Just After Christmas ~ the Biggest Leftover-Fest of the Year!

OK chaps, time to stop lying around the place, let’s get to it.

This is the biggest leftover fest of the year; something that I and other food writers always bang on about just after Christmas but, you know, every little helps especially when it comes to help with eating really well!

Here are some ideas ...

Leftover Turkey

Firstly remove all the good usable meat from the turkey and use it in one of the following ways.

Turkey Fritters / Rissoles / Cakes

Finely chop leftover turkey and mix with leftover mashed potato. Form into cakes and shallow fry till crisp.

Turkey Curry 

... but not necessarily as you know it, Jim – see here for a quick, easy and different recipe. 

Turkey Sandwiches 

Obviously, with added stuffing and cranberry sauce OR they are good with  cranberry and Brie OR, as in this case, with roasted butternut squash.

Turkey Carcass

See here for  how to use every part of a chicken and act appropriately. Then maybe make some ...

Turkey Soup

I like to make this with leeks but onions work well too.

1 large leek or onion
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
2 large potatoes
turkey stock
reserved turkey scraps

~   Toss the leek or onion in the oil in a soup making sized pan over low heat.  Press a butter wrapper or piece of foil directly on top without burning yourself.  Cover the pan and cook gently till very tender.
~   Peel and thinly slice the potatoes and add to the pot.
~   Pour over just enough stock to cover the potatoes, bring to a boil, turn back to a simmer, cover the pot and cook till tender.
~   Mash the potatoes into the broth or you could run through the food processor for a smoother finish.
~   Add some cream if you wish. 
~   Taste, season and only now add the turkey scraps to the hot soup just to heat through.

This soup is based on my genius recipe which I have written a whole book on!

Leftover Gravy

~   This freezes well and, in fact, if you are also freezing some turkey meat it will fare particularly well if you freeze it in the gravy.

~   Stir leftover gravy into the soup above or use it in a turkey pie.

~   If your gravy is particularly delicious (and I trust that it is – if not see here to ensure that it is superb next time you make some) then serve hot as a dipping gravy – maybe alongside the turkey sarnies.

Leftover Stuffing

Boxing Day Fritters

Roll leftover stuffing into balls, flatten and put a spoonful of cranberry sauce in the middle, reform the ball enclosing the cranberry sauce completely. Dip in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and deep fry till hot, crisp and golden. Eat carefully as the cranberry will be very hot OR, if you’re scared of hot sauce, form the stuffing into cakes, fry till crisp and serve with cranberry sauce.

Make stuffing balls or sausage shapes and use instead of real sausages in Toad in the Hole. 

Add to turkey pies, sandwiches etc.

Leftover Bread Sauce

~   Another thing that is good to add to turkey sandwiches.

Bread Sauce Stuffed Mushrooms

Remove the stems from large open mushrooms and brush inside and out with oil. Fill with the bread sauce, sprinkle with soft fresh breadcrumbs and bake at 400ºF/200ºC/180C fan/gas 6 for 15-20 minutes till hot through and the top is crisp and golden. These are extra good drizzled with balsamic glaze.

General Christmas Leftovers

Christmas Pie

Turkey, gravy, stuffing balls, sausage-meat etc. topped with pastry or mash.

Bubble and Squeak

In short fry leftover potatoes together with other leftover veggies in a little oil till hot all through and with a crisp crust.  The secret (not really, you can tell anyone) to this is to let everything sit for a while over the heat before disturbing it to allow the crust form. You could add leftover sausage, turkey, ham, stuffing and/or top with a fried egg.

Make an Après Christmas Pizza with all the leftovers! If you feel cheese is needed then Brie is probably your best bet.

Leftover Christmas Pud

Fry thick slices of leftover Christmas Pudding in butter to reheat luxuriously. Serve with custard, cream or ice cream or, if it is still the season of goodwill, all three.

Christmas Pudding Sauce

Melt a knob of butter and a spoonful of brown sugar. Stir in crumbled Christmas pudding plus Brandy or Rum to taste and serve with ice cream

Make the best Christmas Pudding Ice Cream I know!

