Frugal Foodies, thread 2! Favourite leftover dishes, avoiding waste, menu ideas.

[Ninkanink]

Hey everyone!

1st thread is here

Hope that link worked! I’ve never done it that way before...

💐 and 🍰 and ☕️ to all!

You can make this bread salad to go with roast meat, it's amazing! food52.com/recipes/56344-zuni-cafe-bread-salad-with-currants-pine-nuts-scallions-roasted-chicken

I know it says "not sourdough" but I've used all sorts over the years and it always seems to work fine.

We have leftover roast lamb too and I was going to curry it, but Pegase you have given me the idea to do a fakey takeaway kebab by frying the meat with baharat, and making pita bread then serving with chili and garlic sauce, pickled chilis, salad etc.

@ptumbi isn’t is amazing how long squashes last! I’ve sometimes had them kicking about for months before remembering them and they’ve been absolutely fine.

Spanish Garlic Soup? www.allrecipes.com/recipe/237498/chef-johns-spanish-garlic-soup-sopa-de-ajo/

xiaoxiong they look lovely.

@Xiaoxiong baharat lamb was delicious- especially with melty onions

Just made us a lovely simple salad for lunch with a bag of salad leaves and a tin of tuna. Jazzed it up with a homemade dressing of grated ginger (from the freezer), lime juice (bottle in the fridge), white wine vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of dried chilli flakes and some coriander that I've just planted out in a tub in the garden. Absolutely delicious and tasted a lot more extravagant than it looked!

My butternut pasta sauce last night was a bit insipid. The cream in the fridge was off, so I had to leave that out. But I made the leftovers into soup for lunch and added in some wilted spinach, a good squeeze of lime, and topped with sprinkly seeds. Granary toast with butterbean pate which has now been mixed into the leftover humous tub.

Dinner will be Jamie's hungover noodles (spicy ramen basically)

cricketmum that sounds amazing! I was just thinking how much I missed a salad. It's been a lot of meat & two veg or pulses/grains round here recently (meat dumplings notwithstanding!) Yours sounds lovely and I love the idea of going the ginger/lime/coriander direction rather than the more usual mayo.

I’m missing huge salads and the fresh side of fruit and veg something fierce right now. I’m truly not complaining as we have plenty of good food, and ultimately we have made our decision to not go to the shops at all unless it’s absolutely essential and this is directly related to that decision, but goodness it’s amazing to think of how spoilt for choice we ordinarily are.

We had a lovely lunch today. Had some sausage meat and a roll of pastry in the freezer since Christmas and a bottle of hoisin sauce that's been in the fridge since well, no idea!

I made these pork and apple sausage rolls. They were delicious! We had them with some simple cucumber, cherry toms and grated carrots for a fresh hit and they felt terribly naughty!

Recipe in case anyone wants

Sheet of puff pastry
Pack of sausage meat (350-400g)
Apple cored and peeled chopped finely
Spoonful of dried thyme
Hoisin sauce
1 beaten egg

Mix together sausage meat, apple, thyme, salt and pepper. Split into two.
Cut pastry in half into two long strips. Brush a spoonful of hoisin sauce down the middle. Length of sausage meat down middle and bring one pastry edge up over sausage meat and brush with beaten egg then bring other edge up bit more brushed egg.

Cut each roll into 4 pieces. Put on baking paper on oven trays fold side down with 3 slashes with sharp knife on top of each roll then brush tops with egg and top with nigella seeds/sesame seeds or dried chilli flakes.

Bake at 200 (fan) for 20 mins

Scoff

Good to see you back, @Xiaoxiong!

(Or maybe you’ve been on the thread already and I’ve just missed it? I haven’t yet sat down and read through the whole thing...

In any case, I feel it’s time for 🌻 and 🌷 and 🍩 and ☕️ for all!

We did Lamb Schwarma for our Easter lunch here. I've made it before and it's always delicious and so so easy! I can't get ground cardamon locally so grind my own from the pods but worth it for the smell!

It was delicious and I used the left over lamb by putting it in my slow cooker with some frozen onions, lamb stock cube, tin of toms and a fried off aubergine. Left it bubbling for most of the day then added some orzo pasta (cooked) Left for another hour and then had that with some left over flatbreads and tzatiki - it tasted very Greek and was yum.

Only have a picture of the Schwarma though

Recipe here - https://www.recipetineats.com/slow-cooked-lamb-shawarma/comment-page-1/

That salad dressing sounds delicious cricket! Have saved that in my notes ready - love ginger!

I bought a couple of blocks of halloumi with my last shop, any suggestions for how to use these for an evening meal? Would gladly just fry it all and eat it but that doesn't really seem in the spirit of things

You could fry it, but mix with roasted vegetables and scrappy bits of bread (doesn't have to be pita): www.bonappetit.com/story/pita-chip-salad-for-kids

You could put it into fritters - here's a recipe for courgettes but you can use potato, steamed cauliflower, even beetroot: www.telegraph.co.uk/recipes/0/courgette-halloumi-mint-fritters-mint-yogurt-salad-recipe/

Or you could just fry it all and eat it...

