The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (29 page)

Making Thai curries differs from making Indian ones in a few fundamental ways. First, you are unlikely to have to make your own spice mix, since there are plenty of good Thai curry pastes on the market. Secondly, they require coconut milk, which can’t really be replaced, as it can in Indian curries, with canned tomatoes or stock. Lastly, they will be immeasurably improved by the addition of a fresh lemongrass stalk, if you can get your hands on one. A final squeeze of lime juice adds a citrus edge to the creamy heat.

These are pale, fragrant and very liquid dishes, which often pack a hidden punch, though the quantity of paste I have recommended here should give you a temperate dish. There are lots of variations (see
pages 87
-
8
) and they are quick and painless to make – keep them very simple, or add the sweetness and crunch of thinly sliced red pepper or the tang of Chinese greens right at the end. Serve with boiled rice or noodles, or mix the curry and rice or noodles together in a large bowl for a one-dish supper.

As with stews and stir-fries, when you are using leftover meat you need to turn the authentic process on its head and add it at the last minute, cooking it just enough to heat through.

Serves 4

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3-4 teaspoons Thai curry paste – red or green, as you prefer

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

400ml can of coconut milk

1 teaspoon grated lime zest

1 lemongrass stalk – take off the outer bark, then split and bruise the stalk with a rolling pin

juice of 1 lime

350g cooked chicken, roughly chopped

a good handful of fresh basil or coriander, torn into small pieces

Heat the oil in a large pan, add the curry paste and ginger and cook gently for 1-2 minutes. Slowly add the coconut milk, incorporating it well with the paste, then add the lime zest and bruised lemongrass. Reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Add the chicken and cook gently for about 5 minutes, until it is thoroughly heated through. Remove the lemongrass stalk and stir in the lime juice. Serve with the basil or coriander scattered on top and accompanied by rice – it’s good with a half-and-half mix of basmati and wild rice.

Thai fish curry
Replace the chicken with the same quantity of fish, carefully scanned for errant bones. You can add, or use on their own, 8-12 tiger prawns (usually sold raw) or 2 teacups of defrosted cooked Atlantic prawns. In either case, add 2 tablespoons of Thai fish sauce with the coconut milk. Once the liquid is simmering, add the raw tiger prawns, if using, and cook for 3-4 minutes. Then add the fish (and the cooked Atlantic prawns, if using) and cook for a further 1-2 minutes, until heated through.

Thai pork curry
If you want to use pork instead of chicken, add some finely sliced spring onions with the coconut milk and a kaffir lime leaf to intensify the flavour of the lime zest.

Thai root vegetable curry
Sweet potatoes and pumpkin or butternut squash (replacing the chicken) hold their shape and sweetness when poached in coconut milk and their intense orange flesh gleams brightly through it. Hard vegetables such as these, peeled and diced, will need 15-20 minutes to poach in the milk.

Thai spring or summer vegetable curry
Sliced courgettes, mushrooms, peppers and mangetout all work well as substitutes for the chicken, as – unsurprisingly – do bean sprouts. The point about these is that they should retain some bite. Mangetout, mushrooms and courgettes will take 7-10 minutes to cook in the coconut milk, while very finely sliced red peppers and bean sprouts will take only a couple of minutes.

Some of these recipes are called pies but there is no pastry here. These recipes are for bakes, with toppings such as potato, breadcrumbs or cheese – or in some cases, no topping at all. Most are quick and simple to throw together in one dish, minimising preparation time and washing up, though a few, such as shepherd’s pie or fish pie, take a bit more effort. If you’ve got some of those round or oblong glazed terracotta dishes that are so cheap in France and Spain, this is the time to dig them out, but any ovenproof ceramic or glass dish will do just as well.

Some of the recipes that follow are brilliant ways of quickly assembling an array of ingredients from the fridge or left over from a roast, so the quantity you make will be determined by how much you have left over. Others (like those classic British potato-topped pies) cry out to be made in larger quantities than you need for one meal, since they freeze beautifully for a good three months and provide a stash of home-cooked ready meals.

Bakes are an ideal way of using up the last bits of cheese hanging around in the fridge, especially dry ends that aren’t big enough to do much with. Like the last piece of bread that gets whizzed up and stored as crumbs in a box in the freezer, you could even find yourself – slightly fanatically – getting into the habit of grating all the dog-ends of hard cheeses such as Parmesan, Cheddar or red Leicester and keeping them in a jar in the fridge just for these kinds of dishes. Clearly you can’t store soft or blue cheeses like this, though you’ll find here several things to do with those bits, too.

Below are three very traditional British dishes that were practically invented for leftover meat. Each of them is a moveable feast insofar as you can play around with the flavours and ingredients to your heart’s content.

Fish pie is often overlooked as a way of using up leftovers, perhaps because we think it’s going to be finicky and time-consuming to make.

Aficionados each have their particular foible – hard-boiled egg slices are either loathed or worshipped, and the presence or otherwise of tomato can cause heated debate. In fact, you can add just about anything you want: I throw in sliced leeks and/or diced carrots, or some broccoli florets, or a languishing bunch of spring onions, inely sliced and mingled with the fish. Spinach – blanched, cooled and squeezed – adds a marvellously metallic tang, softened by the white sauce. The quantities below will make just enough for a small pie for 2. Just scale up the recipe if you have plenty of fish to work with.