Jellied ham and parsley terrine

The problem with leftovers is that they can easily look like exactly that but this crafty way with cooked ham - an anglicised version of the French jambon persillé - looks like you've made it from scratch*. If you want it to look really fancy you can make it in a loaf tin and unmould it but I reckon that's far too much of a faff at this time of year.

Although I've given quantities you can adjust them depending on how much ham you have over. Or replace some of the ham with cold turkey as per the original recipe in the Frugal Cook book. You may not need all the stock.

Serves 4-6 depending what else you're serving.

450-500g piece of cooked ham
4 tbsp dry white wine (a neutral white like Pinot Grigio or Chablis is ideal)
6 sheets of fine leaf gelatine (or whatever amount is recommended to set 500ml of liquid)
425ml strained ham stock 
A large handful of curly or flat leaf parsley
Freshly ground black or white pepper
A pinch of mace (optional)

You'll also need a medium sized (about 1.2 litres) bowl

Put the wine into a shallow dish, add the gelatine and leave for about 10 minutes until the gelatine softens.  Heat the ham stock, remove from the stove and stir in the gelatine until dissolved. Leave to cool for 30 minutes.

Remove any fat from the ham and cut into largeish chunks about 2cm square. Finely chop the parsley and mix with the ham. Season with pepper and mace (no salt - the ham should be salty enough.)

Pour half the cooled stock into the bowl, mix in half the ham and parsley mixture and refrigerate until it just begins to set.  Add the remaining ham and stock** and refrigerate for a further couple of hours.

* Of course you can make it from scratch. A ham hock should contain just about enough lean meat to make a small terrine.

** If the stock has jellied you can warm it again gently.

How not to waste open jars and packets

One of the main things that stops me - and I guess you - being frugal is the tendency to use an ingredient for a single recipe then fail to use the rest of it. The problem is it requires constant thought - remembering it's in the fridge (or cupboard) and incorporating it into - or even letting it inspire - another meal.

But this week on holiday in France with slightly less on my mind I managed it.

When we arrived at the house we found there wasn't much to go with the sausages we'd picked up at the local shop. We had a tin of haricots blancs, a jar of red peppers, some garlic and a few shallots. I sweated off a couple of the shallots and a clove of garlic, sliced about a third of the peppers and added those to the pan along with the rinsed beans. French tinned beans break down more easily, I find, so you get a kind of rough-textured garlicky purée that's particularly good with sausages. A holiday staple.

The next day I made a piperade (spicy scrambled eggs - above) with another of the shallots, another third of the peppers and a pinch of hot paprika, let it cool slightly then stirred in 5 lightly beaten eggs and scrambled them. You need to cool your pepper mixture first otherwise it turns the eggs an unappealing shade of salmon pink or, worse still, pink and green. Hot peppers and eggs are a great combination.

And the next I concocted an impromptu hors d'oeuvres with hard boiled eggs, sardines, some tapenade toasts (toasted leftover baguette spread with olive paste) and the remaining peppers which finished off the jar.

Part of it I think is being aware you have limited time in a place so you don't want to stock up with a lot of food you can't use. And maybe being too idle to go to the shops in the heat. (Sorry, shouldn't rub it in. It has been gloriously hot and sunny here.)

But it's a good way to eat and use up what you buy.

How good are you at using up leftover ingredients? Any two or three-way recipes you can recommend?

Leftover patatas bravas

Or, to be more accurate, leftover roasties given the patatas bravas treatment ....

Here's how it came about. We roasted a chicken last night with some new potatoes, rosemary and garlic having started a meal with a green bean and tomato salad. I had two large roast tomato halves left over plus some roasted garlic cloves and enough potatoes to feed four (although I have to admit we managed to demolish them between the two of us which wasn't exactly healthy or frugal).


It suddenly occurred to me that I could make patatas bravas by reheating the potatoes (easy in the Aga but I could have dry-fried them over a low heat) and making a spicy tomato sauce based on the tomatoes and garlic.

