Left over lurve.

Recently I wrote about my version of pulled pork. Having no idea how or what it was, I kinda made it up as I went along. And it was pretty delicious. But then again, what is not to love about pork, slow cooked in vinegar, onions, tomatoes and spices.

But we had a lots.. and AWFUL lot left over.

Tammi suggested that we use the leftovers for pulled pork nachos.

So we did.


HOLY MOTHER OF PORK PRODUCTS, BATMAN!!

It was so gooooood. A few days in the fridge had allowed the pork to achieve a deep sweetness, which went perfectly with the tomatoes and creaminess of the avocado. The textural melange of the pulled pork, the cruch of the corn chips and lettuce and again, the creamy silkiness of the avocado pretty much provided the perfect mouth feel.

Nachos are one of those things that I pretty much avoid unless I am stumped for a vegetarian option for guests. I had truly never thought to use left overs in them, relying (on the odd occasion that I gave in to the pleadings of the Step-Beasts and "made" them) on mince, tomato paste, red kidney beans and something made by El Paso,





Now, they are possibly going to become my staple "turn leftovers into something other than "risotto" dish".

At the risk of bring up the whole "authentic" debate, I am thinking left over chicken Mahkani, garlic corn chips and raita "nachos". Maybe souvlaki lamb, tzatziki and lemon/oregano "nachos".

Frugal Food #2

The thing with being frugal is that you have to plan ahead. There's no point deciding at 5.30pm that you want steak au poivre, if you've only got chicken mince in the 'fridge. The key to frugality is buying carefully and (more importantly) seasonally. Given it is Autumn here in OZ, there is no point getting a Jones on for raspberries, as you'll pay el primo $ for them. At this time of year, you want to be rocking on with your Quince self. Or your Rosella Pear self.

Yesterday, I knew that I had got 2 Porterhouses out of the freezer, and I knew I had some potatoes, a head of garlic, a medley of peppercorns (an Easter gift), so I was actually planning steak au poivre, until I rang Furry on the way home to find that he'd thoughtfully marinated the steaks in a goodly dollop of Elfred's Mumbai Chutney.

So much for planning ahead.

Rice is always a staple in our house, you can pick up 5kg bags for next to nothing, from Asian grocers, so that was definitely on the menu. I also knew there was a sweet potato lurking in the pantry somewhere.

And my best friend since going frugal?? My freezer. Before unemployment descended on us, I would have put aside left overs for the pups. As long as any leftovers didn't include onion, then Stella Bella and Mrs Peaches were set like jelly.

But since having to decide between paying the mortgage and buying heart medications ('cos we sure couldn't afford both this month), I've been a whole lot better at portioning food freezing leftovers.

Much to Stella and Mrs Peaches chagrin.

Which brings us to another frugal-friendly food.

Lentils.

Once, the staple of unwashed hippies and vegan crack-pots everywhere, lentils are now enjoying a resurgence in mainstream cooking. Once only seen on menus at places like Govindas or Gopals, the 90's saw David Lebovitz et al banging on about "lentils de puys" and thus bought them into the mainstream cook's consciousness.

And I happened to have some dhal in the freezer. I purchased my dhal from the dhosa man at the Balnarring Market, for $10 a kg, and I guestimate I'll get about 40 serves out of it! Like rice, it bulks up by about x 3 when cooked. Like rice, bags of various types of dhal can be purchased for next to nothing at your local Indian/Sri Lankan grocer.

So with my bulk porterhouses, my bulk rice and my bulk and frozen dhal, I managed to prepare a meal for 4 last night that came in at about $2.50 a head.

And I have rice and dhal left over for lunch today.

pg's spiced sweet potato.

Peel and chop one large sweet potato/kumara.
Boil/steam until tender.
Add a splash of peanut oil, some cumin seeds and some grated fresh ginger.
Mash.
Scoff.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly

pg's dhal.

500g organic mixed dhal
Place in a large pan with water to cover to a depth of 5cm above the top of the dhal.
Add a good knob of fresh ginger.
slow simmer for 4 hours, adding water as necessary, until lentils are soft.
Add a can of coconut cream.
Fry off some cumin seeds, some fenugreek, some coriander seeds and black cardamon seeds in ghee.
Add to lentils and stir.
Adjust seasoning.
Serve.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly.
(500g of dhal makes about 1.25-1.5 kg of cooked dhal. This, my friends, is a WHOLE lot of dhal, but given the cooking time for dhal, it works out so much easier to make it in bulk and freeze it)

Enjoy!

