Roast Beef Rides Again

One of the supermarkets has been running a campaign - actually a rather laudable one - showing people that a roast will do more than the Sunday lunch for which it was bought. Roast chicken is an austerity staple, as a decent bird will give you the roast, a curry/risotto/wrap/sandwiches, and broth or at least stock made with the carcase. Beef is no slouch on the second coming front either.

Tonight we will be having one of my takes on leftover topside, and almost as importantly on the gravy that graced it. We ate this a fortnight back and it was enough of a hit for there to be requests for it to be repeated with the excellent beef (Henry Rowntree's superb Aberdeen Angus, and no he doesn't sponsor me, it's just that even a teenager notices the difference) remaining after we feasted post the England - Wales match.

The gravy (ultra-garlicky as I roasted a whole head with the beef, and squidged the soft contents into the meat juices) will be flavoured with smoked paprika, a chilli chopped very finely, Worcestershire sauce, some ground cumin, cayenne, and plenty of pepper. The beef, chopped into 5mm dice, is mixed with its gravy and a tin of Heinz beans, and the resulting mass used to fill wraps that fill a 300mm x 200mm cast iron dish perfectly. Atop this goes a sauce made with tinned toms cooked with a chopped onion and flavoured like the filling, with loads of grated cheese - cheddar and Parmesan - on top.

Cooked in a 180C oven for 30 - 40 minutes (when the cheese is browning it's ready, though I tend to warm the Le Creuset cast-iron dish over a low flame first to speed things up and ensure it is piping hot inside as well as out-) it has the added benefit of looking rather lovely.

The result is filling, rich in vegetables, and tastes good. But then in our family lore most things taste good with Parmesan. And it doesn't need a £1 packet of ready-mix fajita magic dust to give it a Tex-Mex touch.

I'll try to remember to take a photo or two.

Political Leftovers

Unpalatable though it is to find myself in agreement with Britain's richest MP, but Richard Benyon was in essence correct about the wastage element of our food culture. His estimate of £50 per month per family of food thrown away is within the bounds of reason.

As I understand his statement he was not advising people to live on leftovers, but to make the most of what they have. That this should have caused an uproar says much about the ridiculous nature of our party system - if your opponents say one thing the opposite must be true, even if it is simple common sense.

The use-by-date and sell-by-date thing is another aspect of this. On Sunday I was shopping and spotted a piece of Parmesan near its SBD at a third of the original price. Parmesan, which if stored properly will last months and months. It was not what I had gone for (chicken for a paella), but in the basket it went. This is not to advocate buying dodgy food, but to point out that sometimes bureaucratic neatness is out of kilter n the kitchen.

We just cleared one of our store-cupboards out, so I am as guilty as the next cook, a pack of Quinoa that seemed like a good idea at the time never even opened, and the dregs of several bags of flour joining it. Some candied peel found at the very back was three years out of date, and though I reckon being candied it was still ok three years is a bit too much leeway to ask, so our chickens are getting it in small doses and seem quite keen.

Chickens are a wonderful way of reducing food wastage, as I have posted before. A rather manky carrot is in their box waiting to be cut into tiny bits, a treat for them that will add to the beta-carotein content of tomorrow's eggs. As our earning power inevitably gravitates ever closer to that enjoyed in the BRICS nations with which we compete I guess more of us will keep these excellent birds. Even Mr Benyon may - though given he is worth £110 million pounds, apparently, it would not be out of necessity.

Half the World's Food Wasted

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has garnered headlines with its report stating that up to half the world's food goes to waste. Some of the causes are beyond ordinary households to fix, but there are plenty of actions we can take to make some difference.

1: Buy local fruit and vegetables from local markets, where how a potato looks, or the size of a turnip, or  a little blemish on an apple, are not regarded as vital. If you buy from supermarkets, make a point of buying stuff like the 'basic' bags of peppers, which are misshapes and 'the wrong size' (what utter bureaucratic idiocy, wherever it comes from). They, like market produce, are cheaper and taste no damn different.

2: If you grow your own, use it. Either side of us neighbours have perfectly good fruit trees that over the years have been little picked if at all. Happily we have been allowed to harvest the damsons from a tree on one side and mirabelles from a much neglected tree on the other. New occupants of the damson side so I hope they make the best of what they have available fresh and free.

