Economy gastronomy

[skronkywildcat]

My very own bean chiIli

serves a family of 4 for two days because on day 2 you can make enchiladas.

Ingredients:
light olive oil
2 x red peppers
2 x 400g cans of Kidney Beans in water
1 can black beans in water
2 x cans of chopped tomatoes
1 small pack of diced chorizo (optional - leave out if you want to make it vegetarian)
1 onion
3 to 5 cloves of garlic
1 rich beef stock jelly dissolved in 500ml water (replace with veg stock if you want to make it vegetarian)
a handful of frozen sweetcorn
Two teaspoons of ground cumin
half a teaspoon of ground coriander
one teaspoon of sweet smoked paprika
Salt and Pepper
2 fresh limes
bunch of fresh coriander
Grated cheddar
tiny piece of plain chocolate



Optional garnishes - pickled jalapenos, sour cream, guacamole, Chili sauce (I use Encona)

Method:
chop and fry the onion and red peppers (and chorizo if using) preferably in a big cast iron pot until they are soft.
Add the spices and fry for about another minute.
Add the stock and tinned tomatoes and simmer on a low heat for about half an hour.
Drain and add the kidney beans and black beans - then simmer again for around an hour with the lid on
Add the handful of frozen sweetcorn and leave the lid off and simmer for another 10 mins
Stir in the bit of chocolate and season with salt and pepper.
Serve on long grain rice with grated cheddar on top and garnish with a squeeze of lime juice and some fresh chopped coriander - and other bits and bobs as you want to.

If you have enough leftovers it's really good the next day in enchiladas - use corn tortillas and roll up a couple of tablespoons of chili in each one - lay them in an oiled flat ovenproof dish and spoon a bit of the chilli in a stripe down the middle - then grate cheddar on top of the sauce and bake on 160 degrees for around half an hour.

You can add mushrooms and/or courgettes after the onions have started to soften too if you have any/want to.

 

[I'm not actually here]

Really easy, healthy breakfast. Get a bread roll, cut in half, toast it lightly. Use a melon baller or a spoon to get the seeds and centre out of a couple of tomatoes. Stick your fingers (pref with clean nails) into the top of the toast to make some dimples. Rub a cut garlic clove over it (or sprinkle finely chopped garlic if wfh!) and then drizzle olive oil on so it soaks into the toast. Add the tomato "mush", eat and pretend you are eating brekkie in Spain with a coffee with a shot of brandy, or even better/worse, a shot of gin with bitter anise to wash your coffee and toast down!!!
---
One day, a neighbour invited me round for lunch. He is a really poor goat herder. We wandered around his veg patch, which was bigger and far better cared for than his 30-40 sq metre 1 room house, picked a lettuce and something that looked a little like wild asparagus that was growing as a weed, and a lemon. Went to the outside kitchen, he made a tiny fire and sauted the weed briefly in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then chopped the lettuce up, put it on a plate, sprinkled with salt and squeezed the lemon over it. Couple of chunks of his fresh goat cheese he had made that morning - soft, gooey, salty, and a glass of his rough af red wine. Chatted about very diverse topics. He had only ever left his village a couple of times to go to a nearby market, once to Madrid for some paperwork, didn't have a phone or TV, and knew as much about the world and people as anybody I have ever met. Lettuce with just salt and lemon on a hot day is sooooo refreshing.
---

Thank you so much for this - we have quite a biggish Chinese supermarket not to far from us - I'll see what they have available. If they don't have boxes like yours, I'll have a think about something similar.

Chinese shops here are more like Poundshops. They sell everything and anything from phone cases to macrame twine to paint to kitchen stuff etc.

 

[House of Carbonara]

And another one...
Pasta with ricotta cheese.
(I swear we don't only ever eat pasta in this house)

Let's say you have a 250g tub of ricotta, and a bit of pancetta/bacon, and pasta.
Put you pasta pot to boil, add a good quantity of salt and decide which type of pasta you want to use. Caveat: spaghetti really aren't suited to this, because the sauce is heavy. You want conchiglue, penne, rigatoni etc.

Chop your pancetta into smallish cubes, put them in a pan with a tiny bit of oil and a garlic clove on a medium low heat. You want the pancetta to release the large and turn golden, but not crispy hard.

