FRIDGE BOTTOM FRITTATA

As time goes by we have become more adept at using up what we have in stock rather than shop for more food.  There are several reasons for this.  

The first is probably because we have more time to cook.

The second is that in France we live a good distance from any shops.  There is a village shop which sells a limited range of basics about 3km away but a supermarket selling everything is at least a twenty minute drive away.  We therefore shop less frequently and make sure we use everything up.

The third is that out here in rural France fresh produce does not seem to keep as long as stuff that we used to get from say Tesco or Sainsbury's.  I don't know why that is but we find ways to use up leftovers and veg before they become too tired.

The fourth is thrift.  Now that we are retired we have to be a bit more careful.  We enjoy eating out and balance the cost of that with sensible shopping.

The fifth is to avoid waste, for all the reasons above.

 

There are several ways to use up random leftovers of cooked or raw food.  You can make them into soup, into a quiche, in a salad, a gratin, or one of our favourites, a frittata.

This one had in it leeks, broccoli (stalks and florets) cherry tomatoes, courgettes and cooked brussels sprouts plus leftover bbq bits and pieces including smoked sausage and baby potatoes. You could add any herbs or spices, fresh or dried, or chilli flakes.

As a friend of mine used to say, if you have eggs, you have dinner!

Ingredients

1 leek, trimmed and sliced thinly

a few cherry tomatoes, halved

a handful of broccoli florets and the stalk, trimmed and sliced

a piece of cooked sausage

1 courgette, washed and sliced

a few cooked leftover sprouts, halved

4 eggs beaten

1 tblsp crème fraîche or cream

Herbs, fresh or dried

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180 fan.

Cook the broccoli in boiling water for a few minutes until tender.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan with an ovenproof handle.  Cook the leeks and courgette until tender. 

Add the tomatoes, potatoes, sprouts, broccoli and sausage and stir into the pan.

Beat the eggs with the crème fraîche.  Season with salt and pepper and add a few chopped herbs, fresh or dried if you like.

Pour the egg mixture over the veg mixture and heat gently until the bottom is cooked but the top still liquid.  

Transfer the pan to the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes or until the eggs are set.  If you don't have a frying pan with a metal/ovenproof handle, you can cook the whole thing in the oven, just tip the veg etc into a baking dish or tray, pour the egg mixture over and cook in the oven for a little longer.

Serve hot with salad or other veg.  Also good cold.

Serves 2-3, depending on what you serve with it.

BUBBLE AND SQUEAK TWO WAYS

 

Oh, the joy of leftovers!

The first version is simply leftover mashed potatoes and green veg, mashed together.

The mixture was piled into a well greased muffin tin and baked in the oven at 180° fan for about twenty minutes then sprinkled with grated cheese before returning to the oven to finish cooking.  After another ten minutes the cheese was melted.  We had ours with baked beans.  Yum!

For the egg version I used all the leftover veg we had, including carrot and half of a small tin of sweetcorn.  I added some fried chopped onions and leftover spaghetti.  I mixed in a tablespoon of panko breadcrumbs for a bit of texture.

I made depressions in the mixture ready to receive the eggs and baked it for 20 minutes at 180° fan  before dropping an egg into each well.

It was then finished off in the oven at 180° fan for around 10 minutes more until the eggs were cooked but the yolks still runny.  Double yum!

PIGS IN BLANKETS CASSOULET

This was one of the recipes in Mary Berry's Christmas programme last year.  It looked so good that we bought extra pigs in blankets in order to make it.  You can see the recipe here.

We actually adapted it to a quick version that just serves two people.

In browning the PIBs the blankets (bacon) came off - the sausages became unwrapped but that was not a bad thing!  In fact it gave me the idea that the cassoulet would be just as good another time made with chipolatas and lardons! 

It was utterly delicious, perfect for a Friday night supper (or any night of the week!).  Because it contains a whole tin of beans we just had ours with extra veg; carrots and broccoli.  I used my lovely small old Cousances cast iron casserole dish, a present from my Aunty Vera in the 80’s.  She had bought it during the early trend for cast iron pots and pans but couldn’t get on with it, preferring her 1970’s Pyrex dish instead - the white one with the orange flower pattern.  I'm sure many of us remember those and I dare say some of you will still be using one!

