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A week of creative use of leftovers

I decided to tackle the freezer again, so for Sunday dinner I defrosted some cod that had been in there a while and chose a Rick Stein recipe, in which the fish was grilled and served with sarladaise potatoes (not a slimming way of serving spuds – lots of goose fat was involved). Really delicious though – they are slowly fried and then lashings of garlic and parsley are added towards the end. The whole lot is accompanied by a lovely refreshing tomato, caper and red onion salad. As is always the case at chez Battenburg, you double the number of potatoes you first thought of, add a couple more and the whole lot gets eaten. No dessert though.

Mind you that was because we had dessert in the afternoon, as the lovely Jenny brought me a fabulous birthday cake. This was one of her Silver Screen Suppers recipes (silverscreensuppers.com – if you haven’t seen it already, check it out). Jenny presented me with Claudette Colbert Cake. She made Rita Hayworth’s angel cake, filled it with lemon curd and finished it off with lemon frosting. It looked amazing and was delicious – like eating little pieces of lemony cloud. For the grown ups there were little cake glasses with apricot brandy.

 

Jenny left the extra lemon curd she’d made, so when she came for dinner this week I made us these cute little lemon meringue tarts: pastry cases from the freezer, the remaining lemon curd and meringue made from egg whites from the freezer. Genius, if I say so myself. 

Also in the interests of freeing up freezer space, I did a sausage audit, found a medley of different varieties and turned them all into a toad in the hole. There were some slightly vintage onions, so I made my favourite gravy: slice a couple of onions thinly, melt a generous slice of butter and cook the onions on a low heat for about fifteen minutes uncovered, then put the lid on and cook very gently until they are really soft. Stir in a tablespoon of flour, then add about 250ml stock (I used beef), a glass of marsala or red wine, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Cook on a low heat for about fifteen minutes. A simple side dish of peas. 

We ate what was clearly enough for four people. That is the downside of comfort food…