The Plight of Leftovers Larry

A column for the day-after Christmas!

Dear Tamar:

I love a good leftover lunch. When cooking dinner for my family, and during the holidays, I like to make more than I think we’ll eat—as lunch prep. What’s a way of thinking about how much more I should make? How much leftovers is too little? How much is too much? Is there a Goldilocks amount? Or a way of thinking about it? Help, please!

-Leftovers Larry

Dear Leftovers Larry,

I don’t know how I made it to my late twenties without having heard the term “Golden Ratio,” but I did. I remember when I first heard it. I was living in San Francisco and dating a Columbia Architecture School drop-out who worked for a company that specialized in rectilinear architecture and adhered to it.

I loved the idea so much—that there was, in the world, a pleasing relationship among shapes, and that all of existence, plant or person, sought it. I found myself casting back through my visual memory, trying to ascertain if the reason I’d loved a certain painting, or view, or building, or vegetable could be explained by mathematical poetry.

Ever since becoming enamored of the Golden Ratio, I’ve looked for pleasing amounts. Why do I stop adding herbs to a finished dish when I do? How do I choose a certain-sized plate or bowl? Why do I often not use the very end of an ingredient or a mixture? Does part of me believe an ideal quantum has been reached? Is there such thing as aesthetic satiety—a fullness of the eye?

Your question about the right amount of leftovers set me musing. I stepped back, as I would from a painting, to see if a “Golden Leftovers Quantity” revealed itself.

Surprisingly, it did. The “Golden Leftovers Quantity” is 1-2 cups. Or if that’s too wide a range: 1 1/2-2 cups. This is why: 1-2 cups of anything is enough to make a frittata, the all-purpose leftover-solution bar none. (Here’s a video of my pasta frittata technique.) 1-2 cups is the right amount to turn into a sauce—for pasta, for poaching eggs, for spooning over freshly made polenta or risotto. 1 cup is enough to fill a 4-6-inch piece of baguette, split open. 1 cup of rice makes not-a-ton of fried rice—which is why I think 1 1/2-2 might be more precise—but still enough. 1 1/2-2 cups of soup can be lunch, if you thin it with a little water and eat it poured over chunks of toasted bread, grated with cheese, topped with a lightly boiled egg. 1-2 cups of chicken or egg is the right amount to make a mayonnaise- or -vinaigrette based salad of it. 1-2 cups of mashed potatoes makes fried potato cakes or dumplings.

Reading back through my descriptions of 1-2 cups of leftovers, I also see that the “way of thinking about” you asked for is embedded there, like the Golden Ratio in a sunflower. The “way of thinking” is considering what you’ll make with the leftover.

It’s not hard to do this, even before you’ve begun cooking. For one, I wrote an entire, heavy book of recipes for only leftovers. Before you start making beans, you can look up “Beans,” find a recipe for leftover beans, and then have in mind what you’ll have for lunch tomorrow. (The recipes in that book are easy and short. Almost all call for “1-2 cups” of whatever leftover they start with.) Even without a book, you can decide you want a sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch and cook an extra bunch of kale—to yield an extra 1-2 cups. Leftover cooked kale makes an amazing sandwich, with lots of olive oil and chile flakes and cheese. Does fried rice sound good? (Does it ever not?) Know that you’ll need 1-2 cups of cold hard rice tomorrow. In that case, chop a little extra onion while cooking tonight. Save the mostly squeezed-out lime and last few sprigs of cilantro and the single tomato wedge no one ate. Voilá: fried rice ingredients.

Dear cook, it has not escaped my attention that right in the range I prescribe, for all the rational reasons above, lies the magical ratio itself: 1.618. When you divide pairs in the Fibonacci sequence, the answer is 1.618. The ratio of the proportions of The Great Pyramid of Giza (according to some) and the Parthenon (again: some) is 1.618. All the buildings built by the design firm that once employed the ex-boyfriend: 1.618. Is it possible that my explanations are hot air? That everything is most balanced and pleasing right there—crystalized in mathematical poetry? I do not know…