Fridge Raider Veg Stew

So I was nearing the end of the week, and had a load of veg kicking about in the back of the fridge. The easiest way to use up all this eg before it goes off, is throw it all in a pot with some cupboard essentials - chopped tomatoes, kidney beans and of course paprika and chilli powder!
I managed to get 3 meals out of this, and served it with mash one night, bread another, and one night had it alone because I was in a rush to go out on the town with my housemates.
It's so easy, and since it's one pot, leaves little washing up.

Ingredients - for 3 meals
1 Aubergine
2 Courgettes
2 Onions
2 Carrots
A couple of potatoes (optional - omit if serving with potatoes)
Can of chopped tomatoes
Can of kidney beans
2 Stock cubes
1 Garlic clove
Sprinkling of paprika and chilli powder

1) Prep all the veg by roughly chopping/slicing/cubing/whatever you fancy doing.

2) First fry off the onions and garlic in some oil in a large pan or stock pot, once softened, add the carrot, aubergine and potatoes. Continue to cook for about 10 minutes.

3) Add the stock (about 1L in total - I just filled a bowl up each time since I don't have a measuring jug!) and the chopped tomatoes and kidney beans. Season and add the paprika and chilli powder to taste. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 25 minutes. Cover to retain the liquid.

4) Remove cover and add the courgettes, continue to cook for another 10-15 minutes until the courgettes are softer, then serve!

Carrot + Coriander Soup

So I managed to get a cheap hand blender for a £10 to make soups with in the summer, and I have to say... I'm sightly impressed. Other than scratching the bottom of my stock pan off a little, it worked well!
I didn't have any ground coriander in, so it was a bit of a struggle, but the old mixed herbs never let me down!

Ingredients (for 3 meals):
750g of Carrots (or 3/4 of a kg bag) - £0.55
1 Potato - £0.10
1 Onion - £0.08
2 tsp of mixed herbs
Handful of fresh coriander
2 Vegetable Stock cubes - £0.20
Total price per meal: £0.31

1) Chop the onion roughly and add to the stock pot or large saucepan, with some butter. Sprinkle the mixed herbs over as they cook. Continue to stir so they don't stick, and cook for about 10 minutes.

2) Add the chopped carrot and potato to the pan, followed by enough stock to cover all the veg. I found that two stock cubes was enough (about 750ml to 1L), but feel free to use more if you think it's needed.

3) Bring to the boil then simmer for half an hour.

4) Use the hand blender (try not to blend the bottom of your pan like I did!) and blend until smooth, or the consistency that you prefer.

5) Garnish with a handful of coriander and serve.

Potato and Spinach Gratin

This recipe was in a budget recipe book, and to be fair, it does quite well at keeping ingredients to a minimum, and using commonly found and cheap ingredients. I have made a few tweaks to the recipe however, to make it more tasty, as the original recipe I found had too much egg (not nice) and was quite bland. So this one should be better!

I made this on a Sunday, so I had it for lunch and dinner, and had leftovers for lunch the next day. Yes, I was pretty sick of it after that haha!

Ingredients - 3 portions
Half a bag of potatoes (1kg ish) - £0.60
Half a bag of spinach (about 200g) - £0.54
300ml double cream - £0.69
Two eggs - £0.16
Mozzarella - £0.50
2 Tomatoes - £0.25
1 Onion - £0.07
1 Clove of Garlic - £0,03
Price per portion - £0.95

1) Slice the potatoes about 0.5cm thick, and boil for about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, take them out and add to a bowl. Put the spinach in to boil for another 5 minutes.

2) Whilst sorting out the spinach and potatoes, add some diced onion to a frying pan with the finely chopped garlic. Fry in oil for about 10 minutes.

3) Whisk the eggs with the cream, and set aside.

4) Layer the potatoes on the bottom of an oven proof dish, followed by spinach (try and press out some of the water whilst transferring from the boiling pan, with the back of a spoon), some onions and garlic and finally some mozzarella. Repeat the layering again, then for the final layer do potatoes, mozzarella and sliced tomatoes.

5) Pour the cream and egg mixture over, and transfer to a preheated oven at 180c for 40 minutes or until golden on the top.

Chicken and Mushroom Stew

So last year I invested in a slow cooker, which I used a couple of times, but never really got into. This year I'll try, I do prefer actually standing over the hobs and actually doing it in the moment, not waiting 6 hours for my dinner, but we'll see how it goes.
I got to the house and since the original recipe said it takes 7.5 hours, and it was already 2.30pm, I had to make some adjustments, because 9pm is pub time!!

Chicken thighs and legs are so much cheaper than breasts. if you can bear a bit of bone, try it. For stews, casseroles and tagines, they're great, probably go for the breast for curries etc.
The original recipe had wine and fresh basil in, which I omitted, because for me, I'd prefer to drink the wine rather than out it in my dinner! I can't afford to glug it into my meals, so I swapped it for veg stock and used a sprinkling of mixed herbs for the fresh basil. Not the same effect, but I haven't had chance to get fresh herbs yet (apart from coriander which I intend on using later on in the week!)

Ingredients - makes 3 meals
6 Chicken thighs (or legs/quarters) - £1.99
Chopped tomatoes - £0.31
2 Veg stock cubes - £0.20ish
2 Onions - £0.15
2 Cloves of Garlic - £0.06
Punnit of mushrooms - £0.59
To serve: Ciabbatta (or rice/potatoes/pasta etc) - £0.69
Cost per meal = £1.33

1) Brown off the chicken thighs in a pan - I just left it a couple of minutes then turned them over. Once that's done, move them into the slow cooker (if you don't have a slow cooker, put them in a stock pot or casserole dish.)

