What to do with leftovers

Or carrying on with the no-food-waste philosophy I learned from my mother and grandmother

I come from a food culture where we have a no-food-waste philosophy. Every part of an animal is cooked and eaten and every edible part of a vegetable or fruit is used. As a result, I hate wasting food except that my food culture is also about plenty and generous hospitality, which means that I always shop for more than one (I live alone) and when I have guests, I always prepare for more than the number I have visting.

This is what happened the other day when I prepared a roast beef lunch for the friend who very kindly lets me stay in her house in London and another friend who was also staying. I had gotten a beautiful ribeye roast that was for more than the three of us and even though we ate heartlily, there was still enough for a steak sandwich that I made for myself when they were both out for lunch the following day, and more for the freezer.

I had also bought a lot of beautiful multi-coloured tomatoes that were sitting on the counter, getting too soft to eat in a salad.

So, I decided to make a kind of yakhneh (stew in Arabic) with the meat and tomatoes. I already had onions in the fridge, and fresh garlic because it was the season, and of course extra virgin olive oil in the pantry. Oh, and I had some leftover frozen broad beans from another dish I had cooked for my friends. The only thing I had to buy was fresh coriander because it goes with the broad beans, and I got it the farmers market.

I am not going to give you a precise recipe here because I didn’t measure the ingredients. Also, because you can improvise and use petits pois instead of broad beans or basil instead of coriander or whatever takes your fancy and as long as you balance the ingredients and not use too much of one or the other, you will have a lovely, hearty dish to eat on its own like I did or with rice.