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September 7, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 8:56 am

Chicken Livers, onions mavrodaphne 

 

I rather enjoyed my chicken livers last time I had them and, since they were so cheap, I was on a mission to do a proper budget meal with them. One recipe that caught my eye on the internet was for livers with caramelised onions and Madeira. That sounded good to me but the Madeira would seriously increase the cost of the meal.

So I had a look through the fortified wines in Tesco to see if I could find a suitable replacement and eventually settled on the greek wine, mavrodaphne. It's a sweet fortified wine that is very cheap and a student would quite happily drink it with dinner. I guess a dry sherry would work too.

 

All this dish needs is the livers and wine, some sugar, a few onions and some rice to serve the livers with. I added a little bit of butter and garlic to the rice and still kept the price at under £1 per portion. The caramel flavours went very well with the chicken livers although it the dish needs careful attention because it would be easy to make it too sweet.

 

I had a side salad too, which added about 30p onto the meal but it was still easily within student budget range at about £1.25 per portion. 

 

Here’s the chicken livers with caramelised onions and mavrodaphne recipe.

September 6, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 9:12 am

macaroni cheese 

 

This meal happened totally by accident. Sir Millar was coming around to dinner and I was on a big shopping trip. I had no idea what I wanted to make that night so I was pretty much buying out everything in the shop.

With hindsight, I see this  was a bit stupid as on the 24th I get kicked out of halls. I can't actually eat everything in my freezer before then. In my trolley were chicken livers, sirloin steak, a lamb leg steak, poussin, sardines, pork spare ribs, a pack of beef mince and a large selection of vegetables and other bits and pieces. I thought that should give Sir Millar a good choice for what to have. But, as always, Andy wasn't being very decisive and just stared blankly at the meat selection I was packing into the fridge. It seems he really had no idea what he wanted. “Well,” I said, “I could always make macaroni cheese to get rid of some of my pasta.” It was supposed to be a joke. But Sir Millar thought it was a great idea. Apparently he's never had proper macaroni cheese before.I assume by “proper” he means “not from a can”. It's true, tinned macaroni cheese is the stuff of nightmares. However it comes a poor second to the school dinner version. I remember being subjected to this horror as a small child in my first primary school and nearly being sick as I was forced to eat the plastic cheese sauce. It took a long while to get over my fear of macaroni cheese. Not as long as it took for me deal with my fear of Yorkshire pudding, but that's a story for another time. When I was a teenager I was made a nice version by a friend's mother and, since then, macaroni cheese has not been an issue.

My two previous attempts at making the dish were successful apart from the fact I hadn't had any macaroni and had to substitute penne. This time however, I had the correct pasta shapes and had quite luckily picked up a load of diced pancetta on my shopping trip.So my macaroni cheese was made. It was a simple combination of pasta, cheddar cheese sauce, pancetta, onion and parsley, baked until golden. It bore no resemblance to the plastic meal of my youth. For a start, it actually tasted of cheese and lacked the slimy texture I remember so well. Thank God! The pancetta was good. Next time I may add even more.

Macaroni cheese

Sir Millar appeared to like it rather a lot. So much, in fact, that he stole the leftovers and had them for lunch the next day.

September 5, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 9:11 am

I'll never understand why I bother trying things this hard. Even when they work, they just stress me out!

Tempura Squid

I've been determined to make good tempura quid since I had some in the Vienna Patisserie in Farnham. I'd made an attempt before, which was a total disaster. The batter went soggy and wouldn't cling to the squid.

This time it was much better. The squid and batter worked. I just had two sauce disasters instead. The first time there was a cornflour explosion, so sauce 1 got binned. The second time, I was trying to add a drop of red colouring to the sauce. But the dripping thing fell off the bottle so a LOT of colouring went in. The third time it worked, but by then I was in a horrendous mood.

It's a shame because I would have really enjoyed the squid otherwise. It did taste very good. I served it with noodles stir fried with peppers, carrots and spring onion and tossed with sesame oil. Very tasty indeed, and the sweet chilli sauce (v3) tasted like those dipping sauces you get in restaurants.