Leftover Marzipan

15 Delicious Ideas for Marzipan Trimmings right here!

Leftover Panettone & Stollen

These both make very good bread and butter pudding or manly bread pudding  or see here for a wonderful quick way to use Stollen. Actually it doesn't have to be "leftover" Stollen,  you could buy it on purpose!

A couple of days ago I hit upon the most perfect breakfast ever – Stollen gently fried in butter and topped, in this case, with thick brandied cream (although I think other creams such as double or clotted would work well too).

Panettone makes good French Toast.

See here for how to make French Toast and ignore the bit about coating in panko crumbs, if you like!

There are lots and lots more ideas for almost every leftover you can think of in "Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers" which, like a dog, is not just for Christmas!

Have a Look Inside here.

15 Delicious Ideas for Marzipan Trimmings

I have just marzipanned our Christmas cake and find I have an unseemly amount of trimmings, This doesn't faze me one little bit because there are so many delicious ways to use the leftovers.  In case you find yourself in a similar situation here are my ideas ...

Cook’s Treat – this is your absolute right so feel free to nibble away to your heart’s content.

Stuffed Dates – just remove the stones from dates (if someone hasn’t done it already) and insert a nugget of marzipan.

Marzipan Balls 

Santa brought these for my real man last year and he loved them so much I think it will become a tradition. Just roll the leftover marzipan into balls and dip in melted chocolate. This also produces some cooks treats during production.

Marzipan Sculptures

If you are of an artistic bent then make marzipan fruits or other “sculptures” and decorate as appropriate. Here's my pathetic effort - must try harder!

Marzipan Sprinkles

Bake little scraps of marzipan in a medium oven, say 180ºC/350°F/160ºC fan/gas 4 ish, until crisp, they won’t take long, then crumble over things such as ice cream or Affogato.

Chewy Marzipan Cookies

To be honest this recipe uses a whole pack of marzipan but you could either halve the recipe or buy a pack specially to make them – because they’re worth it.

2 egg whites
70g-90g icings sugar – sifted
pinch salt
500g marzipan – finely chopped or grated
a little more icing sugar

~   Preheat the oven to 160ºC/325°F/140ºC fan/gas 3.
~   Line 2 baking trays with greaseproof or baking parchment and grease lightly.
~   Whisk the egg whites till pretty damn frothy but not so that you have a meringue situation.
~   Slowly whisk in the sugar, salt and marzipan speed up and whisk to a soft sticky dough which is as smooth as poss.  You may need to add more sugar or, if too firm, perhaps a splash of rum; the texture of bought in marzipan seems to vary quite a lot.
~   Scoop into small balls, roll in icing sugar to coat and place well-spaced (4cm or so apart) on the baking trays, they will spread during cooking.
~   Bake for 20-25 minutes till golden round the edge and cracking on the top.

Marzipan Ice Cream

200g white marzipan
500ml double cream
50ml Amaretto or brandy
200g condensed milk
maybe some inclusions ~ chocolate chips, toasted almonds, dried cherries, for instance

~   Coarsely grate the marzipan and then heat gently with the cream till melted.  Cool to completely cold.
~   Whisk together the marzipanned cream and the liqueur to thick.
~   Fold in the condensed milk plus any inclusions.
~   Freeze.

This recipe comes from my book Luscious Ice Creams without a Machine, which gives over 100 no-churn ice cream recipes including how to make the cherry ice cream in the ice cream sandwich above.

Mince Pies 

... become even richer and deliciouser with a little grated or finely chopped marzipan added to the mincemeat.

Marzipan Enhanced Fruit Tart 

To make a deliciously different fruit tart add a layer of marzipan.

~   Preheat oven to  200°C/400°F/180ºC fan/gas 6.

~   Roll out the leftover marzipan to size and lay it in the base of the tart case. 

~   Top with your chosen fruit, sliced peaches are lovely as are pears.  

~   Sprinkle with a little sugar and bake for about 20 minutes till the pastry is crisp and brown and the fruit is tender and starting to caramelise.