Only I thought it needed a bit more garlic so I heated some olive oil, and fried off a large crushed clove of garlic over a gentle heat. I added a good teaspoonful of sweet pimenton, fried it for a few seconds then tipped in the tomatoes, having first removed the skins along with the roast garlic, jellied chicken juices, a squeeze of harissa paste and a good seasoning of salt. I cooled it for 5 minutes or so then blitzed it in a food processor, reheated it and poured it over the potatoes.

And that was that. It occurs to me that you could equally well use this 'brava' sauce with frozen chips or sauté potatoes or make it with tinned tomatoes if you haven't got any ready-roasted. And you could, of course, use hot pimenton, chilli sauce or cayenne pepper instead of the harissa but it does need that spicy kick.

One of those dishes that tastes much, much better than you'd expect. I'll be doing it again.

How a Michelin-starred restaurant uses leftovers

I've just spent the past week on a work trip in Alsace (I know, I know, alright for some ... ) and stopped the night on the way back at a hotel we've often stayed in - the Hotel d'Angleterre in Chalons-en-Champagne. It's not as cheap as it used to be but we like it so much we occasionally treat ourselves.

What's particularly interesting about the place (and the relevance to this blog) is the fact that the bistro Les Temps Changent (times change) clearly uses the leftovers from the Michelin-starred restaurant alongside which enables them to keep the price of their set menu down to a very reasonable 21 euros*.

There were three dishes on the menu where you could spot this. A really delicious 'salad' of lightly cooked green beans (above) lined up over a finely chopped salad of cold roast beef, shallots and carrots dressed with a good gutsy dressing and topped with a sprinkling of garlic chips.

A fish terrine - almost certainly made from different kinds of leftover fish, some blitzed smooth, others left in bigger pieces. (More delicious than it sounds or looks!)


And a guineafowl breast stuffed with a boudin like stuffing that I suspect was made from leftover chicken. (I like the use of in season fresh cherries too.)


Of course I'm not suggesting that you slave away for hours to create similar dishes although the green bean salad is perfectly easy to achieve but simply want to make the point how well the French still do this sort of thing and what you can get away with if you present leftovers cleverly.

I still think there's a bit of a stigma though in serving up leftovers to your friends (shepherds pie apart though I always think that's better made with fresh mince). Personally I wouldn't hesitate but how about you? And what are your favourite leftover dishes?

* Bear in mind that price (English equivalent £18.55) includes service.

The secret of dealing with cooked leftovers

I was reminded this week just how easy it is to make something delicious out of leftovers - and also how easy it is to forget the fundamental principle which is to do something with them while they’re still hot - or at least warm.

I decided to pot roast a joint of beef I bought a month or so ago from a very good farm shop nearby. Admittedly with the temperature in the 20s the timing could have been better but I was trying to clear the freezer for summer. (Too late. It seems already to have come.)

I cooked it with onions and diced bacon and a fair amount of wine (I also write about wine so am inundated in the stuff: you could equally well use a mixture of stock and beer or cider) and added roasted carrots at the end to keep their colour. Then I served it with buttered cabbage and mash.

I guess there was just about enough meat for two portions at the end of the meal but as it had been slow cooked it would have ended up dry if I’d simply wrapped it in foil. So I chopped it, and the carrots, as small as I could, mixed them with the remaining gravy of which there wasn’t a lot but enough to moisten the meat and put it in a pie dish. Then I covered it with a layer of cabbage and the remaining mash. One cottage pie with five minutes effort and nothing to do the next day.

It turned out pretty well - more than enough for two although we managed to make short work of it. I liked the texture of the chopped meat as a change from mince - I think the only change I’d have made would have been to mix the greens with the mash for a bubble and squeak topping.

It’s not so much that I couldn’t have made this the following night (though I don’t think it would have been as good) it’s just that it would have been less appealing - leftovers to be dealt with rather than a meal that simply needed reheating. That's the way leftovers tend to lurk in the fridge until you give up on them and throw them away.

