Food of the Poor

This is a lovely recipe - it has 5 ingredients: rice, brown lentils, onions, oil and salt.    The important thing is to make sure to fry far more onions than you think you need.  I reckon it costs about £1 for 4 people - if I can find cheap onions at the farm shop.  I got the recipe from the Claudia Roden Middle Eastern Food book - and we eat it quite often - its real name is megdarrah.    Tonight I discovered that 200g of lentils and 200g of rice was a bit too much for 3 of us.  Perhaps 150g would be enough.  I won't put the recipe here - I'm sure it's available if you Google it.

We ate it with Greek yoghurt and a chopped vegetable salad - which puts the price up somewhat - maybe to £2?  The salad is a bit of cucumber, a couple of tomatoes, a spring onion or two and half a pepper, add any available herbs (mint and coriander and parsley are best) a little lemon juice and some oil - don't forget the salt.

Another disguise for Quinces

As the quinces ripen I find myself wondering what I will do with them this year.  Everyone likes quince jelly in theory - but quince cheese is a bit of a drug on the market.  I have discovered a rather nice idea for it though - make a really nice lemon short pastry and turn it into a tart with a lattice covering the layer of softened quince cheese... I will try it - soon.

I am also thinking of trying a quince eau de vie this year.  Could be very nice.

Ratafia

This, I discovered a couple of years ago, is a sort of eau de vie flavoured with grapes.  I had some grapes my father sent me which were very sweet, but with a very poor seed to flesh ratio.  As they were beginning to go off I thought I needed to do something.  I duly found Jane Grigson's ratafia recipe - and shoved the grapes through the mouli legumes and then squeezed the whole mush through a muslin - it is decidedly cloudy and very reddish in colour.  The 800 g of grapes yielded about 300ml of juice which I made up to 400ml with some of my famous French alcohol for fruit... and we shall see if it yields anything worth drinking... if it can't be drunk it can certainly be cooked with.

Food diary last week

Monday:  M was away so Finn and I had pea risotto - which is always lovely, and there was loads left - I contemplated turning it into arancini, but failed to.  Apple pudding (2 points)

Tuesday: had a lovely lunch with friends, the pepper and tomato soup, the "perm any 3" salad - i.e. leaves and some sort of dressing with the addition of any of the following: blue cheese, goat cheese, bacon, avocado, fried bread, nuts, seeds, onions, tomatoes, cucumber, etc.   On this occasion it was goat cheese, bacon, croutons, spring onions, cherry tomatoes and cucumber.  Then we had cheese and windfalls.

Despite having drink taken I managed to make Troo cabbage, which is a great frugal meal - a cabbage filled with sausage, butter, salt and pepper.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to pay proper attention, and it was a bit burned - oh dear.

Wednesday:  M had to go out early, so F and I finished the risotto (1 point).  M had an omelette.

Thursday: Rabbit stew, made with a wild rabbit I bought at the local farmers market for £3.60 - I used a Hairy Bikers recipe which was meant to be fairly traditional, but wasn't enormously tasty - don't know why not, it had cider, thyme, bay leaves, good chicken stock, salt and pepper... so why not?  I feel it needed something - mustard?  Also, too much flour I think (carrots and peas too).  Finn didn't want to eat rabbit - had a little said he didn't like it.  Ate the veg and some pommes etuvees which accompanied it.

Friday:  Bought fish and chips.

Saturday:  Home made pizza - mine with roast veg, everyone else had a mix of ham and chorizo and roast pepper and olives.  I also made garlic bread.

Sunday:  Pork ribs in BBQ sauce, plus rice and peas, plus pineapple salsa and a cabbage and carrot salad with vaguely oriental flavourings.  (1 point for using up a very senior pineapple)

We have had no puddings, but I did make flapjacks on Friday - which have lasted over the weekend - and I did use some apples and used up some alcoholic jam by slicing them, covering with the jam and topping with crunched up amaretti.   Finn said "not more apples" but really liked them.   

Beauty of Bath

A friend has identified our mysterious apple tree - I've always found it very annoying - it ripens early, but the apples have a perfumed taste that is completely overwhelmed if you eat them with the skins on by the terrible tannins... they aren't so well flavoured when you cook with them, although you can - and I don't usually use them that much.  I tend to make them into apple jelly and freeze a certain amount for future use.

Anyway - she thinks it's a Beauty of Bath - which is a rather lovely name, and nice to be connected to the place - in a weird way.  Always something there to remind me... as the song says.  It is an eating apple, but since about 85% of the apples are either bruised or have a worm in them, one doesn't really have much desire to eat them without giving them a serious peeling and chopping first.  Nevertheless, we managed to eat a couple yesterday - and they are very pretty - when they are ripe they have a pink tinged flesh.

Now I am rather sorry I haven't given them more attention - perhaps I shall give the tree some more attention this year.  It has wrens hanging around it... so I definitely think it's making a contribution to the garden's biodiversity.

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.