Leftovers and seconds

I loathe to throw out any fruit or vegetables (except for maybe those furry gray carrots that get pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten about for a few weeks) and so I'm always trying to think of inventive things to do with nearly-past-their-used by date items in my fridge and fruit bowl. My food delivery comes on Fridays, so often Friday or Saturday is when I cook to make way for the new stuff.

I'd been pondering what to do with some broccoli I had in the fridge: I hate the stalks and I'm always trying to find ways to conceal them in things so I can't taste them and don't have to throw them out. I also had some daikon and carrot lying about so, before I headed off to work I whipped up some quick Japanese pickles. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to turn out, but I'll let you know how it tastes in about 4 days.


My favourite thing to do with tired fruit, apart from stewing it and eating it with ice cream, is turning it into muffins. Three lonely kiwi fruit were still left. They'd been left in the bottom of the bowl and almost forgotten. I also had a banana that I had frozen in the back of the freezer. I made this recipe from a base muffin recipe that I have and hoped for the best. Although the photo doesn't look that exciting, these muffins are actually very tasty and are definitely on my "to make again" list. The kiwi fruit gives them a bit of zing, the banana keeps it smooth and sweet, and the ginger gives them a lift.

Kiwi fruit and banana muffins

Wet ingredients:

• 100 g butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 banana, mashed
• 3 kiwi fruit, diced
• 1/2 cup low fat milk

Dry ingredients:

• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.
2. Combine the wet ingredients.
3. Mix in the dry ingredients. Mix until the dry ingredients are just combined.
4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked through. Let to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool.

Apple and rhubarb compote

This morning I visited the Holmesglen Tafe farmers market and, in addition to the delicious goats cheese, locally made olive oil, freshly baked sour dough, zucchini pickles and organic kipfler potatoes, I also bought 1kg organic fuji apple seconds. I used a portion of these to stew up with some rhubarb I had lying about in the fridge.

I adapted this recipe from the recipe for rhubarb compote in Beverley Sutherland Smith's "A taste for all seasons".

• 250 g apples, peeled and diced
• 1 rhubarb bunch (500 g)
• Juice of 1 orange
• Several strips of orange rind
• 1/2 cup sugar

Place all ingredients in a dutch oven or heavy based saucepan (I added a little bit of water just to get it all started). Bring to the boil then reduce to a low simmer for ~30 mins until the rhubarb is just soft. Remove orange rind and serve. Can be frozen for up