The same applies to other kinds of leftover food. If you want to make something of it it’s generally better to do it straightaway. Like dressing pasta, rice, beans or potatoes for a salad, making fish cakes or turning pasta into a bake, with, say, some leftover roast peppers or courgettes if you have some. Or stripping the remaining meat from a chicken and adding it (and maybe some ham and/or mushrooms) to a creamy sauce which can then be used as a pie filling. You can of course freeze it too if you do it quickly.

What are your favourite ways of dealing with cooked leftovers?

Instant French fish paté

I had to spend last week unexpectedly in France for a family funeral - hence the absence of posts - but we went out for the odd meal and I was very taken with the presentation of this fish paté which was brought to the table as an 'amuse' at a restaurant called Larcen.

My guess is that it was whizzed up from some leftover cooked fish along with some spices, a few cooked chickpeas or haricot beans and - I think I heard the waiter saying to the next door table - some mayonnaise. Looks like there was a bit of finely chopped red pepper and cornichon on the top and possibly even some grains of quinoa (or that could have been what was blitzed with the fish). Add a few baked or toasted slices of leftover baguette and you've got yourself a pretty and ridiculously inexpensive starter.

Still catching up on the work I missed last week but hopefully normal service will resume shortly . . .

The cost of a recipe is relative . . .

The other day I roasted a mallard duck (which I'd found at a good price at our local butcher, I hasten to add). Mallards are quite small so there was only enough for 2 plus a carcass with a fair bit of meat on it for stock. I left it overnight in the AGA and the result was superb so I started thinking of dishes to set it off.

Beetroot risotto, inspired by a recipe from The Larder Lout, one of the students who collaborated on my recent student cookbook, emerged at the top of the list but I hadn't got any beetroot and had run out of risotto rice. I also fancied some horseradish in it and a dollop of crème fraiche so ended up spending over a fiver to make a dish for two - not so frugal after all.

It made me think how relative frugality is. If I'd already had most of these ingredients in the fridge or storecupboard - apart from the beets - it wouldn't have been expensive. Good cooks tend to have well-stocked storecupboards. Less well-off and less knowledgeable ones like students don't so are not generally able to make such interesting and complex dishes. The knack of frugal cooking - which I occasionally forget in my enthusiasm - is to be able to make a delicious dish from not a lot.

Anyway here's the recipe, for those of you who do have a well-stocked larder and a spare mallard (or other duck) carcass going begging. (Apologies for lack of picture. I was experimenting with new light settings - unsuccessfully!)

Duck and beetroot risotto
Serves 2

3 tbsp duck fat or olive oil
1 small red or other onion, finely chopped
a sprig of fresh thyme (optional)
150g arborio or other risotto rice
125ml red wine
750 ml hot duck (or other game) stock
half a bunch of beetroot (about 2 medium-sized beets, peeled and grated)*
25g parmesan cheese, grated
1 tbsp grated horseradish and 1 heaped tbsp creme fraiche or 2 tbsp creamed horseradish
leftover duck meat, cut into short lengths
a handful of the beet leaves, washed and shredded
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons of the duck fat in a large sauté pan or saucepan and cook the onion and thyme over a gentle heat until the onion is soft. Season with salt and pepper, increase the temperature and stir in the rice. Stir for a couple of minutes before adding the wine.

When the rice has absorbed the wine, add beetroot and stir for few seconds then add a ladle of the hot stock. Continue to stir regularly, adding a ladle of stock each time the rice has absorbed the previous batch. After 17 minutes or so taste the risotto. It should be almost cooked with just a little bite remaining. Cook for a minute or two longer if not. Remove the thyme sprig and stir in in the parmesan, horseradish and crème fraîche. Add a final ladle of stock, turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave for a few minutes.

Briefly fry the duck pieces in the remaining duck fat until crisp. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain them on kitchen paper. Wilt the greens in the same pan, adding a splash of water if necessary. Season them well with salt and pepper.

Stir the risotto again and dish up in warm bowls, topping with the stir-fried greens and the crisp shards of duck.

