Leftovers

There’s an old joke which goes something like ‘when I was young, all our meals were leftovers’. Ah, but how can they all be leftovers when there surely must be something original for them to be left over from, I (for the sake of argument) hear you say. And therein lies the humour. I have, however, found a way to make this epicurean Penrose staircase a reality. The reason I have not blogged so much recently is that I have been mostly eating leftovers.

I will shortly be moving house you see, and must bid adieu to the 70’s style kitchen that I have been calling my own.

Farewell, my ugly.

So I have been systematically emptying the cupboards and keeping the fridge contents to a bare minimum. As practical as this will be come moving weekend, it means that my dinner options this week have been sadly limited.

It has also forced me to be inventive. The main meal of Monday is refried and served as a side dish on Tuesday. Tuesday is thrown in a soup for lunch on Wednesday, while Wednesday evening is rolled up in a fajita for Thursday. And so on and so forth. Leftovers are the ultimate convenience food - what could be more convenient than something you've already cooked?

It is this dedication to the leftover cause that has led me to discover onion pasta.

I wanted some spicy onion relish to go alongside some burgers, so I fried up a Spanish onion in some chilli oil (which is really quite spicy now, by the way) with a little salt and sugar to help it caramelise. The next day I was stuck and only had pasta in the cupboard. So I boiled that up, melted some butter in a pan, added some garlic, thyme and the left over onions. They didn’t need to cook, just warm through. Once the pasta was done I stirred it into the onion mixture.

Reader, it was damn fine eating.