I rarely, if ever, buy orzo, the rice-shaped pasta, but I was intrigued by barbecue chef Melissa Thompson’s poll on her Instagram stories asking: “Do you have a half-finished bag of orzo sitting in your cupboard?” She had more than 600 responses, almost 90% of which said yes. Thompson turned hers into a salad with pepper, spring onion, tomatoes and cucumber. Inspired, I rushed out to buy a bag (yes, I see the irony, too) and made a salad using leftovers. And, of course, ended up with half a bag of orzo in my cupboard.
Orzo salad: an anti-recipe
I’ve called this an anti-recipe because I think recipes are often guilty of creating food waste by being too prescriptive. I want you to cook with love, confidence and creativity, using up whatever you can find. So, use orzo if you have it; if not, another pasta or even a grain can be quickly cooked up to create a satiating salad.
Build an imaginative meal using leftovers saved from a previous lunch. Stale or out-of-date – but still safe to eat – nuts, seeds and spices. You can tell if they’re off by the rancid, oily smell and bitter taste. Other foods you can revive and reuse: wrinkly veg and wilted herbs from the crisper drawer (revived in ice water), tinned or frozen vegetables, and odds and ends of cheese.
Serves 2 as a main or 6 as a side
All ingredients and quantities are optional and should be added to taste
For the salad
300-400g cooked orzo (from about 125-150g uncooked)
130-260g cooked beans or pulses (eg ½-1 can drained cannellini, brown lentils or kidney beans)
200-300g vegetables, cooked or raw (eg, frozen peas, diced boiled sweet potatoes, green peppers)
100-200g cheese (eg, feta, parmesan, cheddar), sliced or crumbled
50-100g toasted nuts and/or seeds (eg, cashews, almonds, peanuts, pumpkin or sesame seeds)
50-100g other store cupboard ingredients (eg, sun-dried tomatoes, dried apricots, sultanas)
30-50g fresh soft herbs (eg, parsley, coriander, mint), stalks finely chopped, leaves roughly chopped
Other leftovers, to taste – I had a small amount of fennel frond pesto salad (recipe coming up in a couple of weeks), which I added to the mix.
For the dressing
Leftover salad dressings (eg, caesar, French, honey and mustard), or drizzle on 2–4 tbsp oil (eg, extra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, hemp oil) and 1–2 tbsp lemon juice, wine vinegar or ume vinegar (see my apricot umeboshi recipe for the latter)
Tip the cooked and cooled pasta into a large bowl. Now build the salad like a buddha bowl, arranging each ingredient side by side, so you can see exactly what you’ve got before mixing.
Add the beans or pulses, followed by the cooked and raw vegetables. Add the cheese, then sprinkle over the nuts and seeds.
Top with anything else you have in the cupboard that’s packed with flavour, such as sun-dried tomatoes or dried fruit.
Finish with the chopped soft herbs, then dress to taste (if you’ve got just a little dressing left in the bottle, bulk it out with a splash of oil and lemon juice or vinegar). Mix, taste, adjust and serve.
