Ready Steady Cook!

Do you remember this TV programme? It was hugely popular in the Nineties and Noughties and launched the career of many a TV chef.
People used to hold 'Ready Steady Cook' dinner parties too- where the guests brought bags of random ingredients for the host to rustle up into something fab.





I caught an episode of this programme again recently- as it is still going strong - and it got me thinking about a revival. After all, it is pretty much what this blog is about- using up ingredients from your cupboard and fridge in a tasty way.
So, for this month's post I want to take a selection of ingredients- and make two suggestions as to how they could be used. Firstly, the obvious choice and secondly something a little more unexpected.

Let's take these ingredients by way of an example and an introduction:

Tuna, eggs, anchovies, olives, potatoes and bread.

First lot of ingredients

To me, that immediately cries out 'Salade Nicoise'.

Salade Nicoise
http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/specialities-of-nice.html

But no.... I'm going to make fish cakes instead.

Ingredients:

200g cold mashed potato
1 tin tuna*
2 slices stale bread, soaked in water and then squeezed dry
1 egg
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp lemon juice
3-4 anchovies, snipped up small
8 green olives, chopped roughly
salt and pepper
50g toasted breadcrumbs

Mix all the ingredients well (keeping back the breadcrumbs for coating) together in a bowl.

Mix it all up

 Shape with wet hands into patties and coat with the remaining breadcrumbs,

Shape into patties and coat with breadcrumbs

 Place on a lightly oiled baking tray and bake at 160 degrees for 15-20 minutes until golden.

Bake until golden

Mediterranean Fish Cakes

*NB: This recipe works just as well with any tinned fish- sardines, crab or salmon for example.

But does tuna, anchovies, olives, garlic and onions make you begin to think of pasta?

next bag of ingredients

Just add  some rich tomato sauce for a delicious pasta dish.

Add tomato sauce and hey presto....

Spaghetti Marinara

But for me however it says - Pissaladiere- a famous onion tart from Nice.

Gently slow cook the onions and garlic in a little olive oil until golden and meltingly soft. Spread these over either a  prepared pizza base or a puff pastry rectangle.
Criss cross with anchovies and dot with olives (you can add or leave the tuna as you wish)
Bake until the edges are golden and the pastry or dough is cooked underneath.

Pissaladiere ready for the oven

Pissaladiere ready to eat!

Now, how about celery, apple,walnuts and grapes?

Bag 3

Are you thinking Waldorf Salad?

Waldorf Salad

A classic dish of chopped celery and walnuts with crisp green apple, grapes and mayonnaise- made immortal of course by Fawlty Towers.

Well, how about making a Waldorf Soup instead. (Thanks to Hugh F-W for the idea).

Gently cook some onions, 1/2 tsp minced garlic, 4-5 sticks of celery ( chopped), 1 potato (diced) and 1 apple ( peeled and chopped) in some light vegetable oil. Add 500 ml chicken or vegetable stock and simmer until tender.
Blitz to a puree and adjust seasoning to taste.
Garnish with some finely chopped walnuts, grapes and apple dressed with some cream.

Waldorf Soup

Hugh serves his chilled- but in homage to another great comedy hero I am serving mine piping hot Arnold -Rimmer-Gazpacho style.
This recipe works well with celeriac too- just substitute it for the celery and potato.

Now a packet of peanuts might not be very inspirational. It might make you think of making a satay sauce or a Pad Thai.

Pad Thai

http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/pad%20thai

However, I took my lead from Ina Garten (who else?) and made Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars and I can't tell you how successful they were!

Ingredients:

125g unsalted butter

175g sugar

1 egg

250 g peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

375g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

200ml jam (fig or raspberry are good choices)

150g roasted peanuts, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees

2. Cream together the butter and sugar, then mix in the vanilla essence , egg and peanut butter and beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes

Cream the butter, sugar, eggs etc with an electric mixer

 3.Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and mix until combined
4.Grease and line a baking tray or gratin dish and spread 2/3 of the dough along the bottom

Spread two thirds of the dough over the base of the lined dish

5. Spread the jam evenly over the dough
6. Drop blobs of the remaining dough randomly over the top

Spread with jam and the remaining dough in blobs

7. Sprinkle with the chopped peanuts and bake for 45 minutes until golden on top and cooked underneath.

Golden from the oven

Peanut butter and jelly Bars

And finally, taking a pot of creme fraiche and some bacon

- are you thinking of a Pasta Carbonara?:

Pasta Carbonara
(This is Jamie Oliver's pic- not mine)

Pasta is cooked in lots of boiling salted water, drained and then creme fraiche, an egg yolk and crispy bacon are stirred through with a little of the cooking liquor to make it silky.

