'New from Old'

Yesterday evening we had a lovely dinner of roast pork with lots of vegetables and, of course, gorgeous roast potatoes cooked by Karl. We had a 1.5kg piece of pork shoulder, with the bone removed, so I filled the cavity in the centre with a bunch of fresh sage from the garden, which gave the meat a lovely flavour. We followed our meal with some jellies, striped yellow and green, that Christopher and I had assembled together. It was a lovely evening so after supper we headed down to the beach for a walk.

Because of the leftover pork in the fridge, dinner was a pretty easy option tonight. I often make pies like these when we've had a joint of roast pork the day before and you can see the recipe here. Tonight I used broccoli instead of cauliflower (also left over from last night) and crème fraîche instead of double cream, because that's what I had in the fridge. Because the pork was already so strongly flavoured by the sage, I didn't add any more herbs.

I really like cooking with leftovers. It would be easy to dismiss the idea of a 'repeat performance' as dull, but I get a lot of pleasure from making something new out of the bits we didn't need after all. I've actually made some really good things this way. It would be awful to just throw the stuff away after it has lingered under clingfilm in the fridge for a few days. Far too much food gets wasted anyway, and I can't bear to do it in such a cavalier manner when something else could be done with it. Some of the best meals ever were designed to use up scraps of meat, stale bread or stock made from leftover bones. Plus it saves money, which is not so much a plus as it is a reason.