What to do with leftovers from your juicer

When I moved in to where I currently live, I was please to find a multi-functional food processor in the kitchen. It can chop, grate and juice! Sometimes, when I feel particularly decadent, I make some juice – mostly from beetroot, carrots and apples (mixed together). But I can never throw away the stuff that is left over. Some of my friends have solved the problem by frying the beetroot and carrot leftovers with onions, garlic and curry spices, which I sometimes do, too. I have also used the leftovers in bread. Tonight I drew on the experience with the sweet potato omelette and made carrot and beetroot omelettes using other leftovers. I then ate them with fried mushrooms.

Here are the ‘recipes’:

Carrot Omelette

1 egg
dollop of carrot ’stuff’
a few frozen peas
salt, pepper
past-best-before-date mature brie chunks

Mix 1 egg with carrot ’stuff’ and salt & pepper. Pour into pan. Add some peas & brie chunks. Turn over when the bottom side is done.

Beetroot Omelette

1 egg
dollop of beetroot ’stuff’
onions, garlic
salt, pepper
Cajun spice
hot chilli powder

Chop oninos and garlic. Fry a little before pouring a mix of egg, beetroot, salt, pepper and spices over it. Turn over when bottom side is nice and slightly crispy!

Serve with mushrooms or in bread roll or with salad or whatever

Sweet Potato Omelette

Last week I went to see some friends in Yorkshire and around evening time we all grew a bit hungry. As they had just been to the local farm and got enough eggs to feed the entire road, we decided to make omelettes. Because everyone had different ideas about their omelette, we all made our own creation from whatever we could find in the fridge, freezer or on the kitchen surfaces. I was rather intrigued by a bag of mashed sweet-potato, so I folded some of that into the eggs, added salt, pepper and some ‘Spicy Italian’ herb mix that was sitting around by the cooker and finally threw some frozen peas and crumbled extra mature cheddar into the mix. The result was very neat!

The recipe would roughly read as follows:

2 eggs
salt & pepper
fist-sized blob of mashed sweet-potato
herbs of your choice (e.g. Chilli, Italian Herbs)
handful of peas
handful of crumbled strong cheddar (add when one side has started to set, so that it does not ‘tear holes’ in the omelette – you can then turn it in one piece and just make the cheese a bit crispy!)

Banana Yoghurt Ice Cream

For a few days, my friend and fellow food blogger Rosa stayed in Somethingfromanything Town. She famously discovered the City’s runaway free-range soups as well as the existence of pineapple fritters. Bizarrely, we just managed to cook one dish together: Spaghetti! Wow… At least the sauce was pretty wacky: tomato, ginger and capers was the combination of the evening!
I then had to go to Manchester (aka Gotham City) for a few days, and on coming back I needed to use up quite a few items that had been left in the fridge, fruit basket & vegetable pots. The first thing I made was

Banana Yoghurt Ice Cream!

2 very ripe & mashed bananas
some leftover clotted cream
some leftover yoghurt
vanilla sugar
(thanks again, Rosa for all of the above ingredients!)

Beat until very fluffy. Put into freezer in some kind of tupperware. Try to stir in between to break up ice crystals. Eat anytime after it’s frozen…

Pineapple Lasagna

Lots of people have asked me for the recipe for the now (in?)famous ‘Pineapple Lasagna’! I don’t make it very often – only if I have to cook for an army of hungry musicians or feel particularly rich – because it contains so many ingredients… The last time I made it, I cooked enough to last me and many others for months to come (thanks to modern freezer technology).

This lasagna tastes a lot like your ordinary veggie lasagne, but with a tangy-fruity twist which enlivens tired taste buds. At least that’s my theory!

I don’t really pay attention to quantities with this recipe – feel free to adjust it to suit your taste!

Make a base out of

Onions
Garlic
Peppers (any colour, I used red and a bit of yellow)
Small pieces of pineapple (tinned or fresh)
Random veg from fridge (e.g. mushrooms, fennel, carrots)
Chilli power or fresh chillies
Tin tomatoes
Red lentils
Lots of tarragon
A dash of cinnamon
Salt, Pepper

Make a second base out of:

Onions
Garlic
Spinach
Lemon juice
Salt
Pepper

Make a while sauce out of:

Butter
Flour
Milk
Nutmeg
Pepper
Salt

(Melt butter, stir in the flour and then add milk while stirring constantly until it has the desired texture).

With the help of lasagna sheets (any colour), first make a layer out of the tomato base, then the spinach base and, lastly, the tomato base again. Finish off with a layer of lasagne sheets which gets covered with white sauce and plenty of grated cheese!

World Ocean Day Muffins (Bluewhaleberry Merfins)

Yesterday was World Ocean Day. I invited lots of people to the Foundry in London, which had kindly agreed to host the event (big thank you to Jonathan – and also to Cos!). We created a four-hour live improvised soundtrack to different bits of diving footage. And, of course, I made some theme food to sustain the participants and audience over such a long time…

Due to time constraints and the lack of motorised personal transport I only got round to making muffins, and I made up for the lack of variety through sheer quantity – hence the silly amount of ingredients…

Bluewhaleberry Merfins with Drift Icing and Plankton Sprinkle

2 packets of unsalted butter
500 g of whatever type of sugar is in the back of your cupboard
8 eggs
at least half a bottle of vanilla extract
about 500g flour & 8 level tsp baking powder
about 1 1/2 glasses of milk
a dash of sour cream
almond bits of some kind (almond flour, crushed almond flakes or chopped almonds)
small dash of orange flavouring
a few handfuls of blueberries

Mix everything (add blueberries last when everything else is beaten into a smooth mixture) and bake muffins at Gas Mark 4-5 (takes about 20 mins). Leave to cool.
When you have carried the muffins to where the people consuming these are gathered, drop a teaspoon of drift icing on top of each muffin and add plankton sprinkle. The ‘drift icing’ recipe is as follows:

1 large packet of philadelphia or other cream cheese
the remaining sour cream from the above recipe
juice of 2 limes
about 1/2 packet of icing sugar
2 dashes of blue food colouring

The dolphin & fish sprinkle I got from ebay for a few pence, and the coloured sugar was a present from my mum!