My family come from the south of Italy, specifically Naples, where it is tradition not to throw away food and yummy dishes are made out of leftovers. In fact some of the famous dishes from traditional napolitan cuisine, i.e. Casatiello and Frittata di Pasta, are the result of the art of recycling leftovers. Growing up my mum passed this cultural inheritance onto me and so I love to create dishes out of leftovers, well when I happen to have some, since Ryan seems to have made it a mission to ensure that nothing is left from our meals!

So, since people often wonder what to do with leftovers, I thought I’d put my inheritance at work and start a series of posts on what to do with our lovely yummy leftovers.

Let’s start with how to turn Thai Green curry and Coconut rice leftover, that I had for dinner some time back, into a dirty risotto. (I beg mercy to my fellow Italians who may not approve my use of the word “risotto” in this case).The amount of Green Thai Curry was sufficient for one person, so I decided to have it for lunch on the following day, incidentally the day I worked from home that day, and it only took 10 minutes to make a delicious Thai Green Chicken Curry and Coconut Rice Risotto.

Ingredients

Leftover curry – I had about half a cup

1 cup of coconut rice (room temperature)

1 small chicken breast

1 tsp of sunflower oil

2 tbsp of water

I used chicken, but obviously you can use anything you fancy, be it fish, lamb, turkry or steak or simply vegetables.

Preparation

First I diced the chicken in big chunks.

I put the oil in a saucepan on an high heath. Once the oil was hot, I added the chicken and cooked it until brown on all sides. I then added the curry sauce and half of the water and I let it stir-fry until the chicken was cooked.

As a last step, I added the coconut rice and the remaining water and let it cook until the water was absorbed and the rice hot.

I put everything on a plate and garnished with some coriander and voila my dirty and quick leftover risotto was ready!!

If you want to make this recipe and share it on your social media please tag me using @prepandproperrecipes and using the tag #prepandproperrecipes and #nofoodinthebin