Leftovers
Ken Hom wrote in his 'Hot Wok' book,
'The Chinese hate to waste anything. To throw away food is unconscionable.
This is a lesson my mother taught me very well and, to this day, even in
affluent and, I must say, wasteful America, I cannot bring myself simply to
discard left-over food. Fortunately, the wok is most useful when it comes to
making the best of leftovers. The trick is to create tasty, nutritious meals by
means of the wok stir-fry technique.'
As I edit and post this to the web (7th December 2009) they are creating 41 thousand tons of extra
carbon dioxide, so I read, at a big conference in Copenhagen which is going to save the planet or
something. I don't want to introduce that discussion at any length into my cookery book for men, but
we can all agree that wasting good food is WRONG. Very likely, whether you buy into the official
position or are a climate change sceptic, peak Oil is for real, food prices are rising, and the planet is
getting just a little crowded, so common sense and certainly any kind of decent ethics (as if other
people, including our descendants if we have any) mattered) we will inevitably have to make limited
resources go further. We can all make a start at home by NOT WASTING FOOD!
The idea of 'leftovers' will put some people off as being unhygienic or mean. But leftovers have
always been part of cooking and as awareness of planetary issues increases (it has since I first wrote
the above, see note above) the doctrines of the tree Rs (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle) assume more
importance. You will often have leftover food, especially when cooking a big joint or catering for more
people than usual. Obviously things like soggy salad or anything mouldy goes in the compost bin, but
it’s wrong to waste food just because it wasn’t consumed the hour it was prepared. Stews, casseroles
and cold cuts of meat, may even be better when reheated or otherwise used later. Mty current
favourite TV cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says in his River Cottage Meat book that most stews
and casseroles taste BETTER when cooked the day before and warmed to serve, and I tend to
agree. This can also save energy, since a casserole cooked for , say, 1 hour and then turned off and
left will carry on cooking in its own retained heat overnight, an of course in winter that heat isn't
exactly wasted as it comes out into your home which I hope is not overheated.
This chapter is to encourage you to plan ahead, anticipate leftovers and stop waste.
Carve meat cleanly for the initial meal, cover to protect against flies and germs and place in the fridge
when cool. Cooked meat will be OK like this for at least 3 days.
Stir fry
Use standard stir fry techniques (see ‘Chinese’) for leftover cooked beef, pork, chicken or lamb. Don’t
marinade previously cooked meat, add hoi sin sauce, leftover gravy etc to the wok towards the end of
cooking.
Roast meat joints
A family of four can hardly eat a 2 kg beef rib roast or leg of lamb at one sitting. Put the meat in a
polythene bag in the fridge once cool, slice thinly for sandwiches over the next few days. Horseradish
and mustard are good in beef sandwiches, I also like sweet Thai chilli sauce.
Beef or other meat can also be reheated (once only- see Christmas goose leftover recipes) with
some gravy. Slice it up, arrange in a small roasting tray with any leftover stuffing, pour over any
remaining gravy, cover with cooking foil and warm in a medium oven for half an hour.
Roast lamb and pork can be treated in the same way; all are excellent stir fried with onions, ginger
and garlic, hoi sin sauce and cabbage. Serve with rice or noodles.
Cooked barbecue leftovers can be fiddly with bits of this, that and the other. Cooked sausages can
be eaten with salad, sliced (lengthways) for sandwiches or used in risotto; chicken or pork pieces on
the bone can be treated by slicing off the meat and re-warming with cook-in sauce curry or other
sauce, or stir fried If there are bits of various cooked meats (pork, beef, chicken, spicy ribs, sausage
etc), bone off all the meat scraps and mix it up to make special fried rice, or freeze to make it later. A
very short knife is handy for this.
Fish Cakes
Fish cakes are a very tasty and economical use of leftover fish and boiled potato. It is often wise to
plan ahead and when cooking potatoes or fish to eat fresh, cook more deliberately to make into
something else next day.