Water's boiling? Drop your pasta in it and look at the time - ten minutes should do it.
In the meantime, empty your ricotta container in a bowl, add a little bit (100ml ish) of hot water from the pasta pot, grab a whisk and start loosening the cheese. It should look like thick double cream.
Adjust for salt, add black pepper and set aside.
Switch off the heat under the pan, and move it if your cooker is electric like mine.
Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water. Drop the pasta in the pancetta pan, add the ricotta and mix well, adding a little water if too dry.
Serve with black pepper on top.

It really is delicious and easy, and you can leave out the pancetta if you want.

 

[I'm not actually here]

If you've never made tortilla wraps, they're cheap, very easy and I'm certain most people will have the ingredients in their cupboard (Flour, oil and salt). I use this recipe, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/tortillas but make four huge 32cm ones most weeks. Bit of time and effort, but nothing complicated. I've messed around with half wholemeal flour, flavoured oils and whacking some chilli powder or paprika in, all with good results.

Honestly the only thing I hate about these is that whenever I try to be lazy and buy a packet, they're always so disappointing now.

Using Jackmaths, 6 tortillas cost 19.5p.

Making this tonight to go with the cooked mince that now needs eating urgently, the tomatoes and cucumber from the garden, and the last bit of Mild red Cheddar which is a total luxury, rarely seen and now sweaty as hell!!! I love love, love this thread, thanks for all your contributions.
---

Making this tonight to go with the cooked mince that now needs eating urgently, the tomatoes and cucumber from the garden, and the last bit of Mild red Cheddar which is a total luxury, rarely seen and now sweaty as hell!!! I love love, love this thread, thanks for all your contributions.

Oh and an unbelievable snack, addition to any food etc - dry fry (no oil) slices of chorizo so it goes crispy. Use the oil that comes out for anything at all, it goes a bit like dripping if there is a decent large content in the chorizo, so is awesome spread on bread- definitely store it, don't pour it away, and don't put it in with the bleeping fish oils that mad woman keeps in her fridge door!!!
---
Panceta, ricotta, etc are real luxuries with no fridge. It is a 60km round trip (and 25e in fuel) to the nearest supermarket that might stock such things, and it is unbearably hard not going mad when there, knowing that you have max 48 hours to eat EVERYTHING fresh or that isn't in a tin or packet. I'm drooling at these recipes though! Anybody who is an expert at smoking food, canning food, drying food, should step up... All very useful skills.

We aren't quite at apple time here, but last year, I got a length of bamboo cane, tied string to each end to make a loop to hang it up, a piece of netting over the top to keep flies off, sliced a load of apples from the tree, cored, and threaded them onto the cane and hung up outside to dry. Still chewing my way through them now, added them to stews etc all through winter etc. Made dried oranges and figs too. This year, I am going to be much better at gathering rosehips and blackberries as a very important part of winter vitamins against colds and so on, and make rosehip and blackberry syrup to ward off coughs. If you have anybody in your family who suffers from bronchitis etc, the absolute best thing is elderberries in late aummer/early autumn. Pick well away from any roads (or buy if you can't) and make a simple syrup with them, pref with honey not sugar. And then hide it!!!!! It's bloody amazing on ice cream, I was told, after the kids finished the entire store cupboard stock!!!!!

 

[hoopdedoo]

This is one of mine and my kid’s favourites. I use either pasta stars (usually labelled as ‘soup pasta’) or orzo. Quick, cheap, easy and filling. I add left overs such as shredded roast chicken/gammon, left over roasted veg etc at the end before serving and heat through. I use mature cheddar in place of Parmesan if I don’t have parmesan in and vegetable stock rather than salted water just for that added flavour.

Pastina with Egg and Cheese, Otherwise Known As Comfort Food

This simple recipe for pastina with egg and cheese, otherwise known as comfort food, will make everything feel a little better!

www.framedcooks.com

Edit: this recipe is for one portion but it’s easy to covert it for more people to feed.

This looks so yummy! Thank you for sharing it!

And I love how straightforward the writer is. "Any size egg will do." None of this guest-style faffing around with meaningless adjectives that are more confusing than helpful.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

Ginger c

From the days when I had a freezer... When you peel your veg put everything - garlic wrappers, onion tops and skins, carrot peelings etc - into a freezer bag. Have one freezer bag and keep filling it. If you eat meat shove all the bones in another bag, inc chicken carcasses, chops, everything the dog doesn't want.

