The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (57 page)

This is not only a great dish to make with leftover pasta but a lovely thing to do with aubergines too, and it makes a filling and pleasingly Mediterranean supper with hardly any fuss.

Serves 2

2 aubergines

200g leftover pasta

½ quantity of Quick Tomato Sauce (see
page 36
)

1 tablespoon chopped basil

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 ball of mozzarella cheese, diced olive oil for drizzling

½ teacup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Slice the aubergines lengthways in half and scoop out most of the flesh with a metal spoon.

Chop the aubergine flesh finely, mix with the pasta, tomato sauce, herbs and mozzarella and season to taste.

Stuff this mixture into the aubergine shells, drizzle some olive oil over them, then scatter over the grated Parmesan.

Place in a roasting tin and bake for 15 minutes, until the aubergine skin is wrinkled and the filling heated right through.

Stuffed courgettes
Choose large courgettes or small marrows instead of aubergines. Halve them lengthways, scoop out the seeds and discard. Then scoop out the rest of the flesh and proceed as above.

Pino, the owner of our favourite family Italian restaurant, tells me that it is not unusual at all for Italians to mix leftover pasta – complete with its coating of sauce and Parmesan – with eggs, frying the whole lot into a thick omelette. It sounds better in Italian:
frittata di pasta.

The dish is designed for sauced pasta. If you want to make it with plain leftover pasta, then first add a little sauce or flavouring from the ideas for refreshed pasta on
pages 182
–
3
. It is important not to use pasta covered with a great river of sauce, however – if necessary, drain off some of the liquid before using it. Quantities are not really an issue, since it’s a dish that you throw together with whatever you have lying around. It won’t suffer if the ratio of pasta to egg is slightly different from the one I’ve suggested below.

As a general rule of thumb, use 2 eggs for each 100g leftover pasta. Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl and add ½–1 teacup of grated Parmesan and the leftover pasta with its scant coating of sauce. Heat a little oil in a deep frying pan and add the egg and pasta mixture. Turn down the heat and cook for 2–3 minutes (or longer if you are using more than 2 eggs), until the omelette is sealed underneath and almost set on top. Put a plate over the pan and turn out the omelette on to it, then slide it back into the pan, cooked-side up, and cook until firm underneath (instead of turning the omelette, you could just put the pan under a medium grill until the top is lightly golden). Serve warm with a green salad.

We Brits used to have a passion for using up leftovers at breakfast, often simply mixed with an egg. But we’ve lost the time (and the knack) for making cooked breakfasts, so most of these recipes are for lunches and suppers instead. Omelettes are simple and fast, while pancakes still have something of the excitement of Pancake Day about them, and soufflés – which don’t need to be complicated at all – somehow make everyone feel special.

Cheese is a perfect partner for many of the egg recipes that follow, so they make good use of the bits left in the end of the packet. It’s worth storing the ends of hard cheese in an airtight box, or grated in a sealed container, for just these eventualities, never mind for Toasted Cheese (see
pages 201
–
2
). In the fridge, these ends will keep for several weeks, by which time you’ll probably have used them all up.