Yes Nink sorry for my absence so far on the thread, I dropped off trying to make easter special for the kids and not spend too much time on here. Also I got roped into a collective virtual run from Land's End to John O'Groats for our local hospice that has no income all of a sudden...trying to run a 5k every day! Ugh...

Also DH has rebelled and said we're eating too many brassicas and beans again. I think his digestive system just needs to man up!! How would he have survived centuries ago?!

@Xiaoxiong those dumplings look amazing wish I had such neat fingers. I'm also trying 5K a day but it has been too hot for me until yesterday.

Veg box arrived with lots of lovely chard and cavolo nero so I expect my DC will be complaining about too much greenery and beans soon. I got a few sausages out of the freezer yesterday. If they have defrosted we'll have pasta in a sausagemeat and grated carrot sauce. If not then I have a sad looking tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce to mix in with the left over beans from saturdays cod which I can add to some mince from the freezer to make an weird chilli of some sort.

Box also had more fennel so I'll probably remake the salad I made last week as DC ate that quite happily.

This thread is proving useful as a diary!

I made the tart Friday, can I still use the leftover pastry? I’m thinking some kind of vegetable pasties as something fairly easy. Difficult as I don’t know how much “filling” to make because I don’t know how far the pastry I have left will go. I was planning a stir fry for dinner tonight, is it completely bonkers to do stir fry flavoured pasties?

Wrote that before I read @Impatientwino post about hoi sin sausage rolls so I’m thinking stir fry pasties maybe not completely bonkers!

I also have fond memories of veggie schwarmas while living overseas so I’ve made a note of the spices to try my own at some point.

That way if I’ve too much “filling” I just eat for dinner, if I need more for dinner easy enough to make more? Is that crazy?

Or I’ve also some of the stroganoff mix in the fridge (stored without stirring in creme fraiche) would that work in a pasty?

I’ve also quorn bacon (chilled not frozen) dated 12 April that I’m feeling quite wary of using! Thoughts please?

Sorry for not posting yesterday was feeling a bit low.

Had some of the sausage casserole made Sunday with chips for dinner, took ages to cook to piping hot but lovely once done. 2 more portions frozen.

@IJumpedAboardAPirateShip I assume you are making things like soup for lunches? Sandwiches can get a bit boring every day. Omelettes? Pastry things like pasties and sausage rolls? Bulking out leftovers?

@RubySlippers77 can the dc be taste testers while you’re cooking? Or dp?

@Igneococcus the baguettes looked AMAZING. So in awe of all your cooking/baking skills. I’m just an average home cook/baker.

Halloumi is delicious a boss introduced me to it over 20 years ago well before it became popular. He grilled it in the toaster, then drizzled with olive oil and served with chopped sun dried tomatoes, olives and capers as a snack most days.

No one need apologise for having other things going on IRL or absence for a day or two! I’m sure I’ve not been in touch for a couple of days here and there...This is a chilled, happy and very relaxed thread where people can drift in and out as and when and be welcomed as friends.

@Graphista stroganoff pasties sounds amazing! I’d happily eat the quorn bacon for several days yet...

I'm just conscious of the egg in quorn products, I used some bacon a day past date last time but couldn't bring myself to use the rest 2 days past. Only a couple "rashers" but still...

Actually...quorn bacon and mushroom stroganoff pasties sounds appealing!

Bacon & mushrooms go great together!

That would easy use half a pack bacon then other half + veggies in a stir fry for dinner.

Yes, perfect combo!

I’ll defer to @weeds but in the meantime I presume that the fact it’s rehydrated egg white would mean it’s processed to such an extent that it’s not a concern.

Well I'm not sure, I think I'll risk it. Hate waste.

@Londonmummy66 thank you for mentioning fennel, I forgot I have two bulbs languishing from last week's veg box - mix with orange for tomorrow's lunch, and that scratches the salad itch too! And a perfect excuse to break out my mandoline

Dinner tonight is a roast chicken, to make it stretch between the 4 of us with enough leftovers for tomorrow I decided to stuff it. I fried up some things that have been lurking far too long in the fridge: 150g elderly chorizo (other half used almost 3 weeks ago to make sweetcorn & chorizo muffins), a very wrinkly red pepper, and 200g finely diced potato (that I had to break the shoots off) with some flat leaf parsley from the freezer. Not something I've done before but my absolute number one favourite cookbook says it will work...! I'll keep you all posted. I generally think that anything with chorizo turns out pretty good...

Leftover chicken (if any) will then be eaten with the fennel salad for lunch, and carcass boiled up for stock for my next trick which is finally to make that pearl barley risotto suggested to me at the very beginning of the last thread!

@Xiaoxiong - do you have the recipe for the chorizo and sweetcorn muffins - I now have eggs again so I feel like doing some baking and have some chorizo to use up?