Pea & Ham Soup

This pea and ham soup is not only very cheap to make (less than 50p for the peas) it also makes use of leftover gammon that I'd boiled in Dr Pepper at the weekend. There wasn't enough left to make a meal, but it was the perfect amount to add to the soup.

Whilst I'd cooked this in a saucepan it would be an ideal slow cooker recipe, which could be left cooking all day on low.

Pea & Ham Soup - serves 4/5

300g dried marrowfat peas

cold water

splash of olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 litre stock (vegetable, chicken, pork or ham)

salt & black pepper

200g ham or gammon, diced

• add the peas to a large bowl and cover with cold water
• leave to soak for 6 hours, or overnight
• heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the onion for 2-3 minutes over a medium heat
• drain and rinse the peas and add them to the saucepan with the stock
• bring to the boil and simmer for around 30 minutes, until the peas are soft
• remove from the heat and blend until smooth, with a stick blender
• add salt & pepper to taste, and the diced ham
• return to the heat until the ham is heated through 

The kids absolutely loved this with fresh crusty bread, and have asked me to make it again very soon!

Pulled Pork & Potato Frittata

One thing I dislike quite a lot is food waste. By this I mean the fresh foods and leftovers that households throw away every day. There's not a lot of food that gets thrown in the bin here, mostly because I try and re-use leftovers from one day in a meal for the next. I make a rough meal planner for the week which I use when doing the online shop, but it's usually really flexible and I don't stick to it rigidly, especially if there are foods that need using up.

Last week I cooked a shoulder of pork in the slow cooker and made pulled pork for dinner. There was some leftover but I knew it wouldn't be enough to go around 4 or 5 of us the following day, so I decided to be creative with it, along with some leftover boiled potatoes from the allotment (there was rather a lot of these!), and some green beans.

Frittatas are a great way to use leftovers as, I suppose, it's a bit like a bubble and squeak made with the leftovers from a roast dinner, with the addition of eggs. 

This can be eaten warm or cold, and is great for taking on a picnic.

Pulled Pork & Potato Frittata 

2 tbps olive oil

leftover boiled potatoes, sliced

leftover green beans

leftover pulled pork

6 eggs

splash of milk

approx 100g cheddar cheese, grated

• Heat the oil in a large non stick frying pan
• Add the potatoes and fry until lightly browned on both sides
• Add the pulled pork and green beans, and fry gently, dispersing evenly in the pan
• Beat the eggs with the milk and pour into the pan
• Cook gently until slightly wobbly on the top
• Scatter the grated cheese over the top
• Place under a hot grill until bubbling and golden grown

A couple of days later I still had lots of allotment potatoes, along with some chorizo left over from my chicken & chorizo paella, and made a chorizo & potato frittata in much the same way as this one, with the addition of some red pepper and chopped tomato.

Using up the Christmas leftovers - Turkey Cottage Pie

Forgive me for talking about 'after Christmas' when we are barely into December, but I'm going to anyway, because we all need ideas for using up the leftover turkey.

I was provided with a Bernard Matthews Golden Norfolk turkey to cook and make a dish with the leftovers.

In the past I've made turkey spring rolls, curry, soup and lots of lots of sandwiches to use up the leftovers, but in the new year when I can't look at another buffet I crave a good home cooked comfort meal. This turkey cottage pie is exactly that; a warming, satisfying dish topped with buttery mash.

Turkey Cottage Pie

tbsp olive oil
large onion, chopped
clove of garlic, crushed
2 carrots, peeled & diced
400ml turkey stock (reserved from roasting the turkey)
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
tbsp dried rosemary
1 courgette, diced
leftover turkey
tbsp cornflour
approx 1kg mashed potato

• Heat the oil in a pan & fry the onion until starting to brown
• Add the garlic & carrots & fry for a minute longer
• Add the stock, worcestershire sauce and rosemary
• Stir well & place the lid on and simmer for 10 minutes
• Add the courgette & turkey and simmer for a few minutes longer
• Mix the cornflour with a little water and add to the pan, stirring well
• Transfer to an ovenproof dish and top with mash
• Place in a preheated 180C oven until the mash is golden brown

It definitely made a nice change to the usual turkey curry.

