The end of the holidays is approaching. In the summer, when I am out and about and getting ready to go home, a question arises: what to do with what I have left in the cupboards? To avoid wasting food by throwing away food not eaten during the holidays, I opt for well-thought-out recipes. If I have a car to go home, I take dry foods with me. Packets of pasta, bottles of oil and vinaigrette, apples to snack on on the road and bottles of water. Otherwise, with the last eggs in the cupboard, I prepare a fresh omelette, with my overripe fruit (like bananas), a cake; otherwise, for the leftovers in the fridge, I think about preparing mixed salads, like bowls. In short, in this kind of situation, let’s be inventive! Here are some easy recipes to make with the basics in the cupboard.
Recipe #1: Spaghetti with pangrattato bread
This recipe allows me to reuse my stale bread, the rest of a can of sardines, garlic and an onion that have been lying around for a few days now. With these ingredients, I prepare a pasta dish (a starch that almost all of us have in our cupboards), which I season with a condiment preparation and fried sardines, and on which I sprinkle stale breadcrumbs browned in the pan. An anti-waste recipe that makes the pasta crispy and good for morale.
How do you do it? Cut 70 g of stale bread into pieces and brown it in a pan with 3 tablespoons of olive oil. After draining it, crumble it. Rinse a bulb of fennel and cut it into thin slices, before slicing the last onion in the kitchen, peel two cloves of garlic and press them. Brown the onion in the pan for 3 minutes, add the fennel for 4 minutes, then the garlic, a few pine nuts and raisins. Then add 2 sardines in oil. Next, cook some spaghetti (or any other type of pasta you have left), drain it, then add the garlic and onion sauce. Finally, when serving, take the crumbled stale bread and sprinkle it on the pasta with a little chopped parsley.
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Recipe #2: Banana bread
If I have bananas left (or they are too ripe), I can’t make anything other than a delicious Banana bread. A bit like any classic cake, Banana bread is very easy to make with the basics in the cupboard: flour, butter, egg and sugar. Then, we take the last yogurt from the fridge, the rest of the milk and our very ripe bananas. As a bonus, if I have honey or maple syrup left, I like to add it to the recipe!
How do you do it? Preheat the oven to 180°C, mix 50g of milk with 50g of yogurt and mash 3 bananas. Mix 150g of butter, 180g of caster sugar and add 3 eggs. Add the mashed bananas, milk and yogurt to this mixture, then 350g of flour and a teaspoon of baking soda. Put it in the oven, pour the batter into a cake tin and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. Finally, the final touch, if you have maple syrup on hand, brush it on the cake when it comes out of the oven.
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Recipe #3: Chive and mozzarella omelette
When you’re short on time and inspiration, seeing a few eggs in the kitchen allows you to opt for this solution: making an omelette. This recipe, no matter how you decorate it, is delicious and never disappoints. What I like most about making an omelette is adding cheese. It brings an extra softness and fluffiness to the texture of the omelette, and of course, an extra flavor. To enhance it all, herbs are definitely a must. Here, it will be the chive and mozzarella omelette. Otherwise, if I have some feta and herbes de Provence left, I don’t hesitate to choose this combo!
How do we do it? Break 6 eggs into a bowl, whisk them with salt and pepper (and nutmeg if necessary), then add chopped chives. While the beaten eggs cook in the pan for 7 minutes, sprinkle the mixture with pieces of mozzarella cut up beforehand. Then, it’s up to us to turn the omelette over (for firm cooking) or simply let it cook on one side (for a more tender texture).
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Recipe #4: Honey mousse
I have some honey, eggs and a little liquid cream left? I’m making a honey mousse, a surprising dessert because it’s very tasty for so few ingredients. Which just goes to show that in cooking, a little goes a long way! If the honey is crystallized, I liquefy it by heating it in a bain-marie.
How do you do it? Separate the whites from the yolks of 4 eggs. Take the container containing the yolks and heat it in a bain-marie. Whisk while gradually incorporating 150 g of honey until you obtain a very frothy mixture. Next, whisk 100 ml of whole liquid cream and incorporate the whipped egg whites. Incorporate this white mixture into the first egg yolk/honey mixture. The honey mousse is ready, and all that remains is to drizzle it with honey and serve it warm, or cold after leaving it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
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Recipe #5: Egg and bacon croissants
Didn’t all the breakfast croissants get eaten? While this may be rare, sometimes there are leftover pastries in the kitchen. Rather than throwing them out, I make these awesome egg and bacon croissants for a holiday brunch.
How do we do it? Quite simply, we open our croissants in two, brush the inside (of each half) with mustard, and bake the half-croissants for 5 minutes at 180 °C. In the meantime, we cook fried eggs in the pan (let’s plan on one egg per croissant). Once the two halves are out of the oven, we place a slice of bacon, the fried egg, chopped chives on one and close everything with the other half of the croissant. Serve immediately and enjoy this sweet/savory preparation.
Discover the recipe for egg and bacon croissants
