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.
Our local Turkish restaurant does a lovely meze meal- lots of little dishes of hummus, dips, falafel, halloumi, flatbreads, olives, garlicky beans, fritters, vine leaves and yogurt. It often inspires me to cook food from that part of the world.
Although I have featured various Middle Eastern and North African recipes on the blog- I have just started reading Yotam Ottolenghi's book 'Jerusalem' which is a fascinating look at both Jewish and Arab recipes from that city. It made me want to be more adventurous.
But it is the middle of the week- and there are leftovers to use up- so I've gone for a tagine-spiced lamb and white bean soup, served with sweet potato and carrot falafel and salads- and finished up with iced berries in hot chocolate sauce.
We had a lamb tagine at the weekend (recipe on the blog- just click on the cloud above) and only a few pieces of lamb lurk at the bottom of the jug- but there is plenty of lovely spicy gravy left over and so I'm making it into a soup- made creamy with pureed cannellini beans.
Thin down your leftover gravy with some vegetable stock and add half of the can of rinsed cannellini beans. Blitz with a stick blender. Then add the remaining beans whole and warm through.
Serve with warm pitta bread and sprinkled with coriander leaves (if you like them) or crispy onions. Easy and quick for a mid-week meal.
Tagine spiced lamb and white bean soup
For the sweet potato falafel- bake 1 small sweet potato per person in the oven or microwave until tender. Peel and place the flesh in a bowl with 1-2 grated carrots, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp chili powder, some chopped sultanas or currants, a tablespoon of peanut butter, 1 tsp each of cumin, coriander and turmeric and some flour to bind (you could use chickpea flour to be authentic but plain flour will do). Mix together until the mixture can be handled and rolled into walnut sized balls.
Leave to set for an hour or so in the fridge.
When ready to cook, heat 2 cm of vegetable oil in a wok or deep pan and fry batches of the fritters until dark golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
Sweet potato and carrot falafel
Fritters with pitta and hummus
Serve wrapped in a pitta bread or flatbread, with a dish of hummus on the side and salads- such as carrot and nut, tabbouleh or roasted aubergine and pepper with pine nuts.
Roasted aubergine, pepper and pine nuts
Tabbouleh
Carrot and nut salad
Alternatively, I squish my fritters flatter and serve in a bun with chutney and crispy onions for a veggie burger treat.
Sweet potato burger
For pudding, I got this idea from a restaurant - where the dish was being sold for £4.50 a portion- and was being ordered left, right and centre- so people clearly liked it. It's about the easiest dessert in the world to make though- iced berries with hot chocolate sauce.
First make your hot chocolate sauce: use dark, milk or white chocolate according to your likes. You will need 100g of chocolate, 25g of unsalted butter and 2 tbsp of icing sugar. Break the chocolate into pieces and put it, the butter, sugar and 100ml of water into a small saucepan and heat until melted. Pour into a little serving jug.
Take your frozen autumn berries straight from the freezer, pour into a bowl and serve with the jug of hot sauce. The berries melt as they hit the sauce. Simple!
Iced berries with chocolate sauce
So, some quick and tasty ideas for a midweek glimpse of the Middle East- using mostly store cupboard ingredients, salads from the vegetable drawer and leftovers.
There were so many wonderful looking recipes in the book though, I shall definitely be looking more closely for inspiration from this part of the world over the next few months.
Whether you cook for large numbers regularly, or just occasionally- it's always worth having some recipes at the ready so you can rustle up a meal for a crowd without too much stress- or expense.
I found myself cooking for ten last week- ranging in age from under 8 to over 80! And with as much variation in tastes in food too.
I decided to go for the following menu- 'Bubbles and Nibbles' to start, pasta bake and tarte a l'indienne (chicken curry tart) with salads for the two mains, and a choice of spiced apple cake, jelly or chocolate eclairs for pudding.
Many of these recipes have featured before on the blog- because entertaining the hordes might not be the best time to experiment with something new. Stick with what you know.