* Grating beetroot, if you don't already know this, is messy. I suggest acquiring some of those cheap, disposable plastic gloves to do it! (Another expense - but they are useful for other things!)

How big a store-cupboard do you have - in terms of range of ingredients rather than physical size? And, another issue, if you have an extensive one, do you get round to using all the ingredients before they go out of date?

Living off leftovers

As time goes on I'm more and more convinced of the virtues of shopping as and when you need it rather than doing a big weekly shop.

We're still living off the leftovers of the supper I cooked for friends on Friday night - admittedly with a couple of food gifts: a carton of lettuce and pea soup (made to use up leftover leaves) from Stephen Markwick of Culinaria who I dropped in to see on Saturday and a highly original gift of gulls eggs and n'duja, a very spicy Calabrian sausage from one of our guests, fellow food writer Xanthe Clay. Our lunch today must be the least conventional fry-up ever: gulls eggs, bacon and n'dula on toast!

The meal itself was a slow roast joint of pork with fennel, a roast butternut squash and red pepper couscous salad, a lentil, lemon and grilled artichoke salad and a cooked tomato, sugar snap pea and green bean salad with pinenuts. We had the leftover salads with half the leftover pork on Saturday and the remaining pork heated up with some fantastic pan juices and a watercress, spinach and rocket salad I'd forgotten to serve up on Friday, last night.

There was also quite a bit of leftover cheese which made a great companion for the pea and lettuce soup.

If I'd shopped for the weekend on Friday I would almost certainly have overestimated how much we we would eat and bought far more food than we needed. As it is I reckon I can eke out another meal from bits and pieces in the fridge before going to the shops tomorrow. There's half a carton of cream that needs using up for a start . . .

What have you got leftover from the weekend and what are you planning to do with it?

Impromptu 'tapas'

We had the kind of lunch I love yesterday - a selection of little dishes created from assorted leftovers and the contents of the storecupboard. I already had some red peppers I'd roasted the day before which I thought would go well with the sardines we try to fit in once a week as a nod to our recommended oily fish intake. (I have to say I don't much like them so strong flavours like the peppers help)

I also had some asparagus stalks leftover from an omelette which had only used the tips. so sliced those up and stir-fried them for a cooked 'salad' (above) adding a splash of soy sauce and a bit of chopped parsley. (I was thinking this would also have been good with grated ginger and fresh coriander and maybe a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds - not as a tapa but a stir-fried side for salmon or tuna)

There was also a stale baguette (a common occurrence - baguettes stale very quickly) which I sliced and toasted on the hotplate then rubbed with garlic Spanish-style and drizzled with some of the oil I'd used to cook the peppers.

I laid it all out on little plates and must say it looked quite appealing. I could have added a couple of hard boiled eggs or a few slices of chorizo too if we'd had them.

Without looking it up I'm sure that this is the origin of tapas and their French counterpart hors d'oeuvres: a way to use up the leftovers from the previous day - cooked or uncooked. It took next to no time to prepare and felt like we'd had a 'proper' meal.

People sometimes question whether you should use offer leftovers to guests (do you? would you?) but I'd have been more than happy to share this meal with friends.

Warm black pudding, apple and potato 'salad'

As we were out to supper with friends last night and off to France tomorrow I deliberately didn't buy any food this weekend, reckoning we could easily live out of the fridge and freezer.

We could and did. Lunch was a warm 'salad' of black pudding, leeks, apple and potato (above), supper tonight some leftover braised oxtail I froze a few weeks ago topped with mash (also frozen) and served with carrots and hispi cabbage. There are more than enough carrots for the two of us so I'm going to blitz the rest and freeze them for a soup when we come back.

We also managed to polish off a bit of chorizo and some leftover plums (not at the same time, I hasten to add). I've frozen the cheese that would have gone off while we were away (not ideal but it'll be fine for cooking) and will freeze any leftover bananas for smoothies.

