Irish Apple Bread

It isn't bread - but it's a cakey pudding that I've been making for years, a recipe that came from my Irish grandmother - a food that's simple, and v.v. frugal.

It's such an old recipe that I can only remember the imperial measurements - but I'll try to translate.  The imperial version makes enough for 5-6 people - the metric would be a little smaller.

8oz/200g  self raising flour
4oz/100g  granulated sugar
4oz/100g  butter (chopped into small pieces) or margarine
1lb/400g  cooking apples, peeled and sliced
1 egg
pinch of salt, 1 tsp baking powder,
milk to mix
blanched almond, optional,
brown sugar and flakes of butter for toping

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, add chopped butter, then mix in the apple slices with the egg and enough milk to make a smoother mixture.   Put into suitable tin, lined with baking parchment, sprinkle brown sugar on top, with flakes of butter and flakes of almond if liked (this is not in the original - this is a luxury version!).  Put in oven gas 5/190 degrees for about 30-40 minutes until brown and firm.  Allow to cool slightly, peel off parchment and cool on a rack to stop it being too damp.

It doesn't sound very exciting, and I haven't got a photo to show - but it really is delicious with or without cream, hot or cold.  Many variations are possible, add nutmeg or cinnamon or lemon or orange zest to change the flavour - mix the sugar for the topping with some ground almonds, or crushed amaretti, lovely.  You can also use eating apples.

Frugal points

While I was writing the previous blog entry I noticed how many frugal activities I was undertaking... so I thought I would start assessing my cooking in terms of its frugality.

I thought one could just adopt a simple points system - a point for any of the following

Using reduced price food
Using up elderly food from the fridge
Finishing up stuff  before it goes off- e.g. the rest of a packet of passata or pot of cream that had been primarily used for something else
Creative disguise of food that has gone off a bit i.e. not dangerously (e.g. putting fermented jam into trifle)
Using your own, free produce.
Homegrown produce
Foraged produce
Using your own homemade ingredients (chutneys, vinegars, marmalade, bread etc.)
Using low energy cooking methods - microwave, remoska, haybox!
Using something v.v. cheap as the major ingredient - e.g. a 29p pack of spaghetti.
Using up elderly food on the shelves
Freezing self-cooked food for future consumption

Obviously everyone's level of frugality varies - for some a foray into Aldi for a lobster might earn a frugal point... for some a cheap ingredient would be considerably more than 29p... but you get the picture.

This week I have been mostly eating...

Friday: fish pie - I love fish pie, but felt this one was a bit bland - dill or mustard would have helped... or lemon zest in the sauce? Or just tons of parsley?  Frugal note: frozen fish pie mix (same components at Tesco) is cheaper than the fresh variety - and may, conversely, be fresher.  There was enough left to freeze for another day*

Saturday: what did we eat on Saturday?  I raided the fridge for left overs* - 4 herb sausages, a lot of double cream on the turn... sausages converted to meat balls, fried up with onions and garlic, all the squishy tomatoes* added and cooked until soft - then add a little tomato puree, a little passata and a couple of spoons of cream - eat with pasta - spaghetti* 29p a packet in this case. It was too creamy, a little bland - horror. I should have added lots of basil at the end or put some dried oregano in at the beginning, or nutmeg - or anything really!  M&I don't eat puddings - so we aren't having any at present as Finn is trying not to either.

Sunday: we went to the local Cliftonville "farmers" market.  I bought a nice cabbage* - some local "Gruff" goat cheese - some local honey mustard, a pack of rabbit joints (£3.80 v. reasonable), and two pork and stilton pies for our lunch.  I also acquired a bag of beef bones £1* and some brawn.

In the evening I made a really nice lamb and apricot stew with some neck fillet that I'd got half-price*... and fried with onion, chopped carrots garlic, coriander, ginger - I added some water I'd been blanching apples in (* because free additional flavour), and a ladle from the (chicken) stockpot *- salt and pepper - after half an hour I added some soaked apricots, and ten minutes later some blanched slivered almonds and some chopped coriander leaves (leftover from last week's feast*).   We ate this with plain couscous.  It was utterly delicious, but could have done with a little more liquid.  I will try and do it with some cheaper bits of meat - but doubt whether it would be as nice.

We had Irish apple bread (well, I didn't) afterwards.  This was made with our own apple*, which have been fantastic this year - and a few slivered almonds.  I made it in the Remoska* - a worktop electric oven/cooker - as an experiment - which seemed to work quite well.  The Remoska uses virtually no energy compared with putting on a gas oven for 40 minutes.   So even more frugal points there.

So in the last 3 days I have accrued 11 "frugal points" - this is a nice game to play... think I'll do a separate post about it. 

Carbo-charged frugality

It is true that if one wants to eat cheaply one has to make the most of lots of carbohydrate foods.  Sadly even these are getting more expensive.  Basic supermarket pasta is about double the price it was 3-4 years ago, and bags of flour are about 3 times more expensive.  All the beans and pulses have risen in price - as has rice, but I think rice hasn't risen as much as the others.  I have invested in large bags of arborio rice from the wholesaler, and lots of basmati too, so rice may be going to feature quite a lot in the next few weeks.

My only quibble with this is that carbs are not exactly an ideal diet for me.  I need to try and ensure there are plenty of veg in the diet too... to cut down the carbs, and perhaps I should refrain from pasta more than once a week.

