Leftover cooked chicken or turkey became a range of Bisquick’s “impossible” pie series such as this one, or other pot pies. A Sunday ham bought on sale was turned into split pea soup. But my favorite by far, and the one I have adopted into my own kitchen with regular frequency, is Hong Kong Horrigan.

Hong Kong Horrigan…aka what to do with leftover grilled steak and clean out the veggie drawer at the same time. Probably not a PC name in 2011, but it’s vintage now.

Eleven years ago I quizzed my new husband on what I needed to buy to whip up one of his favorite nostalgic meals. With an eyebrow raised, he answered me. “We don’t buy stuff for Hong Kong Horrigan. Hong Kong Horrigan is made from leftover London broil and whatever veggies we have, maybe even a bag of frozen vegetables if necessary. Add some peanuts or chow mein noodles and you’re in business.”

I scratched my head, confused. No recipe? As a newlywed living 300 plus miles away from my own parents, I was teaching myself to cook from books. Winging it was not my thing. It still isn’t, really. Research first, work second. Measure twice, cut once.

But I decided to trust, and what I have learned over the years is that for each one of our six individual families, Hong Kong Horrigan is a unique concoction that can only evolve based on our standard weekly cooking and shopping lists.

One night a few years ago I found myself with half a pork tenderloin that had been marinated in a ginger sauce and grilled earlier in the week. I sliced it up, grabbed some veggies, a can of baby corn, and some toasted sesame oil to make a stir fry.

Jim was pleased and I was so proud:  I had arrived, I had done it!

I emailed my mother-in-law in Cincinnati to ask if the dish would still be considered authentic with pork instead of beef. She typed back, verbatim “Methinks you have invented a new dish: Shanghai Horrigan?”

Whether you use leftover grilled beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, or even tofu, learning to make a stir fry out of what you have in the fridge is an indispensable skill that everyone should learn.

Maybe yours is as simple as leftover veggies with soy sauce and rice. Maybe it’s more elaborate and slightly planned like mine. It’s a great way to teach yourself to eat in the newer, more healthful style of reduced meat portions, and it’s good for your budget and schedule as well.

Read more by Robin Horrigan

Robin Horrigan writes the column Cooking from the Carpool Lane. She lives on Boston’s south shore and is a stay at home Mom to Ryan, seven, and Maegan, three. Her fascination with cooking sprouted from watching Julia Child cook on a little black and white TV; Robin helped her Mom in the kitchen until she was old enough to ask Santa for her very own copy of The Joy of Cooking. She experiments with all kinds of cooking and baking, from quick weeknight dinners and easy cookies to long simmering weekend stews and complicated, fancy desserts. Ryan thinks if his Mom will ever be famous, it will be “for her awesome cookies.” Her friends say it will be for the cocktails. Either way, if she’s not doing volunteer work or shopping for shoes, you’ll probably find her in the kitchen. Robin’s favorite recipe.

There is something about the transformation of a simple cut of pork into sausages and salumis that smacks of alchemy. Our relationship with Italian delicacies like prosciutto, pancetta, and mortadella is usually limited to ordering them from the deli counter of a market or Italian specialty food store, so it’s easy to believe that this feat can only be accomplished by aging nonnas laboring away somewhere in a hill town outside of Bologna. We assume they know things about pork and charcuterie that we could never hope to, so we step to the counter and humbly order our quarter pound of sopressata like everyone else.

I never considered trying to cure pork on my own until I found myself far from the dependable supply lines of Italian food that I had become accustomed to when living in my native Boston. While staring at an overpriced, watery, shrink-wrapped hunk of pancetta in a market recently, I decided that it was time to give it a go. I wanted to make linguini carbonara—the first thing other than Trader Joe’s microwaveable burritos that I learned to cook—and I wasn’t going to make it with this unsavory looking pancetta.

Pancetta is often referred to as “Italian bacon” but the label falls short of describing its unique flavor. Unlike its American cousin, pancetta isn’t smoked, so it imparts a more subtle flavor to dishes rather than dominating them. It’s excellent not only in classic pasta sauces like carbonara and amatriciana but also with vegetables such as asparagus.

Curing your own pancetta is probably the most rewarding of all home charcuterie projects. It requires few specialized ingredients (which you can order from Butcher & Packer) and is quick to prepare. And the result is phenomenal. Your home-cured pancetta will surpass what you can get locally and will give something extra to everyday dishes.

Making pancetta does require one ingredient you’ll want to track down locally: pork belly. If you don’t have a butcher nearby, try a local Asian market, as they typically carry pork belly in their meat section. In terms of technical knowledge, all you need to learn to make pancetta is how to roll and tie the pork belly once it has been cured, something you can pick up relatively quickly from a Cook’s Illustrated tutorial. And drying the cured pancetta can be done easily using spare space in your wine fridge or a cool basement.

I won’t tell you that making your own pancetta is entirely simple or that I didn’t make a few mistakes along the way. I managed to knock the bowl of curing mix I had carefully prepared off the counter and found myself trying to fend off my two golden retrievers—intent on cleaning up for me—with one hand while trying to scoop the curing mix into a dust bin. But that’s part of home cooking. It’s never as simple as it seems on television, but the results are always worth it.