Whether you're going away or not it's a good exercise to do from time to time otherwise you end up chucking away perfectly good food that's simply gone over its 'eat by' date. Here's the black pudding recipe - or a variation of it I did for my book Sausage and Mash:

Black pudding with potato, apple and onion
Serves 2
2 medium sized potatoes (about 200g)
1 small to medium sized onion or a washed and sliced leek
2 medium eating apples, e.g. Cox or Braeburn
A small handful of fresh sage leaves
3/4 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
A 250g pack of sliced black pudding or a small black pudding, thickly sliced

Peel and halve the potatoes and cut them into thick slices. Tip into a bowl of cold water and swirl them around to get rid of some of the starch then pat dry with a clean teatowel. Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a frying pan, add the potatoes and fry for about 7/8 minutes, turning them over occasionally. Meanwhile peel and thinly slice the onion and quarter and slice the a apples. Add the onions to the pan, stir and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the apple pieces and stir. Continue to cook, stirring and turning until all the ingredients are well browned and soft (about another 10 minutes), adding a little extra olive oil if it looks too dry. Add the sage for the last 5 minutes of the cooking time. Meanwhile heat the grill, rub the black pudding slices lightly with olive oil and cook them for about 4 minutes each side until hot and crispy. Lay them overlapping slightly on warm plates and spoon the potato and apple pan fry alongside.

Storecupboard soup

I had a bit of a shock yesterday afternoon when I remembered that the stock I was making from Thursday's leftover chicken carcass was still simmering away in the lower Aga oven. Panic call to my husband who had thought of it a minute earlier and removed it (how's that for telepathy?)

I thought there would be just an inch or two of liquid left and that the pan would be totally destroyed but not at all. What I found was an unbelievably concentrated dark stock, almost more like a veal stock than a chicken one.

It was too strong for the delicate vegetable soup I was planning for today's lunch however so I had to change tack and rustle up a different kind of soup from what we had in the fridge, freezer and storecupboard.

I sweated off an onion, added a large clove of garlic, stirred in a couple of teaspoons of mixed cumin and coriander then added just under a litre of stock. In went 125g of Puy Lentils which I cooked until they were just done then the chopped remains of a pack of frozen broccoli* I tested out for the site a while ago - along with a handful of fresh basil leaves (I'd have used coriander instead if I'd had some).

I resisted the temptation to blitz the lot in the blender which would have turned it into an unappealing pond-like sludge and fried up a few slices of leftover chorizo and some more basil leaves to garnish what was by now more of a stew than a soup. But it was very tasty and perfectly suited to this odd, cold sunny/showery spring day. There's even enough left for tomorrow - though no more chorizo so I'll have to add a bit of bacon. Oh, and a final drizzle of olive oil à la caldo verde is good too.

* Spinach would have been even better if I'd had some.

Lemon-apple compote

Some of the best recipes - if you can call this a recipe - happen by accident.

I was cooking up some Bramley apples yesterday for our morning fruit compote (sounds so much sexier than stewed fruit) and chucked in a quarter of a lemon that happened to be lying around. I left it in the pan while the apples cooled then, when I found that it had an interestingly lemony zing, left it in the bowl in which I refrigerated them. When we ate the compote this morning it had a lovely bitter lemon edge that went perfectly with the dollop of yoghurt and honey we drizzled on top.

I've also found a good way of using up the apple peel which is to add it and any leftover lemon shells you've discarded after juicing. You simply cover them with cold water, bring them to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or so then strain and cool the cooking liquid. Result: a very natural-tasting and delicious apple lemonade that tastes every bit as good as those expensive top-end soft drinks.

It's Frugal Friday . . .

The last of the leftovers

I did a thorough blitz of the fridge this morning to find out what needed finishing up and what was beyond redemption (a turkey liver, and some rather manky parsley and spring onions that had slipped the net). That's not too bad but there's a fair amount of other stuff that will need using up over the next few days, most notably some very good goose stock, assorted bits of cheese and various root veg.

