A massive bunch of silver beet
"They encourage you to stretch boundaries, take a few chances , and be a bit left-field with your combinations and seasonings."
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Yesterday we went on an excursion with our friends into the Dandenongs hinterlands, finishing up in their house, where the lovely Monika handed me a massive bag of goodies from her superproductive veggie garden. Flowers too on this occasion. The star was this massive bunch of silverbeet - it's just one plant - she had several others. The bunch was so huge in fact that it would not fit into my fridge and I had to take it up to our spare fridge in The Gatehouse.
Silver beet I knew did not last long before it begins to wilt, even rot. So it just had to be my starting point for dinner tonight. And a starting point for a blog, which will, in part be about starting points.
Starting points can be hugely significant or trivial - from waking up each morning, to going to the shops, turning up at the airport before a holiday, getting married and having a baby. I suspect there will be no more hugely significant ones in my life, but everyday there is at least one trivial one - several indeed. Like sitting down in front of the computer and wondering what to write about today. The starting point of beginning to type is significant. It indicates that maybe I'll end up with something that might be interesting might not. Just as when I decide what to cook for dinner - it might be great, it might not. And then there are those significant moments that didn't seem significant at the time but which turned out to be massive - like meeting my husband for the first time. It didn't go anywhere then - just a distant friendship really but eventually - well here we are on the verge of celebrating 60 years of marriage.
But as usual I diverge from the point.
Back to the silver beet quandary. The starting point is the silver beet. The next step is:
"standing in front of the fridge scanning for possibilities - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Although in this case it was mentally scanning the possibilities - nay the necessities to be used in the fridge - from the middle two shelves where the leftovers end up - scanning them in my head as I awoke this morning and enjoyed my wake-up breakfast of coffee, toasted baguette and home-made peach jam.
On those shelves you see there are some 'must use' things - two or three roasted potatoes, a very small bit of home-made tomato sauce, a small amount of curried pumpkin soup, some whey from a ball of mozzarella and various leftover fats - one of them fishy. I also know that down in the meat drawer there is half of a large chicken breast and one mild chorizo sausage which urgently need using.
It's a bit of a challenge, not to mention the top shelf which mostly just holds those flavour bombs that everyone talks about - the helpers that will turn something bland into something sensational. Well I dream of the sensational bit but have rarely achieved it. I do know, however, that lurking at the back there is an almost empty jar of a Patak's curry paste, and some ginger which really ought to be used.
The obvious things to do with a massive bunch of silverbeet include turning it into something Italian or Greek - lasagne, spanakopita, cannellini, gnocchi and variations thereof - all of which combine the silver beet with ricotta or feta. And I don't have any and do not need to go to the shops. Mind you I could have a go at making my own ricotta courtesy of Anna Jones' recipe, and actually now that I think about it we will be going to the shops - well to get a COVID vaccination - next to the supermarkets. But no, that's a boring option isn't it - silver beet and ricotta? And sort of obvious. Besides I have some frozen gnocchi in the freezer waiting to be used and we had a pasta and cheese dish just two days ago. So no, I want to be a bit more adventurous. After all as the leftovers king Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says:
"Winging it with what's to hand can be so liberating ... the joyful abandon that comes from not trying too hard or expecting too much."
I will diverge again. Having retrieved his book Love Your Leftovers from the shelf - mostly to look for appropriate quotes to illustrate this post - I decided to see if he had any revolutionary ideas for using up things like silverbeet. Well there were Kale crisps - and I thought I'd seen Jamie Oliver do a similar thing with silver beet although I can't find it now. But anyway this is not dinner. It's a snack. I need dinner ideas. So I perused a bit more and, of course found various soups and salads.
There was also pasta - of course there was -but - well - a bit boring, and as I said we have recently had pasta. Oddly he did not feature recipes like the cheese and leaves stuffing things. Or risotto.
Continuing this particular side trip as I sat down to write I also checked the net for ideas and of course there are heaps and heaps, but I have to say there is a certain sameness about them all. Mostly all of the above.
Nevertheless there are a few collections - a couple of Australian ones that might be worth a look - 46 sensational silverbeet recipes - Australian Women's Weekly and 16 times we danced to the silverbeet - SBS - and herewith three from the Women's Weekly list that are just a tiny bit different: Baked chicken risotto - Jessica Brook; Silverbeet and porcini stacks - Australian Women's Weekly and Easy spanakopita pies - Jessica Brook, which is also a snack not dinner. I did ponder on the risotto because of that chicken, but decided against it, because of the other things I would like to use up. And besides I was in the mood for improvisation and invention.
Enough of recipe suggestions. Back to my own ruminations on what I could do with such disparate things as curry paste, chicken, tomatoes, soup and silver beet. Well just writing that out tells me that they are really not so disparate are they? Let's do curry and rice. After all Murgh saag is an Indian classic.
