicked. I mean, this is heavy. Okay, it's a foil. Oh, that is mold. That is so much mold.

It's kind of, this is a science project level mold. Totally, yeah. Do you want to look at the mold? Do you want to introduce yourself first? I was just going to tell you that you can turn off the beeping in the fridge. Oh, really? We've just been closing the world.

Deborah Traceman to the rescue. You can confirm the horrors of this mold. It's sort of beautiful. It looks like an artwork. It looks like a painting. I can't quite identify the original food item. There's corn and green beans. Is that a cauliflower or is that a giant mold?

Like perhaps it was a burrito? Do they put green beans and burritos? No. I work. Do you have any delicious ingredients at your desk that you might contribute to the cause? I don't. Actually, I do. I do have some ingredients.

What do you have? I have dried caterpillars from the African food market. Oh, you are kidding. They're real caterpillars. It's a plastic grocery bag full of caterpillars, like dried caterpillars. They're pretty big. They have these lovely yellow stripes on them, actually. They've kept their colors.

Do you just sit here and snack on them? You know, they're a little poach. for that. Should we try them now? Yeah, you should try them. They've got a pretty strong, funky umami thing going on. Ooh, yeah, yeah, that is not something you want to eat whole. But it's got a vibe.

Can I have one caterpillar? You can have as many as you want. You can have as many as you want. And so the plan now, sort of, is that we're going to have a salad to start, which feels now that I'm saying it, it just sounds very, lame. We're going to have some kind of vegetable situation at the beginning. And the main course is probably going to be this roasted broccoli, which I'm going to glaze

with a reduction of the chicken stock that I poured out of this thing of chicken soup. And we're going to put it over a bed of this combination of beans, quinoa, and possibly pharaoh from various other places that we've combined together. And then the thing I'm actually super excited about is I've dessert plans. and a cocktail. Hey, Caroline, it's Helen calling from the kitchen. Hey, Helen.

Are you still free to get me a lifeline item from Target? Yes, definitely. Well, what I'm hoping for is an electric griddle. So not quite a hot plate, which you have to put a pot or pan on top of, but something where it's like you plug it in and you just pour your pancake batter right on top and you make pancakes on there. Okay, an electric griddle. Yeah.

Thank you, Carol. Well, I think, yeah, I think we're gonna want some kind of booze. Preferably something high proof. Okay, Anakwa. Do you know if any of the checkers have alcohol? I don't know right now. Yeah, we used to have moonshine, but I think we finished out. Oh.

Fantastic. Who would be a likely person? Nick Trout wine has a lot of alcohol. Oh, Nick Trout one has so much of juice. So do you know Nick Trout wine? Yes. Okay, great. Hi.

Hi. I'm supposed to make a three-course meal out of things that are in the fridge. What are you making? Red pudding. And I've been told that you have alcohol. Yes. I have... Oh, you have fancy Japanese rye.

You're welcome to whatever this you like. I have some Tullmordu. I have some Angostura bitters. Hell yes. And I have some barbecue octopus potato chips that Carolyn Kormon brought back from a reporting trip to Japan. I'll take the ship as Regal. Okay. Do you know if anybody else in the office might have vodka?

Bruce will have vodka All right to Bruce Yeah All right Bruce is He's kind of like the keeper of all the secrets At the New Yorker Has been here forever

I'm Bruce Dioms I work here What are you listening to? This? Yeah That's a really good question too I have no idea This might be John Party

It's probably John Party Cool Can I borrow your vodka? Borrow my vodka? Yeah, well, I'll give you back most of it. Can you tell us what kind of vodka this is? Skull-shaped. I have no idea.

I got this from John McPhee. Can you read that? It's crystal head vodka. Go ahead. Open it. It'll be great. It'll be really good luck for all of us. It might be a horrible failure.

There's this trick in some, like, high-end Michelin-Star restaurants where you use a whipped cream foamer. You fill it with a, a batter and you spray this foamed raw batter into a Dixie cup and then you microwave it and then you peel the paper cup off of the batter and the result is this really beautiful light bread and I'm kind of doing a bullshit version of that with our bread pudding. Hopefully the fat in the heavy cream will help us by Kingji. feeling a little bit.

