Bread and Butter Pudding

Another brilliant way to use up leftovers is to make bread-and-butter pudding.

Bread and Butter Pudding. Instagram pic credit: SimoneySunday

Too many people throw away crusts of bread or bread that has started to go slightly dry. This is a terrible waste.

According to a study published in September in The Guardian, 49 per cent of UK adults claim they they eat bread every day, with 38 per cent of them buying two loaves a week.

However, the research, commissioned by the group Love Food Hate Waste, as part of its #UseYourLoaf campaign, also found that 18 per cent often threw away a forgotten loaf before opening it, while a quarter of had discarded the bread before reaching the end of the loaf.

I haven't bought bread for over a year, not since we were given a breadmaker for a wedding present. Instead of keeping this as one of those 'gadgets' that never get used, I decided to use it.

Flour, yeast, milk, oil, water, salt and sugar - these are the basic ingredients to making brown bread or white bread. And as one 1kg bag from Tesco costs about 80p, and I can make 2.5 3lb loaves from one bag of flour, I basically spend £1.60 on five loaves of bread.

I've already shown how to make cheap sauce and jam for gifts or just slathering onto toast in this blog. I will do a post later on how to make Rosemary bread with olive oil. Yum!

With the bread I make, I cut half of it straight away, and one half I wrap up tightly and put in the fridge, where it keeps about a week.

The other half, I slice, and wrap and put into a tupperware tub for making sandwiches in the near-term. Sometimes I freeze slices individually for 'emergencies'. This really reduces waste - which also reduces our yearly food bill!

However, when there's one slice left and some crusts, I take a bread knife, create some thinner slices, lather them in butter... and prepare a bread and butter pudding.

How to:
Take 2 medium eggs
2/3 cup of semi-skimmed milk (or cream if you really like it rich)
Handful of currants or raisins, washed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
Your slices of buttered bread

Cut the bread into small enough pieces to create layers - bread & butter, some raisins, some brown sugar, some of the spices.

Do this as many times as you can. Sprinkle the rest of the raisins over the bread and butter.

Mix the remaining spices up with the eggs (whites and yolks) and the milk, and pour over the bread and butter.

Cook for about 1/2 hour at 160 degrees or until you can see the mixture is no longer runny.

Serve with cream, custard or home made icecream - a recipe for this is also here.

Enjoy!

Salmon and Feta Leftover Pie

Watching television programmes such as The War on Waste about people throwing perfectly good food and clothes away makes me angry.

I have never been a wastrel. I was not brought up to consume without conscience. Moreover I was also blessed with an imagination which has helped me make the most of whatever leftovers and remnants I could find in my home.

It does not take a genius to work out that supermarkets want you to throw good food away instead of pickling it or freezing it, because their business model depends on the relentless spend, spend, spend of the consumer.

So this Sunday I decided to cook a two-course meal using only leftovers or 'out of date' food. The menu was: Salmon and Feta layer pie with filo pastry, and a spicy bread and butter pudding. I'll do the pudding separately because I'm lazy when it comes to posting stuff. Honesty, eh?

The date of eating was Sunday 15 November. It's now Tuesday 17th and we're both still alive and hearty, thank you very much!

Indeed, I have never seen this recipe anywhere before and so I believe what you are about to read is a world exclusive - the finest luxury leftover pie for you to try yourself. It really was tasty - light on the palate yet packed full of punchy flavour.

Salmon and Feta pie. Made with love - and leftovers

Ingredients:

Loch Fyne Smoked Salmon - Frozen on day of purchase (August). Consumed: November

1/2 pack of Feta cheese - use by date 30 October. Consumed: November

1/3 pack of mushrooms - use by date 6 November

1/2 tin Heinz Mushroom soup - October 2015 use by date 

One onion, use-by date 30 October. Still hard, dry and firm thanks to a good fridge.

6 sheets of Filo pastry, found secreted in the back of the freezer since March 2015

Teaspoon of dried Saffron, found in my husband's possession, dated June 2012. Yes, 2012.

Salt

Pepper

Home-grown chives and parsley (obviously these were in-date)

Well, I have NEVER seen a recipe for this, and I have never made this before so I was basically making this recipe up out of my own head. So it was complete trial and error. 

NOTE: I am sure the smoked salmon can be swapped for a tin of salmon. So give it a go.

How to: 

Prepare the pastry

Defrost the pastry slowly (DO NOT MICROWAVE IT INTO FROSTLESS SUBMISSION)

Carefully peel the layers and fold a first layer into a lightly oiled square pyrex cooking dish. Mine is a square 13'inch by 5inch deep pan.

Brush lightly with oil.

Make the filling

Chop the onion finely and add to a pan with some olive oil. Stir until a little brown.

Clean and chop the mushrooms, add these to the pan along with the seasoning. Add garlic to taste.

Add the salmon, making sure to stir well for three minutes. 

Add the mushroom soup, stir well for another minute.

Chop and add the feta cheese, stir gently and remove from the heat.

Layer a little of the salmon and feta filling onto the bottom sheet of filo pastry.

Add another layer of pastry on top of this as if it were a lasagna, repeat the process until all the filling has been used up.

Layer the remaining filo pastry over the top, brush with olive oil and a little paprika or herbs of your choice, and bake for c.20 minutes at 180 degrees.

And there you have it. It served four (so we ate the rest on Monday). We served it the first day with a Greek Salad made by hubby and the following day with carrots (which were also two days past the use by date!) and peas. For hints on how to keep carrots crispy and crunchy, see here.

Let me know how your version turned out - and if you swapped any ingredients with great success!