Week two of making delicious food with supermarket surplus

If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing right now, please scroll down through the blog to find the following recipes or the surplus ingredients highlighted in italics:

Leek & Potato Soup - potatoes

Pan-fried gnocchi with wild garlic pesto - spinach

Spanish Tortilla -potatoes ,eggs

Upside-down Cake – pears, nectarines, passionfruit

Banana Lumpia or Turon - banana

Egg-fried Rice – eggs, vegetables

Parsnip Curry – parsnip, carrot, apple

Pretzels, Beer and Bavarian Obatzda - pretzels

Leek & Potato Soup

Potatoes, fruit and eggs was the theme for me this week. Having eaten through my most perishable foods first, I had some potatoes left from last week’s delivery as well a few more in the new box which I was very happy about because I LOVE potatoes!

I was also very fortunate to be gifted an allotment-grown leek from a friend and Aber Food Surplus volunteer. I get so excited about veggies fresh out of the ground, such a great feeling! I have to say, I’m not very adventurous with leeks and I have a go-to favourite, but it’s a favourite for a reason and I’d like to share it with you as a super easy, cheap and nutritious comfort food.

My preferred recipe is this – fry the sliced leek in your chosen oil (or butter), meanwhile chop your potatoes to rough cubes (around 2cm), add those to the pan stir and cover, five minutes later add your chosen stock to the amount of soup you’d like to end up with, simmer for another five and blend. It really is that simple.

I had a small handful of wild garlic collected from a walk and I popped the leaves in just before blending. It was a perfect addition! You can add delicious cream, but I find that the blended potatoes create a wonderfully creamy texture anyway and so it’s not essential. If you do want to add cream, add a splash, combine, taste and repeat until you’re happy. In this case, I had some soured cream leftover from another recipe and a dollop in the middle was spot on.

Quantity-wise, use what you’ve got or plan for the number of people you’re feeding. I had one large leek and added one large potato. You can always make a larger quantity by adding a larger quantity of stock.

Season away! Salt and pepper finish off this simple and delicious soup. I devoured it.

I ordered my box for a different day this week in line with when I thought I would have used up what I already had and to give me a chance to look at the ingredients received before meal-planning for the week.

My second Aber Food Surplus delivery during lockdown including a portion of fruit salad and a vegetable soup they’d whipped up!

Pan-fried gnocchi with wild garlic pesto

Still on the potato theme, spinach and wild garlic pesto pan-fried gnocchi was next. This was made from store cupboard ingredients plus more of the wild garlic and spinach from my surplus delivery. This could just have easily been made with pasta if that’s what you have in. Another incredibly simple, but absolutely delicious, mealtime.

For the pesto, I had previously blended together wild garlic (could be ordinary garlic), nutritional yeast (could be a strong cheese), pine nuts (or another nut you have lying around), lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and popped it in the fridge.

Pan-fried gnocchi with spinach and wild garlic pesto.

The gnocchi is easily pan-fried in olive oil – just let them go golden and then flip over. Chuck in the pine nuts, stir through the spinach and green olives, turn off the heat and coat in the pesto which gently cooks in the heat of the dish. Writing about this makes me want to eat it again right now. I love to top dishes like this with a spoonful of cream cheese, but you could keep it plain or add any cheese you like to the dish. You could go for more varied veg in there too, but sometimes it’s nice to keep it simple.

Spanish Tortilla

Similar to last week, I’ve been having thoughts of delicious Spanish food and decided to make a tortilla. I’m not going to claim to make the best tortillas, but they have certainly improved since I lived with someone from Seville. The secret, he told me, is to fry off both the onions and potatoes in generous amounts of oil before bringing them together again in the pan.

I used up all my remaining potatoes to fill the width of my vertical-sided frying pan, more could have gone in to make it a thicker affair. One large onion fried up previously was added to the fried potato slices and once mixed, six beaten eggs were stirred through the pan and the whole mix flattened on top. I cooked this on a low heat until the bottom was browned and holding together. A heatproof pan could then go into the oven to grill and finish the top of the tortilla, but mine isn’t so I placed a chopping board on top of the pan and flipped the tortilla over before sliding it back in to cook the other side. Please be careful attempting this with the hot oil that’s involved! There are various recipes for tortilla online including this one from The Guardian - www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jul/29/how-to-cook-spanish-omelette.

I do love to dunk a chunk of tortilla into some garlickly allioli so I thought I better try making some. I followed the advice of Oh the things we’ll make. I was really pleased and really garlicky.

Upside-down Cake

I’ve been given a fairly varied selection of fruit over the past two weeks and I wanted to cook with it rather than just eat it as is. You’ll often find me Googling for inspiration and as I did I was reminded of upside-down cakes! I used to make a pineapple upside-down with my Mum and thought it was magical so why not bring some of that magic into lockdown?

