A Great Way To Use Leftovers
Bubble And Squeak
Leftovers in my house are always in abundance, cluttering the fridge with cling-filmed plates and open tins balancing on yogurt pots, just waiting for me to knock them over.
Mostly though, the hounds get all of what's left over from our plates. Sunday in the cooler months we revert back to our traditional Sunday diners and with this plenty of leftovers in the pans, usually mash potatoes, swede, peas and carrots, sometimes cabbage or sprouts.
There is no specific recipe for Bubble and Squeak, it is simply vegetable leftovers from an English-style Sunday dinner.
In Ireland Bubble and Squeak is referred to as Colcannon made with mash, onion, cabbage or Kale, and the Scottish name for a similar dish is Rumbledethumps.
Bubble and Squeak
Nostalgia
Monday evening in my home, as a child, brought with it a familiar smell and reminded me that we were going to have my favourite, Bubble and Squeak, leftovers from the Sunday before. This was a favourite because it meant that we would also be having something like fishcakes and baked beans with plenty of bread and butter. This also meant that we weren't having any of those foods we as children really disliked.
I'm not saying my mother was a bad cook, on the contrary, it's just that she catered more to the tastes of my father and an archaic 1950's meat and two veg.
If "it doesn't have meat it's not a meal theory" we as children preferred chips or fish fingers, and spaghetti from a tin. Instead of boiled to death vegetables and a grey looking pieces of meat with gravy the colour and thickness of dishwater, but who dare complain? I'm wincing now as I write, let me add that was in the late seventies and like everything else from that era eventually things seemed to brighten and improve.
Ingredients
- 5 tbsp butter or olive oil.
- ½ cup onionfinely chopped.
- 1 garlic clove crushed.
- Mashed potato.
- swede
- cabbage
- peas
- carrots
- Brussels Sprouts
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Instructions
- Chop the vegetables.
- Sauté the onions and garlic in a large frying pan with the butter or olive oil until soft.
- Turn up the heat and add the vegetables and mash potatoes.
- The aim is to heat everything and brown the outside without burning.
- Press the mixture down with a spatula and flip the large patty that has formed adding the butter or olive oil.
Bubble and Squeak - Without the egg
Serve with hot mushy peas mixed with mint sauce and vinegar
Large Frying Pan
Rumbledethumps