Well instead, I thought of a Flammekueche- an open tart from Alsace made with onions, creme fraiche and bacon and baked in the oven.

Spread a thin pastry base with creme fraiche and onions (cooked as for the Pissaladiere above or you can use tinned for a shortcut as in the bag of ingredients). Dot with thin matchsticks of bacon and bake at 200 degrees until the pastry is golden round the edges and cooked underneath. The lardons and cream should be beginning to 'catch'.

Flammekueche

(I sometimes make a really speedy version of this using sandwich thins as flatbreads too).

Flammekueche Flatbreads

Whether you're a red tomato or a yellow pepper- I hope you've enjoyed the choice of recipes in this month's blog.

Now it's your turn - get.....

Week 13- Lucky for Some!

The number 13 should hold no special fear for me- I spent my teenage years living at number 13 and, by and large they were OK times.

I was successful in my exams, had some fun and made lifelong friends (some of whom read this blog regularly- hi guys!)

But there are always a lot of superstitions around food- and I thought I might explore the idea for this week's blog.


Which foods are considered particularly lucky, I wondered?

Well, take your pick from this list:

 green vegetables (supposed to resemble folding money like dollar bills), 

beans and lentils ( which look like coins), 

grapes and pomegranates (jewel-like fruits)

pork ( because pigs are round and forage optimistically..stretching things a bit thin here, I think!)

noodles ( eaten whole -not cut- to symbolize long life)

fish (silver scales represent money again)

cornbread (gold bars)

So, I've planned this week's menu around many of these ingredients: chicken noodle soup, followed by steamed cabbage parcels with pork filling and dipping sauces (veggie version using lentils and butter beans), and mulled wine jelly with frosted grapes and pomegranate ice.

Chicken noodle soup

For the noodle soup, I used chicken stock made in the slow cooker from a chicken carcass- but you can use  stock cubes or those little Knorr stock pots are good too. Add a tablespoon of miso paste to the hot stock and a dash of soy sauce. Cook a disc of wholewheat or soba noodles in boiling water for two minutes until tender and then drain and refresh with cold water to prevent them clumping together. Add 1 cup of shredded cooked chicken (mine came off the carcass once stripped down), 1 cup of baby spinach leaves and 1 chopped spring onion to the hot stock. Put the noodles in the bottom of each serving bowl and pour over the hot stock. Remember to slurp your noodles without cutting them to preserve your long life!

Two of my younger diners slurping it up!

The steamed cabbage parcels require: 3 Savoy cabbage leaves per person, 300 grams of pork mince (or 1 tin each of lentils and butter beans for the veggie version), 2 spring onions, minced garlic clove, a dash of chilli sauce, 1 cup soft breadcrumbs and 1 beaten egg.
Finely chop the spring onions (or pulse them with two slices of bread in the food processor to make your breadcrumbs at the same time.) Add them along with the seasoning and beaten egg to your pork mince (or crushed beans and lentils). You might want to add extra garlic or chili to the veggie version. Mix together well and form into (meat)balls using wet hands.
Fry in hot vegetable oil until brown all over- but not necessarily cooked through- as they are going to steam in a minute.

Ready to rock..

....and roll

Take your cabbage leaves and blanch them for 2 minutes in boiling water. Lay them out on a tea towel and cut out the coarse rib from the centre, then place a meatball on each one. Roll up into parcels and place in the steamer.

Steam over simmering water for about 10-15 minutes and then serve sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and dipping sauces (ginger, chilli and soy in this case.)

Asian Pork parcels

For dessert, I made a mulled wine jelly by boiling half a pint (250 ml) of red wine (the leftovers from a bottle) and adding some warming spices (ginger, cinnamon or mixed spice according to your taste or store cupboard) and some vanilla sugar. Once up to the boil, I added it to a sachet of blackcurrant jelly crystals (or you could use gelatine leaves) and made it up to 1 pint (500 ml) with cold water. You could add grape juice if using gelatine.
I poured it into moulds (old fashioned wine glasses in this case) and set it in the fridge overnight. I served it with frosted grapes.(Very grown up, was the tasting panel's verdict!)

Mulled Wine Jelly

I also made a pomegranate ice (pictured here) to go with it, but it was very disappointing. It tasted watery and more like a granita than a sorbet with lots of ice crystals - so I think I need to refine that recipe before I share it with you.

Pretty in pink- but not very nice!

The meal yielded loads of food- leftover soup for my lunch, a chili and sesame dressed noodle salad also for lunchboxes and enough pork meatballs for another dish another day :

Spaghetti meatballs

Lunches galore

There's also plenty of  jelly -mmmm.

So, fuelled with all this lucky food , it's probably a good week to buy premium bonds or lottery tickets.

Let me know if it pays off for you!

No rabbits were harmed in this week's blog- all feet intact