Using up leftovers

I always believe in using up any surplus - whether it's wool, fabric or food - so when I stumbled on two clever ideas for using up kitchen waste I had to try them; after all, what is there to lose?

The first was for cider vinegar. This basically involves putting apple peel and cores in a jar with a little sugar and covering with water, and leaving to stand for a few days. After this, it's strained and bottled (a washed out fancy lemonade bottle) and stands again to turn to vinegar. It's easy and the only cost is a tablespoon or two of sugar; my main difficulty was finding peel and cores that were good enough to use as the early apples were damaged. I filled a jam jar though, let it stand, bottled it, let it stand again . 

After a week I checked how things were going. Nice and fizzy, and smelling more like cider than vinegar. The instructions said to leave for another week and let the sour vinegary taste develop... 

At this point I decided to change the whole experiment into one of making cider. In short, I drank it. And very nice it was too; somewhere close to the sweet fruit ciders I buy, and definitely something I though I'd try again.

Second time, I somehow forgot to drink it, and when I opened the bottle it had certainly turned to cider vinegar. There are a multitude of ways I could have used it but I added it to an apple/chilli pickle I was making.

 A less successful experiment was the one trying to make beer from stale bread. Having seen Louisa Ziane from Toast Ales talking at Timber Festival about how Toast uses unwanted bread in their manufacturing process, I'd become intrigued with the idea of making something from nothing, or, at least, from scraps I was planning to feed to the birds. I'd found a very basic recipe on the web, which involved stale crusts, water and a little sugar - so nothing much to lose. After its initial few days with the bread steeping in a jar, it smelt fine, and it seemed quite believable that I'd end up with beer. I strained it, sat it in a clean jar on th kitchen windowsill and for a day or so it bubbled, but then the weather turned and cooled considerably, and the beer-making process stopped. Maybe I should have moved it to the airing cupboard to keep warm but I was worried about it bubbling over (I've had accidents with home made wine before!). I'm sure it's something I'll try again - maybe with some failed sourdough bread - but this first attempt wasn't a success.

Fridge Clear-out Soup

Today I decided it was time to give the fridge a clearout - and found the last bit of the last homegrown pumpkin, leftover chicken stew from earlier this week and a half-used jar of roasted pepper spread.

I'd been going to make pumpkin chilli but had a rethink - and ended up with a sort of Moroccan soup.

Dice the pumpkin flesh and cook it in the chicken stew with some diced onion and a clove of garlic. When it's soft, squash with a potato masher.
Add a chopped up red pepper (mine had been lingering in the fridge while we were on holiday last week, so not looking too good), half a chopped chilli (aiming for a little heat not burning the inside of my mouth) and squashed up seeds from a cardamom pod. By this point, more water needed adding. Once the pepper started to soften I added a tin of chick peas and a heaped teaspoon of the roasted pepper spread, and just let it all heat through again.
It was delicious - spicy without burning my mouth. I'll have to make it again sometime.

leftovers soup

Using up bits and bobs of leftovers to make soup for lunch.

Starting with about a pint of water/stock from boiling gammon at the weekend,adding a small carrot not much bigger than a finger, a slice cut from a turnip, half a sweet potato left sitting in the fridge, a handful of yellow split peas and half a chopped up onion. Everything in a saucepan and simmered for about half an hour.
Today's magic ingredient though was 3 or 4 tablespoons of sauce left over from yesterdays fake boston beans - I could always add a little tomato puree, a pinch of mustard and a very small dribble of black treacle another time to see if it tasted the same, but today's was a wonderful accidental soup.