We obviously used ready made uncooked PIBs but it would be perfect for cooked leftovers, just putting them in last thing with the beans once the sauce got going.  The advantage there is that they would probably stay in one piece!

Ingredients 

1 tblsp sunflower oil 

10 pigs in blankets (or the whole pack of 12!)*

2 small shallots, peeled and chopped

1 stick of celery, washed and sliced

2 small cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed or grated

1 400g can of chopped tomatoes 

1 400g can of haricots verts or other white beans eg butter beans, cannellini beans, chick peas, drained and rinsed

a splash of white wine (or water) used to rinse the empty tomato tin

1 tsp dried parsley or sage

1 tsp Dijon mustard (or just a spot of English mustard)

1 vegetable Oxo cube or any stock cube or stock pot

1 tsp chicken gravy granules if needed

1/2 tsp sugar if needed

Method 

Heat the oil in a heat proof (cast iron) casserole dish or sauté pan.  Add the shallots, garlic and PIBs and fry gently, stirring, to colour them.  Don’t worry if the bacon unwraps itself from the sausages!

Stir in the tomatoes, beans, and herbs, crumble in the stock cube and bring to the boil.  Add the wine and simmer gently uncovered for about 10 minutes until the sausages are cooked through. *this is the stage where you could add cooked leftover PIBs.

Season and taste the cassoulet.  Add the sugar if the tomatoes seem a bit sharp.  Add the mustard and stir in the gravy granules to thicken the sauce if it’s a bit thin.

Serve with any extra veg you like.

Serves 2.

You might also like these other sausage dishes:

Italian sausage and bean stew

Sausage and lentil stew

Sausage traybake

Sausage and potato quiche which could also be adapted to use leftover PIBs.

COURGETTE, CAULIFLOWER AND BLUE CHEESE SOUP (soup maker recipe)

With a large chunk of our giant courgette still in the veg drawer I decided to make soup for lunch.  Courgettes have very little flavour so I added about half a cauliflower and the usual mix of soup veg, stirring in the cheese once it was cooked.

I used the spreadable blue cheese that I get in France (delicious on crusty bread, crackers or toast) and I don't know if anything similar is available in the UK as I have never looked for it but any blue cheese crumbled into the just cooked soup so that it melts would work.  It was a delicious, delicately flavoured soup, perfect for the season.

You may also like another blue cheese soup recipe, using cauliflower leaves and broccoli stalks which you can see here.

Ingredients

1 large onion

2 medium potatoes

1 courgette

½ a cauliflower

1 vegetable stock pot (I used garlic and thyme)

a squirt of garlic paste (optional)

1 tblsp blue cheese spread (or a chunk of any blue cheese, crumbled)

Method

Prepare and chop enough veg to fill the machine to the bottom line.

Add the stock pot and garlic paste and enough water to fill to the top line.

Cook on the smooth setting

Makes 4 generous servings

COURGETTES ON TOAST #2

Blogger friend Angela recently posted about leftovers, how not to waste them and how to make a delicious meal from what could easily be just thrown away.  Sometimes it takes quite a bit of imagination to do that.  See here.

Whilst on holiday in our gite in Brittany on a rainy day we decided to stay indoors and do some painting.  The gite was a long way from any shops so I aimed to produce lunch from what we had in rather than go on a long trek for supplies.  What we really fancied was beans on toast but we had no beans!  We did have sliced bread for sandwiches but also had half a baguette from the day before, so I decided to use that.

It turned out really well, almost like ratatouille on toast!  Very tasty and something I would do again.

However, on return from our holiday we found that our rogue courgette plant had produced these monsters!  Even with quite a bit of imagination I'm not sure we can keep them from the compost heap!

Ingredients 

A splash of olive oil

Half a small courgette 

Half each of a small red and a small green pepper, de seeded 

Four mushrooms 

Two small tomatoes 

1 tsp herbes de Provence (or a dash of chilli flakes or Worcestershire sauce would work)

A sprinkle of grated parmesan

Two eggs

Half a stale baguette

Method 

Wash and dice all the veg.  Heat the oil in a small saucepan and add the veg and herbs, adding the tomatoes last and cooking gently until soft.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Cut the baguette into four chunks.  Slice through into halves vertically and remove the crust.  Toast.

Serve the veg piled onto buttered toast, sprinkle with parmesan and topped with a fried egg. (Or poached, or scrambled if you prefer, but sometimes only a fried egg hits the spot.)