But here is another slight divergence. I almost began this post with this photograph from an Instagram post from Tara's Busy Kitchen because it illustrated for me the trend that exists in the Western cookery world for creating something from nothing, and using up leftovers in ways that will end with something sumptuous like this last minute dinner rustled up by Tara when a friend arrived on her doorstep:
"Herby roasted vegetable couscous, warm olives with shallots, lemon & parsley topped with burrata (obviously - I am still firmly on that train!), creamy hummus… and crisps with cornichons and parmesan"
She doesn't show those crisps in her opening picture - it's a very mini video - but says that they were the star of the show. I'm guessing it was just crisps from a packet scattered with chopped cornichons and grated parmesan. Another must do sometime snack.
The words sort of captured the spontaneity and invention bit and it certainly looked impressive at least. If you had a burrata lurking in your fridge. Instagram and leftovers - it's very now. As are all those cookbooks by people like my particular favourites and hundreds of others not to mention the foodie magazines.
Which led me to wondering whether it's just as trendy to improvise from a fridge raid - or a cupboard raid in non-western countries. After all, the recipes we learn about from those countries tend to be classics. An Indian cookery book will be full of traditional recipes, whether well-known or regional, implying that this is the way Indian cooking happens. I suppose we think it might be as it was in my own home in my childhood when cooks were not as experimental - or didn't seem to be. We ate a limited number of dishes which were almost always the same. Although surely my mother put whatever was available into stews and soups at least. And I'm pretty sure the 'classic' French soups that I ate in France were in fact a 'classic' method rather than a 'classic' soup. What went into the soup depended on what was available on the day.
So do Indian, Japanese, Moroccan, Lebanese .... cooks only cook traditional dishes or do they just look in their fridges and concoct something along the lines of dishes that they know. Is it method that we learn rather than recipes?
However, to get to the crunch - what am I considering doing with my glut and leftovers? Well I guess I'm aiming at that kind of murgh saag - chicken and spinach curry that I spoke about. The picture is of Jamie Oliver's Spinach and ginger chicken curry, which does indeed look good, but is probably not totally authentic. However, I'm not even going to look at what he does. I'm just going to make something up with what I've got. First I shall prepare the silverbeet - leaves washed and boiled briefly until soft and the stems - or some of them at least sliced. The chicken will be cut into cubes. I shall start with the standard, onion, garlic mix plus the silver beet stalks in this case; then add a curry paste made from the remains of that Patak one from which the oil covering will have been scraped to fry the onions in, plus some mint from the garden perhaps, maybe even a touch of crispy chilli oil, and some garam masala. I don't really know at this point. When I make those kinds of pastes I generally just decide at the last moment. The chicken will be fried in this mix of onions and paste together with the chopped couple of potatoes; then liquid will be added in the form of that tomato sauce, pumpkin soup and yoghurt and the silver beet which have been blended together. Cover and cook. Maybe I'll put some chopped mint and parsley in at the end, just before serving. Cook the rice in the whey with a bay leaf or two in the rice cooker. Make some pickled red onions with some chopped cherry tomatoes and mint from the garden to accompany. And there's dinner. Plus a rhubarb and apple crumble - Monika gave me rhubarb as well remember.
I hope it will be one of:
"those seat-of-the-pants, spur-of-the-moment dishes rustled up from odds and ends loitering in the fridge or cupboards ... made more scrumptious by the knowledge of its unpromising beginnings." that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tells us "often bring me the greatest pleasure."
For me I'm hoping for at least minor satisfaction.
But no - a change of plan. We have just come back from a Covid vaccination and a brief trawl of Coles which is almost next door, where I found some basa fillets at the astonishing price of $3.38 per kilo! Even though they were from Vietnam, and so something I usually avoid buying, I simply could not resist. And when in answer to my question 'why so cheap?' I was told they were 'an eat tonight thing and do not freeze because they are thawed already' I decided there and then to change to fish with the asparagus I bought yestereday and also the day before which also needs to be used up very quickly. Maybe I'll make a sauce tartare or a horseradish/mustard sauce. But simply fried with panko breadcrumbs, and maybe just plain boiled but buttered and minted potatoes. If any of them are leftover they can go into the curry - and I can use some of the fishy butter and oil to fry the fish in. Now should we have the rhubarb crumble today or tomorrow - or both?
I'm crossing my fingers that the silver beet does not wilt too much before tomorrow for the chicken curry.
YEARS GONE BY
October 9
2025 - Nothing
2023 - I forgot to take any photos
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - The 'miracle of chia seeds
2018 - Nothing
2017 - Silicone cookware
2016 - Supermarket wars in suburbia
Cant go past roughly chopped fresh spinach steamed lightly and served with butter as a side
P{hew I thought that HFW was going to casue a chabnge of plan from the fish, but I was in front of myself. Fish is ready I hear the call!! 😜