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Sunday roast dinner was a gorgeous piece of pork from the farmers market. I think the best gravy in the world is made with the juices of the pork so its always one of my favourite roast dinners.
Anyway I bought a piece larger than I needed so I could stretch the meat over two days and on Monday I made a really nice sweet and sour pork. I enjoy doing a traditional meat and veg dinner and an international meal the day after – it gives my tastebuds a workout!
There was enough food here for four of us, however my son Alex is a vegetarian so I just did him a separate dish with the vegetables in but added diced quorn instead of the pork. Everything else was the same as we had.
Sweet and sour pork with egg fried rice
Leftover pork joint
1 large onion
Ten button mushrooms
Couple of large tomatoes
Couple of peppers (I used red today as that’s what I had in)
For the sauce
8 oranges (10 for a pound at the market)
6 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tsp arrowroot (cornflour will do but won’t go as glossy)
2 inch piece of ginger chopped finelyFor the egg fried rice
2 mugs full basmati rice
2 eggs
2 tbsp soy sauce
Put the rice on to cook whilst you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Chop up the pork joint, onion, tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms and lightly fry in a little oil.
Juice the oranges and add the juice to a pan with the sugar, soy sauce, ginger and vinegar. Bring this to the boil and let simmer for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally.
When the rice is just about cooked, heat a wok or heavy based pan with a little oil and add the eggs, stirring until the egg is almost cooked. Add the drained rice and the soy sauce and give it a good stir. Season and add a bit of chopped coriander for colour.
So now you have three pans. One with the heated and cooked meat and veg. One with the sweet and sour sauce and one with the egg fried rice.
You will notice from the picture that my sauce has bits in. This is because I used frozen grated ginger. Normally I add the ginger to the veg if its fresh, however I find frozen to go a bit watery so added it to the sauce instead. It doesn’t matter when its added to the end dish.
Combine the arrowroot with a little water to make a paste and then add to the sweet and sour sauce. Mix well and let it cook through for a minute or two to thicken and go glossy.
Egg fried rice cooked in a huge cast iron wok.
Serve the rice and vegetable/meat dish and then pour over the glossy sauce. Add a little coriander to garnish. My family loves this dish and its so easy as most of the ingredients are in my store cupboard. I love the colours in a sweet and sour dish. It always looks vibrant and cheery…. are these words usually used to describe a dish? I don’t know but its pretty good for a leftover / storecupboard supper!
I only buy organic chicken which as you know can work out rather expensive, so I like to stretch it out a little bit further by using the final leftovers for stock. Homemade chicken stock is a real delight, not like those salty stock cubes you can buy in the shops.
I use homemade stock as the base for soups and sauces, flavouring gravies, its great added to chicken lasagne to bulk out and flavour the white sauce. Also if you’ve never tried Delia Smiths leftover dish from her Christmas book titled Turkey en Croute then I heartily recommend giving it a shot. I make it year round with leftover chicken and homemade stock… its heavenly!
I start the stock by looking in the vegetable drawer in my fridge and I chuck in anything I can find. Onions, carrots, celery, the leaves from the cauliflower, whatever happens to be hanging about. Don’t waste your time chopping the veg nicely, just cut it in half and whack it in the pan. As you can see, its not an exact recipe! I then throw in about a dozen peppercorns to season it.
I use all the parts of the leftover chicken, including the skin. Break it up and pop it in, its all good stuff!
This is what mine looks like when its cooking. My son says it looks vile (he is a veggie) but I like it!
Now as I don’t like to keep watch over the stove for hours I simply make the stock in my slow cooker. I make it up in a morning and put it on a low heat setting for about eight hours. The smell of the slowly cooking chicken wafts through the whole house and creates such a welcoming setting….. what could be a better aroma to greet you at the door on a chilly evening!
Once the bones have broken up and the veg looks all wilted and emptied of its goodness, turn the slow cooker off and let it cool. Sieve the ingredients and put the strained liquid into the fridge. Next morning you will find the stock has set into a jelly like state. Don’t be alarmed, this is perfectly normal. If you aren’t going to use the stock straight away, bag it up into portions and store in the freezer. I also freeze some in ice cube trays so I can easily pop a couple into a gravy or sauce to pep it up a bit.
You will notice a layer of fat has settled on top of the stock. Just spoon this off if you are watching your diet. (I spoon it off, warm it up and add flour and use to thicken gravy) Its the little things like using homemade stock that takes cooking into another league. You simply cannot get such intense flavours from cubes.
