How to turn leftovers into treats

Here’s how to turn leftovers into a fun and delicious dessert

Nothing pains me more than throwing food away. I live alone and have only myself to think about when it comes to mealtimes. I admire the organisation skills of mums and dads on their day-to-day management of a busy home. A documentary on food waste that I watched recently got me questioning my own food habits.

I try to up-cycle as much food as I can — my leftovers get turned into stir-fries, frittatas, or just stored in the freezer. A week’s food plan can be like organising the stock list for a busy restaurant. I tend to shop in bulk, divide, share and freeze.

We also seem to have been driven into a state of ‘food panic’; food labels tell us what’s best before, when to use by and display until — it’s all so confusing. No one wants to serve potentially dangerous food.

So what does it all mean? According to the UK Food Standards Agency, there are three simple codes to follow: USE BY is about safety, the food can be eaten up to the displayed date but not after. This applies to fresh meat and ready-to-eat salads. BEST BEFORE, as it suggests, is a guideline from the manufacturer; the food is still good to eat but may not be the standard it was when first produced, for example, tinned, frozen and dried foods. Finally DISPLAY UNTIL — this has nothing to do with us as consumers, this is a guide for store workers. I follow a ‘store as purchased’ rule, however the food is displayed in store — on shelves, frozen — I‘ll do the same at home.

As a kid and still now, I smell everything — it’s obvious, if it smells awful then it’s highly unlikely it’ll taste any better. Growing up, we had a vast, almost SUV-sized trunk freezer in the garage; this part of the house doubled as a food store and playroom. The freezer was stacked to the brim with hand-picked fruits from the summer season, and buckets of ice cream and vegetables from my dad’s allotment. Food and time were in a frozen suspension. But accessing the ‘ice trunk’ was a skill in itself — while reaching down into the frozen depths I always had thoughts of the door crashing down on me like some scary movie.

So here’s a great trick — cook fruits and vegetables, then freeze them. A simple fruit stew can be stored, and later be poured over ice-cream, or used as a pie filling. One of my favourite time- and waste-savers is passata, a rich tomato sauce base suitable for pasta dishes, and which helps upcycle overripe tomatoes.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Quarter six tomatoes, place them in an ovenproof dish with four crushed garlic cloves, coat with olive oil, season and bake for 30 minutes. Pour the roasted tomatoes with all the juices into a blender with a good handful of basil leaves, and blitz. Allow the passata to thoroughly cool, then pour into airtight containers. You can store it in the freezer for up to three months.

Overripe fruit combined with a few store cupboard ingredients makes an excellent treat for the kids: think a dairyfree, silky smooth, chocolate ice cream (recipe in box on left). Apart from being a sneaky way to get them to eat fruit, it’s also a brilliant way to teach kids about food waste.