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Lovely lunch for 15p!

~  Menu  ~

Pease Pudding Soup
Multigrain Bread
Glass of Fizzy Water


This week is the Live Below the Line Challenge an initiative of the Global Poverty Project; the challenge is to spend no more than £1 per person per day on food and drink for 5 days.  I apologise for not mentioning this before but have only just become aware of it - good luck to everyone taking part.

Actually I myself personally eat so very frugally (and deliciously) I think I would often be hard pushed to eat cheaper and am sure I am often well below £1 a day although to be fair I do have a small appetite!

For lunch today I had pease pudding soup - every week or two I cook my Geordie lad a piece of ham and use some of the stock to make pease pudding  

A bag of split peas costs 49p for 500g.  I cook half a bag per batch so say 25p and this makes enough pease pudding accompany my darling's ham dinners say 3 times plus sufficient for a soup or a curry for me, that's 25p divided 4 so say 6.5p.  

The stock is a by product and possibly costs nothing as it is only water and seeped out ham juice.  I use 1 small onion.  

We recently bought a bag of little 'culinary' red onions for 12p reduced from £1.20 and as it contained um ... quite a few lets say 1p for the onion which is a bit high I think.  Incidentally these onions are still perfectly fine although about 3 weeks past their best before date.  

bag of red onions

I used an abstemious amount of olive oil to cook the onion and, the stock being salty, nothing was spent on salt although I did have myself a sprinkle of black pepper. 

 So my bowl of delicious, homemade soup cost 7.5p, let's be generous and say 15p with the slice of toast I ate with it.  

pease pudding soup and garlic bread

This is typical of the way I eat but the funny thing is although we could no way claim to be flush with money I cook this sort of thing because I like it!  I am always telling my darling that if he wasn't so fond of meat and was more fond of 'interesting flavours' I could feed him much more cheaply but he loves his manly meals and at least I get to be creative with the leftovers.

I drank a glass of fizzy water with this - 17p for 2 ltrs so negligible really.  I only have it because I find sparkling more refreshing than still.


Incidentally I saw this good idea for storing onions on Pinterest ...

storing onions in a steamer basket

Speaking of best before - we had some of the best rhubarb ever, which I made into a crumble (recipe here), the other day.  It was sweet and tender, juice and very pink.  It cost 30p instead of the original £3.00 but I didn't cook it for a few days and it was still as perfect can be.

fresh rhubarb




How to Make Grattons, Schmaltz and Gribenes

My romantic old darling brought me home a duck last night and I am making many plans for it because he says I can eat it all myself!!  I'm not much of a meat eater but I do love a duck! 

I have decided to confit the legs (plus another two I have in the freezer) and roast or pan fry the breasts in a couple of wonderful ways and I also might make some duck soup of the Chinese persuasion or maybe ... ooh I don't know, more about the results of these plans later including how to confit duck legs.  However the idea of confitting sent my mind running along skin and fat in general and duck and chicken skin and fat in particular. 

Of course it goes without saying that  all leftover duck fat resulting from roasting a duck should be set aside in the fridge and used to roast potatoes which will then be remarkably delicious. 

Bits of leftover chicken skin can just be popped into a hot oven till crisp and served as a nibble or garnish.

Grattons


a bowl of duck skin grattons
These are diced duck skin with any adhering fat which have been fried (boiled in oil according to one Gascon recipe I recently read) till crisp, then seasoned and served as a snack or garnish.  I have often done a similar thing when serving duck breasts in a restaurant situation - I remove the skin, toss with salt and pepper and olive oil, spread them on a baking tray and cook in the always on hot oven till crisp.  They make a fine crunchy contrast to the tender breast meat.
spoonful of schmalts

Schmaltz


This is a Yiddish term for rendered chicken fat (pronounced שמאַלץ according to Wikipedia!) and is essential in many kosher dishes such as chopped liver and matzo balls or sometimes just eaten on toast instead of butter.  As with duck fat a small amount can result from roasting a chicken, especially a fatty one, but it is easy and well worthwhile to make it on purpose too.  Gather together, in the freezer is fine, enough fatty chicken skin to make the job worthwhile and then ...

~   Chop the skin and fat in 10mm or so pieces.
~   Spread over the bottom of a preferably non-stick frying pan, cover and cook over gentle heat for 10-15 minutes until the fat starts to render out and pool in the pan.
~   Remover the lid, turn up the heat to medium and continue cooking till there is plenty of melted fat at the skin is curly and starting to turn brown, maybe another 15 minutes.
~   Turn off the heat and allow to cool a little then strain through a metal seive - the melted fat is the schmaltz; cool to room temperature and then store in the fridge till needed.
~   Don't throw away the skin - now is the time to make ...

