Our Lady of Leftovers

Since both of us come from families of three or four siblings, it was a hard switch when we got together to stop cooking for the horde. However, since the horde doesn’t live with us, and we don’t have fridge space here in the UK to accommodate them, it was really important to learn quickly to stop cooking (and eating, ahem!) for a big group.

Now that we’ve learned to be a little more controlled with our food prep, we don’t often find ourselves with odds and ends and extras lying around, but when we do, we’ve come up with a few good recipes to deal with them that freeze well and pack away nicely.

Leftover naan: This flat bread is amazing with Indian foods, and in a pinch restaurant leftovers make the quickest mini-pizza crust ever. We’d been tempted a time or two to buy it, since the stuff we make ourselves is never quite the same as what’s in the restaurant. Well, once was enough. The store-bought naan wasn’t nearly as nice as what we were used to, so it sat in the freezer. And sat. And sat. And then, we had a bright idea: roasted vegetable bread pudding.

The usual recipe for bread pudding would call for about four to six eggs along with roasted veg and cubed or chopped bread. I’ve never been able to eat eggs and enjoy them, so though I’m not vegan, eggs: not an option. What, then? Enter soft tofu, my usual answer to creamy and binding.

Roasted Vegetable Bread Pudding

  • Preheat your oven to 350°, and prepare a large baking pan with a little olive oil
  • Using whatever means necessary (for me a rubber mallet and my Joyce Chen chopping knife), split a butternut or other hard squash in half, and clean it of seeds. If you’re not squeamish about the sap getting on your hands, you can peel it now. If you’re a wuss like me, you’ll peel it when it’s roasted.
  • Tuck half an onion into each hollow in your butternut squash.
  • Add four peeled and diced carrots, 2 large potatoes, two cloves of peeled garlic and a handful of mushrooms to your roasting pan, and place in the oven for 40 minutes.
  • While your veggies are roasting, in a large bowl blend a container of soft (not silken) tofu with 1 T. of cornstarch, and a 1/2 c. of soy milk or vegetable broth. To this add 2 t. of rubbed sage, freshly ground pepper to taste, 1 tbsp. garlic powder, a 1/2 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg, and if you’re using milk, 1 tsp. of salt.
  • Add to the mix 1 packed cup of shredded cheese, cottage cheese or cheese substitute is optional. A sharp cheddar pairs nicely with hard squashes.
  • When your veggies are roasted, add them to the milk and tofu mixture. In an oiled 9×12 baking pan, crumple a piece of naan, and add a layer of vegetable and cheese mixture.
  • You can finish this out with another layer of crumbled stale naan and a little extra cheese to form a crust on top of your vegetables. If you, like me, are lucky enough to have some homemade gluten sausages around (*recipe to follow shortly!*), these are a tasty, tasty addition to the dish.(Be advised that if you add the naan to the cheese-veg-tofu mixture that it will suck up much of the liquid – but some people prefer a crunchier more casserole-like bread pudding, so that’s fine, too.)
  • Bake for fifty minutes, until the top is golden brown and crisp.

Congratulations. You finally got rid of the stale naan.

This cuts into nice squares to pack for lunch, and freezes …well, theoretically. Ours is going to be eaten before it gets to the freezer. Oh, well. I’m sure there are some bread and vegetables we can shove in the freezer instead…

Stay tuned for more leftover goodness.

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