Alternatively make a …

Frangipane Fruit Tart!

Good Housekeeping have a great Pear-Frangipane Tart recipe here.

Fruit Crumble with Marzipan

This is my basic crumble mix, which is enough to top about 750g fruit to serve 4 people, with added marzipan. Cherries are particularly good topped with this and served with clotted cream.

240g plain flour
160g cold butter or margarine
120g sugar
150g grated marzipan

~   Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350°F/160ºC fan/gas 4.

~   Rub together the flour and butter till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
~   Stir in the sugar and the marzipan.
~   Sprinkle the mixture over raw or cooked fruit in a shallow ovenproof dish.
~   Bake till the fruit is hot (and cooked if using raw) and the crumble is crisp and golden.
~   Serve hot or cold.

Marzipan Scones – see here for my very flexible scone recipe and after making the dough gently fold in leftover marzipan cut into small dice.

Marzipan Pancakes

Make thick fluffy pancakes, the recipe is here. Whilst the first side is cooking coarsely grate over some marzipan. This way, when flipped, it will have a chance to soften and go golden without overdoing it.

Stollen – I feel I should give a recipe for Stollen here but as I haven’t made it for years ‘n’ years see here for how to make the Perfect Stollen.  

Save the marzipan till Easter and make Simnel Cake!

If I can think of all these ideas for leftover marzipan don't you wonder what I've come up with for the othr 449 potential leftovers in my book Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers?

Look inside here!

I Agree with Baroness Jenkin ~ a bit!

I agree with Baroness Jenkin that “poor people do not know how to cook”...

... or at least quite a few of them don’t but I’d go further than the Baroness.  I don’t think all rich people know either, nor many of the middling sort of chaps and this is something I’ve been banging on about for some while.

Several years ago I remember some “fact” in the media stating that people (it didn't say how rich they were) can’t cook these days because my generation was the last to learn by watching their mothers do it. I sometimes watched my Mum and probably picked up a few ideas but for the most part I am self-taught and I have to say it was a piece of quite easy and I have written several blog posts on this very subject, such as ...

~   10 (+ 2)Commandments of Cooking Well
~   Do Yourself a Favour ~ Learn to Cook!
~   In Defense of Jamie Oliver! 

I am also trying in my very humble way to get some helpful info out there in the form of ebooks – this one is free, the others are just cheap - see them on Amazon for kindle versions or Smashwords for all sorts of formats including pdf.

Just Click Here

In an interview by Marks and Spencer, no less, I was asked what had been the inspiration behind my blog and writing. I knew the answer immediately – irritation.  I am amazed, discombobulated and yes, irritated by all the things people don’t know about food, eating, cooking, best before dates and so on.

I often joke that cooking is just cutting things up and making them hot. I realise there is a fair bit more to it than that but cooking really is not at all difficult. I am not suggesting that everyone should learn to cook like … I dunno … Heston Blumenthal or Ottolenghi (or me?!) but it would be time very well invested indeed to learn how to feed yourself quickly, easily, economically, deliciously and to your very own tastes.

I take on board that, as Jack Monroe points out, some homes don’t have cooking facilities other than a microwave and do sympathise (very much) with people in such a situation.  If it was me, though, I would put that microwave through its paces because you actually can cook some pretty good meals in them.  I haven’t written anything on this but lots of people have, a quick search on Amazon for “microwave cooking” revealed 3,221 results. There’s got to be some useful info there and, of course, you can get most of these books from the library so even if you are poor you can afford to read them.

As Baroness Jenkin also said ...

"Life is considerably cheaper if you are able to cook."

... to which I would add that it is also considerably more pleasant and more healthy.

In short, if you like yourself and want to make yourself healthy, happy and maybe a little richer – stop making excuses and get cooking! (Oops I hope I don’t have to resign after saying that!)

I am assembling a collection of useful articles to help with cooking in a Flipboard Magazine entitled "Learn to Cook"! (did you guess?)

Why Roasting your Veg for Christmas Dinner is Such a Good Idea!

