I am loathed to throw out any kind of food, and Mondays I usually have lots of left-overs. Depending on what I have, a gratin or a soup is usually what I go for.
Today I had four potatoes, one carrot, a bit of cheese (it has survived since Christmas - we bought a huge edamer that just never ends), half an onion, two bits of sausage (Norrlandsfalu - a boiled and lightly smoked sausage- and a spicy one I can´t remember the name of), 200 ml of cream, and some kebab sauce.
I put all the veg and cheese through the food processor, using the coarsest grater, diced the sausage, and put it all in an oven dish. I usually put in a layer of veg mix, then sausage, then the rest of the veg. I mix cream and sauce with a bit of spice, like tabasco and Worchestershire sauce and pour it over the whole thing. I then sprinkle some bread crumbs on top, to prevent the cream from burning and going all icky. This is traditionally done to Janssons Frestelse (= Jansson´s Temptation), a potatoes au gratin dish that is seasoned with anchovy (I will certainly do it later on the blog), and I really like the texture of the surface so I imported the technique to all my gratins.
I leave it in the oven for 50 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, and if dinner is delayed I just turn the oven off and let it sit in the remaining heat. I serve it with a fresh vegetable, we seem to like cucumbers at the moment, and a glass of saft.
This size of gratin usually feeds the two of us and one person besides. I often put any left-overs on a plate, put a soup plate on top, stick it in a plastic bag and freeze it, for the next day when I eat alone (this happens most weeks). It´s like a home-made microwave meal, very handy!
looks good, and the idea for saving leftovers for lunch the next day is something i often do, too. we don't have saft here that i've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteThere has been some campaigning in later years, both here and in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere, too), to get people to throw away less food. I suppose a lot of full-time professionals (and almost everyone is) have never learned basic cooking. I get the impression cooking is a hobby for some, though.
DeleteThe Brits have something similar to saft which they call squash, but I think it´s mostly orange-flavoured. I remember it from 1979-80, when I went on language courses there, that it was a kind of powder you mixed with water. Perhaps there are other variations on it. I should explore next time we go!