Store cupboard tips and tricks

Make your own Nutella, wow your family with an Italian breadcrumb flourish or transform store cupboard staples into delectable desserts.

Make your own Nutella, wow your family with an Italian breadcrumb flourish or transform store cupboard staples into delectable desserts – lockdown is the perfect opportunity to get inventive with your store cupboard staples.

Homemade pangrattato

Add a little flourish to your lockdown menus with homemade pangrattato (the Italian for ‘breadcrumb’), as a great way to use up stale bread or make a dairy-free replacement to parmesan to top pasta dishes.

Pangrattata

To make:

Blitz your stale bread or offcuts in a food processor until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Heat olive oil and a grated garlic clove in a pan on a medium heat. There should be enough oil to coat the breadcrumbs then fry until golden brown and crispy. Once they are all evenly golden brown, remove from the heat. Strain excess oil through a sieve and leave on a sheet of paper towel to drain.

Place your fried breadcrumbs into a bowl and season with salt. Add any hard herbs you wish, like dried oregano, rosemary, thyme, winter savoury.

Once your pangrattato is cool, place in a jar and seal.

Keep for several weeks in the cupboard ready to sprinkle over your roasted veg or pasta dishes.

Nut or seed butter 

Ever fancied making your own peanut butter? This recipe can be used to make any nut butter from peanut to pumpkin seed. Try playing with flavour combinations, like hazelnut with the addition of cocoa to make your own Nutella.

Ingredients:

200g seedsnuts

50ml olive oil

Pinch of salt

Seed butter

To make:

Roast 200g pumpkin seeds on a baking tray at 180 degrees for 8-10 minutes. This will begin to release their natural oils.

Once out, leave to cool slightly, but while still warm add to your blender with the olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Blend the seeds continuously: they will chop, then clump, then form a paste. If you continue blending, the mixture will loosen again with the oil released, so be patient. You should come out with a completely smooth butter.

This can be stored in a jar in your fridge for months, but we reckon it will have been eaten by then!

At the Field Kitchen, we serve it with our sourdough for our dairy-free guests but you could use it on toast, as a dip, through a cheesecake, on yogurt or eaten straight from the jar.

Roasted tomato, caper and olive pasta sauce

This is an incredibly rich pasta sauce recipe and is a brilliant way of using up those tomatoes that have gone a little soft in your fridge.

Ingredients:

15 cherry tomatoes or eight vine (whatever you have left over)

Drizzle of olive oil

1 chopped onion

3 cloves of garlic – chopped

Splash of white wine

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 tbsp capers (if you don’t have capers, increase the amount of olives, or use anchovies or green peppercorns instead)

5 sliced olives

Dried herbs

Salt to season

To make:

Place tomatoes on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and roast in your oven on 190 degrees for 10-12 minutes. At this heat the natural sugars will caramelise and excess liquid will go concentrating the rich sweetness of the tomato.

Start your sauce by sweating down one chopped onion and the cloves of garlic in a little oil on a medium heat until they are cooked but not coloured. Add a splash of white wine, and a spoon of tomato puree.

Let the wine cook off for a minute or two then add the capers and the sliced olives.

Remove tomatoes from oven and add to your sauce, making sure to scrape all the juices from your tray.

Simmer on a low heat until the tomatoes break down into the sauce and come together, adding dried oregano or chopped fresh thyme or parsley.

Serve this rich sauce through orzo pasta or serve underneath a BBQ-ed lamb leg, or any other pasta dish.

Coconut rice pudding

Rice pudding

Using only four ingredients you could create one of our regular dessert offerings at the Field Kitchen’s legendary pudding counter.

Ingredients:

1 litre coconut milk

350ml plant milk (we use almond)

200g sugar 

270g Arborio rice

Place all the ingredients into a pan and put on a medium to low heat on the hob. Make sure you keep checking and stirring your rice pudding mix. 

After about 30 mins, the rice should have absorbed all the coconut milk, leaving you with a thick glossy rice pudding.

Spoon into bowls and top with ingredients like toasted almonds, toasted coconut, caramelised pineapple, mango and lime, orange and cardamom, rum and raisins, or eat as it comes.

Chocolate pot

Chocolate pot

Definitely one for the chocolate lovers, this rich chocolate pudding is a real treat and made with only four typical store cupboard ingredients.

Ingredients:

200g dark chocolate (or you can use milk chocolate instead)

300ml double cream

200ml whole milk

3 egg yolks

To make:

Put the cream and milk into a pan and heat until just under a boil.

Whisk the eggs yolks in a bowl, and once the cream is hot, add a ladle into the egg mix and quickly whisk. This will temper the eggs so they don’t scramble in milk.

Add the egg mix back to your pan and gently heat while stirring until your mix reaches 82 degrees – this will be just below the boiling point or until the mix has thickened enough to coat the back of your spoon.

Snap your chocolate into a heat proof bowl and pour your egg mix over. Keep gently stirring the mix until all the chocolate has melted and you have a smooth glossy chocolate mix.

Pour this into jars, allow to cool slightly then place in your fridge for 1-2 hours to set.

Our favourite way to eat them is with a sprinkle of sea salt and a drizzle of good quality olive oil.

Follow the Riverford Field Kitchen on Instagram for more chef’s tips, tricks and recipe inspiration.

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