Refrigerator Psychology

My condiment obsession. Fast hot noodles. A vintage menu. And wishes for a very happy new year.

My mother is leaning into the refrigerator, tongue clucking as she surveys a landscape of aging dishes. She is pulling out a bowl, sniffing it like a cat. Then she is scraping off the thick blue layer as she mutters, “A little mold never hurt anyone.” And now she is offering the bowl to me.

I am two years old and in this one moment my mother has taught me two important life lessons. The first is to taste very, very carefully before making a commitment. The second is that you can learn a lot about a person simply by opening their refrigerator door. Looking into Mom’s refrigerator would have revealed that she was taste-blind: she once made a stew using two-week-old turkey, dried-up cheese ends, shriveled broccoli and leftover apple pie. She thought it was delicious. 

But I suspect Mom would have been as horrified by my refrigerator as I was by hers. She would have recoiled at the massive collection of condiments – and then she would have concluded that I was insane.  There is some truth to this: I find it impossible to pass a bottle of hot sauce, an unusual miso, a strange nut oil or a jar of tahini without experiencing an overwhelming urge to possess it.

I blame it on Crete. In the 1970s, when my first husband and I were backpacking through Europe, we picked up odd jobs to stretch our money. Just outside of Chania, we spent a day in the olive groves beating the fruit off the trees. To my disappointment, the farmer paid us in olive oil. In those days, the olive oil in the US was nasty stuff – always old, often rancid – and meant mostly for medicinal purposes. I loathed it. But the farmer looked so offended that I took the tiniest, most tentative taste. And then I took another.

My first thought was: this is what spring would taste like. My next was: where has this been all my life? From that moment I could not get enough. I began sampling olive oil at every stop, appreciating the way the taste changed every few miles as if the roots were pulling flavors from the earth.

Then I moved on to vinegar, which turned out to be even more expressive of the land. By the time our money ran out I had amassed a fine collection. It got us through that first New York winter; whenever bleak skies got me down, I’d open a bottle and find myself back in the Mediterranean. I’d always been fascinated by food but this was new: I had discovered that food and memory are deeply intertwined.

You surely know where this is going: every voyage yields new condiments. In Thailand I collected fish sauce and chili pastes. I returned from China laden with jars of salted Sichuan vegetables, osmanthus blossoms and fermented bean pastes. In Japan I discovered the deep, mysterious flavor of aged artisanal soy sauce, the golden glow of new-pressed sesame oil and the deep umami jolt of miso. The Middle East yielded handmade tahini, sweet-tart pomegranate molasses and tangy mango-flavored amba sauce.

My pantry shelves grew increasingly crowded. When friends discovered my condiment passion things got worse. A Japanese friend sends me shipments of her homemade miso along with the tart pickled apricots called umeboshi. People arrive for dinner bearing vinegars they’ve concocted, just-made hot sauces and once a bottle of homemade Worcestershire sauce so delicious that I dread the day the bottle runs dry.

But my real downfall came with the advent of internet shopping. All manner of arcane condiments, once available only in their country of origin, are now a mere click away. My shelves hold colatura from Sicily, artisanal gochuchang and snail black vinegar from Korea along with a wild array of Indian pickles and chutneys. Just knowing I own them all makes me absurdly happy.

It also makes me a better cook. But lately it’s occurred to me how much improved my childhood would have been had Mom shared my obsession. After all, when your refrigerator is filled with condiments there’s no room for aged leftovers. 

Want to see inside my refrigerator? Here’s a Youtube Video.

Here is one condiment I would never be without. Chinese cooks all know the magic of oyster sauce: a few drops add richness, umami and depth to just about any stir-fry dish.

The problem is that most commercially available oyster sauces have never come in contact with anything resembling an oyster. Look at the label; you’re buying sweeteners and thickeners.

But the minute you taste Megachef Oyster Sauce, you know you’ve got the real thing. Offer this to a friend with a wok and they will thank you each time they reach for the bottle. Which I promise, will be extremely often.

The sauce is made in Thailand, where fresh oysters are smoked over hardwood before being cooked with sugar salt and cornstarch. The result is this suave, savory sauce, which will keep in the refrigerator for about six months.

Here’s one reason I keep so many condiments on hand (and Sun ramen noodles in the freezer).

This is just about the easiest meal I know, and if you're the sort of person who finds yourself ordering in from Chinese restaurants, you should become acquainted with it. The ingredients are easy to keep on hand, and if you've got some pork in the freezer you can have dinner on the table long before the delivery man would ring the bell.

Spicy Chinese Noodles

Cook a half pound of Chinese noodles (in a pinch use dried egg noodles or spaghetti) until al dente, drain, toss with a bit of  peanut oil and set aside.

Mince fresh, peeled ginger until you have a couple of tablespoons (it should be about a 2 inch long piece). 

Chop the whites of 2 scallions. Slice the green part of the scallions.

Mix 1 teaspoon of sugar into 2 1/2 tablespoons of Chinese spicy bean paste, doubanjiang, or Korean kochujang sauce, and set aside..  

Heat a wok until a drop of water skitters across the surface.  Add a tablespoon of oil, (if you have roasted rapeseed oil this is the time to use it), toss in the ginger and the whites of the scallion and stir fry for about 20 seconds until the fragrance is hovering over the wok.

Add a half pound of ground pork and stir fry until all traces of pink have disappeared.  Add the bean sauce mixture and a splash of water;  cook and stir for about 2 minutes. 

Stir in the noodles and scallion greens and quickly toss.  Add a drop of sesame oil and turn out onto a platter.

Serves 2.

This menu is not from the original Los Angeles Ma Maison, the one where Orson Welles ate lunch, where the phone number was unlisted, famous chefs held cooking classes and Wolfgang Puck made his name. That one closed in 1985. Sous-chef John Sweeney had strangled his girlfriend Dominique Dunne, and the tragedy changed the way people felt about the restaurant.

This was the new Ma Maison, opened a few years later by Patrick Terrail in the new Ma Maison hotel on Beverly Boulevard. What fascinates me about this menu is the two offal offerings: these days it’s hard to find veal kidneys on a menu. And that calves liver reminds me of the eighties obsession with raspberry vinegar. But as I recall, the best thing on the menu was an innovative dish of snails served in a baked potato. Perhaps someone will bring that back in 2023. Happy New Year!