Frugal Foodies, thread 3! Favourite leftover dishes, avoiding waste, menu ideas. Plus pets, and other chat.

[Ninkanink]

Hey everyone! 🌺🌼🌸

1st thread is here

2nd thread is here

Looking forward to another lovely thread! ☺️ Eat, drink and be merry!

So...
I ended up having Brie and bacon grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.

Roughly folllowing this recipe:

simply-delicious-food.com/crispy-bacon-brie-grilled-cheese-sandwich-caramelised-onions/

First time cooking and eating grilled cheese anything.

Was lovely if a little rich, while it's "only sandwiches" it's very filling so definitely for hungrier days!

I get 400g loaves as it's just me as I wouldn't get through 800g ones so I had 2 sandwiches.

Will definitely have again but it's absolutely for when you need filling up.

@Ninkanink the pie was a huge hit! Thanks for your advice. Roughly followed a newspaper recipe for chicken and pancetta pie but made up the rest.

Been busy gardening for a couple of days.
Dinner was mushroom and ksle pasts bake

@Weedsnseeds1 thank you for the chocolate orange bread pudding recipe! I made it yesterday - you are my new best friend

Does anyone have anything exciting to do with white cabbages?! We keep getting two or three in our veg box. I'm frying it with some butter and salt to bulk up meals a bit, otherwise it's a bit tasteless

I love "kebab shop cabbage".
Finely shred the cabbage (can be white or red), add lemon juice ( about 1 large fresh lemon or equivalent Jif lemon), splask of olive oil, good pinch of salt and finely ground pepper.
Kind of scrunch and massage the flavourings into the cabbage. It will start to soften and beak down a bit. Leave about an hour for flavours to meld, then eat with grilled meat and pita/flatbread.
Also good in stir fry, or coleslaw.

Keralan cabbage (recipe from the last Tesco magazine)

Make a paste from 1 tsp cumin seeds, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, 50g desiccated coconut. Or sub whatever spice paste you like.

Heat 1/2 tsp I crushed mustard seeds in a pan, and when they start to pop add in the spice paste.
After a minute, add shredded cabbage ( around 700g), a grated carrot, 4 sliced shallots and a finely sliced red chilli. Stir fry for about 5 mins.

You could eat it like that, but the recipe says cool for 15 mins before stirring through 100g natural yoghurt, lemon juice and fresh coriander.
I use chilli from a jar, and I’m always a bit heavy handed with it, so mine was very fiery!

I had it with tandoori salmon.

Home made coleslaw is my favourite thing to do with white cabbage. Cabbage is excellent in curries.
This works nicely with white cabbage.

thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/savoy-cabbage-black-kale-and-potato-subji-savoy-aloo-gobhi

Also, this cabbage pasta dish is lovely comfort food.

www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/emmas-cabbage-in-a-pasta

Ok total random one for you all!! I need some advice on silken tofu! Recieved a pack in my treat box yesterday and I haven't a clue what to do with it?

I can’t help with recipes because I can’t stand tofu so never eat it. But AFAIK in south Asia it’s used in soups, sauces, broths etc as opposed to frying or otherwise cooking with it.

My old colleague used to do a brilliant vegan cheesecake with silken tofu.

On the cabbage - put it under a roast chicken!! It's amazing. smittenkitchen.com/2020/04/roast-chicken-with-schmaltzy-cabbage/

And on the silken tofu:

• put it in a bowl, roughly broken, and warm in the microwave 30 seconds. Top with roasted salted peanuts, sliced spring onions, bombay mix if you have some, and fresh coriander. Make a dressing of chili oil (with sediment/chili crisp if you have it), soy sauce, sesame oil and a little water.

or

• put it on a plate in a whole block and cut into slices, push gently so they all fall back like dominoes. Cut an avocado into slices and arrange on top (or cucumber, or both). Top with fresh coriander, and dress with some watered-down soy sauce and sesame oil.

I've made veggoe/lentil type burgers before, using silken tofu as a binder to hold everything together

🙂

@magnarocks I’m glad you all liked the pie! I fancy one now, and we do have leftover chicken in the fridge...but that’s been earmarked for either a salad or a Thai soup...will have to think about it.

Oh do I love cabbage! I also always use some for fresh coleslaw. But also use it for lots of variations on bubble and squeak, stir fries, casseroles, and traditional sides. The recipe suggestions sound good, I’m definitely going to try them when we next have cabbage!

Silken tofu makes a fairly good mayonnaise too if you fancy it.

Birthday dinner for DH tonight is pork and apple burgers from the butcher, homemade sourdough rolls, fennel and apple salad with a mustard yoghurt dressing and watercress. Followed by chocolate fridge cake!
We have lots of greens in our veg box, wondering if they will work for some of these recipes? They are the hardy kind. Like the idea of it under chicken.

You can also make "ricotta" with silken tofu and put it in lasagne or on top of pizza or flatbreads.

Greens! I put my favourite recipe ever on the first thread - a skillet with greens, sausages, fennel seeds, onions, garlic and chili flakes if you like them. You fry up everything bar the greens in lots of olive oil, and then toss the greens (blanched, if they are on the hardier side like kale) through the garlickly, porky, fennelly, spicy oil. Eat with garlic bread or foccacia or something to wipe the pan with after you have inhaled. You can put away quite astonishing levels of greens with this recipe!

Inspired by the greens and tofu discussion, it was stir fry tonight with...tofu and greens! It was really good too.

Sounds great Xiao- will definitely do that and will just take sausages out for the kids before the greens stage as they won't eat them!.
Tomorrow is a fast day for me so it will be spinach soup for lunch and for dinner bean chilli. Will prob make a big batch and freeze, though I am doing that less as I cooking gives me structure each day! I have some Montezuma's chili chocolate that we dont like so will pop a bit of that in too.
I love firm tofu stir fry. I like it's wierd bland wobbliness contrasted with crispy flavoursome edges.

We have lots of salad potatoes (two veg box bags) any interesting suggestions?

We have lots of left over chocolate fridge cake, assuming this will keep forever in he fridge?

Went to check my raisin starter today which has gone a bit mad! It's ver active! Have attached a picture, along with the burger I had for dinner.

I really like salad potatoes in curry, especially coconut milk based ones. I made the cabbage and potato subji I linked to up thread with excess veg box salad potatoes. That was really lovely and froze well too.

Argh! Just went to eat the last of the banana loaf and it was foul! Bitter tasting! Spat it out but PLEASE tell me I'm not in for anything worse? Panicking

You’ll be fine. You need to ingest a fair bit before anything will happen to you. 🙂

Hope you're right! Last thing I need! Why though? The banana? Whatever made it so oily?

Probably just a bit of mould or yeast setting in, honestly nothing to worry about from a food safety point of view, just doesn't taste nice Graphista
That starterookz great Bestbees and I love the name

Thanks for the replies guys, I really hope you're right will keep you up to date

Graphista baked goods are rarely, if ever, imicayed in food poisoning outbreaks as they don't support the growth of pathogens very well

Thank you all for the cabbage recipes! I tried the pasta one from @PurpleDaisies today and it was very tasty plenty of cabbage left to experiment with...

Hope you are ok @Graphista - we made banana & raisin loaf today which I'm hoping will last us till the weekend - DP has already eaten his way through the courgette cake we made the other day Made chocolate black bean cake today too with DS1 (who hates all forms of vegetables with a passion) and he declared it 'the yummiest thing ever', a win for the beans!!