Cooking with supermarket rejects

Visits to the grocery store take on a completely different vibe these days. Staples like flour, spaghetti, and eggs are in short supply, although some aisles of the supermarket are completely stocked. If you are clever and can afford to take a chance on unusual ingredients, you can make good use of the items everyone else is overlooking, says Australian Gourmet Traveller.

While most shoppers leave behind items like brown rice, couscous, pearl barley, and odd pasta shapes like orzo (known as risoni in Australia), the folks at Gourmet Traveller see the swan within the ugly duckling, saying these items “might be the reject supermarket items no-one wants, but in our eyes, they’re recipe gold.”

They offer recipes for these ingredients that are probably still pretty easy to find, including Mussels with risoni and herbs, Guy Grossi’s Barley polenta, Casarecce with pork sausage, cavolo nero and chilli, and Mushroom & pine nut brown rice bowl (pictured). Of course you already know that EYB can help you find recipes for those oddball ingredients that you find in the store (or in the back of your larder/pantry). Now is as good a time as any to use up some of those items you purchased on a whim some time back.