VEGGIE SANDWICH

I love a sandwich. It's easy, it's quick and it can be as boring or as interesting as your mood takes you. As I have a husband who is often out of town a sandwich is often on the menu on these days. Add a salad, and, or a bowl of soup and in no time at all you can have a delicious supper, very quickly.

Last week while deciding what to put between two slices of bread, or in this case a sliced pannini, I like to keep different breads and rolls in the freezer for ease and variety. I knew I wanted something hot, so that was a starting place. And I wanted something very tasty and light. Now a look into the fridge to see what I could come up with.

Luckily I had some left over roasted vegetables. I had roasted up some peppers, courgettes and red onions at the weekend. I love cooking vegetables like this. They can be eaten hot, or cold later in the week. The choice of vegetables is entirely up to you. Just chop them up add salt pepper and herbs, a slug of olive oil and stick them into the oven at 250c for 35-45mins. half way through give them a stir. As they come out of the oven I add a splash of balsamic which is sucked up into the vegetables. The smell is amazing. The only things I don't add are tomatoes and mushrooms as they give off too much water. They can be roasted separately and added later.

So I now had the base of the sandwich. A jar of pesto and some goats cheese would complete my supper.

I spread the pannini with the pesto and layered on the vegetables and cheese. As I am without a sandwich maker at the moment I popped it into one of my toasting bags, they're wonderful, and popped it into the toaster.

Soon I was tucking into a really delicious and satisfying supper. I was happy.

Sandwich fillings can often be boring but they don't need to be. They are only limited by your imagination. I have done brie, parma ham and melon and it was so good. Not something you might think of when you reach for the bread, but stop and think, check out leftovers and experiment. You never know what you might turn up.

LEFTOVERS

Last night saw me gazing wistfully into the fridge looking for supper. My husband was out of town so I wanted something quick, easy but tasty. I needed inspiration. There was a dish of left over rice from the night before and some cooked chicken so I did what people all over the world do with leftovers I put together a fried rice dish. With the help of some shrimp from the freezer a handful of frozen peas and a tablespoonful of a NASI GORENG paste which I keep in the pantry I knew before long I would have a delicious warming supper dish.
I put some oil in a wok fried off the paste then added the chicken, shrimp, rice & peas. On the side I fried an egg and warmed some naan bread in the microwave, in less than 10 mins I was tucking into supper.
This made me think of all the dishes from across the world which use basically the same ingredients. Nasi Goreng, which is Indonesian, paella, Spanish,fried rice, from China, jambalaya and rice & beans from the south, and even the Italians have their risotto, although this a bit more refined than the others. In UK we have a dish called KEDGEREE, which is rice, smoked fish flavours with curry powder. This is I'm sure a dish carried over from our days in India. Usually it is served for brunch. I am sure there are many more.
Today these dishes are all trendy and can be found in all good restaurants but in their simplest and earliest forms these were dishes concocted to use up leftovers from the weekend meals, cooked at a time, unlike today, when food was not wasted or thrown out. Also lack of refrigeration meant it had to be used quickly before it went off. Today I often despair at the food I see wasted especially when so many people in the world are starving. Why do we do this? Has food become so cheap that we don't care anymore? Why not look in your fridge and see what you can come up with using what is there, I'm sure you will be surprised. After all bread pudding was invented to use up stale bread, sour milk and eggs gone bad hence the heavy cinnamon seasoning! I don't advocate going this far but give it a go. Amaze yourself.