We do love a party! Ever since socialising has been allowed this year, we have been indulging in our passion and having friends and family round for meals. This has been quite a challenge with constantly changing rules, and the restriction on numbers indoors to start with meant that we had to spread the love and actually have more gatherings with fewer people.
Sometimes I have help with the catering or we have a bring and share event. For our Merry Wives of Windsor after show party on the last night, two very good friends involved in the production assisted me with the catering. Afterwards there was quite a lot of green salad left. Sometimes it does not look that exciting the next day, so I decided to work my magic on it and avoid food waste at the same time. The best dish to make with left-over salad (in my humble opinion) is Peas a la Francaise, which is basically fresh or frozen peas cooked gently with stock, onion, lettuce of any description and a few lardons or any kind of bacon snipped into small pieces. Actually I don’t always put the bacon in, but on this occasion I was roasting a chicken for dinner. So the bacon that had been covering the chicken then went into my pea dish. Sadly I did not take a photo of this, but you get the idea.
Last night some school library committee friends came round for a bring and share social supper. I invited them to the house, as for me it is easier than trying to get to a pub; I don’t drive. This time I found that the main item left-over that was not going to keep for long, was the remains of a pack of carrot batons that was brought along to go with the dips. They were looking a bit limp, but I resisted the temptation to just throw them into the food bin. I decided to roast them with spices – coriander, cardamom and harissa (powder not paste) along with freshly milled pepper, sea salt and olive oil. They took probably more than half an hour to cook to a beautiful tenderness. I then mixed some of them with some red and wild rice that I had just cooked, and some seared chorizo. You could use feta to ring the changes. The rest I blitzed with some ricotta to make a rather interesting dip or pate. I am thinking of having that in some sandwiches as a base for salad and ham or cheese.
We had the salad for lunch, still warm, along with the celeriac slaw that I had made for last night’s supper but forgot to take out of the fridge!
It is a good thing that we both love carrots! Having them both raw and cooked for lunch was a really lovely contrast of textures. I might even include both as part of a buffet selection for a future party – hopefully remembering to take them out of the fridge (although the roasted dish is best served freshly cooked).
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