Getting Creative with leftovers – Potato Croquette’s

I have a confession to make.

I waste a lot of food. No wait, we buy a lot more than we eat, then the worms in our worm farm eat what is past its prime, or veggies that have gone ‘floppy’. The worms turn the food into waste – worm wee and we use that as fertilizer for the garden. So we don’t throw a lot out, but we certainly eat less than we buy.

That is … we used to. I have been feeling pretty guilty about it and come to the following conclusion – our fridge and pantry is usually so cluttered with things that are going off that I can’t actually see what is still fresh.

Enter – fridge and pantry clean out. Yep, I spent a Friday night at home recently cleaning out my pantry. I tell you there is no better feeling. There’s room, extra containers that were previously filled with now off junk, you can see things better and the shelves are no longer sticky. It’s a beautiful thing.
 
Same goes with the fridge. I’ll admit, opening the door and peering into our fridge is a little depressing – definitely not like the fuzzy feeling you get when it’s full for days over Christmas.

So now that I have a clean empty fridge and pantry, I am sticking to my guns and using what we have before buying more.

This weekend just gone I made apricot chicken on Saturday night and served it with rice, peas and some Greek yoghurt on top. Sunday night, there were leftovers so I just made some potato mash and I confess, served it with peas again because that’s all I had, but I also toasted some pine nuts for some crunch. It wasn’t as good, but at least it wasn’t the exact same meal.

 

We used all of the chicken, but I now had mash leftover. In a previous life I would’ve thrown that mash in the container for the worms, but this is my new, don’t throw anything out, life.

So on last night’s menu were potato croquettes. (normally I plan a meal around protein, like I plan my outfit around my shoes… but things are different, so those croquettes are my basis). All that was left in the fridge were some corn cobs and a chicken breast. I grabbed some broccolini on my way home because I MUST have something green on my plate or I feel guilty!

Potato Croquette 101.

I softened the mash a little in the mickywave and stirred through some fresh chives and curly parsley, then rolled them out into little logs. They’d softened a little too much by now so I popped them in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up and got the flour (seasoned with S&P), eggwash and breadcrumbs ready.

The gist from here is to roll them gently in the flour, followed by egg, followed by breadcrumbs and drop into the oil.

Straightfoward enough, however I have some hot tips for you:

1. The oil doesn’t need to be too hot because you’ll burn the outside before warming up the inside.
2. I should’ve used a bigger pot so there was enough room for them to float around in without getting too squished.
3. 3 of mine broke and released the potato into the oil so it might actually be wiser to pop them in the freezer to firm up AFTER you coat in the breadcrumbs.
4. Some parmesan cheese through them, or a ball of mozzarella in the middle would be lover-ly!

The results are in and of 9 original croquettes, we ended up with 6. Not bad for a first try!! And not bad for leftovers!

Busted croquettes :(

Busted croquettes make the oil pretty much unusable

And there you have it. Last night’s dinner. (I made some last minute gravy too).

Those delicious little fluffy croquette’s took me to a happy place, or maybe it was the glass of red I had with them?