You've got to love Hugh. He is definitely the Crumpet-Eating Woman's Thinker (to paraphrase Frank Muir)*
He is a good cook with appealing recipes but he is also a very powerful lobbyist- whether he is having a Fish Fight or exhorting us to Grow our Own.
His latest crusade is one dear to my heart, as he is taking on the horrendous amount of waste- food, clothes, recyclables- in the UK and trying to change practice.
His website www.waronwaste asks for reader's top tips for reducing food waste. Well, I don't know where to start.
I thought perhaps this week I would just look at an ordinary week's cooking- and how each meal led to another via its leftovers. Perhaps by coincidence ( and certainly not by design) I've ended up featuring some leftover classics.
So, this week, I made a Spaghetti Bolognaise on Sunday (along with many of you no doubt) - and had leftover meat sauce, also leftover tinned tomatoes. I also bought more fruit and veg than usual- as the fruit/veg bowl was looking bare.
So I made some fruity puds, some salads and some potato dishes (some to eat and some to freeze).
Many of these dishes generated others from their leftovers (eg. the spag bol).
Here was the menu: Tabbouleh (using up leftover tomato sauce) with a Quiche, Chilli Chips
(using up leftover meat sauce) Date and Orange Bread and Butter pudding, Caramel Clementine Upside Down Cake and Potato Boulangere (half of which could be frozen but I used the leftovers for Bubble and Squeak)
Here are the recipes:
Firstly, to make a good tomato sauce I recommend this recipe (Tomato Butter). Soften some onion and garlic in a saucepan, add a carton of chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon each of red wine vinegar and sugar, a pinch each of salt and pepper and simmer away for 15 minutes or so. Just before serving, stir in a knob of butter. The butter emulsifies and enrichens the sauce in an instant.
Tomato butter sauce
It is simple and quick but has a lovely glossy look and a rich flavour. I use it to coat Stuffed Cabbage Leaves
or poured over Aubergine Canneloni, but today I only had a couple of spoonfuls left over so used it to pep up a Tabbouleh salad.
Ingredients:
2-3 tbsp tomato butter sauce
1 cup couscous
1 tbsp sultanas
chopped spring onion, red or yellow peppers, whatever you have to use up
1 tbsp chopped mint and parsley
2 cups hot vegetable stock
seasoning/olive oil
Pour the hot stock over the couscous in a large bowl. Cover and allow the grains to soak up the liquid.
Mix in the tomato sauce, vegetables, sultanas and herbs.
Taste and adjust seasoning, adding a swirl of olive oil just before serving.
Tabbouleh
The tabbouleh accompanied a Quiche. I made this one from some pieces of ham from the fridge- but Quiche is one of my go-to-recipes when I need a meal but don't have many ingredients- favourite fillings are mushroom, spinach, chard, salmon, watercress, bacon and combinations thereof.
Quiche Lorraine
At its simplest- you need a pastry case (pre-cooked or baked blind)- filled with 125g cheese, 3-4 eggs depending on the size of your pastry case, ditto 200-300 ml milk and whatever you use as your filling.
Arrange the filling on the pastry base, sprinkle on the cheese, mix the eggs with the milk and season well. Pour carefully over the filling and bake at 170 degrees for 20-30 minutes until risen and golden.
Next day I turned my attention to the leftover Spag Bol sauce.
I have two favourite ways to use this up- if I only have a few tablespoons, then I make a frittata:
But if I have a bit more, then I add a tin of kidney beans in chili sauce, a little more chili for kick and pour the whole lot over a bowl of chips. Not really a recipe- but I do love to eat it!
Chili chips
The best recipe of the week though, for me, was the Potato Boulangere.
Ingredients:
1kg of potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
300ml of vegetable stock made from 2 heaped tsp Marmite dissolved in boiling water
40g garlic butter
salt, pepper and a scattering of fresh thyme or rosemary
a handful of flavoursome grated cheese to top
1, Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Butter a gratin dish (I use garlic butter)
3. Layer up potatoes, onions, salt and pepper and herbs, finishing with potato.
Layer up potatoes and onions
Pour on stock and dot with butter
4. Pour on the stock, pressing the vegs down into it
5. Dot with the rest of the garlic butter
6. Bake for 30 minutes until starting to crisp
7. Top with the cheese and cook for a further 20 minutes until golden and tender
Potatoes Boulangere
It's like a Dauphinoise, but without all the cream- as the potatoes are cooked in stock with onions.