As we're already feeling stuffed and dying for some spicy fresh-tasting food I've decided to have a batch cooking session and freeze the results. On the agenda, a chestnut and lentil soup, a quiche (have already made one this Christmas) and a banana bread or cake. I might also freeze some of the stock for risottos and some breadcrumbs and grated cheese for gratin toppings.

I've managed to resist the temptation this year to stock up with those 'just in case' purchases that one rarely needs but need to guard against plundering the shops later this week for reduced Christmas goodies like puddings and panettone or cut price turkeys. Do we actually want to eat turkey or Christmas pudding again before next Christmas? Absolutely not. Do I need to nibble panettone after a week of stuffing myself? No, likewise.

And my new year's resolution? To keep my fridge and cupboards tidy. Tidiness is not something I'm noted for, my family will tell you, but it's impossible not to waste food unless you know where things are and when they need to be used up.

So have you made any food-related resolutions and if so, what are they?

Turkey leftovers

There is a large half-eaten turkey sitting in the shower. Why? Because it won't fit in the fridge, the kitchen is too warm and anywhere else my daughter's visiting cat would get at it. (It has already half-demolished our landlord's pot plant - the cat, not the turkey, obviously) The health police would of course be appalled but we didn't finish eating till 10 o'clock last night so there was nothing else to be done.

Today will be devoted to ensuring it doesn't go to waste or that we don't get driven mad by endless turkey meals. My usual strategy is to have it cold for lunch on Boxing day (By far the best meal of Christmas IMO) then to prepare little parcels of white and brown meat for other uses and make stock with the carcass.

My youngest son particularly likes the brown meat fried up till crispy with the leftover turkey gravy so that takes care of some of that. I usually make a rich turkey and mushroom lasagne or a korma like the chicken one I cooked on You and Yours the other day but if I can find some tarragon I may try and make the splendid jellied terrine in the book which comes from a food writer friend of mine, Andrea Leeman.

The stock makes terrific soup but is so rich it tends to overwhelm more delicate vegetables. I like it for a chestnut soup (I do have a few leftover chestnuts, happily) or a dark mushroom soup or risotto. It's good with lentils too.

Incidentally I managed - yet again - to buy a larger turkey than we needed, largely because the butcher had run out of smaller birds by the time I got round to ordering one. (Memo to self, order earlier next year). We usually stretch the turkey anyway by serving plenty of sausages as well as the stuffing so there really is no need for an outsize bird.

I did however manage NOT to buy a Christmas cake (my daughter made a chocolate one which has already been scoffed) or any dates, figs, nuts or excessive quantities of cheese or twice as many sprouts as we needed so the cost of Christmas is well down. And you know what? We didn't miss any of them.

How did your Christmas go? Any bright ideas for the leftovers?

A frugal weekend’s eating

Off to visit my mother-in-law in France this week so we spent the weekend using up odds and ends from the fridge and freezer. On Saturday night I made a pea and lettuce soup which sounds pretty unseasonal but I like salad even in winter and this is a good way to use up the outside leaves

You simply trim and chop up a bunch of spring onions and soften them in a little oil and butter, chuck in a handful of lettuce leaves and some chopped parsley stalks, let them wilt then add about 200g of frozen peas, a cooked, sliced potato, a handful of parsley leaves and about 500ml of vegetable stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about 3 minutes until the peas are cooked. (You need to cook the potato first otherwise the soup will take too long and the peas will lose their fresh green colour). Cool for 5 minutes then whizz in a blender or food processor, return the soup to the pan then add another 200ml or so of stock or milk and heat through. You can sieve the soup if you want a smoother texture or whisk in a bit of soft butter or cream for a more luxurious taste. A squeeze of lemon juice doesn't go amiss.

With it we had some crostini topped with fromage fort, a brilliant French way of using the assorted odds and ends of cheese from the fridge. No exact quantities. I used a bit of leftover goats cheese log and Brie (both with the rinds removed and a rather sad bit of Appenzeller which had seen better days. You simply blitz a clove of garlic in a food processor, add the cheese (sliced or crumbled) and whizz till you have a smooth paste then add just enough white wine to give a spreadable consistency. Season with cayenne pepper, chilli powder or hot paprika.