Like everyone we are, of course, stocking up food for Christmas and my real man is, to be frank, going right over the top!  He loves Christmas, mainly because of the food, and he is also a very traditional guy wanting everything his “Mam used to make”. So we not only have cupboards full of nuts and dates and chocolate and marzipan and so, and not only is he making his own trifle (he won’t risk my doing something fancy to it) but Christmas dinner will be, you know, the usual.  In detail ...

Roast Turkey
Homemade Stuffing
Bread Sauce
Sausagemeat
Mashed Potatoes
Veggies
Gravy
Cranberry Sauce
... and possibly Mushy Peas – I haven’t checked with him on this yet!

I, on the other hand, am not a huge meat eater (and turkeys are made of meat) and like excitement and contrast in my meals so roasting my veggies is the go for me.

Please pin for easy reference!

Roasting vegetables ...

~   Makes them crisp and crunchy,
~   Caramelises their juice in a wonderful way,
~   Intensifies their flavour,
~   Can be seasoned with whatever you fancy – garlic or spice or whatever,
~   Brightens their colours for a fab looking meal,
~   Can be cooked alongside the meat so don’t need much last minute attention.  

The Basics

~   In short you prepare your vegetables, cut them into similar sized pieces, toss with a little olive oil, season to taste and roast at 200°C/400°F/180ºC fan/gas 6 or thereabouts till crisp on the outside and tender on the inside.
~   Don’t overcrowd the pan too much – you need dry heat to crisp the edges, it they are too close together the vegetables will steam.
~   If you want to speed things up a bit cover the dish with foil and cook till the veggies are tender and then remove the foil and perhaps up the heat a little to brown and crispen.

Some ideas ...

Roasted Butternut Squash with Sweet Onion and Chilli

1 medium butternut squash
1 medium red onion
2 tbsp olive oil
chilli flakes to taste (or maybe black pepper instead)
sea salt

~   Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/180ºC fan/gas 6.
~   Peel the squash, cut in half, discard the seeds and cut the flesh into large dice – about 25mm/1 inch.
~   Peel the onion and cut into slivers.
~   Toss the squash and onion together with the olive oil, chilli flakes and sea salt.
~   Spread in a shallow layer in a roasting pan and cook for 30 minutes till completely tender and the onion is just starting to char. 
~   Stir occasionally during cooking and if any onions slivers seem to be getting overcooked before the squash is ready set them aside and stir back in at the end.

Leftovers are great tossed with pasta or as a pizza topping.

Roasted Carrots

This is a particularly good way to cook little Chantenay carrots. Just follow the basic guidelines above.

Click here for some other good ways to use these little darlings, and ...

Honeyed Roasted Parsnips

Same again really but about 10 minutes before they are ready to serve drizzle in a little honey, roll the parsnips in the sticky juices and return to the oven for the final few minutes.  Maple syrup works well too here depending on what you are serving them with.

Or try a mix of your favourite veggies all together, so long as they are similarly sized and inclined to cook in the same amount of time you won’t go far wrong. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, red onion and butternut squash is a pretty and delicious combination.

Root vegetables do roast most marvellous well but so do others veggies, for instance ...

Brussels Sprouts (and Bacon)

Brussels sprouts often seem to be for display purposes only!  Many people want them on the plate at Christmas but then leave them. Roasting helps them to get eaten. 

Prepare the sprouts as usual, removing any yellowish leaves, halve or quarter if they are large, toss with olive oil, season and roast at the usual temperature shaking from time to time for about 35 to 40 minutes till tender and crusty.  Bacon goes awfully well with these so perhaps fry some bacon strips till crispy (you can do this hours in advance) and toss them with the sprouts for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Black pepper is good too.

Roasted Cauliflower 

This was a revelation to me which I posted about here. The cauliflower was transformed and became sweet, nutty and fascinating. 

The first time I tried this I sliced the cauli and it does look impressive but florets work well this way too. 

In Other News ...

I would, of course, just like to mention my Christmas book!

Catering for Christmas can be time consuming, tiring and a bit stressy, so I thought I’d offer some suggestions to make it quicker, easier, more relaxed and perhaps more impressive!

Read more here.