Left Over for Dinner

So after Christmas we all usually end up with lots of leftover foods (and for us foods that haven’t even been opened yet!) and rather than throw it away I decided to use it to create a couple of dishes.

Roast Vegetable Frittata
We had a lot of the roast vegetables left over (carrots, potatoes, pumpkin and parsnip although I didn’t use the parsnip in this recipe) and rather than reheat them and serve them as they are or throw them away, I made a roast vegetable frittata. I’m not 100% sure what makes something a frittata and what makes something an omelette but it was pretty delicious.

The recipe was as easy as you can imagine, you just mix up the following ingredients in a bowl and then pour it into a heated frying pan to cook and then when cooked stick it under a pre-heated grill to finish the recipe off:

6 eggs
1 cup of milk
Half a cup of cheddar cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste

I served the frittata with some of our left over chicken from lunch on Boxing Day and a rice salad I made for Christmas Day so it was a proper left overs kind of dinner!

Chicken Curry
I have been making this chicken curry recipe for a few months now and really enjoy putting all the ingredients together (have you noticed how much better cooking a meal from scratch is than using a sauce mixture out of the jar?). It’s also a great recipe because I can add the spices to my own preference and I am a chicken when it comes to truly spicy food.

As we had a lot of chicken left over I decided that we needed a chicken curry for our dinner and set to work putting it together.

The recipe is:
1 chicken breast chopped (for 2 people)
1 onion chopped
1/2 pepper chopped
1 teaspoon Ginger paste (or to taste)
1 teaspoon Garlic paste (or to taste)
400g Coconut Cream
1/2 teaspoon of chilli Powder (or to taste)
1 tablespoon of curry Powder or paste (or to taste)
400g chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon peanut butter

Method:
When everything is chopped place the chicken, onion, pepper, garlic, chilli and ginger in a saucepan or frying pan and cook for 5 minutes or until the chicken is golden brown. Then add the curry paste or powder and cook for a further minute.

When that is all done add the coconut cream, tomatoes and peanut butter and stir until the peanut butter is mixed in. You can also add cashew nuts now which taste pretty good but we didn’t have any.

Then you can either put it in a heatproof dish and cook it in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees C or simmer it on the hob for about 30 minutes until the sauce thickens. Both methods work nicely but I prefer the oven method I think.

I just served it with rice and freeze any leftovers to take to work for lunch. It seems like the flavour gets even better when it’s reheated again as well.

What are your leftover food recipes after Christmas? Is there something you always have and look forward to more than Christmas dinner maybe?