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.
I thought this week I would make a collection of my favourite sauces- sweet and savoury- to share with you.
They are all really simple- because I'm not one for fancy reductions or emulsions.
I've done two hot, two cold, two sweet and two savoury.
They really do come into their own though for jazzing up leftovers-and none more so than a hollandaise sauce. Wonderful with salmon, asparagus, new potatoes or any fish, my favourite is with spinach and a poached egg on a toasted muffin.
First, make your hollandaise: Melt 60g of unsalted butter in a pan or microwaveable dish.Take one egg yolk, the juice of half a squeezed lemon, a pinch of cayenne pepper if you have it and half a teaspoon of salt and put them in the goblet of the food processor or blender. Start the motor running and quickly but steadily trickle in the melted butter. Just watch the sauce emulsify. If it gets too thick, add a squeeze more lemon or a teaspoon of warm water.
Don't throw away your egg white- freeze it to use in meringues or cakes later.
To make eggs florentine- steam or microwave some spinach leaves, squeeze them quickly in a J cloth, then lay them on top of a toasted English muffin. Top with a softly poached egg and a good slather of the sauce.
Eggs florentine with hollandaise sauce
Fish and chips with tartare sauce
My next sauce is more of a relish really. To make your own tartare sauce, take a tablespoon of good mayonnise, add to it some chopped spring onion, some chopped gherkin and some chopped green olives. Voila!
I told you it was simple this week.
A delicious variation uses black olives instead of green to make a cross between tapenade and tartare sauce. Yum!
And whilst we are tallking simple- here is just the best- but simplest- tomato sauce. 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
My last savoury sauce is made with mustard and creme fraiche. It's lovely on pork or chicken.
Deglaze and add mustrard
Mix in creme fraiche
When you have fried your meat, put it to keep warm in the oven and then deglaze the frying pan with either some warm water, some vermouth or some white wine.
Pork with mustard and cream sauce
When it is bubbling, add a tablespoon of coarse grain mustard and two tablespoons of creme fraiche. Stir quickly as it thickens and then pour back over the meat. Now for some sweet sauces. My favourite standby is a toffee or butterscotch sauce. Once you know how to make this, you can vary it according to the type of sugar you add- muscavado for a treacle toffee, soft brown for a fudge sauce, demerera for a butterscotch toffee sauce or with a pinch of sea salt for a salted caramel.
These skewered ban-iteroles are my latest creation. Choux buns filled with cream and banana, threaded on skewers to keep them together, with a toffee fudge sauce.
For the choux buns:
Ingredients: 85 ml water 85 ml milk 65g butter 100g plain flour 2 eggs 200ml whipping cream 1 banana
1. Bring the water, milk and butter to the boil in a saucepan 2. Beat in the flour 3. Cool slightly and then add the eggs one at a time until you have a glossy paste 4. Spoon (or pipe) teaspoons of the paste onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper 5. Bake for 20 minutes until puffed and golden brown 6. Pierce the base of each to allow steam to escape 7. When cool, slice in half and fill with whipped cream and a slice of banana before sandwiching back together 8. Thread three or four onto a skewer to hold them together.
For the toffee fudge sauce: Ingredients: 150 ml cream 75 ml milk 75 ml golden syrup 25 g butter 150g demerera sugar 2 tsp vanilla essence
1. Boil all the ingredients together (except the essence) in a saucepan. 2. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla.
Pour into jugs and serve with the ban-iteroles.
Ban-iteroles with toffee fudge sauce
And finally- the best and simplest chocolate sauce:
100g dark or white chocolate
25g unsalted butter
2 tbsp icing sugar
Put all the ingredients into a saucepan with 100 ml of water. Heat and stir until the butter and chocolate are melted and the sauce is glossy.
Pour over profiteroles, berries or ice cream or banana splits.....
Not everyone wants to have the oven on- it's expensive and it takes time to bake things.
