Monday 6th September will see the start of the third national “Zero Waste Week”, and just like our dear friend Mrs Green of MyZeroWaste we at VegBox Recipes and Ooffoo plan to give it our full support.

This year’s theme is ‘Cooking for Victory’ in response to WRAPS “household Food and Drink Waste in the UK” report. The report shows we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if we had planned, stored and managed it better. This amount of food waste costs the average family in Britain £50 per month. And in these economic times, that’s £50 per month few of us can spare. What could you do with that £600 you’d save in a year? And if that’s only the average, then some of us are wasting a whole lot more than that…

We have made our own pledge, to publish this “handy guide to eating left-overs”, which we really hope you’ll:

1) find useful,

and, more importantly,

2) add your own ideas to, using the Comments field down there.

Alternatively, rather than adding your ideas here, why not add them to Mrs G’s website and put yourself in the running to win one of the two great prizes that she has up for grabs: a £50 LUSH voucher and £50 Natural Collection voucher!

Handy Guide to Eating Left-overs

In our experience, if you have a list in your head of meal-TYPES that you can “scroll through” when you look at your left overs, it’s much easier to use them up.

So here are five basic recipes for you to use as starting points for Zero Waste Meals. We have tried to work out whether there are any veggies that you COULDN’T use in each of the following types of dishes, but we reckon you can use these for ANYTHING. Not that we’ve ever TRIED putting leeks in a curry, but their onion-y, so if you used them at the beginning, with the spices, they’d definitely work. And OK, Mange tout on their own wouldn’t make a great soup, but chop them and add in some julienned carrot / broccoli / mushrooms and a decent light stock and you’ve got a great consomme. Add a miso sachet and you’ve got a Japanese classic…

Basic Risotto Recipe

Saute onion in some olive oil. Tip in 50-60g arborio rice per person and stir to coat. Assuming you’re serving 4, gradually add up to 1 litre of stock, letting the rice absorb what you’ve added before adding more. Once the rice is just about done, add in your left over veggies and grated cheese or vegan cheese powder, and you’re ready to eat. For extra flavour, you’ll need salt and freshly ground black pepper, and you can use wine for some of the cooking fluid.

Basic Pasta Recipe 

As long as you’ve got tins of tomatoes, or home made tomato sauce (link) you can make a pasta sauce. Start cooking the pasta. Saute onion and garlic at the same time. Add in the tomato sauce. Choose between reheating the veggies by popping them into the pasta water towards the end, or by stirring them into the hot tomato sauce. Season with salt and pepper and your favourite pasta herbs. Stir in grated cheese or vegan cheese powder, and serve with the drained pasta. If you want the sauce less chunky, you could use a hand blender to puree it. You could also give the sauce a kick by adding chilli powder or tabasco.

Basic Pie Recipe 

Thaw your pastry then cut it in half. Roll out one half to be big enough to line the bottom of an 8 inch pie dish. Put it in the dish and leave the excess hanging over the rim.

Make the filling by sauteing onions and garlic. Stir in your left over cooked veggies and saute until hot. Then either tip in a can of mushroom soup, or left over gravy, or add a tablespoon of cornflour and stir the veggies until they’re coated. Now mix a pint of water with a teaspoon of yeast extract and a stock cube, and add to the veggies one third at a time to create a sauce. Season with salt and pepper, consider adding cheese, cheese substitute, or mustard for a kick. Spoon this mix into the dish.

Now beat an egg in a cup and brush some of it onto the pastry hanging over the edges of the tin. Then roll out the second half of the pastry, use it to create a lid, and press the pastry together around the dish using the beaten egg as glue. Trim excess with a knife, brush the top with more egg, cut a slice in the top to let steam escape, then bake for just over half an hour.

Basic Curry Recipe 

Saute onion, garlic, and then the basic curry spices – cumin, coriander, chilli, garam masala – and heat until it’s very hot and the spices are fragrant. Add cubed potato and a tin of tomatoes (or home made tomato sauce) then cover and simmer for around 15 minutes until the potatoes are nearly cooked. Now stir in your left overs. Test for taste and add more salt, pepper, chilli etc to your liking. Stir in fresh coriander if you have, and serve with basmati rice. Yogurt or creme fraiche tops a curry off well. You can convert this to a more Thai style curry by just using ginger and chilli in the early frying stage, and using a tin of coconut milk instead of a tin of tomatoes.