Nectarine, pear and passionfruit upside cake using unsold fruit and eggs.

It’s an oddness of mine that I claim not to like cake. It’s not entirely true, I think I just like only really indulgent or extra flavoursome cake. The recipe I followed was from Nadia Lim and it fulfilled my requirements, it was moist and sugary and fruity. I particularly loved the zing of the passionfruit seeds. I used nectarine and pear for the other fruits and I loved the combination, but experiment!

I should add that this recipe uses minimal flour as it’s half ground almonds. So, if you do have enough left flour left you might choose to use it here.

Warm upside-down cake & ice-cream, a lockdown treat.

I ate it straight out of the oven with vanilla and white chocolate ice-cream.

Banana Lumpia or Turon

Another ‘surplus’ fruit I received was a banana which helped transport me to The Phillipines! In an effort to brighten up the lockdown I arranged a zoom to trip to The Phillipines with a friend. We dressed for dinner by the beach and cooked three courses of Filipino food in tandem whilst listening to traditional Filipino music. I can’t recommend an evening like this more highly so do give it a go! The banana came in for our dessert course, where we made deep-fried banana lumpia, or Turon. I’m afraid I have no pictures as I’d probably had too much wine by then, but follow the link for the recipe or picture a sweet spring roll stuffed with gooey banana.

Egg-fried Rice

Another meal idea, which you can basically throw everything at is a delicious bowl of fried rice. Make it up as you go along, but best to use previously cooked rice or cook off the rice beforehand to make sure it’s nice and dry before it goes in the pan.

Fried rice is a great way to use up veggies!

I fried up all the veggies I wanted to add; my remaining surplus carrot, the last of a pepper I’d been putting in salads, green beans, radish sprouts, shallots and red chilli. When they were softening I added a little soy sauce, once coated I dropped in the rice and stirred around so it had a chance to brown (you might need a spot more oil here so it doesn’t stick).

In a mug I beat an egg together with sesame oil, made space for it on one side of the pan and poured in. After leaving it to cook for a few seconds I broke it apart with the wooden spoon and before the egg was cooked entirely stirred it through the rice and veggie mixture to give that egg-fried rice effect.

I topped mine with some Ketjap Manis which is an Indonesian thickened and sweetened soy sauce – it’s fantastic. There are various simple recipes online to make your own.

Enjoyed on the sofa in front of the telly.

Parsnip Curry

Lastly, I had received two parsnips. I had no particular plan for these, but when the day came around I decided that I would make a parsnip curry. That’s the great thing about curries, they can be based around any ingredient, even baked beans!

I have a good selection of spices in my pantry, but if you don’t the curry pastes from Patak’s and other brands are a one jar alternative that I hope you can still easily get hold of. Or if, you’re looking to expand your spice collection Maes Y Maesydd on Chalybeate street are open and they have a fantastic collection to choose from.

Parsnip curry with parsnip and apple crisps

I started off the curry sauce by blending together onion, garlic, ginger and fresh chilli before frying this gently in a pan and adding my chosen spices. After this point I added small chunks of parsnip and carrot, covered my mixture with stock and added some coconut cream to thicken. I cooked until the vegetables were tender serving with rice and apple and parsnip crisps.

Pretzels, Beer and Bavarian Obatzda

Last and by no means least it’s time for quiz night at the Lockdown Arms with friends and beers – my favourite night of the isolating week.

For starters, I am getting beers from the Bottle & Barrel, just like I used to on a Sunday afternoon, it’s just this time they deliver them to my door for me 😊 I know that Kane’s Bar are providing this service too. I’m not sure about any others, but worth investigating if you’re usual local is operating for take-away or deliveries if not giving one, or both, of these two a shout.

I received two pretzels in my surplus box this week and so I was instantly transported back to Bavaria and a whipped cheese I had there with warm pretzels and beer. Time to recreate the feeling! I discovered a very indulgent recipe for a traditional Bavarian cheese dip and simply mixed all the ingredients together and chilled before warming up my pretzels for quiz night. It was a fantastic combination of raw onion, camembert, cream cheese and paprika. I felt just as stuffed as I had in Munich! Cheers!

A night at the pub thanks to Bottle & Barrel and Aber Food Surplus.

I hope you’re enjoying making use of Aberystwyth’s surplus food and it’d be great to hear if you try any of the recipes I’ve used. You can find me on Instagram @naturebitesuk.

About the author. Kathy is a naturalist working in natural history programming and conservation. Food production and diet is intrinsically linked with conservation and planetary heath which plays a large role in the food choices she makes. Kathy runs her @naturebitesuk Instagram account to share her love of cooking and eating, but also to inspire people to make space for good and well sourced food in their lives.