Oh, you know, this might have worked. It's definitely dehydrating a little bit. You can see how it's pulling away from the edges. And we're losing a lot of the watery effect, and it's starting to solidify a little. They're like little pucks of bread pudding. They are. Look at my perfect little bread pudding cakes. I can't believe that it actually is doing the thing

that you thought it would do. I feel like you don't have enough confidence in me. I'm allowed to have no confidence in me, but you have to have confidence in me. My plan is that I'm going to take this broccoli, broccoli that's a little flaccid, but at one point was roasted and presumably crispy. And I'm going to put the broccoli on the griddle and crisp that up. I'm putting the broccoli on the griddle and it's sizzling.

It's sizzling. This is real cooking. I'm taking the bread puddings and I'm putting them on the griddle, hoping that we can kind of crisp them up. Okay, so to taste the meal and pronounce judgment, though I don't really know quite what we're judging. Do I win things? I brought over Nomi Frye, who's a staff writer.

here at The New Yorker and loves food and is the best, and also was walking by when we needed a judge. Okay, so I'm just going to have a taste from everything, I guess. Start with the first course, I guess. So here's what we have. The first course is a sardine salad. So those are just two sardines straight out of a can that we found in a cabinet, on top of a bed of thinly sliced cucumbers and carrots that I marinated for about an hour

in lemon juice, this really cool Korean Menteiko mayonnaise that we found, and a little bit of olive oil. And there's some tomatoes and cilantro from a several days old pret salad that we found in the fridge on the sides. And the pickled onions are also from that pret salad. Delicious. Time has only been kind to the pret salad.

These elements were taken from. So that's course number one. Course number two is charred broccoli on a bed of mixed grains and black beans, which were a combination of the same prep salad. That's where the beans came from and the quinoa. And then the pharaoh or whatever that grain is is from a dig-in bowl, which is also where the broccoli came from.

But we re-chrischoped the broccoli on the electric griddle that I used my emergency lifeline to make Caroline go by at the store in the middle of this process. And all of that has been tossed at various points. Like the grain and bean situation was reduced a little bit in the microwave with butter and some chicken stock that we pulled out of a container of chicken soup that we found in the fridge.

Incredible. And then we put a little more of the reduced chicken stock on top along with some chimmy churry that was left over from an art department potluck yesterday that apparently went with Arapas, I think. Okay, I'm going to try a little bit of broccoli. This is actually good. Like I would actually eat it.

Like you were lying about the first course, but this one is... No, no. I mean, no. And then for dessert, I made bread pudding out of stale hamburger bottle. that we let soap with some half and half and a bunch of sugar packets, like 20 sugar packets. And then a sauce made out of cream and some whiskey that we stole from Nick Trout wine. And last but not least, I made a Bloody Mary using something that I think was tomato juice, a packet of hot sauce from Rachel Readerer.

It's got a rim of McCormick salt-free seasoning mixed with salt that we stole from Fergus, and some crushed caterpillars that Burke Biltor just happens to keep it his stuff. Wow. Here's David Rim. I'm sorry. You have a crushed caterpillar where in the... The rim. The rim.

That's crushed caterpillar? It's salt and spices. That has to be tasted. Wait a second. Crush caterpillar. Oh, man. Oh. Maybe the vodka will make it better.

Perfect. Should I try the bread pudding? Yeah. Here I go. Extremely sweet. Maybe we added too many sugar. Extremely sweet. Which is not.

not a bad thing. The whiskey is good. Here, I'm having another bite after complaining that it was too sweet. Thank you. If you had to rank the dishes, how would you rank them? I mean, I would, you know, considering the circumstances, this would be an 11. But, you know, without that handicap, I would probably put it at an eight and a half, maybe. That's amazing. Yeah. That's a solid B. Yeah, I would totally eat all of these. Like, if they were served to me at a restaurant, I would totally be like, yeah, this is pretty good. But then again, I'm really not a grammont.

Okay, thanks you guys. Helen Rosner, food correspondent for the New Yorker. You can find her picks for the best cookbooks of 2019 and much more at New Yorker.com.