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| Going to recycle the roast pork, sweet potato flans. |
Remember those sweet potato flans from last week’s blog? We were only three for Christmas dinner, but I had made enough for a banquet. I frequently do that if I am testing the proportions for a recipe. Then I need to figure out what to do with the leftovers.
I found in the cupboard a carton of coconut milk (unsweetened beverage, not canned coconut “milk” for cooking) whose expiry date had come and gone. And some leeks that were threatening to expire as well as a bag of chopped chard, passed over more than once. Soup? Yes, a curried sweet-potato soup with coconut milk and chard.
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| Leftover sweet potato flans, mashed up and cooked with curry and coconut milk, get a new lease on life as soup. |
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| Chunks of pork get recycled with black-eyed peas with spicy sofrito--good fortune for the New Year. |
The main dish for the holiday meal was a boneless pork shoulder roast, done with a Venezuelan-style pernil marinade with orange juice (that recipe is here.). That pork went round a few more times, but in different guises. First was Chinese-style red-cooked pork. Since the pork was already well-seasoned and cooked, all I had to do was make the rich sauce—using leftover pork gravy, soy sauce, Sherry, ginger and star anise—and reheat chunks of pork in the sauce. I accompanied the pork with rice and stir-fried cabbage, recycled from a cabbage dish served at another meal.
The end chunks of the roast are heading for 2024 in a pot of black-eyed peas. Those guarantors of good fortune in the new year were cooked and ready-to-go in the freezer. All I needed to do was add a spicy sofrito. (The recipe for black-eyed peas with pork and sofrito is here. A vegetarian recipe for black-eyed peas is here.)
Even the pork marinade, half of which was stashed in the freezer, will re-emerge on New Year's Eve as a marinade for magret de pato, duck breast, with a different sort of orange sauce!
Curried Sweet Potato Soup
Sopa de Batatas al Curry
Some of the sweet potatoes I used for the soup were leftover flans that contained grated cheese and had been cooked with eggs. If you use plain pureed sweet potatoes, you may want to add a little grated cheese. Once cooked, blend the soup. Add the cooked chard before serving.
Serves 4.
2 cups pureed sweet potatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped leeks or onions
1 clove chopped garlic
½ apple, diced
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger
4 cups unsweetened coconut milk beverage
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup grated cheese (optional)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup cooked, chopped chard
Chopped scallions, to garnish
Greek yogurt, to garnish
Smoked pimentón (sweet or hot)
Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the leeks and garlic until they are softened, 5 minutes. Add the apple, curry powder, ginger, and the pureed sweet potatoes. Mash the sweet potatoes into the sautéed leeks. Add the coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper. Add grated cheese, if using. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook 15 minutes, until leeks and apple are very soft.
Use an immersion blender to blend the soup until quite smooth. Add lemon juice and reheat the soup before serving. Add chard to serve. Garnish with scallions and yogurt. Sprinkle with pimentón.
More recipes for recycling leftover food:
New Year's resolution: Join the movement! SIN DESPERDICIOS! NO FOOD WASTE!
A Spanish Hoppin' John. Happy New Year Janet!
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