I was recently invited to a 'Bootiful Ideas' event hosted by Bernard Matthews at the fab Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London. During the event we were given some food styling tips by stylist Olia Hercules, had chance to meet other bloggers and sample some existing products as well as give our views on some potential new ones - fingers crossed that my favourite makes it to the shelves!

It's always nice to attend blogger events and meet new bloggers, especially when the kids are invited too, and this time I got to spend a day with my budding food stylist Hanna.

We even got to take a few samples home and Jack was treated to a 'Turkey Munchkin'.

#shortcuteggsperts - Roast Dinner Tart

For the final #shortcuteggsperts challenge for British Lion Eggs I have been challenged to create a recipe that uses up leftovers as well as eggs. With 5 of us in the house (including one teen with a bottomless pit for a stomach) we don't often have much in the way of leftovers, but if we do they are always put to good use, and never thrown away.

New research by British Lion eggs ahead of British Egg Week (6-12 October 2014) has found that today’s mums are increasingly committed to reducing food waste to save food, time and money - but their biggest challenge is how to feed the family on leftovers and random ingredients at the end of the week. A study of 2,000 mums* found that with the most common days for food shopping being Monday and Saturday, and 55% of mums running out of food 4-5 days after their shop, 67% admit they end up living on scratch meals using leftovers towards the end of the week, peaking on Fridays.

I can definitely relate to these results, and quite often at the end of the week I make random meals to use up the vegetables left in the fridge, be in it a curry, a soup or ratatouille (my favourite). If you have meat and vegetables leftover from your Sunday dinner this recipe is an easy way to use them up, and of course it includes a couple of large free range eggs.

Roast Dinner Tart - serves 4/5

1 sheet of puff pastry

butter for greasing

leftover meat, veg & stuffing - I used roast pork, broccoli, courgettes and mini stuffing balls

1/2 small red onion, sliced

2 large eggs

150g cream cheese

salt & pepper

• Roll out the pastry into a rectangle that would cover a baking tray with raised sides
• Lay a sheet of baking paper onto the baking tray, and grease with butter
• Lay the pastry sheet onto the tray, making sure that the pastry reaches up the sides of the tin
• Prick the base of the pastry with a fork
• Bake in a preheated 200C oven for approx 5 minutes (to avoid a soggy bottom)
• Cut the leftovers into bitesized pieces and scatter over the pastry along with the onion slices
• Beat the eggs and cream cheese together, and season to taste
• Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables
• Return to the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown

I have been provided with shopping vouchers to cover the cost of my ingredients

Turkey & Dorito Chilli Bake

Can you believe that we still have Christmas leftovers in the house. Apart from chocolate, which the kids are attacking with gusto, we still have lots of cheese, crackers and crisps so I'm trying to use as much as I can in meals to remove the temptation, especially now I am officially in training for my leg of the Team Honk Relay.

My eagle eyed bargain spotter of a Mum picked up a pack of turkey mince in the reduced aisles when she was on her way to us for Christmas so I dug it out of the freezer and used that in this recipe, making it reasonably healthy - if you overlook the large bag of Doritos I scattered on top! I also used a mixture of leftover cheddars and red Leicester cheeses for the topping.

Turkey & Dorito Chilli Bake - serves 4/5

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 red pepper, thinly sliced

1 green pepper, thinly sliced

340g Turkey breast mince

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp cumin

400g can of chopped tomatoes

400g can of baked beans

2 tbsp tomato puree

150g cheddar cheese, grated

175g Doritos (I used cool original)

• Heat the olive oil in a large pan
• Fry the onion & garlic gently until softened
• Add the peppers & fry for an additional 2 minutes before adding the turkey mince & spices
• Fry for approx 10 minutes or until the turkey is cooked through
• Add the chopped tomatoes, baked beans & tomato puree
• Stir well, place a lid on and simmer for 10-15 minutes
• Spoon into a large lasagne dish and top with Doritos and grated cheese
• Bake in a 180C oven for 10-15 minutes until cheese is bubbling 

Unfortunately it was another rubbish photo due to me not being organised and cooking earlier in the day!

