Nasi Goreng - using up the leftovers

This was my tasty lunch the other day - leftover rice transformed into Nasi Goreng. Yum!

After realising half-way through the month that I'd already spent our food budget for the month, I knew that I'd need to 'use what we've got' for the remainder of the month and get back to more baking and cooking. Something I've been a bit slack on lately.

Last weekend I had a day's baking and stocked up on cakes and treats for the week: (brownies, honeyed scone ring and spinach and fetta triangles).

My Nasi Goreng came from us often having a small pot of left-over rice from dinner. Sometimes it gets made into 'smashed sushi' (it's not sticky rice so we can't roll it into proper sushi, but it gets mixed in a pot with tuna mayonnaise and cut seaweed sprinkled on the top - my girls like that in their lunch boxes!)

I did make fried rice for a while, with bacon, peas and soy sauce, but the girls tired of that quickly.

So what else to do with the left over rice?

A couple of years ago we had a family holiday to Bali. One of our favourite lunchtime dishes was Nasi Goreng.

I tried the 'packet mix' for this from the supermarket a while ago and wasn't too impressed. So when I stumbled across a recipe in one of my many many recipe books:

I had to try it.

So first I made a quick basic omelette with 2 eggs. We always have plenty of eggs in the fridge.

Then rolled this and sliced it.

Next was getting some other ingredients out - fresh ginger, some garlic, mushrooms and spring onions. 

Stir fry those a little...

Then add the rice, some kecap manis (like sweet thick soy sauce) and sambal oleak (spicy hot chilli paste).

When that was all mixed and heated through, I added back the egg and served it up with spinach leaves and fresh tomato!

Very tasty, and I'll definitely be making that again with whatever veggies I've got in the fridge!

With my plan for this year to 'use what I've got', and the smashing of this month's food budget, I've been prompted to start looking at my many under used cookbooks to create some tasty meals and treats with what we've got in the pantry and fridge!

I'll let you know if I find any more tasty recipes!!