There was enough soup left over for a couple of extra little cupfuls last night before a main course of a shepherds pie-like dish salvaged from the remains of last week’s braised beef topped with celeriac mash which I’d stashed away in the freezer. I must say it felt good not to be chucking out food this morning.

Communication may be spasmodic this week. Back next weekend, if not before . . .

Omelette paysanne

It's a sign of the disfavour into which French food has fallen that we'd rather talk about frittatas than omelettes these days. Even though they're virtually the same. We also buy pancetta cubetti rather than bacon bits - at about 3 times the price. There's a lot in a name.

Anyway, this simple meal was prompted by good old bacon - a small bag of offcuts that I spotted in a local butcher yesterday for just 35p. I also had a leftover cooked potato and some parsley to use up, some eggs and an onion (which one should never be without).

I went through the bacon offcuts and trimmed off the excess fat then tipped them into a frying pan in which I'd heated 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and fried them for a couple of minutes. (If the bacon had been watery I'd have discarded the liquid at this point and put fresh oil in).

I then added a large chopped onion (probably about 200g) and fried the mixture for another 7-8 minutes or so until the onion started to brown. I added the sliced potato and carried on frying for another couple of minutes then tipped in 5 large eggs, beaten with a handful of chopped parsley and seasoned with salt and pepper.

I left the pan on a low heat, pulling up the edges of the omelette as they cooked to let the liquid egg run down to the base of the pan. Then I heated the grill and put the pan under the grill to brown the top. (That took about 4 minutes.)

It should have been enough for three, even four with a salad and some bread but we managed to demolish it between the two of us (thus breaking my own rule that one should always set aside leftovers and not leave them lying invitingly on the table)

Even so, it was a good cheap lunch.

Rescued roast peppers

I've had a bizarre 48 hours moving from Arles in Provence back to the Languedoc then flying home to Bristol yesterday, in the process experiencing a couple of thunderstorms and a temperature drop from 33° to about 14°C last night.

We took some vegetables with us to Arles (as you do . . . ) that we hadn't got round to using then didn't get round to cooking them because we got distracted by the heat and the photography and the cooking facilities in the flat we were staying in were so basic. (At least that's my excuse . . . )

Two aubergines had bitten the dust, I'm afraid to say, but I salvaged a couple of big red peppers and beefsteak tomatoes and some gorgeous sweet onions that they sell by the bunch at this time of year. I cut them up and roasted them in a moderate (about 180°C) oven, Elizabeth David-style with slivers of garlic and lashings of olive oil for about an hour and a quarter until they were all sweetly caramelised then left them to cool. We ate some for supper, dunking chunks of fresh baguette in the gorgeous garlicky oil then I left the rest for my husband to pick at while I'm away. They make a great addition to sandwiches or you can add pasta to them for a pasta bake.


No sooner had I got back, of course, than I had acquired more veg in the form of this fabulous bunch of onions I picked up from an organic food stall at the Bristol Wine and Food Fair. Not wholly sensible as there's only me to feed but they were irresistible. I think maybe a green onion soup with beans would be good. It's certainly cold enough for it.

What happened to the breast of lamb

Confession time. I've never cooked breast of lamb before, having been put off by the decidedly fatty boned, rolled roasts of my youth. But at £5.19 a kilo for organic lamb it's too good a bargain not to try.

Last night I slow-roasted it on the bone, as advocated by Graham the butcher - slightly too long I think. It was so lean that it dried out a little. But with the creamy chard gratin, the beet greens and a few roasted spears of asparagus from the farmers' market it was a feast.

Unusually for me I tackled the leftovers straight after the meal, pulling the meat off the bone and marinating it in a few spoonfuls of garlicky vinaigrette. (Good for the lamb, not so good for the fridge which reeked of garlic when I opened it this morning.) I also saved the crisp outer skin in a separate piece.