Dear reader, let me tell you - it was scrumptious.
Better still, the next day, the leftovers made little Bubble and Squeak cakes- mashed with leftover spinach and peas, coated in flour and fried in vegetable oil.
Bubble and Squeak
Now for a few puddings.
You can't get a more classic leftover dish than good old Bread and Butter pudding. I gave this one a different flavour by adding some grated orange zest and chopped dates, along with the sultanas (which I soaked in a teaspoon of leftover Pimms from the drinks cabinet).
Ingredients:
4 pieces of stale bread, buttered and most of the crusts cut off
1 egg
300 ml milk
1 tbsp sultanas and 3-4 chopped dates
grated zest of 1 orange
1 tsp Pimms or rum
2 sachets of vanilla sugar (30g)
nutmeg to grate over
1. Soak the fruit in the booze for an hour or so.
2. Butter a pudding dish and then layer in the bread ( cut into triangles), fruit, orange zest and vanilla sugar
3. Whisk the egg and milk together and pour over the bread.
4. Lay a saucer over the top and press the mixture for an hour or so with a heavy tin.
5. Dust the top with grated nutmeg.
6. Place the pudding dish in a bain marie of hot water and cook in the oven at 160 degrees for 20 -30 minutes until risen and golden.
Date and Orange Bread and Butter Pud
And finally- if you missed it in The Guardian this week- and there was an awful (and I mean awful) lot of other things going on- here is my Caramel Clementine Upside Down Cake- which I like to make around Christmas time when I have fruit to use up, as well as almond biscotti and breadcrumbs.
Caramel clementine upside-down cake
This is quite simply the best cake I’ve ever made! It’s good to eat at any time, but the flavours of clementines and almonds make it a lovely Christmassy dish; I served it as a lighter alternative to Xmas pud last year. It is dairy-free too. LeftoverLiz, via GuardianWitness
LeftoverLiz’s caramel clementine upside-down cake: ‘a lighter alternative to Xmas pud... It is dairy-free too’. Photograph: LeftoverLiz/GuardianWitness
Serves 8 For the caramel
3 tbsp caster sugar
100ml water
For the cake
5 clementines, all 5 zested, 3 of them juiced, 2 peeled and sliced into rings
150g caster sugar
50g ground almonds
50g biscotti, blitzed to crumbs in a food processor
50g soft white breadcrumbs
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs, beaten
175ml sunflower oil
1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4, then grease and line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper.
2 Make the caramel by putting the sugar and water into a small saucepan, then bring to the boil and cook until golden. Pour into the bottom of the lined tin. Lay rings of the sliced clementines in the caramel.
3 Mix together the sugar, ground almonds, biscuits, breadcrumbs and baking powder in a bowl.
4 In a separate bowl, whisk the beaten eggs, oil, zest and juice together. Combine all the ingredients well and pour over the clementine slices into the tin. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before turning out.
Holders of the Title
*Frank Muir once described Joan Bakewell as 'The Thinking Man's Crumpet', then Melvyn Bragg was christened the 'Thinking Woman's Crumpet', and there have been many holders of the crown since- the latest being Benedict Cumberbatch.
Me? I like my crumpet toasted with butter and Marmite.
Everybody knows we waste too much food in the UK. Even the most remote cave dweller will have heard that bit of news by now.
But did you know that by far the biggest landfill-filler is bread? It makes up more than 32% of our food waste.
Well, when I say 'our' food waste, I don't mean mine.
I don't mean to sound holier -than-thou, it's just that there are so many tasty things you can do with bread rather than throw it away. So, before you get ready to put that stale half loaf in the bin, here are some ideas for you:
Firstly, Garlic Bread Dauphinoise.
This dish is lovely served as you would dauphinoise potatoes - with lamb, chicken, steak....- but it is lighter ( and soaks up gravy beautifully.)