Serves 2.

NOGGLE END TOMATO TARTS

Our tomatoes have started to ripen but although they taste delicious they would not win any beauty contest!  They are a bit "noggly" - lumpy and bumpy with the odd split.  With a pack of puff pastry in the freezer I decided to use some of them for little tarts.

There was also a selection of bits of cheese in the fridge - we call those "noggle ends" - bits you would put under the grill on toast or in a quiche.  I used Camembert and something called Tome aux Fleurs, a hard cheese with a crust of flower petals, which you can read about here.  Grated cheddar would have worked well.

Also lurking in the fridge was a small pack of cocktail frankfurters, purchased for some long forgotten event and never used but fortunately well within date. 

I used my free Yorkshire pudding tin (see here) to make four tarts but this time used a slightly bigger template to cut the pastry allowing me to crimp the edges more neatly.  (It's actually something I spotted in Ikea, is meant to be the base for one of those stainless steel kitchen tool holders and I had a hunch it would be just the right size.)

My pastry made four tarts and eight cocktail sausage rolls (recipe here) from the trimmings.  All fun to make and very tasty - a nice way to entertain children on a wet afternoon in the school holidays I think - they are very adaptable and bake in just the right amount of time to clear up then heat up a tin of baked beans!😋

Ingredients 

1 pack of ready made, ready rolled, oblong puff pastry

2 tsp French mustard (or brown sauce, onion chutney or ketchup if you prefer)

6 thick slices of tomato

Thin slices of any cheese you have (or grated cheddar if you prefer)

1 egg, beaten (optional but worth using if you are also making the sausage rolls)

Fresh or dried thyme

8 cocktail frankfurters (or one large frankfurter cut into bits or the filling from a sausage)

Method 

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk6.  Grease the four holes of a Yorkshire pudding tin or four small tart tins (or use four ovenproof saucers placed on a baking sheet).

Allow the pastry to thaw and come up to room temperature.  Unroll and cut four circles about 2cm bigger than the holes using anything you have that’s the right size as a template.  Lay the pastry into the holes and crimp the edges.

Using the back of a teaspoon spread 1/2 tsp mustard over the base of each tart.  Add the slices of tomato, cutting to fill the pastry.  Arrange thin slices of cheese on top but leaving gaps as the cheese will melt and spread.

Brush the pastry edges with beaten egg (optional).  Sprinkle with fresh or dried thyme and bake for 20 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden brown and the cheese has melted and bubbled.

Use the pastry trimmings to make little sausage rolls which can go into the oven at the same time.

Makes 4 tarts and 8 cocktail sausage rolls

VEG DRAWER SOUP and the death of a soup maker

This very basic vegetable soup has always been one of my favourites.  It uses all the bits and pieces in the veg drawer that could very easily be destined for the compost heap but instead you get a very tasty virtually free lunch.  You can use more or less any veg you have as long as it has something that will thicken the soup such as potatoes or any root veg.  My selection is influenced by the very first vegetable soup I ever made, years ago, to a recipe by Nigella Lawson.

Unfortunately during the cooking programme my soup maker seems to have died.  When it got to the blending stage there was just a weak humming noise.  😞

I bought both of my soup makers in 2021, firstly a Morphy Richards in the UK just after Christmas then one in France a few months later, almost identical but quite a bit cheaper in a sale.  The French one has been used a lot over the years so I suppose for what it cost I've had my money's worth.

When we next go to the UK by car I will probably bring the Morphy Richards one back to France as it doesn't get used very often, only a handful of times per year.  In the meantime, I can use the broken French one on the "chunky" function, mainly used for soups like minestrone, which cooks the soup just the same but doesn't finish it off by blending.  On this occasion I just fished my stick blender out of the depths of the kitchen drawer and used that to finish the soup.  The deep shape of the machine made the blending very easy, probably easier than in a saucepan which would be wider, and much easier than transferring to a separate blender or food processor.  Just one extra piece of washing up, the stick blender wand, so it will do for now.

I notice that I can get a very similar new one for about 50€ on Amazon but would rather not spend the extra money as long as the heating element is still working and cooking the soup.

Update  I made a red pepper and tomato soup yesterday on chunky, got my stick blender ready, and thought I would try the "blender only" function on the soup maker, just in case.  It worked!  Maybe it just needed a rest!