Tonight I crisped up the meat and the skin in a little hot oil. I seasoned the meat generously with ground cumin, a little chopped onion and a tablespoon of chopped fresh mint and scissor-snipped the crisp skin into it. I rescued the last of Saturday's salad greens, lightly dressed them with oil and vinegar and tossed in some peeled, chopped cucumber I found lurking in the veg drawer of the fridge. Then I arranged the salad on our plates, topped it with one of the roasted beets, cut into chunks, piled the meat on top, drizzled over some yoghurt and sprinkled over some chopped herbs.

It was actually pretty good - like a deconstructed doner kebab with veg - but one of those dishes for which you can't really give a recipe as it's too off the wall.

It did prove, however that lamb breast is a good buy. The two breasts I bought would have easily served six and were really tasty. Graham told me they're at their best at this time of year because they come from animals who have been grazing on winter grass and which are therefore nice and lean (as opposed to spring lambs which gorge on summer grass and run to fat).

Off to London tomorrow for a couple of days' meetings and catching up with the kids. I'm really looking forward to seeing them but it's hard to break off in the middle of a book especially when a deadline is looming. And the publisher is reading my blog ;-)

PS There's a useful post (I hope) on Beyond Baked Beans today on how to save money on pasta which, as I'm sure you know, has gone up 81% in the last year. Scary.

Big (or small) bowl salads

The way food looks is always important, to me at least, but all the more so if you're using up leftovers. There's nothing more depressing than a pile of brown sludge. Or random bits of food plonked unceremoniously on a plate. (Better to eat it straight from the fridge, which at least has an indulgent frisson to it)

Doing even a minimum of chopping and slicing immediately makes leftovers look more appetising. As does - weirdly - putting them in a bowl (cuts down the washing up too!)

Here's a little salad I rustled up the other day from some leftover haricot beans with some chopped onion, red pepper, half a can of tuna and some chopped parsley - all except the tuna being leftovers. OK we're not talking about a culinary masterpiece here but it doesn't look too bad, does it?

I didn't even make a dressing - just drizzled over a bit of olive oil, a few drops of vinegar (hold your thumb half over the top of the bottle to control the flow), seasoned it with salt and pepper and tossed it together. Five minutes work, max.

A veggie bonanza

The problem about writing this book is that you not only have to use up all your own leftovers but those of well-meaning friends.

"You wouldn't like some carrots and cauliflower, would you?" asked my neighbour wistfully. "We've just got a whole lot more in our veg box." By bequeathing them to us she feels she's not wasting them so I feel bound not to let her down. Free dinner anyway.

I scrubbed and sliced the carrots and put them in a pan with a teaspoon of mixed ground coriander and cumin and half a teaspoon of vegetable bouillon powder, gave them a stir, put just enough water in the pan that they wouldn't catch, covered them and left them on a low heat until they were tender (about 25 minutes). This is the way I normally cook carrots - you get a much more intense flavour than if you boil them.

I cut up and steamed the cauliflower, made a quick white sauce, added a bit of cheddar, decanted half the cauliflower into a shallow dish, poured over the sauce, topped it with the rest of the cheese and flashed it under the grill.

Odd combination, cauliflower cheese and carrots but it worked out fine. Potatoes would have been a good addition but we're cutting down on carbs at the moment.

I dressed the leftover carrots with a little vinaigrette, some extra coriander and cumin and some dried dill and the cauliflower with the same dressing plus some garlic, hot paprika and capers. These will make cooked salads for tomorrow with . . . er . . . I'm not sure what yet. Chopped cashew nuts or sesame seeds would go quite well with the carrots. Haven't got any fresh herbs though at the moment which would make a good last minute addition.

If I had been feeling even more frugal I could have blitzed the two veg into a soup, with the water I used for steaming the cauliflower.

And if I'd had leftover potatoes I could have made a dry cauliflower potato and carrot curry which we could have eaten with some raita and a dal. The leftovers from which (the dal) could have been made into soup . . .

Quite satisfyingly creative, frugal eating. So long as you're prepared to cook a bit.