The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (41 page)

Unlike savoury pies, the filling doesn’t have to be pre-cooked for a fruit pie. Just peel and core the fruit if necessary, dice it and put it in a pie dish – its juices will start to run as it bakes, and the steam created will help to raise the pastry into crisp flakes.

Serves 4

300g puff pastry

700-900g cooking apples, such as Bramleys

75g caster sugar

a little milk for brushing

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured work surface to around 3-5mm thick. It should be large enough to cover a 1-litre pie dish with a good 2cm to spare around the edges. Leave it to rest for 10-15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Peel and core the apples and cut them into medium-sized chunks. Put them into your pie dish, scatter over the caster sugar and add a tablespoon of water. Put a pie funnel in the middle of the dish.

To fix the pastry lid on to the pie, cut a thin ribbon of pastry, dampen the rim of the dish with a little water and press the ribbon firmly on to it. Brush the pastry ribbon with water, then lift the large sheet of pastry on to the pie dish and press the edges firmly on to the pastry ribbon underneath. Trim off any excess. Make a small slit with a sharp knife in the pastry over the pie funnel to allow the steam to escape. If you feel like it – and it takes seconds and looks marvellous – decorate the top of the pie by using leftover strips of pastry to make leaf shapes, sticking these to the top by brushing the underside with a little milk.

Brush the top of the pie with milk and place on a high shelf in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden.

Some classic fruit combinations
Replace a proportion of the apples with blackberries, rhubarb or raisins. According to what is in season, you can substitute damsons or gooseberries for the apples, or use apricots with toasted slivered almonds. Adjust the amount of sugar according to the kind of fruit you are using – if you prefer to be sure, you can part-cook the fruit in a large saucepan, adding the sugar to taste as the juices begin to run. In this case, let the fruit cool in the pie dish before adding the pastry top.

Puff pastry ‘sandwiches’
If you don’t have very much fruit, individual pastry sandwiches make a really easy pudding that looks competent and takes only minutes. Roll out some puff pastry to around 3-5mm thick and cut it into oblongs about 10 x 5cm. Prick all over with a fork to prevent it puffing up too much. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 5-7 minutes at 200°C/Gas Mark 6, until risen and golden. Flip the pastry over, squash down with a spatula and bake for another 5 minutes. Sandwich 2 pieces of pastry together with a filling of fruit mixed with whipped double cream. Dust the whole lot with caster or icing sugar. Classic fillings include raspberries, strawberries, blackberries or stone fruits. Ripe pears are especially nice with a little diced stem ginger mixed into the cream with a teaspoon of its syrup.

No-dish fruit pie
My mother makes fruit pies without using a dish by pulling up the edges of the shortcrust pastry into a rough, but still open, pasty that looks something like a pastry bowl filled with fruit and crusted with rough sugar. Roll out 300g shortcrust pastry (see
pages 110
-
11
for home-made) or puff pastry into a rough oval, about 3-5mm thick. Slip it on to a greased baking sheet and leave in the fridge to rest for 20 minutes. Brush the pastry with beaten egg yolk and scatter over a handful of semolina to absorb some of the juices from the fruit. Pile about 700g prepared fruit into the middle of the pastry and pull up the edges like a rough basket around it. Brush the pastry with egg white and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Delia Smith made this beautiful pie famous using gooseberries.

Tarte Tatin
Traditionally made with apples, but you can use pears just as well. I make the tart in a 20-22cm ovenproof frying pan. Use 400g puff pastry, 10-12 small, sharp dessert apples or pears (peeled, cored and sliced), 85g caster sugar and 55g butter. Very gently melt the sugar in the frying pan so that it turns into a caramel, making absolutely sure that it does not burn. Dot the caramel with the butter and then layer the fruit neatly in the pan, packing it in tightly and filling up any holes and spaces with bits of cut fruit. Cover with a circle of pastry rolled out to about 5mm thick, tucking the edges into the pan. Bake at 200°C/Gas Mark 6 for 20 minutes, until the pastry is puffed up and golden. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then put a plate over the top of the pan and invert the whole lot so that the tart slips out on to the plate. Spoon off any excess juice and serve at room temperature.

Meatballs, fishcakes and so on are all, as our grandmothers well knew, a godsend for using up the ends of things. You don’t need a huge amount of leftovers, and they also freeze very successfully, providing some of the best leftover-leftovers.

Unless you are up for careful, fine chopping, a food processor or small electric chopper will come in handy; use the pulse button to get a fine mince rather than a paste. Keeping your hands slightly wet when you’re rolling or shaping the cakes helps prevent the mixture sticking – professional chefs get best results by rolling balls on the work surface rather than between their hands. Always chill them in the fridge for a good half hour before frying, as this helps them keep their shape in the pan.

This is when a box of breadcrumbs ready and waiting in the freezer is handy. Some recipes include them in the main mixture, while others use mashed potato, and you can also dip almost any ball or cake into a bowl of lightly beaten egg and then roll them in crumbs before you fry or bake them, which will give them a tantalisingly crunchy outside.

If you find yourself at a loss for things to do with leftover potatoes you can always add them to soups or stews (see
pages 53
-
88
).

Alternatively, here are two of my favourite ways to deal with them – one very simple and northern European, the other emphatically Italian. Both are wonderful for using up other leftovers or raw vegetables, and can be pepped up with either something from the store cupboard or a bunch of fresh herbs.

Use mashed potato for these or grated leftover boiled waxy potatoes (grating won’t work with floury potatoes, as they will disintegrate). As with Bubble and Squeak (see
page 151
), you could mix equal quantities of potato with another vegetable – anything from cooked chopped spinach to grated leftover parsnips and just about everything in between.

It would be crazy to give a full recipe for potato cakes, since you simply need to make a mixture that will hold together well enough for frying in small patties. Use an egg for binding, adding it gradually so that you don’t end up with a sloppy mix, any chopped herbs you like – dill, parsley and thyme are all lovely – and some seasoning. Shape into rough balls, flattening them down into ‘burger’ shapes. Shallow-fry until golden on both sides, or bake on a lightly oiled baking tray at 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Serve as a side dish with sausages, chops or stews, or on their own with a hearty chutney, Onion Marmalade (see
page 42
) or Chilli Jam (
page 45
).