Take a Bag of Veg - Ham & Vegetable Pie

Following all the Christmas festivities I found that we had some of the delicious 'ham in coke' left over. Instead of eating more sandwiches filled with leftover meats and stuffing I decided to make it into a quick pie for the family.

It was a nice easy pie made using ready made puff pastry. I've made my own puff pastry previously but always try and keep a block or two of shop bought in the fridge or freezer ready for quick meals like this. Frozen veg is also something that I always try and keep in the freezer as the fresh fruit & veg in this house gets eaten in a flash, so having the frozen variety always means we have some kind of vegetable available for dinner.

This pie is the first of a few recipes that I have coming up that use frozen vegetables, and the low cost (£1 for a 1kg bag) makes the meals incredibly frugal as well as convenient - and unlike frozen ready meals you have control over exactly what ingredients go into your meals.

Ham & Vegetable Pie - serves 4/5

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

150ml milk

2 tsp cornflour

300g frozen mixed vegetables, defrosted (mine included sweetcorn, peas, cut green beans & mini carrots)

300g cooked ham, diced

100g cheese (I used a mixture of soft goats cheese and grated Red Leicester leftover from the Christmas cheese board)

500g ready made puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

• Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion to soften
• Mix the cornflour with a little of the milk and add to the pan with the remainder of the milk
• Stir in the vegetables and ham
• Bring gently to the boil for the sauce to thicken
• Meanwhile roll the pastry out to form a base and a lid for your pie (I used just over half for the base and the rest for the lid)
• Line your pie dish with pastry, prick all over with a fork & bake for approx 6-7 minutes in a preheated 200C oven
• Stir the cheese into the ham & vegetables
• Fill your part baked pastry base with the filling
• Brush around the edge of the pastry with the beaten egg & lay the pastry lid on top (doesn't matter about being neat!)
• Press the edges together with a fork to seal
• Brush with more beaten egg
• Bake in the oven for approx 20 minutes, until puffed up and golden

I need to get into the habit of doing my cooking earlier in the day until the Spring comes as I hate those night time food photos!

Family Christmas and Boxing Day Soup

It's been a busy couple of weeks and just when I thought I was over my illness I was struck down again, right before we visited London for a few days. I dosed myself up and braved the wind and rain and we had a fabulous weekend sightseeing, shopping, watching a show and soaking up the Christmas atmosphere.

It was then off to the local garden centre for a Christmas Eve breakfast with the big fella, before an afternoon with family.

Checking on Santa's location

We then had a manic Christmas day swamped in wrapping paper and presents, and the men folk spent hours building Playmobil (and napping) whilst the women prepared veg drank fizz in the kitchen.

We enjoyed a great Christmas day with family and friends, laughing at terrible cracker jokes and random secret Santa gifts.

 

As usual, I cooked far too much food, meaning that there was plenty left over for Boxing Day Soup. Unfortunately I felt too ill on Boxing Day to go anywhere near the kitchen so instead we enjoyed it earlier today. Once again the soup turned out better than I could've expected and it went perfectly with home baked Focaccia.

Boxing Day Soup

Christmas dinner leftovers, including :

Sprouts

Carrots

Peas

Stuffing

Bacon

Turkey

Ham

Pork

4 bird roast

Roast potatoes / parsnips

Mash

• Add everything to a large pan or slow cooker
• Add a couple of pints of stock and bring to the boil
• Simmer for around half an hour if using a pan
• Blend until smooth using a stick blender
• Add extra stock/water/milk and season to taste

Simple yet so tasty....

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.....now let's bring on New Years Eve!

Use up the leftovers

I don't like waste so if there's ever any leftovers in this house I always use them up in something else. Last Christmas I made a delicious soup on boxing day from turkey stock and meat and vegetable leftovers. I can't tell you precisely what was in it and would never be able to recreate it exactly but no doubt I will make something similar this boxing day.

