one-pan mediterranean orzotto
Having a pantry full of random jarred and canned ingredients was kind of underrated until the pandemic hit. In the context of that time, those ingredients might’ve become your most prized possessions. That lone jar of Castelvetrano olives you’d already had for a year then came to represent all the martinis you may have in your entire future lifetime, not to be wasted on some lesser fantasy. Suddenly, this item that held no place in your heart now felt so special and significant that you wonder whether you should ration it.
But now it’s pantry cleanout 2022, and all these things are still hanging out in there, waiting for their turn. There’s nothing to it but to do it: you’ve just got to figure out a use for them, or else wait for them to magically disappear.
Turns out, these understudy ingredients were always capable of holding their own in starring roles. I’d just never thought to let them audition.
The trick to working with expressive, specific ingredients like this is to understand their casting, so you can set them up for success in the show. You have to know three basic things: who their supporting friends are, who’s a foil, and who the villain is.
Often, supportive friends are going to be from the same place as the original ingredients. Because they grew up together, they understand each other, and are likely compatible with each other in a relationship. Sundried tomatoes, being Mediterranean, will usually play nicely with other ingredients from that part of the world—olives and their oil, tinned fish, fresh tender herbs, citrus, artichokes, capers—which narrows the compatible range substantially. Pick a few of these you happen to have, and see how they play together. I had a jar of DeLallo Castelvetrano olives, which I mostly use in martinis and to complement cheese plates in all the entertaining I never do anymore. I smashed those, creating an instant Sundried Sidekick. I juiced and zested a lemon, the pair’s friendly neighbor growing up. Dill, the unusual friend who got sexy later in life, also seemed like a natural addition to the group. Now you have a main cast.
Then, your foil characters. These are simple bases that set up the starring characters to shine, and often they are starches. Potentially boring on their own, in a different environment they actually magnify the potential of the star ingredients, giving them something to play off of. I happen to love whole wheat orzo, but struggle to work with it at times because it’s pretty straight and not terribly compelling as a lead. Turns out, it does better in a role that only has a couple of lines, even though it’s actually there the entire time.
Villains are typically much easier to figure out—they add unwanted friction to the scene and make people feel uncomfortable. Pickles would be an example: they’re intimidating, almost guaranteed to be stronger than the ingredients you’re trying to star. So would be like, hot sauce, which while lovely in its own role, will fight the others to the death to steal the show. Limes would just be awkward, uncomfortably pretending to be lemons and not really doing a very good job. You wouldn’t want to use woody herbs, the equivalent of wearing a parka in the summer: they’re misaligned with the season, and just kind of feel wrong. Sometimes a dramatic outsider works, as long as it doesn’t clash. A lot of this is what I will call “intuitive,” but what it really means is having a clear imagination of what different ingredients represent in your mind, so that you have a language you understand for how they go together. In my case, I rarely think of them as an ingredient. I kind of just think of them as people.
But if you choose your cast perfectly, you risk having a boring plot, the cooking equivalent of I Heart Huckabees. A little spicy discord is what creates harmony; you have to find a way to introduce good chaos in order to create something compelling. Case in point: feta was probably the more obvious cheese to include here, and when I first made this dish, I almost regretted not using it. But I knew goat cheese, equally Mediterranean, would be more of a surprise (it’s also what I happened to have). More importantly, it added a textural element that wasn’t present: creaminess, which this dish needed to feel substantive and not like a hot boring pasta salad. Feta couldn’t do that, because feta doesn’t melt. So we went with goat, and we did not look back.
And that’s how it’s done. It may seem unhinged, but that’s as complicated as pantry alchemy really gets.
kinda makes sense now, doesn’t it?
So, yes. Everybody has had A Moment recently in the kitchen, glassy-eyed, staring past the same dumb can of cream of mushroom soup into the abyss of the back pantry, searching for answers you will not find because you already know there is nothing there you want to cook with. Nothing you have feels like it goes with anything else you have, and you only look because it will absolve you of defaulting to whatever it is you really want. “See? I have no food. I have no choice.” You look because you have to. You look so you can feel better when you look away.
Do me a favor. Look again. Find just one color that inspires you in some forlorn jar and decide you’re going to paint with it. Find anything else you have in your kitchen that belongs to the same regional color palette, and throw it in alongside it. Hold something you bought, and never used, and didn’t appreciate enough at the time, and consider its purpose: it exists just to feed you. It’s waiting for its chance to surprise you, to wow you, if only you’ll let it. Let it speak to you, and truly listen to what it has to say. Above all else, do it so that you won’t disrespect it by letting it go to waste.
Remember: you don’t need your mom to hang your finished work on the refrigerator. You probably just need to eat tonight.
recipe
One-pan zesty, creamy, herby goat cheese orzotto with a Mediterranean flair thanks to a few jarred pantry-lingerers you’ve had forever and don’t know what to do with: sundried tomatoes and Castelvetrano olives.
Effortful time: <10 minutes
Total time: <30 minutes
Makes 2 servings alone, more like 4 if you add something like Greek chicken meatballs or a springy green salad
you need
2 tbsp. of extra-virgin olive oil
7 oz. jar of sundried tomatoes—drained and roughly chopped (you can use the oil to cook with if you like)
~12 Castelvetrano olives, smashed with the flat of a knife and roughly chopped into big pieces
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups orzo, I like whole wheat most here—it’s sturdy, nutty, and more rustic
2 3/4 cups water
4 oz log of goat cheese, crumbled
Fresh chopped dill, I used close to 1 cup because I love dill
Juice and zest of one lemon, plus a few thin slices
Salt and pepper, to taste
make it
Get prepped. This recipe goes quick, so it helps to have everything ready up front. Drain and chop your sundried tomatoes, smash your olives (use as many as you want!), and mince your garlic. Roughly chop dill; you can finely chop the tender stems and include them too. Zest a lemon, then halve it. Cut off a few thin slices and set them aside. Juice the lemon; save the juice and zest for the end of the recipe.
Start building flavor layers. In a large deep skillet, heat 2 tbsp. of extra virgin olive oil over medium-high heat. Sauté the chopped sundried tomatoes and olives gently in the olive oil until picking up a little char, about 4 minutes. Then add the minced garlic, and sauté 30 seconds longer, just until fragrant.
Toast your orzo. Toasting the orzo gives it amazing, nutty flavor it won’t have otherwise! Pour in your orzo, stir well to coat in the olive oil, and let cook for just under a minute until you can smell toasted wheat. This creates a base of really complex, savory Mediterranean flavors, even though our cooking liquid is going to be just plain water.
Immediately pour in the water and scrape everything up. Season with salt and pepper, and lower the heat to medium-low. It should be simmering visibly but not aggressively.
Cover and simmer. This will take about 18-20 minutes. Stir every so often to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom. If water is absorbing too fast, add more, and
Finish and serve. Turn off the heat. Stir in the lemon juice, zest, and chopped fresh dill. Then add about 3/4 of the crumbled goat cheese, stirring until it melts. Toss the rest on top. Top in freshly cracked pepper, aleppo chili flakes if you want a kick, and even more dill if you want to get that dill freak on.