Making Good Use: Leftovers

I'm really enjoying the twin feasts of both a new Nigella and a new Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall cookery series on Thursday evenings (pity the schedulers had to put them both on at the same time but, thanks to the wonders of the BBC iPlayer, Nigella can be watched the next day) and both have been giving some excellent ideas for using up leftover foods.

Having watched Hugh last week - when he was focusing on Breakfast - I had a light-bulb moment about how to use up the five quite-seriously-out-of-date eggs languishing in my fridge - pancakes. I hadn't made a large batch of pancakes for some few years and, after a judicious sniffing of each egg as I cracked it open, I ended up making 12 really large ones. Six were used to make stuffed savoury pancakes (stuffed with natural cottage cheese tickled up with mustard powder, garlic and some grated cheddar) topped with a chilli tomato sauce (a tin of chopped tomatoes, half an onion and a pinch of chilli powder.) That yielded two evening meals for the two of us (although the second meal was supplemented with some leftover meatballs in homemade tomato sauce) and the other six pancakes were eaten for dessert on three separate occasions - with lemon juice and sugar for me and with strawberry jam for P.

Some leftover and rather wilted spring greens were yesterday turned into a rather yummy, if violently green, soup with the addition of half an onion, three carrots, a couple of sprouted potatoes and a handful of mushroooms. That, along with some salad and a crusty roll, made a nice supper last night and, eked out with some additonal milk, another nice lunch today. My bowl of soup at lunchtime was accompanied by a wrap containing some of the leftover salad, a light grating of parmesan and the rest of the homemade salad dressing from yesterday - and very yummy it was too.

Tonight's evening meal will be a second serving of Beef Tagine (left over from Wednesday,) which I'll have to bulk out a bit with another tin of tomatoes, served with a generous helping of quinoa. The Beef Tagine is one of Jamie Oliver's recipes and has become quite a firm favourite in our house since I first saw him cook it on TV. It takes a bit of fore-thought to make the dry rub for the meat and leave it marinading overnight, and it does take 3 hours all told to cook (although there's not much work involved) but I don't mind that as it always yields two very tasty evening meals from pretty cheap ingredients. (And, having just checked out the comments on this recipe, I think I'll also be adding a few 'tired and emotional-looking' leftover dates to tonight's serving too.)

I'd really like to give Nigella's Marmite Spaghetti recipe a go too (though, oddly, I can't actually find it on t'internet.) When she made it on the TV a couple of weeks ago it looked rather tasty to me, but I'm not sure I could sell it to P as he refuses to eat anything that's black!! The fool, doesn't he know how tasty both Marmite and Pickled Walnuts can be (though not at the same time, obviously.)

Another great source of leftover inspiration can be found over at Reactive Cooking blog, tagline 'Don't waste it - cook it.' And very tasty her recipes look too.

Any other useful leftover recipes and / or sources for inspiration that you know of out there?

Comments

Just catching up with everybody's blogs after getting back from hols - it's a major job!! This post has made me salivate, despite having done almost nothing but eat and drink for the last couple of weeks! Have recorded Jamie & Nigella's new series while I've been away - looking forward to catching up with them.

Posted by: Caroline | 11/01/2010 at 09:48 AM