Ingredients

4 small carrots

2 small potatoes

1 leek

a handful of radishes

1 large tomato

1 stick celery

1 chunk of cauliflower

3 broccoli stalks, woody outer layer removed

dry sherry and grated nutmeg (optional)

cream or crème fraîche for serving (optional)

Method

Wash, trim and roughly chop enough veg to fill the soup maker to the bottom line.

Add 1 vegetable stock pot and water to the top line.  Cook on smooth (or cook on chunky and finish with a stick blender).

Stir in a splash of dry sherry and a sprinkle of nutmeg before serving, and a swirl of cream in the bowl.

Makes 4 generous bowls of soup.

BROCCOLI, CAULIFLOWER AND BLUE CHEESE SOUP (soup maker recipe)

It's still very much soup weather here in France.  We seem to get one or two warm, sunny days, getting warmer week by week, followed by perishing cold grey, wet or drizzly days and very cold nights.  The 18°C sunshine  and clear blue sky the other day turned into a clear, starry night only a few degrees above freezing followed by a day of cold grey mizzle.  It's not time to put the soup maker to the back of the cupboard just yet and I regretted putting the electric blanket away already!

This soup was very much a "free soup" idea.  I always have to trim the leaves from a cauliflower to fit it into the fridge so had saved them and several stalks from some broccoli with the idea of turning them into soup.  My research told me it would produce a very delicate flavoured soup, which I interpreted as "not much flavour".  The usual way to add flavour to an otherwise bland soup is to add an extra stock pot or seasoning but I had decided on blue cheese, a popular flavour combo.

I discarded the floppy green bits from the cauliflower leaves and used mainly the thick white ribs.  I trimmed the ends and knobbly bits from the broccoli stems and removed the woody outer part.  I went a bit off piste and for once sautéed the leek.  

Into the cooked soup I stirred several dollops of whipped St Agur, a product I spotted here in France not long ago and it's delicious as a spread on toast or croutons.  I think that crumbling in any kind of blue cheese (to taste) would work just as well.  It added a lovely creaminess as well as the blue cheese flavour and the soup was divine.  Definitely a keeper!

Ingredients

cauliflower leaves

broccoli stems

1 leek

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

1 vegetable stock pot

creamed or whipped or crumbled blue cheese to taste

Method

Trim and wash the leek.  Slice into medium slices and fry gently in butter or oil until beginning to colour.

While the leek is cooking, discard any tired and floppy green parts of the cauliflower leaves.  Roughly chop the ribs and rinse well.

Trim the broccoli stems by removing the ends, the knobbly bits and the outer woody part.  Roughly chop and rinse well.

Add enough prepared veg to the soup maker machine to fill as far as the bottom line.  Add the stock pot and enough water to fill to the top line.

Cook on the smooth setting.

When cooked (or when reheating in a saucepan if serving later) stir in your blue cheese spread or other product to taste, until it melts and blends in.  A little can go a long way with some blue cheeses so go steady.  Season with salt and pepper to taste - remember that blue cheese can make it taste salty.

Serves 4 generous bowls of soup or 5-6 as a starter.

ANOTHER SUNDAY DINNER SOUP (soup maker recipe)

We are fans of leftovers in this house and there were quite a few after having friends round for Sunday lunch.  The menu was coronation chicken cocktail (a mini coronation chicken salad served as you would serve prawn cocktail), roast pork with home made sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce, cauliflower cheese, broccoli and mashed potatoes.

The table set for Sunday lunch for ten people.

You can see my earlier Sunday Dinner Soup here.  The principle is the same but this time there were enough leftover veg without adding anything else at all so no preparation of extra onion and carrot.  The quickest and easiest soup yet!

I had made the coronation chicken to an easy BBC Good Food recipe you can see here and I poached the chicken for it as per the recipe I used here.  I kept the liquid used for the poaching as stock, along with the bits of carrot and celery, with the possibility that there might be soup in mind.

Everything went into the soup maker and it was delicious, just like Sunday dinner in a bowl!  I added an extra spoonful of warmed apple sauce just before serving.  Yum!

