Leftovers

On opening the fridge recently I had been turning a blind eye to various bits and pieces that were glaring accusingly at me.  This week I could take it no longer.  The issue was some food that had been bought for Christmas and somehow was still, in the middle of January, residing in my fridge.

I’d bought too much cream, my daughter had returned from university with a surprising number of apples.  A red cabbage destined for my Christmas salad was getting soft in a corner of the fridge alongside a celeriac and some puff pastry purchased on the off chance I wasn’t in the mood to make my own flaky pastry (I wasn’t but it didn’t get used).

Like so many I was brought up with the imperative that there should be no waste.  Never put more on your plate than you can eat and always, always finish what is on said plate.  That sort of thing.  Quite a lot of that ethos has filtered through to me and I can’t bear waste, whether it is scraping plates into the bin after lunch or shamefacedly throwing away food from the fridge that I have failed to use.  So it was in this spirit that I set too with all the sulky ingredients, determined that they should all have their moment in the spotlight.

The cream tasted fine despite having a late December use by date (what do they do to it?) but feeling sure its days were numbered I made it into butter.  Eschewing the jar shaking that my Granny taught me many years ago I used the big mixer.  Obviously I turned away just as the butter separated from the buttermilk and I got splashed but my delight was no less than when making it in an old jam jar as a child.  Always delighted by a bit of kitchen alchemy I suddenly had a handful of butter to squeeze, wash and salt.

The red cabbage was chopped and cooked with one of the apples, some red wine vinegar, brown sugar and redcurrant jelly.  A celeriac – along with some just beginning to sprout potatoes – was transformed into a rather delicious Ottolenghi gratin.  The recipe asked for 10 leaves of sage but, don’t you know it, only a few in the packet bought for the festivities were still green.  Anyway, it was still fab and we had the gratin with the red cabbage and the sausages from the freezer than hadn’t fallen into the puff pastry.

Let’s not stray too far from reality however.  I was the one who had bought all (most of) these ingredients and it was my inefficiency that resulted in them loitering for so long.  The joy derived was because, despite having been neglected, they had been used rather than chucked in the bin and I think I therefore enjoyed the results all the more.

Thus I would implore you to give any sad stuff skulking in your fridge a fighting chance.  Whilst it might no longer be suitable for its original purpose, there is usually a fine alternative to found, you might even create a new family favourite.

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