A lot of my recipes call for oven baking- so this week I have changed tack and deliberately sought out a menu which can be made on the stove top.
I'm starting with halloumi and chutney fritters, followed by cod wrapped in bacon with mushy peas on black pudding mash with a tomato butter sauce, and finishing up with chocolate brioche pain perdu.
Whilst I think all of the above components are pretty tasty, I'm particularly pleased with the halloumi fritters, the genius tomato sauce and the black pud mash- but take a look for yourselves.
Halloumi cheese is a lovely ingredient- salty and dense with a delicious crispy crust when fried. For this recipe, the chutney adds a salty-sweet contrast and the breadcrumbs add to the crunchiness.
First, beat 2 eggs in a bowl. Take out a large tablespoonful and put in another dish. Keep the majority of beaten egg for the pain perdu later.
Slice the hallomi into tranches about 1 cm thick. Dip them in flour. Mix the tablespoon of beaten egg with a tablespoon of chutney (fig, plum or even mango). Dip the slices into the egg mixture, then onto a plate of breadcrumbs. Coat well.
Flour, egg/chutney mix, breadcrumbs
Fry until golden
Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a non stick frying pan and fry the slices quickly until golden brown on both sides. Serve with a spinach salad.
Halloumi and chutney fritters
For the fish dish, first make your tomato sauce. This is so simple- but it makes the best tomato sauce for pasta or fish. Gently fry 1 small finely chopped onion with a little minced garlic. Put it in a slow cooker or heavy saucepan along with 2 cans of chopped tomatoes, seasoning and 100g of unsalted butter. Cover and leave to simmer for as long as you like.
The result is an unctuous, creamy tomato sauce - which you can sieve if you like it smooth, or leave chunky.
Tomato butter sauce- three (or four) ingredients!
Now make your mash- fry some slices of black pudding (leftover from a breakfast fry perhaps) and crumble into a bowl. Add 300g of mashed potato (or the equivalent of 1 baking potato per person ) and combine the two. Adjust the seasoning to your taste and either keep warm over a pan of simmering water or microwave for 1 minute per portion when you are ready to eat.
Right- mushy peas. OK- I bought mine tinned. They are excellent as they are.
You can make your own by blitzing some cooked peas to a puree (this has a fresher taste and a more vibrant colour).
Fresh blitzed peas and tomato sauce
To make authentic mushy peas from scratch, you need 225g dried marrowfat peas. Place the peas in a large bowl or stock pot, the peas will swell and so need plenty of room to expand. Add 2tbsp bicarbonate of soda and cover with 300ml / ½ pint boiling water and stir to make sure the bicarbonate has dissolved. Add the peas and leave to soak overnight, or for a minimum of 12 hours. Drain the peas in a colander, then place in a large saucepan, cover again with cold water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for approx 30 mins or until the peas have softened and turned mushy. You could use your slow cooker for this if you prefer. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve hot. You can see why I prefer to use tinned!
Mushy peas- the easy way!
Finally, cook your fish. Wrap the fillet in bacon or pancetta and fry on all sides until the bacon is crispy all over. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid to allow the fish to cook through in the residual heat and assemble your dish. Place a round of mash, topped with mushy peas in a dish. Place your fish on top and drizzle tomato sauce all round.
Bacon wrapped cod on black pudding mash with mushy peas and tomato butter sauce
Lastly, the pud. Take 2 slices of chocolate brioche per person and spread one half of the 'sandwich' with Nutella, jam or fresh fruit puree. Sandwich together. Beat the reserved egg with a splash of milk and some vanilla essence and then soak the sandwiches until all the egg has been absorbed.
Soak the sandwiches in the egg mixture
Melt a small knob of butter in a frying pan. Fry the sandwich quickly on both sides, cut in half and serve with cream, or ice cream and a dusting of icing sugar.
Chocolate brioche pain perdu
Any leftovers from this meal can be put to good use- tomato sauce has a plethora of uses from pasta dishes to chilli to salsa to baked potato fillings and