Ingredients 

Two thin slices of roast pork, chopped

Cooked mashed potato and broccoli

A spoonful of cauliflower cheese

A small spoonful of stuffing (there was not much left)

The carrot and celery from poaching the chicken (or use a stick of celery and a carrot, chopped)

A spoonful of gravy

A blob of apple sauce

The poaching liquid from the chicken (or use a chicken stock pot or cube and water)

Method 

Add enough meat, cooked veg and stuffing to fill the machine to the bottom line.  Add the gravy, applesauce and enough of the poaching liquid (or the chicken stock pot/cube and water) to fill to the top line.  Stir well.

Cook on smooth.

Add a spoonful of warmed apple sauce before serving.

Makes 4 generous portions.

CHERRY AND COCONUT CAKE

Whilst doing my occasional purge of ancient condiments and out of date foods in the fridge I found a part used jar of bottled cherries.  These things are very sweet but delicious on ice cream or with chocolate cake.   This time my thoughts turned to "cherry cake" swiftly followed by "coconut"! 

I used one of my favourite coconut recipes from the Waitrose website which you can see here. I've previously adapted it to make a delicious coconut and lemon cake which you can see here.

I rinsed, dried and quartered the cherries, a process which I find a bit tedious which is why I've given the cake two stars for the faffing about.  It’s not hard to do, just always takes longer than you think!

The mixture turned out stiffer than I remember so I had to add a splash of milk if I was ever going to get it into the tin.  The good bit about that is that the cherries didn't all sink to the bottom of the cake!

Anyway, it turned out really well, was a lovely cake, with a good coconut flavour, a crisp crust, moist with a Madeira-like texture and little hits of the very sweet cherries.  Perfect for a "not quite Spring yet" cup of tea in the warm afternoon sunshine.  

It was very much appreciated in my watercolour class where we were painting snowdrops and everyone had a second slice!

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter, softened

175g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

1/4 tsp coconut flavouring (optional)

175g self raising flour

100g dessiccated coconut

100g bottled or glacé cherries

a splash of milk if needed

 

Method

 

Butter and line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin or use a paper liner.  Preheat the oven to 180°C /160°Fan / gas mk 4.

Rinse the cherries well and pat dry with kitchen paper.  Cut into quarters.  Put about a tablespoon of the measured flour into a small bowl and tip the cherries in.  Roll them around in the flour with a spoon so that they are well coated in flour.  This should help to avoid them all sinking to the bottom of the cake (although sometimes they do even though I have done this step!).

 

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar using a hand mixer, until light and fluffy.  

In a jug, beat the eggs with the coconut flavouring and then add a dribble at a time to the creamed mixture along with a little flour, beating well with each addition.

 

Fold in the remaining flour, then the coconut and cherries.  If the mixture seems very stiff, mix in a splash of milk to loosen it.  Spoon into the tin and level the top.

 

Bake for 50-60 minutes, covering with foil after 30 minutes, until done.  

 

Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

 

Cuts into 8-10 generous slices.  

(Leftover slices are nice served warm as a pudding with custard!)

SOUP OF THE DAY (soup maker recipe)

I know I have waxed lyrical before about how useful I have found my soup maker but.........

Having made the Caesar salad for lunch one day I decided to use the veg and liquid from poaching the chicken the next day in a soup.  It worked really well using a random selection of other veg.  I poured the poaching mixture through a sieve into a jug first to pick out the veg then strained the liquid again to avoid using any unwanted bits in the soup.

My soup maker is a very basic design, doesn't have a sauté function, simply cooks either smooth or chunky but can be used as a blender only.  This is handy if I have made a chunky soup, such as minestrone, then decide I want the chunks a bit smaller.  A quick zap on the blender function makes it a bit finer.

My machine is essentially a large kettle with a blender in it.  Whilst I know that there are some soups that are better made using other means, for everyday lunches and most soups it works perfectly well.  There’s no simmering, stirring, or ladling into a blender to be done.  Once the veg are chopped and you switch it on it does all the work while you do something else and a perfectly good home made soup is ready less than thirty minutes later.  You can add a little spice, a few chopped herbs and a swirl of cream when served in the bowl or, my personal favourite from a Nigella Lawson recipe, a splash of dry sherry and some freshly grated nutmeg.  

There are numerous websites and cook books available to give you ideas, although many of them use machines with extra functions.  If a recipe needs fried or roasted ingredients I do that while chopping the rest of the veg.

