Using up the bits and bobs

I'm going to cheat today and post a couple of recipes I used over the weekend that are terrific for padding out and using up leftovers, providing they start unadulterated. By which I mean they won't help if you have leftover cauliflower cheese or lobster thermidore, but are great for the end of a roast and the leftover vegetables from the same meal.

Chicken caesar pasta

Very easy, this. All quantities are approximate.

Ingredients:
250g pasta
Left over roast chicken for 5 (on the light side if necessary), chopped.
Vegetables for 5 (anything that cooks quickly that you may happen to have about), chopped.
half a small tub of creme fraiche
a few grinds of pepper
parmesan shavings
balsamic vinegar.

Boil water for pasta and tip the pasta in once boiling; then put on the lid and turn off the heat. Set the timer for advertised cooking-time less 5 minutes; when it beeps, drop in the chopped vegetables and chicken and put the lid back on quick. Leave it for the remaining 5 minutes.

While you wait, put the creme fraiche in a big bowl and grind in a little pepper. Amuse yourself making interesting parmesan shavings using a block of parmesan and a vegetable peeler.

Drain the pasta and bits, plop into the bowl with the sauce, mix well and sprinkle with parmesan shavings. Serve with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

My 6 year old had three helpings of this!

Left-over lamb stew (based on the summer lamb stew recipe in Good Meals on a Small Budget by Gladys Mann, 1964).

Ingredients:
leftover scraps of lamb
a few carrots, chopped to baby-carrot size
a couple of spring onions, chopped
left-over spring veg of any other kind (peas, beans, greens etc)
Lamb stock
mint sauce

Put the lamb stock in a saucepan with the lamb, spring onion and carrots; bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the other veg and leave for 5 minutes with the heat off and the lid on. Stir in a teaspoon of mintsauce just before you serve. If you find the gravy a little thin, thicken with two teaspoons of cornflour and water. Serve with mashed potatoes.

I have also served the lamb with new potatoes cooked in the stew - just place small new potatoes in at the same time as the carrots and carry on regardless.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme. Or not, since none of the children (or His Lordship, come to that) will tolerate bony fish.

Fish is complicated in this house, because Middlingest child won't countenance anything that looks like a lump of fish, but will eat tinned mackerel, sardines, pilchards, tuna, salmon - you name it. Meanwhile, Eldest only really likes white fish and Little Miss just likes being difficult.

So, on fish days I cook proper fish for me and His Lordship (tuna steaks, tonight); fishfingers for Eldest; and sausages for Middlingest and Little Miss. Tonight, they are served with boiled potatoes, peas, broad beans and sprouting-broccoli-from-our-very-own-garden. There may also be baked beans for the nay-sayers. Needless to say I have to return the favour on sausages days, when Eldest (who does not eat sausages) must have fish....

I'm sure it's not quite what Parson Woodforde had in mind.

Spring pasta

There comes a point, around about the middle of April, when the potatoes have gone into their pots and the broad beans are sprouting nicely, that I long for something properly Spring-like on the dinner table - no more winter cabbage and wilted carrots. Because we are wildly spoilt and I do buy frozen vegetables, I was able to indulge this yesterday with a quick-and-dirty recipe that took all of seven minutes to get on to the table. I kid you not:

Ingredients (to serve 2 adults and three hungry children)
250g pasta (spaghetti in this case)
250g (one packet) of cherry tomatoes
4 slices of ham
Peas and broadbeans enough to serve the family (I don't measure, I judge)
Optional extras, depending on the children involved: black olives, sauteed leeks.

Method
1) Cook your pasta. We've been having a lot of success with slinging it into boiling water, then putting the lid on tight and turning off the heat and letting it sit for the designated cooking time. It doesn't actually need to be boiling after all!
2) Heat the grill, the halve the tomatoes and put them on a baking tray, cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper, and put under the grill for 5-10 minutes, until they start to burst.
3) Boil a pan on water for the other vegetables. When the water is boiling, drop in the veg, slam on the lid and turn off the heat. Let them sit for 5 mintes.
4) Slice the ham roughly.
5) Drain the pasta and vegetables and tip the whole lot into a bowl altogether. Add a little olive oil and mix well. Serve

This went down particularly well with a dribble of balsamic vinegar each too; and has the advantage that if you have really fussy eaters, you can break it down into individual componants and serve what each person likes (with caveats like 'you must have one green thing').

A New Recipe Book

The time has come to start writing down some of what I feed to the tribe on a regular basis, or we get stuck in a rut. I was going to do this in a card file - I do like new stationery and I rather fancy little white cards to write on in my best handwriting, with my best ink-pen, and not get dirty, ever, by doing anything so silly as cooking near them.... Wait a minute, that defeats the object, doesn't it? Then I thought I might be able to cross reference the receipes so I could search for individual ingredients, or the main carbohydrate element, or the season, or the protein, or whatever. Then I thought it might take forever to build that sort of system, until His Lordship uttered the magic word 'metatags'. Does it all for me, in one easy move.

So, back to the Parson Woodforde idea that started this blog - recording what we had for dinner!