Basic Lentil Bake Recipe 

Saute onions and garlic then add in 200g split red lentils and stir until coated. Add quarter of a litre of water and allow it to simmer off before adding another quarter. Now mix a stock cube into the rest of the water and finish adding it in quarters. Season with salt and pepper and any other spices you like, including chilli if you like a kick. Then stir in your left over veggies or apples going spare and 75g of grated cheese. You can add the veggies in chunks, or grated. Transfer the mix to a loaf tin or other oven proof dish, place in an oven pre-heated to 200*C, top with another 25g cheese and any nuts or seeds you’d like to use, and bake for half an hour.

Basic Bubble and Squeak Recipe 

Quite simply, roughly mash together all your left over veggies with some cooked potatoes, butter, salt and pepper. Then heat 25g or so of butter in a shallow, non-stick frying pan and tip in the mash, pressing it down into a ‘cake’ with the back of your wooden spoon. Cook until it’s crisp and browning underneath then turn it. If it’s not holding together, you can slip it from the pan onto a plate, put another plate over the top, flip it over and slide it back into the pan. Cook the other side until crisp and brown. You may want to flip a couple of times, or just once. It depends on how browned you like it. Personally, we just love the charred bits. Try adding in a few dollops of your favourite pickle or chutney, or spices of your choice, or left over meat if you’re a meat eater. Just make sure you heat very thoroughly.

Basic Stir Fry Recipe 

The trick is to prepare all the ingredients before you start cooking and to start the rice or noodles cooking well enough in advance. Make sure all your left over veggies are chopped up to similar sizes. Mix a sauce, using soy sauce and honey, or soy sauce with peanut butter and sweet chilli sauce (using extra water if the peanut butter is thick), or a sachet of black bean sauce. Then heat oil (seasame, preferably) in a wok or big frying pan and flash fry the veggies until spitting. Add in the sauce and continue cooking for another few moments.

Basic Soup Recipe 

Make a litre of vegetable stock, saute onions and garlic, stir in your left over veggies, tip in the stock, cover and simmer for around 15 minutes, taste and add herbs, spices and seasonings of your choice. Once you’re happy with the taste, serve as it is with roughly cut doorsteps of bread, or add cream or yogurt and puree using a handblender.

Basic Fruit Compote 

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Mix together juice from one orange, its grated zest, 100g sugar (you can vary this according to how sweet the fruit already is), cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg or vanilla essence or bourbon. Chop up your left over / over ripe fruit and mix it into the juice. Place the mix in an ovenproof dish, cover with foil or a lid and bake for 20 minutes. Check for sweetness, and add more sugar or honey to taste. You can use compote as an interesting side with a cheese board, or with ice cream or yogurt as dessert. You could top it with crumble mix, or crumbled digestives or ginger biscuits before you bake it for a traditional crumble, you can use it as cheesecake topping or serve it with cereal at breakfast time. You can even use it as cheating jam and spread it on sandwiches or toast or oatcakes.

(To make a crumble topping, chop 100g cold butter into small cubes and add to 200g plain flour. Using your finger tips, rub the butter and flour until they resemble bread crumbs then mix in 100g sugar.)

Basic Bread Pudding 

Soak stale / left over bread in water until it’s soggy then squeeze it out, mash it until it’s smooth then stir in dried fruit, or over-ripe bananas, or left over stewed fruit, along with some honey, and cinnamon / nutmeg / vanilla to taste, put in an egg (optional) and then whizz it in a blender. Add more liquid – either water, milk, beer, cider or wine until it’s dropping consistency, stir in crushed nuts if you like, then pour the mix it into a greased baking tin and bake for an hour or so until it’s firm. Serve as it is, or sprinkled with a little sugar, or with custard, cream, ice cream, creme fraiche or yogurt. Or eat cold for breakfast!

Store-cupboard essentials 

If you always have the following things in your storecupboard, then you’ll always be able to make variations on these left-overs meals:

• Rices including Arborio and Basmatic
• Your favourite pasta
• Split red lentils
• Frozen puff pastry or frozen pie crusts
• Your favourite curry spices – garam masala, coriander, chilli (mild or hot), cumin
• Dried oregano / basil or even better, fresh ones growing on your sill
• Olive oil
• Soy sauce or a vegan alternative / miso sachets
• Vegetarian stock cubes or powder
• Vegan cheese-sauce powder
• Tins of chopped tomatoes
• Tins of chickpeas
• Cinnamon / nutmeg / vanilla essence or bourbon
• Honey
• Sultanas / raisins

And just to finish this piece off, don’t forget that quinoa, couscous and bulgar wheat make great bases for hot or cold dishes with cooked left over veggies stirred into them.

Let us, or Mrs Green, know what we’ve missed from the list of perfect left-overs recipes…

Categories: seasonal eating

Tags: leftovers, seasonal eating, zero waste week

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