In our Triangle Food Issue, published Wednesday, May 29, we asked five local chefs, farmers, and small business purveyors to let us peek inside their fridges. You can read the rest of the interviews here.
Toriano Fredericks | Chef/owner of Boricua Soul
INDY: Can you list some things that are in your refrigerator right now?
Fredericks: A general-style red sauce, because our son eats that every day for lunch. We put chicken tenders in the air fryer and put that sauce on them.
Cherry pepper hoagie spread.
Sweet chili sauce.
Provolone cheese.
Soul Slapping Seasoning. That’s our signature seasoning that we put on pretty much everything.
Deli meats: salami, prosciutto, soppressata.
Cucumbers. I love cucumbers. [My wife] Serena can’t stand them.
Some salad ingredients: bacon crumbles, blue cheese, McIntosh apples, cider vinaigrette. We went to Il Palio in Chapel Hill for our anniversary, and Serena ate a salad there that she’s been obsessed with, so those ingredients are to try to recreate it.
Mayonnaise—and if you want to cause a controversy …
Is it not Duke’s?
It’s not Duke’s [laughs].
This might be a bigger story than I realized.
Look, my grandmother is from Georgia, and she’s always used Hellmann’s.
Out of all the times you open your fridge, what do you reach for most often and what do you do with it?
That’s a hard question. I’m not sure. I open the refrigerator a lot out of boredom, so if I’m doing that, normally I’ll grab a piece of deli meat and a piece of provolone and just roll it up and eat it. We’ve been adding that pepper spread to anything and everything—tacos, a salad, just dropping it on there. And I’m almost always cooking with the Soul Slapping Seasoning: I’ll put it on grilled meat, like chicken or pork chops.
I’m gonna run through a list of foods that some people refrigerate and some people don’t, and you tell me your stance. Bread?
No, because we go through it so quickly.
Eggs?
Yes.
Ketchup?
Yes and no. I put it in, Serena takes it out. I think it’s just a household thing. If you grew up in a household where you put it in the fridge, that’s what you do. And if you didn’t, you’re like, “Why are you doing this?!”
Peanut butter?
Absolutely not.
Tomatoes?
I had been putting them in the refrigerator, but I think I’m actually going to go back to storing them at room temperature because I was watching Produce Pete the other day—do you know who Produce Pete is?
I do not.
My wife and I were both born and raised in the Northeast, so we actually grew up watching the same news station. I grew up in Connecticut, and she grew up in New York. We both watched New York news. Recently, she found a New York news station on the Fire Stick, so every morning, she’s been putting it on, and there’s a segment on there with a guy called Produce Pete. He’s an old Italian guy and he sits in his apartment and talks about different produce and where it comes from and how to store it. Produce Pete was talking about tomatoes the other day, and he was like, “You really shouldn’t store your tomatoes in the refrigerator.”
Is there anything you eat cold out of the fridge without heating up?
I eat leftovers without warming them up. My son thinks this is the funniest thing. He’ll make the announcement: “Mom, Dad’s eating cold stuff out of the refrigerator again.”
Is there anything in your fridge that’s expired right now?
Maybe some vanilla yogurt. Here’s why. We have good intentions. We’re like, “We’re gonna go hard on smoothies this week.” And then we kinda don’t.
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