Dobby, the House Elf

"This, sir?" said Dobby, plucking at the pillowcase. "'Tis a mark of the house-elf's enslavement, sir. Dobby can only be freed if his masters present him with clothes, sir. The family is careful not to pass Dobby even a sock, sir, for then he would be free to leave their house forever."

This morning, as I left The House of Fur and Purple Love, my husband, Furry, was doing the washing up.

In the nude.

For those of you who know him, you may well imagine this. For those of you that don't, imagine a portly, middle aged man, pretty much covered in body hair, standing at our sink, whistling tunelessly.

Now Furry often finds himself nude. He is well known for his streak at the Turrumburry Races, and even poor Auntie Linnie has had her eyes soiled, as she jogs past our house in the early morning, to see Furry standing in our picture window, rubbing his eyes and his "nethers" and farting, but to see him standing at the sink, nekkid bottie wobbling as he scrubbed last nights pots, gave me pause.

When I remarked upon his nude status he replied in best Lancashire accent "T' Missus, she's a dragon. Won't give me clothes to ware, keeps me chained at sink. Nary a stitch t'cover m'arse and work all day long scroobin' it is"

Please, dear reader, I beseech you. PLEASE FIND FURRY A JOB, HE'S DRIVING ME MAD!

In other news, with Furry's unemployment about to hit the 4month mark, and no prospects on the horizon, we're falling back on old frugal recipes to save some dosh. This weekend past, we made Mr Chang's Wombok salad.

Baby Bok Choy Crunchy Noodle Salad

BABY BOK CHOY CRUNCHY NOODLE SALAD

Ingredients:

1 bunch Baby Bok Choy
6 Green onions (spring onions) chopped 10mm lengths
100g packet Changs Crunchy Noodles (flat noodle)
100g chopped roasted cashew nuts

Dressing:

¼ cup white vinegar
2 tablesp soy sauce light
2 tsp Changs sesame oil
2 tsp Changs fish sauce
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup castor sugar

Remove individual bok choy stalk with leaves and wash well. Shred diagonally in slices 5-8cm wide. Place bok choy in serving bowl, add chopped green onions, and toss. Just before serving, pour over dressing, add nuts and noodles, toss well to combine.

To make dressing, combine all ingredients in bowl and whisk.

From www.changs.com.au.

And I had a bit left over, undressed (much like Furry) and some extra noodles. I quickly stir fried the cabbage/pine nut/spring onions. Added some chicken thigh pieces fried off in sesame oil in another pan. Add the salad dressing and a heaped tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter. Cook over high heat until peanut butter has melted, serve immediately on rice, and top with crunchy noodles.

A most excellent way to use up leftovers that otherwise would have been tossed.

From pizza to jambalaya via omelettes.

you've seen enough pics of my pizzas to know what they look like. However, what the hell does one do with enormous amounts of left-over sliced tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, anchovies, antipasto, ham and capsicums??

You make omelette's for breaky, thats what.



Take 4 organic, free-range eggs, break into a bowl and add a splash of milk, a twist of pepper and some salt. Pour mix into a hot cast iron pan, seasoned with some browning butter. Here's the key to perfect light fluffy omelettes. LEAVE THE BLOODY THING ALONE. Don't poke it, prod it, swirl it, just stand back and wait until the sides pull away from the pan and the mix is mostly set. Then whack in a handful of grated cheese and pop under a griller until fully set and the cheese is melted.

While this is happening, grab random handfuls of ham, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms and fry off in another pan until all smooshy and juicy. Add more cheese, (in the vain hope of getting thru all these bloody leftovers. Sigh meaningfully when you realise that you STILL have 3 kgs of cheese and enough sliced tommies left over to fix the World's hunger crisis)

Serve the omelette topped with the meat mix and scoff. Believe me, this will get you thru a long day of cleaning up after the day before and preparing your house for the winner of Menu for Hope next week.

