Moods and leftovers

"such a dish is always ... made more scrumptious by the knowledge of its unpromising beginnings." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I see I have used this photograph - the frontispiece to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's most wonderful book - Love Your Leftovers - a few times. It's because, in so many ways it epitomises comfort does it not? Even the fact that it's in a cup and you can picture yourself in some comfortable chair with as many layers of clothes on as you can fashionably accommodate, with your hands wrapped around the cup or mug as you sip, makes it so - well - homely.

Soup is the ultimate home for leftovers I guess which is why I chose it.

I have written about leftovers many times in various guises, and here I go again - but, hopefully in a slightly different guise.

It began with this book which has been sitting on my desk for some time now, bristling with post-it stickers which at the time I thought would lead to hopefully entertaining blog posts. And I have written at least one - maybe two.

So yesterday - clueless as usual - I leafed through it looking at what I had bookmarked and decided that none of them were worth it.

And herewith an aside about moods - one of my main title words today. I don't think I was in the mood - to write anything really - let alone any of those little bookmarked items. One's mood is vital to how one sees the world, how energetic and/or inspired one feels to truly move forward in life, even if only by a tiny step. And on dismal days like yesterday - and today - weather is a factor in mood. Which is thought provoking in itself.

I mean why? We who are pretty well off, retired, with no duties of work or care, and living in a mostly benign and comfortable society really have not much need to worry about the weather. You can put on more clothes - or take some off, turn up the heating or air-conditioning, stay in, go out ... Besides who cares about rain really? If you really want to you can walk in it with or without an umbrella. Once you are wet, you are wet, so just enjoy splashing through the puddles. Children derive immense pleasure from such things. Such joy.

Mist is beautiful - it softens colours and reminds one of romance, of glorious paintings Turner, the Impressionists, even Leonardo, of mysterious happenings, hidden things. I shall always remember the day after we had bought our block of land in the Adelaide hills on a cloudy day - we stood there that next day and the mist drifted away to reveal the most amazing view far down a tree covered valley out to sea and Kangaroo Island at the edge of vision. A magic moment. My kitchen looked down that valley and out to sea, but some of the most beautiful views were when the mist was driting here and there.

Even on a grey day like today - and the past few days - if you care to look carefully, there are wonders to be seen - mushrooms in all their variety are the current stars, and, in our part of the world anyway - there is always at least some green.

And yet we do indeed allow ourselves to be gloomy because the sun is not shining and so tiny things annoy - like problems with my Wix software not sending out emails to announce a new post. And so yesterday when I checked out that book, looking for ideas, not only was I not inspired by any of it, so discarded virtually all the stickers, but I could not bring myself to think of anything else to write at all.

But then I decided - having leftovers in mind - that I should incorporate them more into the cookbook I am ever so slowly working on for my grandchildren. And so I set to and produced this page at the end of my section on how to make a stew. It was something different and at the end of my time fiddling around with it, I felt better because I had achieved something. I even sent off a page for approval to my granddaughters and today had a lovely short reply telling me that "It would be lit to see something with your recipes in it" . 'Lit' - I learnt recently that this is a current buzzword for something like 'cool'. When I first saw it in a WhatsApp conversation my grandchildren were having, I had no idea what it meant, so I looked it up - and found that it's derived from the phrase 'lit up'. I truly wonder how these words appear in changed fashion from their original sense. Who first thought of it? I understand how it spreads - usage and the social media obviously - but surely it originated from one person. Who was he/she?

But I'm rambling. Back to moods and leftovers. On the whole I enjoy using leftovers because of the challenge and and the satisfaction if you pull it off, as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall puts it:

"Winging it with what's 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 haven't I tried this before?' And, more importantly, 'I'll definitely make this again,' to which, by the very nature of leftovers, you have to add, 'Or something like it.'"

And yet there are days, when the thought of leftovers is just too hard. As last week when I had three different sets of leftovers and the thought of spending most of the next week dealing with them rather than making something new or a favourite dish. By the time at least one of those leftover solutions produced yet more leftovers I was over the whole leftovers challenge - and so at least one set was just reheated - this broccolini galette. It's hard to cook a galette for just two people. Although when I think about it, it isn't really. I just cannot get rid of the automatic instinct to cook tarts that are big enough for four at least - not two.

The mood of - well almost boredom - added to the miserable weather and the prospect of yet more leftovers that needed to be used - led to more of that 'I'm not in the mood' feeling.

I now realise that I have three or is it four modes of cooking.

The first is a new recipe. Something I haven't tried before, whether it be because we have visitors, or because I just feel like trying something new. And this has a subsection - because the new thing may come from something I spotted in a new book or magazine, or from an online newsletter, or it may come from actively searching for something new in my cookbook library. Or, indeed, online.

