gastronome: leftovers

leftovers

Say, what are your favorite things to do with leftovers? I love repurposing leftovers into new dishes; it excercises frugality and creativity - and often, you can get a really quick dinner on the table after work.

The latest leftover creation i played around with involved salad & risotto cakes. We made dinner for Forrest (actually, the meal is mentioned in the not-quite-chopped-salad entry) I intentionally made extra risotto so we could me the cakes later, and we still had a bunch of cabbage and lettuce from the salad. Voila! Nice 'n' easy. (click on the avocado - you know you want to!)

What do you do with leftovers?

Other tricks:

An urban picnic with cheese, crackers, a little toast rubbed with garlic, maybe, anchovies, maybe a rogue sausage or some proscuitto if we have it, whatever fruit is around, and a salad. Any small leftovers that are eaten cool or cold or even a bowl of soup reheated, if there's only a little, is perfect for this.

Roasted chicken turns into a lovely avgolemono soup, if you pull the meat off the bone to throw in the soup.

A bit of soup can often turn into a nice pasta sauce, thinned or thickened as appropriate. Veggie purées, especially. In fact, i can turn just about ANYTHING into a reasonable pasta sauce or bruschetta topping as a leftover. Again, with a bit of salad, perfect!

Posted by shock on June 03, 2003 | TrackBack

Comments

*drool*

hm. i guess that means i should go fix something for dinner... if ONLY my fridge had leftover risotto in it!

hey -- the boy's not home. i could have fresh risotto!

Posted by: naomi_traveller on June 3, 2003 7:23 PM

The research physicist doesn't eat risotto?
Note: I am sharpening my knives before I become resident cook and bottle washer chez bushell y martinez.

Posted by: Damien Warman on June 3, 2003 9:46 PM

Sounds truly excellent. You are mastering the zen of knife sharpening. What did you wind up making, Miss Naomi?

Posted by: meriko on June 3, 2003 10:27 PM

heh. risotto, of course.

It was a late dinner, what with the editing inspiration earlier. The research physicist will eat risotto, but he's approaching it slowly and gently as far as enthusiasm goes. But what with the writing, when he called to say he was on his way home, it was almost in the pot.

And by the time he got here, it was ready! :) So we had risotto for dinner. And he was very hungry, and it was *exactly* what I wanted to be eating, so it turned out well on both counts.

It was sort of a random what-have-I-got-on-hand risotto: leeks, linguica sausage, tomatoes, some dry vermouth, broth, chicken (ahem - leftover chicken!), olives, italian herbs, and a bit of mozzarella right at the end for creaminess.

Supremely tasty. Hurrah for my pressure cooker, which makes it in about 5 minutes of cooking once everything is in the pot.

Posted by: naomi_traveller on June 3, 2003 11:01 PM