One of the veg I like to use now is Jerusalem artichokes as a couple of these add a unique smokiness to the flavour of any soup.  I always buy a few when I see them as they also seem to keep quite well in the fridge.

For this soup I used

The veg and parsley from poaching the chicken (celery, carrot and garlic)

1 large carrot

1 largeish potato

1 medium onion

1 large leek

2 smallish Jerusalem artichokes

3 broccoli stalks, woody outer layer removed

1 chicken stock pot

Method

Having put the poaching veg into the soup maker add enough prepared other veg to fill to the bottom line.

Add the strained poaching liquid and enough water to fill to the top line.

Add the stock pot, give it a good stir and cook on smooth.

Makes 4 generous bowls of soup.

CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD

One of the bars in our village changed hands last winter and is now a very popular bistro style restaurant called Brody's, serving excellent pizzas, lasagne, burgers and salads.  My absolute favourite salad is their chicken Caesar salad.  After a few of those I wondered why I never make it at home and thought it was time I did.  My version is similar to the one they serve.

The chicken ready for poaching.

I now make it quite often using leftover roast chicken or a poached chicken breast, although you can of course buy packs of cooked chicken breast which do the job very well.  You can also cook the chicken breast in an air fryer, adding a few spices if you like, which takes about ten minutes at 180°.  

One poached chicken breast makes plenty of salad for the two of us or would make a starter for four.  I doubt this Caesar salad would pass muster with the authentic salad police but it's a formula we enjoy.  You can obviously omit the ingredients you don't fancy or add other things you like, such as a bit of chopped cucumber.  Some recipes suggest adding bits of crispy bacon which sounds very tasty but I haven't strayed that far yet!

You can also poach the chicken from frozen which is very handy.  I frequently freeze chicken breasts individually, bagging them separately from a large pack from the supermarket, to thaw out one at a time for future use but they work perfectly well from frozen here, just taking a few more minutes to cook in the poaching liquid.

The salad ready for the dressing.

The thing that makes it a Caesar salad as opposed to just chicken salad is the dressing.  I have in the past used home made Caesar dressing based on this recipe here which contains no anchovies.  It came in very handy for a guest who was allergic to most kinds of fish.  Mostly though I use shop bought Caesar salad dressing and have found Heinz readily available in France and very good.  Some others are a bit too thin and not creamy enough.

For the croutons I break up into chunks the dried slices of baguette sold in a local supermarket.  Such things are readily available here for people to serve as apéros with patés or numerous other spreads.  You could make your own or buy packets of cubed croutons (or leave them out).

Since first writing this post I have attempted to make my own croutons by simply drying out some thin slices of yesterday's baguette on a baking tray in the oven part of our wood burner.  It seemed to work!  The temperature was about 200°C and they were in for about ten minutes, turning them over once, until a nice golden brown and crisp.

One thing that is worth the effort is making sure you have the right kind of lettuce, such as iceberg or romaine.  It needs to be crispy and somehow it doesn't work with the floppy kind!  

Ingredients

For the poached chicken

1 skinless chicken breast

1 medium carrot, peeled 

1 stick of celery, washed

1 fat clove of garlic, peeled 

a few stalks of fresh parsley or a pinch of dried parsley

For the Caesar dressing 

2 tblsp mayonnaise

a squeeze of lemon juice or  ½ tblsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp mild mustard such as Dijon

a splash of Worcestershire sauce

1 small clove of garlic, grated

1 tbslp grated parmesan (shop bought ready grated is fine)

For the salad

a chunk of crispy lettuce, washed and shredded (not too finely)

a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

a few stoned black olives, halved

½ a red onion, peeled and finely chopped (or use a spring onion)

¼ of a red pepper, de-seeded and finely chopped 

a handful of crisp croutons 

1-2 tblsp grated parmesan

Method 

To poach the chicken breast, roughly chop the carrot and celery and put them with all the other poaching ingredients into a medium saucepan.  Add enough water to cover the meat, season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer immediately and cook for 15 minutes until the chicken is tender and cooked through.

Lift the chicken out of the liquid and set aside to cool.  You can discard the liquid and veg or use them to make homemade soup.  When the chicken is cold cut into chunks.

For the Caesar dressing, put all the ingredients into a small bowl and mix together, adding extra ingredients to taste.