2) Fry the onions and garlic on a low heat for a little while, so they're soft, and add to the slow cooker/pot/casserole dish.

3) Pour the tin of chopped tomatoes over, and add the two stocks cubes (in water, I usually use a mug for each.)

4) Leave the slow cooker on a low setting for 7 hours or medium for 5 hours/ high for 4 hours. For a stock pot, I'd leave it on a low heat for maybe an hour and a half, and for a casserole dish that can be put in the oven, perhaps 2 hours at 180c.

5) Once those times are up, add the mushrooms, and cook for a further half an hour. Serve with ciabatta or if you prefer rice, pasta or potatoes.

So I have dinner for another two nights this week!

Back to Uni - First Shopping List

So it's been a while, we didn't keep up last year as we were coming up to assignment deadlines and exams. I plan on carrying on the recipes this term! Over summer I bought a couple of recipe books to get the inspiration flowing, but mainly to look at how I could make their recipes more affordable (who needs marjoram anyway?!)

My first shop was expensive because I had to buy some basics, and get some cleaning products. But I was happy I could slip some chicken into the budget this week because I've got to gradually get used to not having meat every day (which we do at home.)
There's a picture of my receipt below, and I'll be writing up about my first meal back at uni in the next post!

Home Sweet Home - Leicester version

So it's our Easter break now, Marianna is stuck in Norwich still, but is soon to be venturing to Morocco for a surf trip. Totally rad man,
Whilst she's exploring the cultural edible treats of Morocco, I'll be sampling the old recipes of my childhood. Sunday lunches is what I've missed the most, and I've had three in the last three days. I was greeted home to a roast chicken, then we had roast lamb, and finally roast pork. Whatever people say, my Dad makes the best roast dinners!

Since I can't blog about being a student for a while, I thought I'd do a quick post about what we usually eat at home - when the rents are paying!
I obviously eat a lot more meat. We are one of those households that will eat meat every day of the week, except one, on which we'll have fish. We're also very seasonal, for example, salads we only really have when summer comes around, with some nice cheeses, cured meats and crusty bread, the rest of the year we have soup, soup, and more soup.
Anyway, I'll post a few pictures of my Dad's recent roast dinners. I'll ask Marianna to do a quick post too when she's back in Norway, it's interesting to see what each of us eat when we're not cooking together!

Roast Pork (with crackling!) and stuffing and roast veg, (We also had 'potato straw' which is just a simple fried potato cake type thing  - not on the picture because I was told I was getting in the way!)

Roast Lamb studded with garlic - I actually started this trend in roasts, I saw it on a recipe for 'Greek Lamb'. We had it with mashed potato yorkshire puddings (you can see how we make them below), veg and a red wine and cranberry jus.

To make the mashed potato containing yorkshire puddings, you simply make the mashed potato and pour the batter mix over them. Cook in the oven for about 30 minutes at 200 degrees. Ensure that the oil in the yorkshire tray is hot beforehand, by placing in the oven for 5-10 minutes before assembling.

Veggie Lasagna

So it's been a while since I've done a blog post. We've been busy lately, since it's the end of term we've got a lot of deadlines (I keep failing my lab classes and having to resit them over and over - most stressful thing ever. Seriously, who thought that making creams and ointments would be so hard.) Marianna is busy saving the world as usual, and has been playing a lot of gigs.
This was one of our very early recipes that is truly a delight! It's one of my favourites!

Ingredients for 4 portions:
1 Courgette - you can throw in whatever veg you have left over!
1 Onion
2 Spring Onions
1 Aubergine
1 Pepper
Half a punnit of Mushrooms
Lasagna Tomato Sauce - I found these at Aldi real cheap, for both jars it was £1.50. Alternatively use  pasta sauce, pasata or even just bog standard chopped tomatoes.
Lasagna Cream Sauce - I have no idea how to make a creamy cheese sauce, and I can't afford to try right now. Nor do I have the time to try! Alternatively, use the cottage cheese between layers too, it's just as good! We only used a third of the jar for this recipe.
Pasta sheets - we got a box of these for like 80p and they've made about 5 or 6 lasagnas!
Handful of spinach
Cottage Cheese - we always head straight for the low fat cottage cheese with added chives. Yum!
Tomatoes (optional)
Price per portion: £0.75 (crazy, I know check out our shopping lists to see how it's done!)

1) Start by prepping the veg (except spinach), try not to chop it too large or it'll be a hassle to get out the dish when you serve. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

2) Cook in a pan, with a little oil, for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add the tomato sauce (or chopped tomatoes, a 'lil garlic and some herbs - basil or oregano will do, or if you're lazy like us, the classic mixed herb tactic is the way to go!)

3) Let it simmer for another ten minutes.

4) Add a layer of the lasagna mix to the bottom of an oven proof dish. Pop some lasagna sheets on the top, then layer with the cream sauce (or cottage cheese if you skimped out on the cream sauce.)
Repeat until you've ran out of lasagna mix - if you run out of space, save the mix - either freeze it or make a pasta with it the next day..

5) On the last pasta sheets (on the top), spread the cottage cheese over it, sliced tomatoes (if wanted, we only added it because we had some leftover!) and a handful of spinach. Pop in the oven for ten minutes, cover with foil to prevent the spinach going black (we made that mistake before!) then cook for another 40 minutes Be patient, it;s worth it.

6) Serve up and enjoy!

(Sorry for the lack of a picture, it's getting late here and I don't want to bother Marianna in case she's sleeping - she's the expert photographer. I'll add one when I get it!)

GOT IT!