Last Sunday was all about using up the ends of a roast chicken from a couple of weeks before, plus sundry other odds and ends from the fridge. I was so pleased with the end result I thought I’d share it here: a homely chicken casserole with seasonal veggies, spelt and light dumplings made with rosemary and lemon.Like most people, we’re feeling the credit crunch a little bit around this way. I’m loathe to cut our food buying in any dramatic way (not surprisingly, eating well is a fairly big priority in our house) so it is a softly, softly approach at the moment. For me part of the deal of being an occasional omnivore means buying higher welfare standard meat and going back from this to cheaper alternatives just isn’t an option. A small organic chicken is surprisingly economical, not to mention tastier than the ubiquitous pale chicken breast fillet. This way the whole of the chicken gets used up, plus there’s something quietly satisfying in a domesticated way about stretching a chicken out to three or four meals.
Here’s what I had left in my fridge:
Chicken stock – the really good stuff, the sort that sets to a quivering jelly in the fridge. The stock was made from the carcass of a roast chicken that I didn’t have time to turn into stock straight away but slung into the freezer until the next weekend.
Half a tub of crème fraiche – whenever I buy crème fraiche for a recipe there is always some leftover; every recipe uses half a pot or less! A chunk of sourdough – of course the breadcrumbs don’t have to be made from sourdough but the bottom line is that good bread makes good breadcrumbs. Slightly dry, stale bread is even better than fresh, but fresh will work fine too. Seasonal vegetables – I’ve used carrot and leek, the seasonal vegetables that I had odds and ends of in the fridge. Celery, squash, onion, fennel and turnip would also work well here. Rosemary and bay – not technically in the fridge, but unlike more delicate species, rosemary and bay are the only herbs to consistently survive both my horticultural efforts and the British climate
Half a tub of crème fraiche – whenever I buy crème fraiche for a recipe there is always some leftover; every recipe uses half a pot or less! A chunk of sourdough – of course the breadcrumbs don’t have to be made from sourdough but the bottom line is that good bread makes good breadcrumbs. Slightly dry, stale bread is even better than fresh, but fresh will work fine too. Seasonal vegetables – I’ve used carrot and leek, the seasonal vegetables that I had odds and ends of in the fridge. Celery, squash, onion, fennel and turnip would also work well here. Rosemary and bay – not technically in the fridge, but unlike more delicate species, rosemary and bay are the only herbs to consistently survive both my horticultural efforts and the British climate
Comment on or continue reading Ultimate leftovers – chicken casserole with lemon and rosemary dumplings
This post is first of a new set of seasonal guides on Mostly Eating. Quarterly seems like a good timescale for a produce guide; long enough to hide those little uncertainties induced by geography and climate which can easily throw things out by a few weeks.Here’s what you will find in here:
a list of fruits and vegetables in season between late September to mid December (yep, I know, a little bit later than scheduled!). I’ve developed my list from a consensus opinion across a variety of sources including Eat the seasons, River Cottage and the Scottish What’s on your plate guide. It’s good for the UK and also for much of Northern Europe and the less sunny parts of the USA (for a State by State guide check out the Sustainable Table). For you antipodeans, Kathryn usually has a list for New South Wales (tell me if you know any sites with a wider coverage of Australia). 
I've put together a longish list of recipe and snack suggestions that center around using seasonal ingredients to make sure that your diet is full of fruits and vegetables. there's a pretty PDF version of the list to stick on your fridge, or tuck into the front of your favourite vegetable cookbook as a quick reminder of what to look out for when you go shopping. The Autumn cooking suggestions are on the back.
Autumn produce guideI've put together a longish list of recipe and snack suggestions that center around using seasonal ingredients to make sure that your diet is full of fruits and vegetables. there's a pretty PDF version of the list to stick on your fridge, or tuck into the front of your favourite vegetable cookbook as a quick reminder of what to look out for when you go shopping. The Autumn cooking suggestions are on the back.Autumn is a feast riches for the seasonal eater, with the luxury of an extended overlap between the last of the summer favourites such as courgettes and aubergine and exciting newcomers like pumpkin, chestnuts and kale.
Seasonal fruits and vegetables for Autumn
apples, damsons, medlars, pears, quince, plums, chestnuts, elderberries, artichoke, aubergine, beetroot, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, celery, courgette, fennel, garlic, kale, leeks, onions, potatoes, turnips, watercress, celeriac, kohlrabi, pumpkin, jerusalem artichoke, parsnips, chicory, beetroot, cauliflower
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I’m doing that commute again at the moment and our cooking has been very much of the tried and tested variety, hence the slightly light recipe flow. I have however been indulging my inner geek and making a few cosmetic and technical tweaks to Mostly Eating. First of all, I decided it would be fun to have a bit of a seasonal colour theme to go with all of those beautiful autumnal fruits and vegetables we’re going to be cooking with over the next few months. And then there are a few little technical touches to make the site easier to use:
Mostly Eating is built on customised installation of Moveable Type, which I love dearly but is let down a little bit by its search tool. I’ve been trying a few alternatives out over the last couple of months and finally settled on Google site search (I figure everybody knows their way round Google’s search result format!). You can find the new search on the top right of every page. 
In the old incarnation of this blog I had a tag cloud, something that didn’t make it through the redesign back in February. I was having a look at my search logs and it seems that a few of you have been missing the tag cloud, so I’ve decided to reinstate it. You can explore at your leisure later but a popular choice is those recipes that take “less than 20 minutesâ€. The tag cloud is also a good way to discover seasonal recipes, through the Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter tags. You can find the tag cloud in the side columns of each page. 
You'll find that there is a neat little Share This button on every post, just at the end of the body of the post and before the comments. Clicking on the button opens up a huge range of options for sharing the post with your favourite social media network, bookmarking it for later or emailing it to a friend.
In the page footer there is a link to my Twitter page. Fellow Twitter users, it would be great to hear from you if we aren’t following each other already. Non Twitter users, come over and check Twitter out when you get chance. Twitter is officially Where the party is at and there are lots of friendly food bloggers over there (in fact too many for me to safely list without risking accidentally offending somebody by missing them out!)
In the old incarnation of this blog I had a tag cloud, something that didn’t make it through the redesign back in February. I was having a look at my search logs and it seems that a few of you have been missing the tag cloud, so I’ve decided to reinstate it. You can explore at your leisure later but a popular choice is those recipes that take “less than 20 minutesâ€. The tag cloud is also a good way to discover seasonal recipes, through the Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter tags. You can find the tag cloud in the side columns of each page. You'll find that there is a neat little Share This button on every post, just at the end of the body of the post and before the comments. Clicking on the button opens up a huge range of options for sharing the post with your favourite social media network, bookmarking it for later or emailing it to a friend. In the page footer there is a link to my Twitter page. Fellow Twitter users, it would be great to hear from you if we aren’t following each other already. Non Twitter users, come over and check Twitter out when you get chance. Twitter is officially Where the party is at and there are lots of friendly food bloggers over there (in fact too many for me to safely list without risking accidentally offending somebody by missing them out!)
Comment on A few little changes for Autumn
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