FINALLY make it home to GW and unload everything you loaded into the car only an hour ago. Eventually find time to think about dinner. Decide to freeze the remaining ham, but using the leftover prawns as an inspiration, come up with a jambalaya kind of thing.



Slow braised the remaining onions, tomatoes, capsicums and mushrooms in some of the left over sun-dried tomato oil, until completely broken down. This took me about three hours. Add 2 leftover anchovies for depth. If the mix becomes too dry, add a slurp of white wine. When all lovely and smooshy, add some arborio rice and let this absorb all the juice. When rice is cooked, add the left-over prawns and top with a sprinkle of Louisiana's finest "Slap yo Mama!" jambalaya seasoning. Serve with a wedge of lemon.

The Last Supper.

When I was young, we'd all troop down to Dromana on Boxing Day. And there we'd stay for about a month. Mater Beige and all the aunties would take us to the beach, or to Rye Mini Golf if it rained, and Dad and all the uncles would spend the week in town, and come down on weekends. Dad would take the final two weeks off and I would be in heaven. I had my Daddy-O all to myself for two whole weeks.

He'd come to the beach with us, and sit under the orange and white striped beach umbrella, listening to the cricket on a portable "trannie" hung from one of the struts. He'd hang his watch next to it. He'd walk us up to the pier, where we'd jump off the stauntions into the water.

If we were very VERY good, at the end of the day, he'd swim us out to the sand bar. My brother and I would hang onto his shoulders and beg him to tell us when the water was over our heads. He made us feel so very brave.

One year we went out to sand bar, and discovered that hundreds.. actually thousands of sand crabs were running. He left us on the sand bar and returned to the beach. I can still remember how vulnerable I felt, all the way from shore, with my Daddy-O. he returned with our dinghy and a couple of sticks, and we spent the afternoon poking the sticks into the sand. The crabs would latch onto the sticks and we'd toss them into the dinghy. We collected several hundred and took them home and cooked them up in Grandma's old copper. We ate crab meat for about 2 week on EVERYTHING!

The last day of the holidays was filled with a sad nostalgia. There was cleaning up and packing away of the boogie boards, a final rinse of salt-hardened towels and shoes. I'd have to vacuum the car of its Summer's worth of sand, and we'd put the shells we'd collected in the garden wall next to the sun bleached ones of the previous year.

To this day, vacuuming out my car in July and finding sand in the cracks between the back seats reminds me of the smell of the vinyl interior of the 1970's model LTD.

One of the things that Dad would do was to cook The Last Supper. This consisted of anything that was 1/2 opened in the fridge, that he didn't want to take home. it always had cheese in it and it was always served on bread. No matter what was in it, it always tasted of seas salt and long afternoons. Of the squark of seagulls and the smell of seaweed. it tasted of a complete lack of responsibility and a childhood that would never end. It smelled of endless freedom and the peculiar taste that Pine Lime Splices have, when eaten on Dromana Beach.

It was the taste of the end of the holiday.

Apart from one memorable year which involved scrambled eggs, 1/2 a can of creamed sweet corn and some dodgy tomato paste it was, infact, quite tasty.

So this year, as I was cleaning up on our last day of the holidays, I remembered all those years of Last Suppers, and made one for my son. And told him this story. And told him that one day, I hoped he'd be cooking Last Suppers for his family and reminding them where they came from. And I told him, that no matter how old he was or what he put in them, they'd always taste the same.



Ron Manzie's End of Holidays Last Supper, 2008.

1/2 a can of McKenzie Braised Steak and Onions.
1/2 a bottle of Five Brothers Tomato, Eggplant and Basil pasta Sauce.
1 large field mushroom
1/2 a tub Chris' Tzatziki Lite.
1/2 tub unknown cashew nut and parmesan dip.
Some random spring onions.
2 rashers bacon
dregs of a small bottle of Provencale roasted capsicum mustard
unknown quantity (possibly 1/4 can) of red kidney beans.

Mix together on stove top until heated and mushies are cooked. Serve on toasted random slices of bread and top with grated "pizza cheese" or whatever variant of cheese you find left over. (there's always some!)

Eat sitting next to the clean and folded beach towels, while the sky is a cloudless blue and a gently breeze wafts in from the seashore. Think about your Dad without crying. Count your blessings.