Holly and I have been on a bit of an economy drive since she was made redundant and I decided to take a lower paid job at the University of Surrey. Actually, it's not an economy drive, it's an efficiency drive. I still have an espresso in the morning, I just make it at home before I leave for work, and I make my own lunch - I choose whatever I want, but I'm not paying for anyone else to assemble it for me.
So, apart from eating more healthily than we have in a long time, I have also taken to making a few pot roasts. These meals are carefully planned so that we don't do our usual thing of buying more ingredients than we can use and throwing them away when they go off. However we still tend to make too much. And thus we have discovered the joy of leftovers. It all came from reading in my Readers Digest Farmhouse Cookery (a great book from 1980) about how bubble and squeak was refried roast leftovers. The recipe it gave had slices of roast beef fried in butter with onions and then served on a bed of fried potatoes and cabbage
At Holly's request, we tried this recipe (I didn't take too much persuading) and found it to be rather good (if slightly artery clogging). Anyway so we have extended this idea in to our now regular two day roasts. The best way to explain this is to give an example of my last two days teas:
Tea 1: Shoulder of lam, slow cooked for three hours on a bed of carrots with whole onions and prunes (it was a risky gamble on a tagine theme, and it worked!). This was accompanied by boiled cauliflower and broccoli, Yorkshire pudding and gravy - all made from base ingredients (the only cheating I do is to use some vegetable bouillon in the gravy)
Tea 2: Couscous with diced lamb and fried cauliflower and broccoli mash in a gravy sauce. So I know it sounds gross, and it was with some trepidation that we tucked in, but it was really nice. Gravy and cous cous were made for eachother! And even though all the prunes were quickly devoured yesterday, the flavour they had infused in to the meat was still discernible today. And if the thought of fried cauliflower and broccoli mash doesn't appeal, then you need to try it! Mashed well and fried in some nice olive oil they don't turn out bad!
