18/12/2011
http://www.lovemoney.com/blogs/travel-food-and-lifestyle/food/13839/frugal-food–16th-december-2011
This is an amazing blog which gives you a whole host of cheap and frugal eating options, including a huge chart of restaurant deals with links to the relevant websites.
01/03/2011
All my further food related writing can be found on Eating Exeter
02/02/2011
In my Baking Phase, I have branched away from baking biscuits to a classic recipe that is frequently overlooked. The history of the Lasagne seems to be Greek originally, but the Romans borrowed it and adopted it as one of their own. It has been a staple diet of the poor an imporvorished for nearly 2000 years, so what a fantastic forum to display it.
This is my Non-Vegetarian, Vegetarian Lasagne.
For this you’ll need:
1 Jar of cheap-ish pasta sauce,
1 tub of carbonara sauce / or cheese sauce
Half a red onion
Three cloves of garlic
Bag of Quorn mince
1 glass of Red Wine
2 tsp of Red Pesto
Tomato Puree (75g)
Grated cheese, Cheddar and Parmasan.
If this doesn’t do it for you, then there is a lovely recipe at GrubsUp
23/01/2011
I like Jamie Oliver, in fact I like him so much that I sat and watched his 30 Minute Meals programs that were on a few weeks ago and, like many, marvelled at how easy the whole thing looked.
Oh it was divine, he cooked away, bubbled pasta, spread things, grated other things in a seamless ballet. It was like a culinary Bolshoi and the viewers were the Russian Aristocrats watching this majestic display, captivated and enthralled with his magic and charisma he made us believe that we could do this wonder, creating these easy snappy dishes as easily as a rabbit is taken out of a hat.
But alas, following the rabbit analogy, it might look seamless but there is a degree of pain to the whole thing. Being pulled out by your ears is not the nicest thing, and when you boil down Jamie’s 30 Minute Recipes you realise that they are not truly designed for everyone.
 |
Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals. Jamie Oliver |
A quick flick through the lovely put together recipe book (because all shows have to have some sort of spin-off) shows that each recipe involves things that your average Joe Bloggs does not necessarily have in their kitchen. In fact in order to cook these things, you either have to have the sort of kitchen that will allow you to store all these ingredients, or enough time and money to go and buy them all.
And, does 30 minutes include preparing everything too? I imagine if you had to cut everything up first, that would take much longer.
I wonder if Jamie has realised that the country is in the middle of a recession, and that the average struggling person will not want to go and buy Capers, Anchovies and other things that involve a considerable expense.
But hang on, let us give him his due.
First off, the recipe’s are easy and you don’t HAVE to prepare the whole meal. You can make bits of the meal, either on their own or as part of something else altogether. The philosophy behind the book/TV programme is admirable and, as ever with Jamie Oliver, accessible (ensuring you have a full pantry).
So let’s conclude. Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals are a good concept, but be prepared to spend money buying lots of ingredients. The book is lovely in its design, but do people in these austere times have the money to spend on a hardback book that is ultimately a work of art as much as a functional informational work.
It is part of the greater Jamie Oliver ‘machine’ that has seen him use that lovable and cheeky image that The Naked Chef presented us with, and has actually shown him to be a shrewd and clever businessman.
But hey, if you can, do.
23/01/2011
So, we made them after seeing the recipe being cooked on Baking Made Easy presented by Lorraine Pascale on BBC Two earlier in the week. Actually Tori made them and I ate them.
They are as nice to taste as they look on the box, a soft and very moist recipe that relies on the crunchiness of the Oreos to give it texture.
The recipe was not as straightforward as it was made out. Brownies need a lot of effort and as usual the magic of television presented it in way that made it look effortless and quite seamless. So this recipe wasn’t for the beginner, especially a beginner who might get easily put off.
The price of the ingredients were strangely high, and this recipe is one of those that require you to already have most of the ingredients for it to be a truly money saving endeavour. Altogether they cost over a £5 to make, which means they are nearly too expensive to be included in this blog, therefore they fall very firmly into the ‘treat’ category.
Thankfully they keep surprisingly well. Three days after they were made, they are still moist and delicious although like a lot of things, maybe after a week they’ll start to go dry.
So here it is, straight from the BBC website where it first appears is
Equipment and preparation: You will need a 20cm/8in square baking tin.
23/01/2011
My next foray in the the world of baking has been Oaty White Chocolate Biscuits.
The recipe is courtesy of the BBC, and before you start thinking these will be anything like the ones you get in the supermarket, then think again. They are more like White Chocolate flapjacks, crunchy and very sweet (depending on how much Golden Treacle you use), and once they’ve cooled they turn a beautiful golden colour.
How much does it cost? If you have all of the basic ingredients, then it will cost you no more then the cost of the White Chocolate and the Treacle (under £3 if you use supermarket brand white chocolate). If you don’t have any Bicarbonate then maybe a little more.
Two ingredients here that I had not used before was White Chocolate and Bicarbonate of Soda, and as a result there were two things that surprised me.
Apart from these surprises, the feedback has been quite good as they are very sweet and go well with coffee or as an accompaniment to Ice Cream.
