Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - River Cottage Love Your Leftovers: Recipes for the Resourceful Cook

For my sister Sophy

Contents

Recipes for leftovers

Some of the most satisfying meals of my life have been created, seemingly, from almost nothing. Planned and carefully shopped-for feasts, such as Christmas dinner and elaborate parties, can be great fun and delicious. But its those seat-of-the-pants, spur-of-the-moment dishes, rustled up from odds and ends loitering in the fridge or cupboards, that often bring me the greatest pleasure.

Winging it with whats to hand can be so liberating flinging in this or that with the joyful abandon that comes from not trying too hard or expecting too much. Before you know it, you can produce a plateful that has you thinking, Why havent I tried this before? And, more importantly, Ill definitely make this again, to which, by the very nature of leftovers, you have to add, Or something a bit like it.

This book represents the scribbling-down of my most cheerful and satisfying experiments, the ones that turned a few, simple, pre-loved ingredients into memorable meals. Ive hugely enjoyed writing it. And Im sure thats because its really the story of how I cook at home most of the time. Not with a list or even much of a plan, but standing in front of the fridge scanning for possibilities.

A few dried-up odds and ends of cheese, a bit of leftover meat, a dab of cream in dignified old age, the remains of an excellent loaf and some seasonings rummaged out from the back of the storecupboard, can create a rarebit that will beat the world or at least a raging hunger. And such a dish is always, in my experience, made more scrumptious by the knowledge of its unpromising beginnings.

Its the sort of cooking that allows the cook, quite justifiably, to feel rather pleased with themselves. And its as efficient as it is tasty. Not only is it thrifty in a financial sense, the work you do for one meal pays dividends because subsequent meals are easier. Often, they are just simple assemblies of meals that have gone before. Or they might flow pleasingly into whole new dishes, significantly different from, though indebted to, the original. A roast chicken might become a , stuff a pepper, or top a baked potato.

Its always hugely pleasing to save money, of course, but the drive to waste nothing is not about parsimony. Its emphatically joyful, a way to honour your food and yourself. When youve sought out and paid for something wonderful, or tended it in your garden, why wouldnt you want to relish it down to the very last morsel? Youd be mad not to.

I do sometimes toss a mouldy apple or some yellowing cabbage onto the compost. I dont beat myself up about that. But I like to think that not much hits the bin unless its really irretrievable. And I would certainly feel guilty about not eating every last scrap of meat or fish that makes its way into my kitchen. Nothing less than my kitchen honour is at stake here. When an animal has died to feed me, thats quite a thing. And no part of it that can be made tasty should ever go to waste.

I admit that such careful cooking can become something of an obsession. In the course of creating this book, Ive turned my naturally competitive eye to those things I might previously have cast compost-wards or fed to my pigs, and asked myself if I could get a bit more out of them first.

Ive given fresh thought to the skeletal remains of roast dinners and to slightly past-it veg and reconsidered the bendy, the floppy and the slightly tired to see what can be done with them. Ive come up with some answers too from , which are better than any you can buy in a packet. Theres a soul-feeding pleasure to be had from dishing up something tasty from such unprepossessing raw materials.

Theres no need to see leftovers cooking as a constant challenge, however. At its heart, its about simplicity. Sometimes, you just want to reheat and eat, without feeling you should be doing more. There are days when merely tucking that leftover roast ham into a sandwich, rather than turning it into a soup or a pie, is what fits the bill. The former option isnt a compromise it all comes down to the time and energy you have available.

When I looked at each recipe for this book, the first question I asked myself was not, Is it speedy? Or Is it thrifty? But, Would I be delighted to have that for my supper (or lunch, or tea) today? If I couldnt answer that question with a resounding Yes! the recipe didnt make the cut.

Of course, there is a deeper issue at play here: in this country, we waste a shocking amount of food. Although recent campaigns, such as the one run by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), are helping to reduce our profligacy a little, we still throw out some seven million tonnes of food every year. That is scandalous, particularly in a world where scarcity is the norm for so many people. And all that wasted food took energy and resources to produce and transport putting less in the bin means easing the pressure on our planet too.

Thrifty cooking is hardly a new idea, of course. Many people enjoy lovingly re-invented leftovers as part of their daily diet already. But as with any cooking, we all get stuck in ruts, often returning to the same tried-and-tested dishes and techniques. I want to show you that leftovers cuisine is an area as broad and exciting as any other. You can be just as creative and inventive with ingredients you have dabbled with already as with pristine items freshly bought. Probably more so, since they encourage you to stretch boundaries, take a few chances, and be a bit left-field with your combinations and seasonings.

So set your expectations high and take a new look at how you cook and what you cook. Youll discover that you absolutely can make meals from peels, and snacks from skin and bone. You can take the surplus and the borderline and cook them back to sparkling originality, roasting and simmering, frying and blending your way to a sense of deep satisfaction that is very sweet indeed.

Planning for leftovers

If you embrace leftovers as a central part of your daily cooking and a wellspring for culinary creativity, you will change not just the way you eat, but also the way you buy food and the way you manage both your kitchen and the time you spend in it. This is because all your food plans will be made consciously at first but soon pretty much without thinking with leftovers in mind.

The business of getting food on to the table can be split into three broad stages: shopping, storing and cooking. All of those stages can be quite stressful if you imagine each meal must be a self-contained unit you are constantly trying to calculate quantities, always planning to end up with zero when the meal is done.

Take a more leftovers-centred approach and the entire process becomes more relaxed and flexible because each meal can beget another, or part of another, with precise amounts mattering very little, if at all. Im reminded of a line from the American writer Calvin Trillin, The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

I love this quote. And I aspire to be more like Calvins mother! I do still cook a few original meals but I like to think of each one as the beginning of a daisy chain of deliciousness. Sometimes its a short chain leftover meat and veg into a simple . Sometimes a meal keeps giving all week, as is often the case with big roast joints of meat or hearty feed-a-crowd stews and curries.