~ Menu ~
Lovely Vegetable Soup
Croutons
White
Wine Spritzer
½ a
Pastry Thing with Clotted Cream & Fresh Fruit
Coffee
This would look good on Pinterest don't you think? |
This lovely meal was made entirely of leftovers most of which a lesser woman than I may well have thrown away! They comprised:
~ A
few stalks of asparagus (I’d eaten the tips)
~
Some really old baby leeks that we bought cheap as they were out of date
about a month ago (seriously!) which were fine after I pulled off the outer
leaves.
~ A
mislaid mystery potato which my friend Jenny from Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb & Ginger thinks is an Apache Potato
and I think she is right.
~
Some leftover peas from last night’s dinner.
~
Ham stock after cooking a ham – obviously!
~
The stale end crust off my real man’s loaf of bread (yes we eat
different breads most of the time too!)
~ A
pastry trimming which I cooked alongside my manly man’s pie for dinner but had
no particular plans for it.
~
The last one of my doughnut peaches.
~ Half
a punnet of blueberries I stuck in the freezer the other day as I couldn’t think
what to do with them. When I thawed them this morning were all mushy and wet.
~ A handful of fresh blueberries.
~ A handful of fresh blueberries.
~
Two days out of date clotted cream.
Even the wine was the very end of a bottle so had to be augmented with sparkling water!
The specifics …
Summery Vegetable Soup
~ I coarsely chopped the leeks and cooked them as I would cook onions till soft and sweet.
~
When they were buttery tender I peeled and sliced the potato and added
it to the leeks.
~ I
poured enough ham stock to just cover the potato, brought to a boil, turned
down the heat, covered and simmered till almost tender.
~
Coarsely chopped the asparagus (discarding the woody ends) and added to
the soup for the last few minutes of cooking.
~
When all was tender I mashed it with my and then
stirred in the peas and enough cream to make a soupy consistency.
How to Make Croutons
See here for my Crouton Philosophy, in this case I left out the balsamic vinegar.
Lunch Pudding
After making my real man his second pie of
the week (!) I had just a small square of leftover, (and yes, bought in) puff
pastry so I bunged it in the oven alongside the pie. No skin off my nose after all! It has been sitting around for a couple of
days.
I cooked the mushy blueberries with a spoonful of sugar till they burst and then strained them through a nylon sieve. The peach was just a peach. The clotted cream tasted fine when I stuck my finger in it. I am not a great adherent of best before dates except where raw meat is concerned. And just look at this …
I cooked the mushy blueberries with a spoonful of sugar till they burst and then strained them through a nylon sieve. The peach was just a peach. The clotted cream tasted fine when I stuck my finger in it. I am not a great adherent of best before dates except where raw meat is concerned. And just look at this …
Not bad for Leftovers! The reason I only had half is that this is the sort of food we both like, damn it!
Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers
I love cooking with leftovers, to me they are are not just something that you reheat and eat again – they are ingredients, inspiration, maybe a cook’s treat or the start of a different and delicious new meal.
For this reason I have written a book, Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers, giving every recipe, idea, handy tip, cook's treat, storage info and food pairing idea I can think of for 450 potential leftovers.
4 comments:
That soup is the food of the gods so far as I am concerned. I currently have two leeks sitting doing nothing in the fridge and soup is at the top of my mind - but it's just too hot to make it, even if I then cool it and have chilled soup! I suppose they'll wait - anyway, I've gone off eating right now, unless it's a chilled prawn accompanied by some lamb's lettuce. LOL
Oh and by the way - thank you for the mention. :D
You're welcome as heck, Jenny!
You did an amazing work with leftovers! Delightful soup! Thanks for coming and linking up at The Weekend Social. All posts get pinned in our pinterest board! Please be sure to come back next week starting Thursdays at 9PM EST on culinaryflavors.gr ! I hope to see you there!
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