PS. If you can’t get hold of vanilla fudge then don’t worry. I only managed to get supermarket bought fudge in the wrappers but I found that melting it and adding some extra butter and a bit of hazelnut spread to bulk it out, actually worked better then rolling it in to a flat sheet. You do need quite a bit of fudge but it stays hot and when it hardens the shell is sweet and brittle and acts as a really nice base for the White Chocolate.
Oaty white chocolate biscuits
Ingredients
Preparation method
17/01/2011
I have just recovered from the latest girly cooking program to break on to the telly like a empowered lighting bolt from the rectum of a Pankhurst on Prozac. And despite the first few minutes trying to wonder whether I was dreaming, but alas I wasn’t.
And to be fair it wasn’t a bad thing as Baking Made Easy was presented some fantastic little recipes that I am going to be trying myself. But more on that in a sec…
So, Lorraine Pascale. Who is she? What does she do? Who cares. She’s a sexier alternative to Nigella, less pompous and much more about food then Nigella-ness (which could only be described as a sort of combination between the M&S adverts and Deep Throat).
There does seem to be a genuine love of the food that she cooks, although the atmosphere of the program seems to be that of a sickly column from the deep bowels of Cosmopolitan.
But looking through that, you have some clever and beautiful recipes that are CHEAP and incredibly easy.
Two that I am taking away from this will be:
Progress reports will appear here. Although the Brownies might be too expensive to really include on a blog about cheap eating, I might do it for the hell of it.
14/01/2011
When I first had Peanut Butter, I was no older than eight years old. Generally I would have it on toast and then bread. Soon I discovered that eating it straight out of the jar was much nicer but as you can imagine it was not a welcome method.
Then I discovered that the inside of snickers was pretty much just caramel and a thin strip of sweet peanut butter. I discovered that peanut butter went with sweet things too, not just savoury in the form of Satay dishes etc.
So here I am, writing an article about Peanut Butter in biscuit form.
There are quite a few recipe’s floating about the web for Peanut Butter cookies, but I have to say that this is the easiest and does seem to be the simplest that I can find in my two hours of cookie related research. There is a lack of the usual stuff like brown sugar and baking soda, but it does need some dusting with icing sugar just to give it that ‘finish’.
The great thing about baking at home is that you can easily grab what you need from the cupboard, a few ingredients here and there, and save a fortune. However, if you are like me and have not done much baking for a while, you realise that before you actually do any baking you have to buy half the basic ingredients just to get to a place where you can even start looking at recipes. But this small investment goes a long way.
Biscuits are the perfect thing to whip up quickly and can be a lovely addition to a present, or any occasion for that matter.
It’s a curious combination that works perfectly, so here is the recipe from the BBC website. It appeared on Ready Steady Cook thanks to Paul Rankin.
8 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
1 free-range egg yolk
50g/1¾oz butter, softened
icing sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
Place the flour, sugar, peanut butter, egg yolk and butter into a large bowl and mix together until combined to a smooth dough.
With lightly floured hands, break off evenly sized pieces of the dough and roll into walnut sized balls.
Place the dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with silicon paper or baking parchment and gently press each ball with the back of a fork to flatten slightly.
Place in the oven and bake for ten minutes, or until just turning golden-brown.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and allow to cool for ten minutes.
To serve, place on a serving plate and dust with icing sugar.
14/01/2011
There is nothing left in the cupboard, the eggs are gone, there are no capers, no beans, nothing. But there is bread and cheese. What do you make?
Cheese On Toast is the most versatile meal that you are likely to ever eat, it is THE most simple and satisfying meal to make and the variations can diverse and exciting.
I am going to present you with some recipes to make much more of this meal, but also demonstrate how easy it is to get away from the speedy easy nature of this meal.
So lets see what the ‘proper chefs’ say. It’s not quite a bandwagon, but one way Chefs have learnt, to get peoples attention is to present the quick and dirty version of a simple meal, then pimp it up and make it in to something quite different.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsal wrote an article for Guardian Food giving some pimped up varieties. Giving some intriguing recipes for Madame Rarebit (derived from Jessica Rabbit), Smoked Fish Rarebit and Leek & Blue Cheese Rarebit, they involve a lot of effort and in some strange way kill off the thought that they are meant to be quick & easy, converting them in to proper meals (you know, the ones you cook and would be happy to feed to a new girlfriend).
Lesley Waters gives us ‘Posh Cheese On Toast’ on the BBC website, which involves basil beans and a certain amount of zesting citrus fruit. Never has such a simple dish become so pretentious.
So I think the winner (if there is one) is not a proper chef at all. Ronnie Corbett (via UKTV Food) gives us a method here which I am going to reproduce here for the convenience of my readers.
This is a very simple method, but involves combining the ingredients and then applying it over the bread. This means the flavour cooks deeper and fuller, plus you don’t get that nagging irritation of burning ingredients that are sticking out through the cheese.
Let me know of any other chef variations, and I’ll include it in this post.
1. Preheat the grill.
2. Combine the egg yolk with the cheese, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and season to taste. Spread the cheese mixture over two slices of toast and cook under a hot grill until the cheese melts and is tinged golden.
06/01/2011
Fancy some free junk food? This voucher was emailed to me today. Not that I would eat this stuff, but sometimes you can’t resist. Go on.