Please give this a go as its so worth it. You’ll never use stock cubes again. I try to respect the animals I eat and use as much as possible. It would be a crying shame to throw a perfectly good carcass into the bin….
Ok I’m posting another left over beef meal because the first one has been really popular – its one of the most searched recipes on my site!
So this dish is my take on a cottage pie but its a very ‘rich’ meal because of the dark chocolate and cream that I add. I use sweet potatoes as I love the sweetness but to keep costs down go half and half with white potatoes.
Recipe
Leftover beef joint
Tin of tomatoes (I add this to help bulk it out a bit but it works fine without it)
Large onion
Couple of squares of good dark chocolate
Two or three sweet potatoes and a couple of white potatoes
Few tablespoons of cream
Butter/milk for creaming potatoes
Seasoning
Steam the potatoes, remembering that sweet potatoes don’t take quite as long as white ones.
Fry the onions.
Whizz the beef around in the processor or chop it up with a knife. Don’t go overboard with the chopping as its nice to have chunks of meat in the dish. Add the beef and the tomatoes to the onions with a little stock or water. Heat it up but remember it doesn’t need to cook again. At this stage you could add other things such as a stock cube, bit of gravy mix etc. Add in the dark chocolate and let melt into the beef.
Mash the potatoes together. I find it easier to mash sweet potatoes with a potato ricer otherwise they can seem a bit stringy. Add the milk, butter and the cream.
Pop the mash onto the beef and cook in the oven for approx 30 mins.
You really don’t need to put in the chocolate and cream but it makes the dish so rich that it doesn’t seem like a leftovers meal at all!
I served it with Carrots batons finished off in the oven to concentrate the flavour and sprouts steamed until just cooked and then tossed into a hot cast iron pan with a bit of butter, it gives them more of a crunchy edge.
Here’s a picture of what the pie looks like inside. 
Sorry if the pictures are a bit messy, but its a week day meal for the family… I bet Gordon Ramsay would wipe the dish before showing it! 
The night before last we had a lovely piece of organic beef for tea. I cooked it raised on a rack of veggies to let the lovely juices run out. I drained off the juices and added some fat back to the pan and squashed down the veggies. I then made a delicious gravy by adding a bit of flour to thicken it and then slowly added some water from my steamed vegetables. I then strained it to get rid of the veggies that had supported the beef. I ended up with a gorgeous thick gravy and didn’t need to add anything but a little seasoning to it. Perfect!
The remaining steamed vegetable water was refrigerated overnight to go in yesterdays ‘breadcakes’ That just leaves me with the remaining beef from the joint…. so I made a spaghetti!
As its a leftover dish, the ingredients change every time but here’s what I used in last nights meal:
Leftover beef joint
One onion plus a couple of garlic cloves.
Tin of tomatoes.
One carrot, grated finely.
Mushrooms/celery from my dehydrated stock as I had no fresh.
Heat a solid bottomed pan (I always use cast iron pans) and gently fry the onions until they go a golden colour. I make no apologies about my big onions in the picture… we love them! Add the garlic at this point so it doesn’t burn.
Cut the beef joint into small pieces. I find it easier to whizz it round a bit in the Magimix. I leave some pieces of meat a bit on the large size, I just think it adds to the dish.
Add the meat and tomatoes to the onions and garlic mix.
Next, pop in mushrooms, celery and carrots. I had no fresh mushrooms or celery in so used the ones I had already dehydrated. I often prefer the dehydrated ones as the flavour is so concentrated.
Season and add any extras you may think it needs for flavour. I added some mixed herbs, basil, half a kallo cube, a little honey and a square of chocolate. Add a little water if it looks dry. I left it simmering for about an hour because hubby was late in from work. It wont spoil, just add a little more water if needed.
I always add something sweet such as honey or a little chocolate to a savoury dish. It really adds a depth of flavour to the dish. And the chocolate seems to add a real richness. Give it a try when you are next experimenting 
I have to apologise for the blurry picture… its my hubbies fault. I took one photo and was just lining up the dish in my viewfinder again so I had a couple of pictures to choose from when the dish dissapeared from the screen… hubby had knicked it! He wouldn’t put it back as he said he was starving so I’m afraid we all have to make do with this picture. I’ll not shout him in next time until I’ve finished lol!