This week we are entertaining our friends for lunch on Saturday. It's early of course, but I'm pondering on something wintery - it's the weather again - so at least initially I have selected Delia's Smith's Winter Collection and Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow for perusal. Currently I'm in the mood for something like Delia's A bit of Irish stew with crusted dumplings or even a Sticky date pudding from somewhere. The fire in the background of the picture and the glass of red wine is very much a cosy winter mood. I'm not in an Ottolenghi mood - which needs a slightly different impetus. And thanks to my explorations of what to do with leftover stew, I now have ideas for the inevitable leftovers. Pie being not very original, but glorious - although dumplings don't really fit the pie scenario. Maybe I could even invent a new use for Irish stew leftovers.

My second method of cooking is the fridge raid thing - using up the wilting vegetables, the cream almost past it's best and well past is use by date, the jar of some mysterious sauce ... There is a mild sense of urgency to this kind of cooking but if you are in the mood you can sometimes be quite inventive.

Third is the leftovers of leftovers - like my regular pseudo Spanish omelettes - mostly created when I have leftover potatoes that can be fried along with other tiny bits and pieces, and a bit of fresh bacon as well. I think I wrote about this one recently. They are a regular thing. Like Hugh Fearnley -Whittingstall's comment - not always the same thing but the fundamental idea is always the same. Fry some stuff together, pour over some beaten eggs with herbs and garlic and shove under the grill to puff up and brown over. Sometimes served in truly plebeian fashion with baked beans and HP sauce. But alas there are always leftovers, because like the galettes and the quiches, I cannot make them small enough. Leftover Spanish-style omelette is difficult.

The last form of cooking is the favourite dishes that I cook on repeat - some are just traditional things like lasagne, roast lamb, shepherd's pie (a leftover dish). Some are dishes that originated with somebody's recipe, but with which I fell in love and which I cook on repeat every now and then - Robert Carrier's kebabs, Ottolenghi's curried cauliflower cheese in filo pastry, Nigel's pillow pies, Delia's chicken with sherry and shallots, Charmaine Solomon's tandoori chicken ... And as I cook these and become so familiar with them that I do not need to refer to the original recipe they evolve ever so slowly into something a little different. A few are even things I 'invented' myself - e.g beetroot and smoked trout quiche - and always slightly different. Also not really invented by me as I realised when I found lots of recipes for this combination on line.

Today I am more in the mood for my current leftovers - a small amount of mashed potato and an almost empty jar of home-made pesto, the dregs of the weekend's bottle of white wine - which, with the addition of ricotta and Parmesan, perhaps some cream, mushrooms and spring onions will become gnocchi - finished in the oven with a pesto based sauce. In fact I can get almost excited about the prospect of the challenge.

I'll end with my Everlasting Meal book - in a way my starting point. I was quite excited to receive this gift from my son - as I do - when in the mood, enjoy the challenge of cooking with leftovers and there are indeed lots, and lots of suggestions - over 1,500 in this book - but I can't say that any of them enthralled or enticed in the way that Hugh's examples did.

The choice of leftovers was also sometimes weird. I mean - caviar - who has caviar in the fridge? Well actually I do - and I should probably throw it out because it's a hangover from Christmas. But Tamara Adler tells me I should make some pancakes, dab some sour cream on top and then the caviar - maybe some chives as well. What a pain to make the pancakes.

And when I looked to see in the book what I could do with my leftover mashed potatoes that was a new idea for me - there was absolutely nothing. Hugh, on the other hand has lots of ideas - including gnocchi. Gnocchi are one of those things that, like risotto, I used to think was difficult, but actually they are not and they quick - especially if you have leftover mashed potato. And fun too. Not to mention, so, so satisfying.

Tamara Adler does have a really useful piece on fried rice, which I may well return to, and a couple of rather nice little sayings:

"It can help to remember that every liquid has been used for cooking at some point. There are soups of tea, and sauces of rum, and desserts made of anything that has quenched our thirst." Seawater yes, urine no I think.

And a quote that introduces us to the book - and I have to ask myself why on this one really:

"A man was cleaning the attic of an old home in New England and he found a box which was full of tiny pieces of string. On the lid of the box there was an inscription in an old hand. "String too short to be saved." Donald Hall/String Too Short to Be Saved

It just leaves me wondering what you could do with tiny pieces of string. Maybe if you were an artist ...

I shall keep the book but I'm not sure I shall be using it much. We'll see.

YEARS GONE BY

June 2

2025 - Upping my sandwich game

2024 - Hot wing rambles

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - What makes gin, gin?

2018 - Yesterday's challenge - Tuscany

2017 - Nothing - for the whole of June - we were on our last holiday in France