Basically you mix equal parts of cooked, boned fish and cold mashed potato, add a bit of chopped
onion, season with spices of your choice, shape into cakes and shallow fry in oil.
I adapted this recipe the day after catching 7 mackerel and a pollack feathering from Haslar wall one
morning. We ate 4 mackerel Tandoori style and fried 2, so what to do with the ‘spare’ mackerel and
the unexpected pollack? Fish cakes, obviously.
to make 8 fish cakes (suggest serve 2 per person)
1 mackerel, 1 pollack (about 500g in all)
500g mashed potato
100g shallot, chopped very fine
1.5 cm cube ginger, shredded fine
1 tsp lightly cracked coriander seed
Salt and pepper
1 small green hot chilli chopped fine
Bunch of fresh chives, sage, parsley and thyme chopped fine
Beaten egg + breadcrumbs, to coat
The fish were steamed for 5 minutes and the flesh carefully removed. All the ingredients were then
well mixed and shaped into cakes, brushed with beaten egg and sprinkled with breadcrumbs, then
fried 2 minutes a side in hot oil. Serve with green vegetables and Thai sweet chilli dipping sauce. Hoi
Sin would be an alternative. I often serve with baked beans with or without a dollop of sweet chilli
sauce stirred in while the beans are cooking. Variations add chopped coriander leaf or parsley,
Worcestershire sauce, shrimp paste, or anchovies. We have also made fish cakes with pouting and
rainbow trout. I think I would avoid making fish cakes using very oily fish such as herring or sprats.
Minestrone from leftovers
With the greatest respect to the Italians, minestrone )like so many other traditional peasant recipes)
is a classic ‘leftovers’ soup, the essential ingredients of which are pasta, bacon, tomato, Parmesan,
herbs, beans, onions and ‘whatever’. Since Elizabeth David lists 5 minestrone recipes in her ‘Italian
Food’, we lesser cooks are free to use whatever ingredients we like. I made some from a leftover
portion of lamb and beans, some leftovers from a bacon joint, some leftover pumpkin and cabbage,
onions. Not a classic Italian recipe but if it tastes good (and it did) who cares?
6 oz leftover cooked lamb and beans
4 oz leftovers from smoky bacon joint, chopped fine
2 pints water (use chicken or vegetable stock if you have it)
Handful pasta shapes
Can of tomatoes
50g tomato concentrate
Pinch of salt
4 oz cabbage sliced thin
Pinch of dried sage (or a bouquet garni, or herbs of your choice)
Medium onion, chopped and fried in sesame oil
8 oz butternut squash pumpkin
Peel and chop the pumpkin and boil in the water until soft, then mash coarsely, retaining the cooking
water. Add cabbage, pasta, sage, tomato puree and chopped bacon to the broth. Meanwhile fry the
chopped onion in sesame oil, and add that too. This Chinese ingredient adds a wonderful savoury-
sweet nutty flavour to all sorts of dishes. Finally add the leftover cooked beans and lamb (don’t try
this with raw beans!). Grate Parmesan (or, more patriotically, Twyneham Grange English cheese
from Hampshire Farmer’s Markets) over before serving. Notice the general rule about timing-
ingredients are added in order of rawness, starting with the pumpkin and cabbage and ending with
the previously cooked lamb and beans. The pumpkin and cabbage need full cooking, while the
previously cooked leftovers just need to be reheated and will not be improved by long cooking. NB
the lamb is not ‘authentic’, I included this as it was something I actually cooked with the leftovers we
had, to illustrate the point about being able to make up recipes as you go provided you appreciate
the basic idea.
Stale bread can be used for croutons, fried or toasted (thin toast is great for eating pate or Rillettes)
or dried out completely in the oven and crunched up for breadcrumbs to use to coat stuff for deep
frying or to add bulk to meatballs.
No doubt other ways of using leftover food will occur to you, but as I suggested in the introduction to
this chapter, stopping waste is in everyone's interest and just the right thing to do.
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