Butter a spring form cake tin and lay in slices of leftover garlic bread. Squash them to fill all the nooks and crannies. Make a custard with 1 beaten egg, a pinch of salt and pepper and enough milk to pour over the bread without flooding the tin.
Do just that- pour it over, squish it all down a bit more and then dust with a grating of nutmeg and some grated hard cheese if you wish.
Bake in a moderate oven (180 degrees) until risen and golden.
Allow to cool enough to be able to release the spring form clips - and voila- your garlic bread dauphinoise ready for slicing and serving.
Garlic bread dauphinoise
Try it!
Now, I've put together another 10 ideas for ways to use up leftover bready things.
1. Pain perdu- delicious made with leftover brioche or madeira cake too.
Usually, when you think about 'the next day' - all that remains is a thumping head, a churning stomach and a vague sense that you said or did some rather regrettable things.
On my team, we celebrate twice- an evening at the pub which, yes, has the potential to lead to all of the above (and I do believe in always fulfilling my potential)- and a lunchtime buffet where everyone brings a dish and we all have a jolly nice lunch.
The only problem with the latter is that everyone contributes really generously and there is always lots of food left over. It seems criminal to go round with a black dustbin bag and throw away delicious food because people have been kind enough to make it or buy it, but have been too restrained to eat it all up.
So, this year, I collected up what was left and made various dishes out of it all. What I couldn't adapt, I froze. What I couldn't freeze, I gave away.
For this week's blog menu, I took pity on the carrots which had been sliced up to go with hummus and dips, the nuts and dried fruits which some health conscious member of the team had laid out - only to be snubbed in favour of Stollen, mince pies and cheesecake- also the cocktail sausages which went largely ignored ( as always, on a team of mostly vegetarians and people from faiths which don't eat pork) and a huge Panettone which sat disconsolate and forgotten like the plateau of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lost world.
I made a nut terrine (like a nut roast but somehow less virtuous), followed by a spiced sausage and bean stew and a caramel bread and butter pudding.
For the terrine- put whatever you have in the way of dried fruit, vegetables and nuts into the goblet of your food processor. I had carrot sticks, apricots, dates, brazil nuts and walnuts. Pulse to a fine chop.
Meanwhile, toast some pine nuts in a pan until just coloured. Be quick. Don't let them burn.
Similarly soften some onion and some garlic in some olive oil.
Mix everything together in a bowl with some soft breadcrumbs, some grated cheese, some grated nutmeg, salt and pepper and allspice and 2 beaten eggs.
Pour into a well greased loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. (About 20 minutes).
Nut terrine
Serve hot with salad leaves and chutney or style auvergnat napped with hot mushroom sauce.
Terrine with hot mushroom sauce
Sausage and bean stew
Main course again requires some onion softened with garlic in a frying pan. Add the cocktail sausages and heat through. Next add a carton of chopped tomatoes with added chili (or add the chili yourself), a dash of Worcester sauce, a dessertspoon of black treacle (or muscavado sugar), a dessertspoon of balsamic vinegar and a tin of butter beans (drained). Refill the tin and add the starchy water to the pan. Bring to a bubbling boil then reduce to simmer.
When the liquid is thickening, pour into a gratin dish, top with fresh breadcrumbs and place in a hot oven (200 degrees) until the breadcrumbs begin to turn golden - abut 10 minutes.
It made a great huevos rancheros for supper the next day too.
Huevos rancheros
For dessert, I sliced the Panettone and laid one layer in a gratin dish.I spread caramel sauce ( or dulce de leche) over this layer. Next layer went on until the dish was full. I mixed two beaten eggs with 200 ml of milk and a dessertspoon of vanilla essence. Pour the custard over the bread and press it down until the bread is pretty much submerged. I didn't sweeten the egg custard as the caramel sauce is very sweet, as is the Panettone and -oh dear- I sprinkled vanilla sugar over the top before it went into the oven as well.
Panettone-zillah
Spread with caramel sauce
Caramel Panettone bread and butter pudding
Bake at 180 degrees until golden and between mostly firm at the sides and wobbly in the centre. (Think dancing at the office party unrestricted by Spanx).
When serving you can give the top some added crunch by finishing with a blowtorch.
Even though I say it myself, this was a fab meal made from stuff that was destined for the bin.