(Don't put potato peel in, just fry them in a little oil with mayo or any dip to keep the kids happy.)

Once the freezer bag is full, shove all the bones in a roasting tin with some garlic, oil, onion, leek, carrot and roast briefly on a high heat to give them all colour and caramel.

Get a big pot, put all your veg back in and the now super tasty bones and roast veg and cover with water. Add salt and pepper etc, bring to the boil and (then put it all in the hay oven to) slow cook for hours to make a superb stock. Sieve bones out and remove any excess large if you don't like that - best bit imho!

I used to decant much of it into ice cube bags for quick easy stock cubes.
---
Lidl seem to be doing fresh turmeric root in the veg section in a small cardboard box. 8-10 roots. Grab a box, eat half, plant the others in a window box. Don't give too much water at the beginning as the root can rot but once they sprout, the leaves are great in salads etc, and the roots are delish grated in pretty much everything, and very healthy. Do the same with any fresh herbs in the salad section that have roots. Split the pot out and you usually get 20-30 plants from each tiny pot.

Ginger can be sprouted the same way - but it takes effing ages. I was digging mine up every couple of days and roundly abusing it. Mr Mice warned me it would never grow if I kept doing that BUT HE WAS WRONG! It has grown and I've had to repot it once already. I am looking forward to some fresh ginger and trying to stop myself from digging it up every two minutes to call it rude names

 

[MurielSnark]

Spoiler: Spelling aneurysm

Please note that the cheap and delicious Indian / Pakistani lentil dish that we all love can be spelled in one of three ways:

1. Dal
2. Daal
3. Dhal

Please also note that "Dahl" is a deceased British children's author of Norwegian heritage.

 

[fifyfomum]

Making this tonight to go with the cooked mince that now needs eating urgently, the tomatoes and cucumber from the garden, and the last bit of Mild red Cheddar which is a total luxury, rarely seen and now sweaty as hell!!! I love love, love this thread, thanks for all your contributions.
---

Oh and an unbelievable snack, addition to any food etc - dry fry (no oil) slices of chorizo so it goes crispy. Use the oil that comes out for anything at all, it goes a bit like dripping if there is a decent large content in the chorizo, so is awesome spread on bread- definitely store it, don't pour it away, and don't put it in with the bleeping fish oils that mad woman keeps in her fridge door!!!
---
Panceta, ricotta, etc are real luxuries with no fridge. It is a 60km round trip (and 25e in fuel) to the nearest supermarket that might stock such things, and it is unbearably hard not going mad when there, knowing that you have max 48 hours to eat EVERYTHING fresh or that isn't in a tin or packet. I'm drooling at these recipes though! Anybody who is an expert at smoking food, canning food, drying food, should step up... All very useful skills.

We aren't quite at apple time here, but last year, I got a length of bamboo cane, tied string to each end to make a loop to hang it up, a piece of netting over the top to keep flies off, sliced a load of apples from the tree, cored, and threaded them onto the cane and hung up outside to dry. Still chewing my way through them now, added them to stews etc all through winter etc. Made dried oranges and figs too. This year, I am going to be much better at gathering rosehips and blackberries as a very important part of winter vitamins against colds and so on, and make rosehip and blackberry syrup to ward off coughs. If you have anybody in your family who suffers from bronchitis etc, the absolute best thing is elderberries in late aummer/early autumn. Pick well away from any roads (or buy if you can't) and make a simple syrup with them, pref with honey not sugar. And then hide it!!!!! It's bloody amazing on ice cream, I was told, after the kids finished the entire store cupboard stock!!!!!

Make blackberry vinegar too. Sounds gross but when you’ve got a frog in your throat, a tsp cuts through it like you wouldn’t believe. Also lovely warm with honey

 

[I'm not actually here]

Ginger c

Ginger can be sprouted the same way - but it takes effing ages. I was digging mine up every couple of days and roundly abusing it. Mr Mice warned me it would never grow if I kept doing that BUT HE WAS WRONG! It has grown and I've had to repot it once already. I am looking forward to some fresh ginger and trying to stop myself from digging it up every two minutes to call it rude names

Chop the leaves into a salad. Mind blowing!

 

[skronkywildcat]

Spoiler: Spelling aneurysm

Please note that the cheap and delicious Indian / Pakistani lentil dish that we all love can be spelled in one of three ways:

1. Dal
2. Daal
3. Dhal

Please also note that "Dahl" is a deceased British children's author of Norwegian heritage.