Unilever sent me a variety of their condiments to enjoy with our Christmas dinner and challenged me to get creative with my leftovers.

At the weekend I had some pork loin steaks leftover. There wasn't enough to have one each so I decided to use them up in a pie.

Pork, Apple & Stuffing Pie

Puff pastry block

Roast pork or loin steak leftovers, cut into small pieces

1 small pack of sage & onion stuffing

1 jar of Colman's Bramley Apple Sauce

milk or egg for brushing

• Roll out the pastry into a large rectangle
• Make the stuffing up as per directions on the pack
• Spread the stuffing over half of the pastry, leaving a 1.5" gap around the edge
• Top the stuffing with the pork and then the apple sauce (you might not need a whole jar)
• Brush around the edges with milk or beaten egg
• Fold the pastry over and seal the edges
• Brush the top of the pastry with milk or beaten egg
• Bake in a preheated 200C oven for approx 20 minutes, until nicely browned

I didn't stop at pie and decided to make Nigella's ham in coke and put half in the freezer for Christmas and half to use now. I baked some lemon & garlic focaccia and prepared some tasty sandwiches using some Hellmann's mayonnaise with a twist of pepper and a zing of lemon - who knew that there were so many varieties of mayonnaise! I spread lemon mayonnaise on one slice of bread and pepper on the other and sandwiched a couple of juicy slices of ham in between.

Lemon & Garlic Focaccia

350g strong white bread flour 

7g yeast
7g salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
75ml olive oil 

280ml cool water 
2 garlic cloves, grated
2 tbsp fresh lemon thyme

• Mix the flour, sugar, yeast, garlic, thyme & oil and half of the water together in a food mixer
• Add the rest of the water with the motor running until you get a thick cake like batter, adding more water if necessary
• Mix for approx 10 mins on high speed
• Put dough in a large silicone baking pan & cover with clingfilm
• Leave in a warm place to prove for approx 2 hours
• Bake in a 200 C oven for approx 15 minutes until golden on the top

Nigella's Ham in Coke

2kg gammon joint (I used unsmoked)

2 litres of cola (I used 17p smart price!)

1 onion, cut in half

• Add the gammon & onion to a pan
• Pour over the coke
• bring to the boil & simmer for approx 2 hours

I was sent the selection of condiments for the purpose of this post

Turkey Spring Rolls with Cranberry Dipping Sauce

Visting Marco Pierre White a few weeks ago and watching him cook The Perfect Christmas Turkey started to get me in the festive spirit. The trouble is that it was only September so I've had to contain my spirit for a few weeks, but now that we've reached November I think it's save to unleash it and start preparing for the big day.

I've been asked by Lean On Turkey to share a recipe that uses up some of the leftover turkey. I always buy too much and there is usually enough for a curry and a soup and plenty of sandwiches (one of my favourite parts of Christmas) but this recipe is for something a little bit different.

These turkey spring rolls not only use up some of the leftover turkey but also the vegetables too. Just make sure you have a pack of filo pastry in your fridge and these would make a great snack for boxing day. 

I served these for dinner along with turkey and vegetable risotto.

Turkey Spring Rolls - makes 8

Preparation time : 30 minutes
Cooking time : 20 minutes

100g cooked turkey breast
75g cooked carrots
75g cooked cabbage
100g cooked roast potatoes
1/4 tsp Chinese five spice
2 tbsp Dark soy sauce
4 sheets of filo pastry, cut in half
1 egg, beaten

• Chop the turkey, carrots, cabbage & potatoes into small pieces and place into a bowl
• Add the spice and soy sauce and mix well
• Take one half piece of filo pastry at a time & leave the rest covered over to prevent them drying out
• Place it on a board and spoon some mixture onto one corner as shown below
• Brush the pastry with beaten egg around the edges
• Fold over the bottom corner and fold each edge of the pastry in, to make an envelope
• Roll up carefully and set aside
• Repeat with the remaining filo sheets and filling
• Place all the rolls onto a greased & lined baking sheet and brush with beaten egg
• Bake in a 180C oven for approx 20 minutes, until golden brown