Polenta is a good new thing we can now eat without annoying Ned - Finn and Mark both like it and it doesn't seem quite so pernicious as other carbiforms.  So we can have that in various ways, bean stew enlivened with some sausage and pimenton eaten with a slab or two of grilled polenta seems a likely forthcoming attraction.  We can eat more couscous (another pet hate of Ned's sadly), and of course all the Spanish and Italian rice dishes we like - Ned for some reason is not keen on these, although in fairness, I got him round to bolognese sauce, so I expect he will eventually like the aroz amb forn sort of dish that I sometimes make.  Finn likes the leftovers turned into arancini di riso - so there's lot of potential there.

The ultimate frugal carbfest is the Arabic dish called megdarrah (spelling?) or Food of the Poor - a mix of lentils and rice, topped with friend onions.  As long as I can still get good cheap farm shop onions, all will be well.

Flour based foods - well, mostly pizza in our case, home-made bread of course - and occasionally scones.  I am eschewing pies on the whole - all that fat in the pastry... lethal!

And then potatoes - these have also almost doubled in price at the farm shop recently - a huge bag used to be about £7 - it's gone to £10 - but the half bags are now £7 and sometimes they don't have the cheaper whole bags - which are I think about 25kg - does that sound right?  I don't know, but they normally take about 3 months to get through.    But there are plenty of potato options... various sliced potatoes with attitude - i.e. ingredients to zing them up - anchovies (no!), bacon, onions, cream, gruyere etc.

One of the policies this autumn is not just to be frugal but deliberately to eat less meat - to ensure we have at least one meatless meal, and work towards two, although I think meals like pizza which don't use much meat are permissible, or at least count towards meatless if not actually achieving it.

The challenge is to find lots of frugal food which is meatless, very delicious and also not too fattening.  I do not wish to undo all my good work.  I want to get down at least one dress size by the spring and lose about a stone by Christmas.

Food diary 1 - Left overs & frugality

On Monday we had pork cheek casserole - because I had accidentally defrosted some, thinking I could use them for the pie I made on Friday.  I fried the pig cheeks, added some sliced leeks, then topped up with chicken stock and a little bit of wine, and some thyme and then cooked it for about two hours.  I did that on Saturday - while I was making the feast...  On Monday I reheated it, took a lot away to freeze, then added some slices of apple from our tree, a couple of tablespoons of sour cream to the stew and served it with mashed potato, cauliflower polonaise and peas.   For pudding there was left-over zuppa inglese.

On Tuesday I unearthed some bolognese sauce - and we had spaghetti bolognese.  And left over pudding, brownies etc.

On Wednesday (today) I was having a frugal, meatless moment and we experimented with Quorn... I had bought a box of Quorn burgers a while back, because they were cheap.  These chicken flavoured ones were not unpleasant, we may have them again, since Finn liked them a lot and they are very low on points.  Oven chips were discovered to be really rather disgusting compared with the real, triple-cooked ones I made last week (surprise! surprise!) and I didn't have any - but I had cauliflower and potato cakes instead, which were rather delicious (Monday's left overs mixed together with egg white and fried).  More brownies for them.

The plan for the rest of the week is that we should have a proper risotto tommorrow - risi e bisi, and a fish pie on Friday.  On Saturday we may have the virtually traditional pizza - or perhap scoff a bag of frozen barbecue stuff I bought.   On Sunday I think we will have a delicacy such as lamb fillet (found some reduced today), so I want to find something really nice to do with that (it must not involve anchovies - Finn is very suspicious of lamb since he discovered I used anchovies when doing shoulder/roast leg)..

Now that my beloved eldest son has gone of to University I feel freed up to cook all sorts of things he didn't like.  Finn will not enjoy fish pie - but that doesn't matter - he can have frankfurters or something.  I also feel the need for frugal food... but doubt whether I can lure Finn to eat offal - probably be better off with pure vegetable mixtures.

At present I am trying to roll the money as thin as it will go.  Our freezer is full and we need to eat it down a bit.  The supermarkets have already begun to fill up with Christmas goods - I bought an experimental box of cheese biscuits - I am assuming we will have enough money for cheese at Christmas - a bit!

What I am mostly eating....

We had a big family party last weekend - this is what I made for 20 people.

Hoummous and crudites, tomato focaccia, rosemary focaccia, sticky sausages

A pork pie of immense proportions, a chicken and sausagemeat pie,  stoved potatoes,  couscous salad with roast vegetables and goat cheese, spiced rice salad, green salad, beetroot salad, spiced cucumber salad, sourdough bread.

Zuppa inglese, toffee apple cheese cake and a variety of cheeses (St. Agur, Shropshire red, Chaource, Camembert).

I think people were somewhat overwhelmed by the sight of the pies - unfortunately I don't have a picture - but they looked great.

On Sunday we went out to lunch - in Thetford - where we found a mysterious Portuguese restaurant called Cheers.  It had quite a few Portuguese lunchers - and when we left we felt as if we had had a brief exposure to European life.  The food was insanely oily - or rather, my clams were - but the monkfish and prawns were OK, Mark liked his pork and clam dish, and Ned was delighted with his steak which he cooked on the hot stone at the table.  So far, so home made feeling - which I rather liked, especially as the prices were low too.  Then the three of us shared a "torta biscotta" - a very simple dish - basically layers of whipped cream with biscuits dipped in coffee - extraordinarily delicious.