The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (26 page)

A North African twist
Use either chicken or pork and replace the canned tomatoes with enough chicken stock just to cover the meat. Add a handful of raisins, a finely sliced fennel bulb, the zest of an orange, a teaspoon of chilli flakes and a stick of cinnamon. Serve with rice and chopped mint.

Root vegetables
Leave out the meat entirely and substitute a similar quantity of root vegetables, such as potato, sweet potato, parsnip, carrot, pumpkin, turnip – all peeled and cut into chunks of about the same size so that they cook evenly. Add with the onion and garlic.

Leftover lamb or beef
Replace the chicken with diced leftover lamb or beef and use red onion instead of white at the start. Add ½ teaspoon of paprika to the onion once soft, cooking it for 30 seconds or so before adding the tomatoes. Leave these to reduce and thicken, then add white beans, chickpeas or leftover cooked potatoes. Add the meat 6 or 7 minutes before serving, along with a couple of good handfuls of baby spinach and/or a handful of coriander leaves.

This fake ‘tagine’ works well with any meat, though lamb is perhaps the most delicious with this clinging, sweet and winey sauce. Or you could forget the meat and use root vegetables instead, adding them with the onion marmalade at the start.

Serves 3-4

a little oil

2 rounded tablespoons Onion Marmalade (see
page 42
)

1 teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground ginger

a good pinch of ground cinnamon

6 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole

2 tablespoons each of stoned black olives and capers, drained and rinsed

180ml red wine

180ml water or mild stock

250g dried fruits – a mixture of apricots and prunes is lovely

4 teacups (400-500g) cooked lamb, trimmed and cut into pieces

salt and pepper

In a heavy-based pan, gently heat a little oil and the onion marmalade. Stir in the cumin, ginger and cinnamon and cook for 1 minute. Add all the other ingredients except the meat, stir well and cover. Cook slowly on the hob or in a low oven (150°C/Gas Mark 2) for 40 minutes or so, until the sauce has reduced by a good third. Add the meat and heat through for 10 minutes. Season to taste. Serve with couscous and a green salad.

Pork or chicken
Substitute pork or chicken for the lamb, use green instead of black olives and white instead of red wine, and add a lemon, cut into 8 segments, or some preserved lemon. Serve with chopped parsley.

Beef
Substitute beef for the lamb and add several raw potatoes, peeled and cut into smallish pieces, right at the start with the onion marmalade. Leave out the capers. Chunks of fennel could also be added with the potatoes.

These very gentle Middle Eastern dishes give you something entirely different for your leftovers repertoire, using yogurt or sesame paste (tahini) to make a caressingly creamy sauce into which you slip the meat or fish. I learned how to make them from the cookery writer Anissa Helou, whose thoughtful dishes are always incredibly healthy, as well as delicious. Serve with warm flatbreads, chopped basil or coriander and a green salad.

This Lebanese dish is most often prepared with whole fish but you can also use leftover fish.

Serves 2

100ml tahini (sesame paste
)

115ml water

juice of 1 large lemon

a little vegetable oil

2 onions, thinly sliced

2 teacups (about 200g) leftover fish, flaked

salt

Put the tahini in a mixing bowl and gradually stir in the water and lemon juice until you have a pale liquid the consistency of a thin, creamy soup. Add a little more water if it looks too thick.

Pour a little vegetable oil into a frying pan over a medium heat, add the onions and fry until golden. Add the tahini and salt to taste, then allow to bubble until you see a little oil rising. Turn off the heat and slip the fish gently into the sauce. Serve tepid or at room temperature.

This recipe can be used as a basis for cooking other meat in yogurt, varying the taste by replacing the coriander with mint or basil. Indeed, you could make it entirely vegetarian by using a can of chickpeas or some cooked cauliflower florets or diced courgettes in place of the lamb.

What rescues this deliciously mild and velvety dish from blandness is the pungency of the garlic and the aromatic hit of the herbs. For a slightly thicker sauce, you could omit the stock.

Serves 2

1 heaped teaspoon soft butter

a small bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

500g plain yogurt (even better if you can find the thick, curdy yogurt freshly made daily in some Middle Eastern grocery stores
)

1 egg, lightly whisked

2 teacups (about 200g) leftover lamb, fat and gristle removed, torn into good-sized pieces

the white heads of 8 spring onions

210ml stock (optional – if you are after a thicker sauce, leave it out
)