Cranberry Dipping Sauce

3 tbsp Cranberry sauce
2 tbsp Dark soy sauce
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp water

• Mix all the ingredients together well and serve with the spring rolls

This is a sponsored post, however the recipe is my own

Spice up your leftovers

I had a bowl full of beef stew left over which wasn't enough for everyone as it was so I eeked it out a bit and spiced it up by adding a can of baked beans and a teaspoon of chilli powder.

I then stirred through some cooked pasta and it made 3 generous portions.




What do you do with your leftovers?

Fridge Bottom Soup

'Fridge Bottom' was a concept that I heard from Mum In The Madhouse, who makes a delicious looking fridge bottom curry. Fridge bottom soup is, as the name suggests, made using the vegetables left in the bottom of the fridge at the end of the week. I used to work in a restaurant and tomorrow's soup was always made from yesterday's vegetables and salad, and was always delicious.

The soup always has a different flavour depending on which vegetables are left. Butternut squash usually appears in there, along with carrots and onions. I've also used sprouts, cabbage, parsnips as well as the odd tomato and wilting rocket.

Combined with garlic and chicken or vegetable stock I cook in the slow cooker for a few hours and then blend until smooth. It makes a great after school meal on a Friday, as well as lunch on Saturday, served with home-made bread or pitta bread.

Deep Filled Leftovers Pie

With all the overspending at Christmas I'm trying to put off a Supermarket shop until the weekend in an attempt to use up various leftovers and all the food-that-we-didn't-need-but-bought-because-it-was-Christmas. The first problem that arose was not having any bread. An easy solution would be to put the older two children on school dinners for the remainder of the week but as Jack still needed a packed lunch I decided to make a loaf in the breadmaker - problem solved. If only we had a cow, some chickens and an orchard we could be self sufficient!


Next I needed to make dinner and use up leftovers from a dinner made in between Christmas and New Year that I had put in the freezer. It consisted of a couple of pork chops, some carrots, broccoli and potato and I needed to stretch it between five without anyone feeling like that were eating less that half a pork chop each. I decided to make a pie but as I'd used all of my regular plain flour up on the run up to Christmas baking a gingerbread house and biscuits  it was necessary to use wholemeal. 


The recipe is as follows :


For the pastry
250g Plain Wholemeal Flour
pinch of salt
110g butter, cubed
4tbsp cold water


For the filling
2 cooked pork chops*
cooked carrots*
cooked broccoli*
cooked potato*
1/2 pint milk
5 tsp cornflour
100g Wensleydale & cranberry cheese**
1tsp Dijon mustard


* or any other leftovers
** or any other cheese 

• Either rub the butter into the flour & salt with fingertips, or use a food mixer or food processor which is much easier, until it resembles breadcrumbs. 
• Add the water and mix until it starts to come together, wrap in clingfilm & refrigerate for 15 minutes.
• Roll out pastry to cover the base of a pie dish and enough for the top.
• Cut the chops and vegetables into bite size pieces
• Boil the milk and add the cornflour mixed to a paste with a little cold water or milk - add a little at a time as you may need more or less cornflour to thicken to custard consistency.
• Stir in crumbled cheese and mustard, then stir the sauce into vegetables/meat
• Spoon filling into pie dish and lay the pastry on top
• Crimp around the edges with a fork and brush all over with milk
• Bake in a 180 degree oven for approx 45 minutes - or until golden brown

not looking too appetising yet

ready for the oven

fresh out of the oven

I served the pie with honey roasted parsnips and mixed vegetables (both from the freezer).
My pastry will never win prizes and always develops holes when I'm rolling out but I must admit this did taste good. The decorative leaves were partly to use up excess pastry and partly to cover over the cracks.
Verdict from the family taste testers : Delicious (well all except Jack who gagged on the pastry and refused to eat any more).