Cook. Eat. Rinse. Repeat.
When you’re in no mood to cook but have enough material to whip up something for dinner in just a few minutes and about two steps, it’s time for makeovers for leftovers. Remember my kori sukka from a few days ago? In that post I mentioned I was saving the curry for something else. Here it is. One lazy night I turned it into an egg gassi. I could have made it easier by just cracking open the eggs into the curry but I hard boiled a few eggs and dunked them in the gassi.
Since it has been a while I did a post on ‘makeover for leftovers’. Since I had to use some of the carrots and spinach sitting in my fridge, I thought I might as well give it a makeover with some cooked rice and mustard oil. The best thing about Indian cooking is that you can go with the flow and make any recipe your own. Like instead of these veggies, you could use beets, potatoes, cauliflower, capsicum, so on. It takes hardly any effort to make a meal out of what we already have in our fridge and pantry. In the pictures you see a glass of red. No, it isn’t wine. It’s the juice from rhododendron flower concentrate I brought back from the hills of Saattal. Tasted almost like kokum juice to my surprise and delight.
Most people want the food they cooked to be polished off that very meal. But I love it when that doesn’t happen so I have leftovers to work with. Like when I made the chicken and chickpea stew with foxtail millet. The leftovers – chickpeas and foxtail millet – were turned into a bowl of salad for dinner the next night. I also threw in some cherry tomatoes, basil, coriander and even shredded coconut. With a quick dressing with balsamic vinegar, honey, lemon and mustard, dinner was ready in minutes.
1 bowl of salad
10 mins at leisure
Cooked chickpeas – 1 cup
Cooked foxtail millet – 1/2 cup
Shredded coconut – 1/4 cup
Basil, coriander leaves – handful chopped
Cherry tomatoes – 4-5 halved
Cucumber – 1/2 cup chopped
Balsamic vinegar – 2 tbsp
Honey – 1 tsp
Lemon juice – 1/2 lemon
Mustard paste/sauce – 1 tsp
Method:
Whisk all the ingredients of the dressing and keep aside.
Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl and pour dressing over it.
Note:
Tweak this any way you want. The idea is to use up leftovers along with any scraps from the fridge to make a meal. You could replace the millet with brown rice or any other cooked grains. Or even omit it. You can also add cooked chicken to this salad, and more greens if you have.
Yield: These were from leftover noodles and I could make one portion
Ingredients:
Cooked noodles – One portion/serving
Chilli honey paste – 2 tsp
Sesame oil – 2 tsp
Regular oil – 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Veggies and egg – Optional
Method:
Heat the oils and cook out the paste in them for about 2-3 mins.
Toss the noodles in and stir around till all of them have a been painted with the chilli paste. You won’t miss it since it takes on a lovely colour.
At this point you can add veggies and cooked chicken if you’d like. I just added a finely sliced capsicum for crunch.
I also added a fried egg on top while serving because it goes so well with the spicy noodles.
All I did was add olives, raw mango bits and mix it all up. Then I popped it into the microwave and then just drizzled lemon juice on top of it. There you go! Easy peasy salad that filled me right up. It was also a great pre workout meal.
I’ve decided to call myself “The Queen of Leftovers”. The pan grilled chicken from last Sunday, went into a Chicken fried rice with raw mango and basil on Monday. It tasted better than the grilled chicken dish itself. The best part about leftovers is that you can turn into a great rice dish or an omlette, or maybe something more.
Ingredients:
Leftover chicken – Shredded
Cooked rice – 2 cups
Raw mango – 1/2 mango grated
Onions – 1 medium, chopped
Ginger garlic paste – 1 tsp
Sesame oil – 1 tbsp
Fish sauce – 2 tbsp
Oyster sauce – 1 tbsp
Method:
1. Heat oil, tip in the onions and ginger garlic paste, and let them change colour.
2. Add the chicken, raw mango and basil leaves and saute for a minute or two.
3. Add cooked rice and mix well.
4. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce and mix well.
5. Take off heat and serve.
The fish sauce and oyster sauce are optional. You could go with soy or any other sauce as well. If you have other vegetables like beans, carrots, peppers, mushrooms – toss them in too.