I love to cook and bake, both for us (husband and I) and our dog. Husband loves to grow vegetables and fruit. I like to batch cook and freeze meals, so I can have a day off cooking occasionally! We eat meat and fish, but not every day. We make bread about twice a week, I bake a cake about every other week.

Thursday, 30 April 2020

Going all Italian with leftovers

Still using up things from the freezer, yesterday it was meatloaf and spaghetti, both leftovers (from separate meals) that I'd frozen.  The meatloaf, made a few weeks ago, tasted fine but didn't slice well, it was very crumbly, I guessed it would be even more so after being frozen (there was half of it left).  We had spag bol one day last week and I cooked too much spaghetti so froze the remainder, there was at a guess slightly more than 1 portion.

Having had a think, I made a pan of simple tomato sauce - sliced red onions cooked until soft, tinned chopped tomatoes, Italian herbs, a squeeze of tomato puree and splash of Worcestershire sauce, cooked slowly until thick.  I saved about a third of the sauce, the rest I poured into a dish and mixed in some chopped mushrooms, the meatloaf all crumbled up and the spaghetti, topped it with Mozzarella and put it in the oven.  So basically it was minced meat (I think it was pork), tomato sauce and pasta, but all mixed together.  No idea what to call it, but it was lovely and we'll have it (or a variation of) again.  No photo, I forgot.

Today for lunch we've had a homemade pizza, I made the dough base using equal parts of flour and Greek yogurt.....the yogurt is out of date but is still fine, it lasts for ages anyway.  I part cooked it in the oven for 5 minutes, just to set the base, then spread the tomato sauce saved from yesterday over the top.  I'd got a bag of frozen broccoli....not very keen on it as a plain vegetable (too watery) but it's ok with fresh cauli and macaroni in a cheese sauce.  I cooked some of the broccoli then mashed it roughly and mixed some grated Halloumi into it, then spread that over the tomato topped pizza base.  Ham ribbons and mushrooms on top of that, followed by grated Mozzarella and Cheddar.






We had slices with homemade coleslaw and salad, there's enough left to have cold for tea tomorrow and some to freeze.  The yogurt and flour base worked out well, it's the first time I've made it and I will do it again.  Next time though I'll add some flavouring to the dough - eg Italian herbs or garlic or paprika and some grated Parmesan - as it was a bit bland.

6 comments:

  1. You are so inventive, and I ad mire that so much. It looks delish.

    I think I remember you saying, some time ago, that you add extra flour to any bread mix you use - will you tell me how much extra please? I have a Wright's Ciabatta mix and should love to extend it to give half a loaf to D. XOXO

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Toni, you can add up to half the packet weight, I've done that much on occasion, although usually I add 100-150g extra. Let me know how you get on xx

      Delete
  2. Thank you so much! I am waiting until my next Ocado ordeer arrives on Wednesday afternoon to see if I get another bread mix. The one I have I will hold onto - I still have bread flour and dried yeast so can make loaves from scratch. The last one I did turned out so big and it tasted good too. xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, look at that fully loaded pizza, take the ham off and I would be all over that :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. That dough looks really pretty, smooth.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That lovely spaghetti sounds right up my street.

    ReplyDelete

Please note: Anonymous comments will not be published unless you add a name at the end of your comment. This is to weed out those anonymous comments which are clearly just spam.

Spam comments, advertising or rude comments will not be published!