When I say 'Bubbles and Nibbles'- I'm talking about canny canapes which can be washed down with loads of sparkling wine or water- and make an impressive start to the meal. They can mostly be prepared in advance - with just a few hot ones to add interest- and people can pick and choose what they like.
We had blinis with onuga caviar and creme fraiche and dill, spring rolls, mini croques-messieurs, red pepper hummus with vegetable sticks and sausages and cheese and pineapple on sticks (put together carefully by the children at the feast.
Cheese and pineapple hedgehog
Spring rolls toasting in the oven
Blinis
Mini croques toasties
I filled up the table with salads- green salad, tabbouleh, rice salad, garlic bread - and brought out the centre pieces: penne pasta tray bake with mozzarella and meatballs and a chicken curry tart (tarte a l'indienne)- just click on the cloud at the top of the blog or use the search option for any of these recipes.
When you need to feed a lot of people- pasta is definitely your best friend.
Boil 500g of penne pasta in a large pan until tender. Drain and pour into the largest gratin or baking dish you have. Mix in one carton of chopped tomatoes (I used one with oregano and olives added) and a jar of passata. For the meatballs, mix 500g of minced steak with some seasoning sauce (soy or Worcester or Maggi), the crust of a loaf made into breadcrumbs (I always have some in the freezer ready) and a finely chopped spring onion. Knead together until you have a good 'meatloaf' texture and then wet your hands and roll the meat into walnut sized balls. Fry in a dry pan- they will release fat of their own accord. Press them into the pasta randomly. Do the same with a tub of mozzarella balls. Then sprinkle 200g of grated cheddar or gruyere/emmental over the surface. Bake in a moderate oven (170 degrees) for 10-15 minutes until the surface is golden but the pasta is still tender.
The chicken curry tart is just as simple. I made the pastry shell the day before- baked blind.
First take a carton of chicken curry ready meal- korma is best. Separate the chicken meat from the sauce and distribute it evenly over the base of the tart. Mix the sauce with 4 beaten eggs and a splash of milk and pour into the tart shell.
Carefully bake at 170 degrees for about an hour until set and firm and golden on the top.
Do this well in advance of your party - as it is nicest served at room temperature with the salads.
Both of these dishes are really good as vegetarian options- just forget about the meatballs ( or add mushrooms instead) and use a vegetable korma rather than a chicken one for the tart. In fact, I think it could be better that way.
And so to pudding.
For the children (who had been on a visit to the zoo the day before) we had Nile Crocodile infested jelly and ice cream- and for the adults we had spiced apple cake with cream or chocolate eclairs (not homemade this time!) in case neither of the options appealed.
The jelly is just lemon jelly poured over jelly sweets and set overnight in the fridge.
The apple cake is made from 2 dessert apples, finely chopped, 125g of butter, 125g of self raising flour, 125g of demerara sugar, 2 eggs and 50g of cinnamon sugar (caster sugar mixed with equal parts cinnamon and mixed spice powder.) Grease and line a 20 cm cake tin. Beat the butter and sugar together until pale. Add 2 beaten eggs, the flour, half the spiced sugar and the apples. Loosen the mixture with a splash of milk if it seems too stiff. Pour into the cake tin and sprinkle the remainder of the spiced sugar over the top. Bake at 170 degrees for 35- 40 minutes or so, until the top is risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin before taking out and then serve warmed up (the next day) with some cream.
The feast was well received - and large amounts consumed. However, there was still enough to see us in leftover meals for the next few days.
The pasta did another two meals- as it reheats well, and can be bulked out with some french bread or garlic toasts. The tart and salads did another meal- and the salads made up lunchboxes too.
The hummus made part of a tapas-y style meze meal- with cheese and pate, parma ham and melon:
Check out the lovely Scottish slate serving tray- one of the perks of entertaining is that sometimes people give you lovely presents in appreciation, as in this case!
All in all, this frugal feasting (16 or more meals) works out at just £1.50 per head per meal (not counting the bubbly!) But then who counts bubbly when you're having fun?
