Second Helpings: Delicious Dishes to Transform Your Leftovers by Sue Quinn

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Leftovers says

Pen and Spoon

is not the most glamorous of words, although ‘the French have a lovelier expression- les restes,’ she tells us. (Of course they bloody do; even their word for a dustbin is pretty.) I love leftovers which is just as well because I am absolutely crap when it comes to a) proportionate food shopping and b )impulse control. I wasn’t always like this, but now the kids have departed, and there’s little need to cook huge meals as economically as possible, I tend to drift around like Marie Antoinette in a wig shop, buying whatever takes my fancy, ingredient-wise. So, if I can’t rein in this habit, I can at least use Quinn’s newly published book to deal with its consequences in a delicious, flavour-led way.

There are moral arguments for eating rather than discarding leftovers, and Quinn takes us through these in her introduction but uses a light touch. She focuses on convenience and enjoyment, urging us to get creative with commonly-binned ingredients (a salad leaf pesto with broccoli, mint, and pistachios to be served with pasta) alongside leftover cooked food (Roast Dinner Enchiladas) or cook with leftovers in mind (roast several trays of vegetables instead of one and deploy in her recipe for Peanut and Tamarind Curry with Mint and Dates). There’s lots of advice about using up odds and sods (Breakfast Cereal Gelato), too. You’re in skilled hands, which is essential; this cookbook is not explicitly aimed at people on a tight budget, but it will appeal to them, so the recipes need to work, taste great, and be safe. I trust Quinn in this respect; she’s rigorous when it comes to research, beginning her career as a news reporter for News International in Australia before moving to the UK as their London Correspondent. Since then, she has established a career in food media, writing investigative features on topical food and health issues for Delicious Magazine, BBC Food, The Telegraph, and The Guardian. Second Helpings is her 15th book. Usefully, Quinn starts with ‘base’ or ‘master’ recipes. There’s a simple pasta bake with a choice of two sauces and a six-step stew demonstrating how to flavour, thicken, bulk out, brighten and boost homemade stew via a combination of leftovers and fresh ingredients. It’s flexible, she writes, suggesting we serve it on toast or crumpets, with mash and polenta or add a pastry lid to make a pie (and instructions for the latter are given). Roasted veg, soup, risotto, salad and fruit benefit from this approach; suggestions for what to do with rock-hard or overripe fruit (poach, roast, stew, and a lovely recipe for crumpets where they are topped with cooked fruit and berries, butter and sugar, then baked until sizzling); and a base recipe for risotto that shows you how to incorporate whatever cheese, vegetables, meat or even grain you have to hand are really useful. Following this, we dive into chapters according to meal type, from ‘small plates’ to ‘sweet things’ via light and main meals. Every recipe is fully realised, often using a multiplicity of ingredients and products one might have lying around with helpful advice about substitutions.

If you are the kind of cook who ends up with half-used bags, jars and tins of ingredients purchased for one specific recipe, Quinn’s final section on how to use them (and small portions of leftovers i.e. one cooked sausage) is invaluable. She shows us how to make lemon curd or a tangy vinaigrette from preserved lemons (which she uses in her Crisper Drawer Tabouleh with Buckwheat), and a couple of spoonfuls of lemon curd are transformed into a wet rub for chicken or roast vegetables. What might we do with the last scrapings inside various condiment jars? Use them as a flavour essence to deglaze and drizzle, she says. There are similar and very clever suggestions for leftover pickle brine. You can even deploy the brine from leftover feta similarly, she writes.

Some more favourites:

Those cooked vegetables appear in a smoky dip that handily contains tahini and Greek yoghurt, two ingredients that also need using up chez moi.

Leftover takeout curry and lime pickle are turned into a toastie.

A ‘flexible and doable salad’ becomes an Indian spiced Veg Bowl with Crispy Chickpeas and Chutney Dressing.

Leftover ham becomes a gratin with cabbage, apple and mustard.

Random broken pasta is added to ‘perfumed rice’ and flavoured with mint butter.

Spent coffee grounds, cocoa and hazelnuts transform into cookies and leftover bread and seeds become crackers.

Leftover roast beef is served with tomatoes, walnuts and tomato sauce in a hommage to tonnato.

Curried Potato Pancakes with Smoked Fish and Mango Chutney Creme Fraiche uses just 200g of leftover mash.

Old, bruised apples and pears are roasted and served with spatchcocked chicken.

Stale or surplus bread becomes Bread and Jam Steamed Pudding or is added to vegetables to make a Bread Tart with Greens, Pinenuts and Raisins.

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Second Helpings: Delicious Dishes to Transform Your Leftovers by Sue Quinn is published by Quadrille and is available to buy now. This is a Bookshop.Org Associates link from which I will earn a small commission should you buy this or any other book in my bookshop.