Gribenes


chicken skin gribenes

~   Return the skin to the still oily pan and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring till it starts browning again.
~   Add about and equal quantity of thinly sliced onion and cook together till all are crisp and golden.
~   Season with salt and pepper
~   Using a slotted spoon carefully lift the gribenes from any malted fat in the pan then spread them out on a piece of kitchen roll to drain and cool.
~   Add any remaining fat in the pan to the cooling schmaltz, it will taste even better than before.

leftover food cookbook


In other news ...

1.   If these are just a few of the suggestions I can think of for leftover skin and fat don't you wonder what ideas I have for the other 450 potential leftovers in my book Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers?





Squidgy Chocolate Meringues!


Whenever I roast a chicken my real man has it with all the trimmings (potatoes, homemade bread sauce, homemade stuffing, veggies, real gravy and cranberry sauce) but I just have some breast meat with butternut squash roasted with red onion and chilli plus a little gravy.  Today the leftover spicy sweet roasted butternut was excellent mixed into mayonnaise with some diced chicken and served with delicious homemade sourdough

leftover-butternut-squash

Incidentally, see here for a lovely Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash Mayonnaise recipe.

Lunch pudding was one of my luscious ...

Chocolate Meringues


175g dark chocolate
2 large room temperature egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
50g caster sugar

chocolate-meringue-recipe
~   Break up the chocolate and put into a small bowl and stand it in a small pan of boiling water to come about a third of the way up the bowl.  If your bowl is plastic it is a good idea to stand it on a metal jam jar lid or similar to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan.
~   Simmer the water until the chocolate is melted and then stir till smooth. 
~   Cool a little but it should still be runny.
~   Preheat your oven to
350ºF/180ºC/160°C fan/gas 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment or a  non stick liner.
~   Whisk the egg
whites together with the cream of tartar (abiding by the rules of meringue making here) to soft peaks.
~  
Add the vanilla extract and then, still whisking, gradually add the sugar and whisk to stiff peaks.
~  
Add the cooled chocolate and fold in gently, gently to till all merged together. 
~  
Immediately drop teaspoonfully onto the parchment a couple of centimetres apart and bake till shiny and cracked – about 15-20 minutes.
This recipe is taken directly from the chapter on Inclusions, Complimentary Stuff & Ancillary Recipes in my book Luscious Ice Cream without a Machine.

In Other News ...

1.   The reason I had two glasses of wine (other than I wanted to) is that there has been a bit of a cock up in the distribution of my "real" book, The Leftovers Handbook, department; people are still waiting for delivery, and I am in a Bad Mood!  Not surprisingly I cheered up after lunch!


ultimate guide to using up leftovers


News from the future ... by book is now in its second edition  and is called Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers.  In it I give all the information, ideas, recipes, handy hints, cook’s treats, storage info, ideas of what goes with what that I can think of for over 450 possible leftovers. 


Me and my Inner Womble!


The 'flu bug I had ages ago affected my appetite, my energy to cook and therefore the amount of leftovers I had for some considerable time.  The last few days, however, I feel that me and my inner womble are back on form.
madame cholet the womble

Wombles, as you know, can't abide human wastefulness but they do appreciate the good food scraps that our species throw away because the burrow's cook, Madame Cholet ( pictured) is a dab hand at making great meals out of leftovers.  Unfortunately, however, a large percentage of the human race don't live near Wimbledon which is why, hopefully, this blog and my book, Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers, come in useful.  

Yesterday's Lunch ....

Pease Pudding Curry!
Rice
Cashews
Sparkling Water

Pease Pudding Curry (Geordie-Indian Sub Continent Fusion) was quick, easy and delicious.  One of my storecupboard staples is Patak's Madras Curry Paste.  I cooked half an onion my favourite way and, when it was soft and starting to caramelise, I stirred in a teaspoonful of said curry paste.  Once that started to smell so delicious that my Real Man asked "pooh, what's that stink?" I stirred in the leftover pease pudding (the amount you see in the picture) and a little leftover ham stock to soften it a bit. 


dal, rice and cashew nuts


Today's Lunch ...

panko crusted potato cake
Boursin Stuffed, Panko Crusted Potato Cake
White Wine Spritzer 

This just came about because I only had two large potatoes left last night when cooking mashed potatoes for dinner. One was too small, two was too much. Today I mixed a dollop of roasted garlic mayonnaise into the leftover mash, wrapped it round a remanant of Boursin (garlic and herb), rolled it in panko crumbs (lots more to do with panko crumbs here) fried and ate it.
Both my lunches were truly delicious, both were made out of leftovers and both were decided on the spur of the moment.

seriously useful leftovers cookbook
Read more here.


Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers  


All the recipes, ideas, hints, suggestions, information etc. I can think of for over450 potential leftovers. Madame Cholet would be proud of me!