To assemble the salad put everything into a large bowl, add the chicken and enough dressing to just coat the salad - don't drown it.  Mix thoroughly.

Serve with crusty bread or, if feeling indulgent, a bowl of chips.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as a starter.

SALMON, PEA AND POTATO QUICHE

"Here she goes again" I can hear myself saying! Yes, another blog post about leftovers!

I've been "off the lead" for a couple of weeks while Nick is back in the UK for one of our scheduled visits, which usually revolve around seeing friends and family, and mending things.  The MOT for the car we leave in the UK falls due at this time of year and when I was last there it had a dashboard warning which declared "ENGINE FAULT. REPAIR NEEDED".  Naturally I ignored it and it ran perfectly well except for the annoying audible warning!  However it needed to go to the garage anyway for its test so we allowed a bit longer for the visit in case parts needed to be ordered.  It was a simple fix so all is well.

So, with Nick out of the picture I decided to host a "ladies that lunch" for some other singletons at home.  For starters I served the little vegetable tarts which you can see here.  For main course I made roast salmon on a bed of courgette and tomatoes which you can see here.  For dessert I made five pana cottas with a strawberry topping.  I made these the day before so that I just had to add the topping last minute.  Only three other ladies had replied to my invitation so I had "quality tested" the spare one for my dinner.  When a fourth guest accepted last minute and having eaten one of the puddings I rustled up a second dessert of apple and gooseberry crumble using fruit and topping from the freezer, to Mary Berry's recipe which you can see here.

Naturally there were leftovers!  A few unused cooked peas, beans and broccoli from the starter, plus nearly half a pint of the egg mix.  I have found it best not to over fill the tarts, as the leftover mix can be used later.  (Usually I just pour it over a few savoury bits and pieces to bake a kind of "crustless quiche".)

There was also one salmon fillet with a few bits of courgette and tomato left and a few potatoes. I had a pack of shortcrust pastry in the freezer which I thawed out and then just piled everything into it including ripped up flakes of salmon.  I used my general method for making a quiche which  you can see here, adding a few slices of a rather past it noggle end of goat's cheese and some tomato to decorate the top.  Three quarters of the way through the cooking I pressed the filling down a bit using the back of a fish slice as it looked like some bits were going to be browned too much.  This made sure everything was submerged in the custard and resulted in a well filled quiche.

It was absolutely yummy!  Another "free lunch"!  It took me three days to eat my way through it on my own but was so delicious I would most definitely make it again from scratch!  In fact it would have made the ideal lunch dish for the ladies.

Ingredients 

a pack of ready made, ready rolled shortcrust pastry

2 tblsp caramelised onion chutney (or any other suitable chutney made with onions)

a handful of cooked peas, green beans and broccoli florets

1 cooked salmon fillet

a few chunks of cooked courgettes and tomatoes from the roasted salmon recipe (or fry some)

2 small cooked potatoes, sliced

2 eggs

2 tblsp of crème fraiche

approx 100ml milk

a few slices of goat's cheese, or any other cheese, grated or sliced

a few slices of tomato

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan.  Line a loose bottomed 20cm tart tin with the pastry.  Use the baking paper that comes in the pack to line the pastry case, add a layer of baking beans and blind bake for 15 minutes.  (I find it a good idea to put the tin on a baking sheet, which removes the risk of accidentally pushing the loose bottom up when lifting the pastry case in and out of the oven.)

Remove from the oven, remove the baking beans and paper and, if the pastry still looks a bit damp, return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Spread the onion chutney over the pastry case.  Add the cooked greens in an even layer and distribute the sliced potatoes evenly over the top.  Tear the salmon fillet into strips and arrange them evenly over the veg.

Beat the cream and eggs together in a jug and add enough milk to make up to 250ml.  Mix well, add salt and pepper and pour evenly over the filling.  Add the cheese slices (or some grated cheese) and tomato slices.

Return to the oven, reducing the temperature to 160C / 140 fan.  Bake for 20 minutes then press any bits of filling that are above the surface of the custard back down so that they are submerged.  

Bake for another 10-20 minutes until the filling is set and slightly browned.

Allow to settle and cool for 10 minutes before serving.  Serve warm or cold with salad or anything else you fancy.  Chips and baked beans would be nice!  Equally a simply "English" salad or something more exotic.

Cuts into 6 regular or 4 generous servings.