And strangely I have noticed how some fellow allotment growers don't harvest some of their crops, either because they are grown out of habit though not liked, or too much of something is grown (so gift them), or a touch of the can't be bothereds sets in.

3: Learn to use leftovers. All it takes is a little imagination: yesterday I was making a big omelette for our evening meal, into which cubed went three stovie potatoes left from the previous day, bulking out the onion, yellow pepper (yes, basics range) and Parmesan.

4: Don't buy on automatic. I wonder how internet grocery purchases are affecting wastage - we all tend to laziness, and not changing a list even if you go off something, or have plenty already, is going to lead to waste.

5: Learn to preserve stuff better. That may be simply keeping certain fruits and veggies in the fridge, or actually making pickles and jams. Last year was rubbish for apples, strawberries and raspberries here, what we got was eaten fresh or made into ice cream as regards soft fruit, so no jams or jellies made for once. But we have some from 2011 still good.

6: In a country where obesity is a major problem, think about portion size.

The economic benefits will be immediate if the shopping bill is reduced, as it can be for most of us. But longer term as demand drops here so should prices, and the developing world will get a better share of food resources. It won't cure the planet's ills, but every little helps.

Another action, not for everybody though: get chickens (who love leftover spuds, greens, stale bread, cucumber skin if you don't use it, any toms that have got mould, etc etc). One fine day we'd love to have a pig or two, though as our deeds say we can't that has to wait until we move sometime in the future.

Capital Investment - The Vacuum Flask

We lashed out a possibly ridiculous £25 for a wide-mouthed vacuum flask on Saturday, the idea being that I can save/freeze and later use reheated for Ruth's lunches the small portions of leftover stews and soups that otherwise end up too often in the fridge for a week, then shifted to the bin. In this weather something hot is more welcome than any salad. It's a Stanley, tough as old boots - and like good boots should last a lifetime. Though 20 years ago she had another drinks flask by the same company that was also supposed to be unbreakable. She left it in a bag behind the car, forgot about it, for some reason reversed the car out of the drive... we did not claim on the guarantee.

I am less nervous about buying expensive things than cheap ones. Cheap usually means short-lived, expensive the opposite. Unless you back a car over something.

Star Star Anise

Home-made Chinese food too often focuses on stir fries to the exclusion of many more interesting methods and recipes. In my past life I got to travel in China, Taiwan and various Asian countries where the Chinese tended to dominate business (as they soon will around the world). A frequent favourite dish on those travels was variations on beef soup flavoured with star anise, the best being made with oxtail.

I have since found that a passable imitation can be made with leftover beef gravy (real gravy, not the stuff made with powder) or the juices from a beef stew. On Saturday we had one such, started as ever with a gently fried chopped onion, to which a finely chopped red chilli was added before the sieved juices of a stew from two days earlier were poured in and two whole star anise and a couple of big chunks of ginger were plopped in to simmer nicely for the best part of an hour (the few scraps of meat added at the last minute to avoid them going stringy along with a ready softened nest of noodles).

Not haute cuisine, but a good element of a Chinese meal that had the twin virtues of tasting great and costing next to nothing. Made with leftovers but there were no leftovers afterwards this time.

Leftovers and What They Mean

Recipe books are often filled with recipes for leftovers. Ideally a good cook has none, as their food should be so good nothing remains at the end of a meal, and they have judged precisely what is required. But inevitably we all have odds and sods that make their way into the fridge for later use, and it is literally a waste not to use them.

Friday we had some neighbours over for a meal, the main course of which was a daube of beef slow cooked for four hours. Lots of meat, and some health conscious eaters, so a few morsels left at the end. On Sunday these were dried of sauce, cut into much thinner pieces, and mixed with a drained tin of lentils, chopped onion and vinaigrette to make a salad. It was good, and I felt virtuous.

Getting the same feeling now as I smell the stock made with a chicken carcass and a few veg and herbs, the basis of a vegetable soup tonight. But it has to be about more than thrift to be really valid, and good chicken stock is always more than thrifty, the beginning of many flavorsome sauces, stews and soups. Cubes (we all use them at times) get nowhere near.

So leftovers well used are a sign for me of imagination, of economic thinking, and maybe experience. But only if they are not the norm.