The Endless Loop of Leftovers

Sometimes I find myself in a endless loop of leftovers. I make something, which leads to leftovers and then I find a way to make that into something else, but it leads to more leftovers and on it goes.

I had a meat delivery last week. Mostly I just bag it all up into suitable portions and get it into the freezer to last a few weeks. However, I turned the 700g of stewing steak into steak pies before freezing them, cooking up the pie filling that afternoon and adding some puff pastry once cooled. The pies had circular lids so I was left with some offcuts of puff pastry. 

The meat box was also supposed to contain 12 sausages, which I would normally divide into 8 and 4. We eat 8 sausages between us as one meal, and the other 4 I might turn into sausage egg muffins or add them to a mixed grill. However, I only received 1 pack of 6 sausages, which doesn't work for me in terms of numbers. Fortunately, there was a rather delicious sausage pasta bake recipe in the BBC Good Food Magazine this month that feeds four with 6 sausages so I bought some mozzerella and made that. That left a little bit of mozzerella that I boxed up and popped in the fridge.

Later, I added to the off-cuts of puff pastry when I made a batch of sausage rolls (also destined for the freezer). One tray of sausagemeat only needs three quarters of a sheet of puff pastry, leaving an odd bit. Sometimes I make this into 3 or 4 cheese straws just to be done but this time I added it to the offcuts from the pies. But what to do with the puff pastry?

I had seen a recipe for Homity Pie in the BBC Good Food Magazine too and I wondered if it might be nice to replace some of the Cheddar in it with my leftover mozzerella and maybe give it a lid of puff pastry instead of shortcrust. It certainly seemed like the perfect way to use up some of the rubbish potatoes from our allotment, along with some onions and leeks from my Oddbox delivery. However, it did mean I had to buy a pot of double cream.

With the double cream purchased, I re-read the recipe and realised it was more a tart than a pie, being without a lid, so that ruled out using up the puff pastry. I also decided that Cheddar would work much better than mozzerella in terms of flavour so I didn't use that either. The pie was really delicious, and definitely one to add to my favourites, especially at this time of year when potatoes, onions and leeks are seasonal stars.

I tried it out as a lunchtime dish for my youngest daughter and me as we like being guinea pigs for new recipes but my husband was so taken with the thin slither he tried that he decided to eat some of it for his dinner.  And the remaining two portions, my youngest and I ate for lunch on Sunday. All good, except it only used half a pot of double cream so I had to think of something to do with that now.

Looking around the kitchen for inspiration, my eyes fell upon some tired looking apples in the fruit bowl so I typed "apple pudding" into Google and found a recipe for Sticky Toffee Apple Pudding, served with cream. I whipped this up on Sunday afternoon and put it into the oven to cook once I had served up the roast dinner. Despite the moment of doubt as I pour sugar water over the top of the cake batter before it went into the oven, it turned out beautifully, creating its own lovely toffee sauce at the base. And it was particularly tasty served with cream. I just had the headache of trying to fit a half eaten pudding into the fridge where a pot of double cream had previously been!

Fortunately, we reheated the apple pudding after dinner on Monday and finished off the last of the cream with it too so that at least was now out of the fridge. We had had leftover pork from the Sunday roast for dinner too so it was a good day for eating leftovers. In addition, I had a moment of inspiration Monday morning and decided to turn the puff pastry and mozerella into a mozerella and courgette tart for lunch for my youngest daughter and me. This also used up half an OddBox courgette but it meant I opened a jar of red pesto but didn't use all of it! 

So on Tuesday I decided to try cooking up some Pasta 'ncasciate. I thought this would not only use up the aubergine I had just bought but maybe the tired looking mushrooms, the half courgette and the red pesto. I found a recipe and set about making it, realising it didn't contain either mushrooms or courgettes and that red pesto wasn't really the right thing to use for the sauce either. It turned out to be a very tasty dish and I'm pleased to have found another way to eat aubergine. 

However, it made way more than I needed and once again I found myself scratching my head, wondering how to fit the leftovers in the fridge! Still, that's lunch sorted on another day, and you know what, I might even cook up the half a courgette and tired mushrooms and add the red pesto to it when I serve it up this time!