 

Here is the recipe for Tempura Battered Squid and Sweet Chilli Sauce 

 

tempura squid meal

 

 

 

September 4, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 9:07 am

 Pastitsio

 

When I say cheap I mean really, really cheap. It cost me £3.80 and made enough for three hungry people with leftovers. In fact, it would easily feed four people with normal appetites.

Pastitsio is another thing I hadn't heard of until I read the book ‘Home Cooking'. The dish is made of a layer of macaroni, or other tubular pasta, a layer of moussaka style meat sauce and topped with béchamel . It looked something like this.

 Whole Pastitsio

I've had trouble with the recipes in this particular book before (see the post about lemon and horseradish pasta), so I did my usual trick of just getting an idea  of flavours and then making it up myself. The sauce was made of beef mince, tomato, garlic based with onions, red wine, cinnamon and ground cloves. I added lamb stock cubes to it because I think lamb has a more pleasant flavour than beef.

I cooked the pasta in the standard way then tossed it with finely chopped parsley, olive oil and nutmeg. And a bit more cinnamon. The béchamel had lots of nutmeg too. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed by the yoghurt-egg combo. In future I'll just leave it out and top this with béchamel and cheese. The meat and pasta combination was delicious. I love Greek spices. I'd like to class this as  a student recipe but there might be a problem with that. From what I've seen, most students tend not to buy things that seem expensive but last a long time. Things like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves probably aren't found in an average student kitchen and I suppose margarine is favoured over butter for it's cheapness. Maybe only a few students who really like cooking will appreciate this kind of recipe. 

Here is the pastitsio recipe 

September 3, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 8:55 am

I bought some cheap kidneys from Tesco (40p for 250g! :) ) planning on making a Rinones al Jerez (or Kidneys with sherry ). It was all going to plan until I got home and realised that my paprika had all gone. My flatmate had borrowed it the previous night. This irked me slightly as she will quite happily admit she doesn't actually know what paprika is, let alone what to do with it.

Apparently her friend had asked for some so she went through my rather extensive spice cupboard until she found it. It was taken off to her mate's house where she'd finished it off making paella. So the Kidneys weren't as great as I wanted and I got a bit stressed so I forgot to take pictures. This might have been for the best as the colour wasn't quite right without the paprika.Flatmates are now under strict instructions to leave a note if they finish my stuff in future. Grrrr! Apparently she nearly refilled the bottle too,  from the large pot of red powder  in my cupboard. Bloody good thing she didn't because it was, in fact, my extra hot chilli powder!  And finally here is the recipe for Rinones al Jerez (Spanish Lamb Kidneys with Sherry).

September 2, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 7:28 am
Crispy Crocodile with Mango Sauce

Since I had recently got a better idea of how crocodile tasted, I thought it was time to experiment. crocodilehas a subtle (even bland to some people)  flavour, I thought I'd better do something really interesting for the sauce, so I stole an idea from the menu of a Thai Restaurant. 

Despite my better judgement, I decided that I wanted to try making deep fried crispy crocodile ‘goujons.' I live on the fourth floor of some student halls. If I set a pan on fire, I couldn't rush out into the back garden. I couldn't even throw it out the window because the windows don't open!  No, it's ok, I'm joking, I wouldn't ever throw a burning pan out the window. Not unless someone I really hated was standing below, anyway.

Nevertheless, I gave the deep frying a try. This time my batter worked! I used the recipe from a lady on the BBC food boards of 2 medium egg whites + 1 tablespoon cornflour. I should have chilled it for longer to get it properly crispy but I was a bit short on time. It still looked and tasted good, especially since I threw in a bit of five spice.

I made the sauce from a mango (obviously), honey, cinnamon, dark soy and a little ginger. It was delicious, although it got a bit cold when I was taking the picture. To keep in with a Thai theme, I cooked some noodles in coconut milk infused with lemon grass and lime, then tossed in some freshly chopped coriander. I'd have liked some suitable oriental vegetable but the shops were being crap I couldn't find one. So I had sugar snap peas instead. 

Here is the Crispy Crocodile with Mango Sauce Recipe.

Crocodile, noodles, sugar snap peas

I like crocodile. I wish I could afford to buy it more often!

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