God, you must feel so clever and important.

 

[MurielSnark]

God, you must feel so clever and important.

No. Just a stickler for proper spelling.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

Spoiler: Spelling aneurysm

Please note that the cheap and delicious Indian / Pakistani lentil dish that we all love can be spelled in one of three ways:

1. Dal
2. Daal
3. Dhal

Please also note that "Dahl" is a deceased British children's author of Norwegian heritage.

I read this, and couldn't remember how I had spelled it.

So I looked back over my posts . . . and all I can say is . . .

FORGIVE ME! I AM ASHAMED!!!

Though it was quite a relief to me to have proof positive that I AM NOT GUEST.

I know this because I didn't double down, tell you I am DYSLEXIC* and have TWO KINDS OF ARTHRITIS, that my SHOULDER is OUCHY, and MY BONES ARE CRUMBLING, and my GRANDFATHER is DEAD, all of which make it hard for me to type accurately.

Nor did I attempt to re-make this recipe more cheaply, using aquarium gravel** instead of lentils, dandruff instead of garam masala, and the scrapings of toenails instead of everything else.

I may not be able to spell, but at least I can look my dahl dhal in the face.


* I am, as it happens, but that is no excuse not to at least try to get it right

** Wouldn't work - that stuff is stupidly expensive

 

[I'm not actually here]

Make blackberry vinegar too. Sounds gross but when you’ve got a frog in your throat, a tsp cuts through it like you wouldn’t believe. Also lovely warm with honey

I've never had much luck with vinegar. Got a recipe, dearheart?

 

[MurielSnark]

I read this, and couldn't remember how I had spelled it.

So I looked back over my posts . . . and all I can say is . . .

FORGIVE ME! I AM ASHAMED!!!

Though it was quite a relief to me to have proof positive that I AM NOT GUEST.

I know this because I didn't double down, tell you I am DYSLEXIC* and have TWO KINDS OF ARTHRITIS, that my SHOULDER is OUCHY, and MY BONES ARE CRUMBLING, and my GRANDFATHER is DEAD, all of which make it hard for me to type accurately.

Nor did I attempt to re-make this recipe more cheaply, using aquarium gravel** instead of lentils, dandruff instead of garam masala, and the scrapings of toenails instead of everything else.

I may not be able to spell, but at least I can look my dahl dhal in the face.


* I am, as it happens, but that is no excuse not to at least try to get it right

** Wouldn't work - that stuff is stupidly expensive

This made me laugh. Lentils cause mentals.

 

[I'm not actually here]

I've never had much luck with vinegar. Got a recipe, dearheart?

Lesson learned from last night. Don't be dead organised and take all your empty bottles to the recycling and then start buying wine in boxes. Tortillas are very hard to roll out with a wine box.

 

[tomato_paste]

Apologies for the use of a bullet blender but pea pesto is a chaos favourite. Blend frozen peas, a clove or two of garlic, mint and sunflower seeds/almonds/walnuts depending on taste and budget and some hard cheese. I'm vegan and use lidls parmesan style offering but it works without any tbh. Blitz with olive oil, until a nice texture is obtained. Stir through spaghetti. Quantities are really to personal preference.
Sunflower seeds are much cheaper than pine nuts and work in other pesto recipes.

that sounds so good and I LOVE peas! Do you think some nooch would be nice?

 

[Captainmouse]

I seem to recall @blurstoftimes beans going down a storm

 

[MurielSnark]

In honour of the humble lentils which we love, the Guardian has today published this gorgeous image of the fields of blooming lentil crops in Umbria:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/eb3b1981c6028e621be4a72b432f50f66e117398/0_0_4000_2668/master/4000.jpg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=f07421d2a8852e3a9411620d4a824f5e

 

[CarmenGhia]

that sounds so good and I LOVE peas! Do you think some nooch would be nice?

Frozen peas, some mint leaves, a handful of almonds and a little bit of butter (or vegan equivalent) is my go-to pea pesto recipe. Boil some water then pour over the peas and leave to warm up while you find the rest of the ingredients, or microwave them for a minute or so. I like this with gnocchi. It's actually an adapted Deliciously Ella recipe which works.

 

[hereforthechaos]

that sounds so good and I LOVE peas! Do you think some nooch would be nice?

Definitely!