Bonus Post: Budget Pasta "Salad" plus fruit.

Improvised Caesar / pasta / Waldorf salad

I've been on holiday, so this is a quick filler post from when I had to grab a fast budget picnic lunch, and hope for the best.

I've been on holidays for the last ten days, and it was great.

Short on time to catch a train, a fast lunch was necessary.  I picked up a "Caesar" Salad with pasta, chicken and bacon, plus a mini-pack of apples and grapes from the T.

*munch*

Tasting the dressing tube first, I don't think it's improved an iota from back in the days when I made this Caesar much better.

I'm only going to dot it about and throw the rest the hell away. Too much vinegar, too much mayo.  Yuck.

• The pasta as always is over cooked, but isn't soggy today. Croutons, but yeah, they wouldn't travel... 
• The chicken is dry-ish; edible. 
• The salad - few leaves of iceberg at the bottom; disappointing.  
• The bacon is smoky but not crispy, and that smoke flavour isn't from wood...
• There's some cheese in here as well.  It...works with some mouthfuls, I'll give it that, but it's just T-ShopValueCheddar® instead of a nice Pecorino.

So, today, all I'm doing is tipping fruit into a store bought salad and adding a dash of sauce to balance it. 

 Will apple and grapes turn this into a half-Waldorf,  or a half-baked horrible disaster?

Pasta Chicken Bacon Caesar salad, per person

• 1 serving of pasta - fusili or similar. 
• 4 lettuce leaves, iceberg.  Little Gem also works from scratch.
• 1 half-portion of chicken - say half a breast, or 1 thigh or 1 drumstick.
• 2 rashers of streaky smoky bacon, chopped into 1/2cm strips
• 1 apple, quartered, then chopped into thumb-sized chunks.
• 6 grapes, plus or minus 1.
• A few shavings of your finest (ahem...) ripe cheese.  Parmesan is best but any hard mature cheese is good.

About the dressing:

If I was trying to reverse engineer this dish, I'd do a garlic mayo myself, from scratch.  Otherwise a nice olive oil and vinegar mix  (4/1 ratio) would work.  Some folks do (3/1) oil / vinegar but I don't like the acidity.  But whatever floats your boat.

Method

 If you're cooking it from scratch:

•  Boil pasta for the requisite time, say 7 minutes for fusili.
•  While this is on, fry the bacon.
•  Drain pasta, allow to cool.
•  Shred your salad ingredients and dress appropriately.  I'd add the bacon fat in myself as part of that.  
• - Dress with your dressing of preference, (I'd go for olive oil and white wine vinegar) to your taste, season, chill in the fridge.
•  - Add the apples and grapes last, and serve.

*munch*

I must say for something I have put no effort into, I can report that, if I had shelled out an extra pound on a packet of nuts or seeds, or even 30p on celery, this would have been even better, and probably a very good budget Waldorf.  Not great you understand, but better than what you would get at your company barbecue.



I hope that's given you some ideas for messing around with your pre-bought picnics when you are in a rush to get to somewhere sunny.

I looked online and some recipes for Waldorf Salad and Caesar can be found here, as well as mine.  So yes, maybe it's O.K. to quickly play with your food, when on holiday.

Chicken 3 ways 2/3 - Shakshouka & couscous

For my first post for almost a year, I am lucky - The supermarket reduced section was pretty kind to me the other day - I have a bucket load of Mediterranean grains and veg.






First onto the fork is some couscous "salad" - I'm aiming to eat these mass-produced edible-constructions first, before I play around with them afterwards...

Wasn't great in it's raw state...

*munch*
What I can say for this couscous is that the peppers and chilli it comes with are punchy, but these grains are as dry as the Sahara, and need some sauce if they are to be some form of dinner.

I have been wanting to make this next dish for a while, as I've eaten its Basque cousin Piperade, which is delicious.  

Shakshouka or chakchouka, is an Arab / Mediterranean / Middle Eastern dish of baked eggs, tomato, peppers, onions / other vegetables, and spices.  I've added some leftover chicken drumsticks into the mix as this is normally a breakfast dish served with breads but it's my supper tonight.  I think lots of tomatoes will help rescue the couscous, and what's not to like about everything else, so this recipe should be perfect.

  There's a very comprehensive article here about shakshouka; I've read it, understood it, but I'm going to adapt it to my circumstances.

Ingredients - per person

2 eggs
1 orange (bell) pepper
Lots of tomatoes - 4 salad, 12 cherry is what I used.  
1/2 a small onion
1 chicken breast / drumstick / thigh, cooked*  

* This addition is non-standard but I promised recipes about how to use a whole chicken, and it worked...

About 250g couscous, fresh steamed is probably better.  
A little olive oil, maybe about 2 tsps.
Spices
 - cumin or curry powder
 - harissa paste - today's store cupboard rescue.  £3.50 for the harissa but that'll    add flavour until next March.  Dot that liberally over the ingredients.  
 - pimentón - another store cupboard staple for me.  Hot, dry, spicy, tasty.  
 - 1 + 1/2 cloves of garlic, smashed up with salt.  Poke the  cloves into the tomatoes

Method.

In a casserole or ovenproof dish, lay down the couscous, and add the chopped onions, tomatoes, peppers and garlic over the top of it.  Put into a low oven for an hour, at about 160°C.  
Allow to cool.

Chop the chicken up into rough chunks, almost like "pulled" chicken.
Add a tsp of cumin/ curry powder, 1 or 2 of harissa and half a tsp of pimentón or your nearest equivalent chilli powder,  over the top of the veg and couscous saucery.

Now then - make 2 wells / hollows / spaces in the dish under the couscous & veg, and crack the eggs into them.

Turn the oven back on to about 140°C and leave the eggs to bake for about 20-30 minutes.  Timing's not important, but keep your eye on your oven.  You want the eggs soft and slightly runny, but not underdone.

Hopefully this long slow process will give you slow roasted veg and wobbly baked eggs, and I'm hoping the couscous will not be as dry as it was thanks to all those tomatoes.... but let's see...




*munch*

You can't see the eggs here but I'll take a photo of the leftovers with more baked eggs as it was good enough for me to make again.

The harissa dotted about lifts this into the stratosphere of taste highlights - fiery but flowery.  I am also very pleased with how the juices from the roasted tomatoes have rescued the store bought couscous.  The leftover chicken has absorbed a lot of the tomato as well, and is a nice addition of texture and flavour.  One more way to use your entire chicken, done.

  As for the baked eggs, they are a real treat - absolutely lovely.  But the number one key to the dish, I reckon,  is the cumin / curry powder, just scattered over the top.  

I'm having seconds, and I'll post a photo of them later in the week.

August '16 - Returning from hiatus.

I'm picking up the reins again and posting about how to best use and improve reduced food items and basic brand supermarket produce.  A lot of things happened in the last year that made posting updates...not a thing that was going to happen. 

So here's what went to the pass last year...

Ingredients Impediments

1.  Job - I was working flat out as a software contractor and was living off canteen and client lunches, take-aways, and 6 hours sleep until April; I had no energy to prepare food from scratch or be innovative.  Life was no fun.   Probably the main reason I stopped.

2.  Ingredients.  You can't predict when you'll get something in the Clearance section that will fit in well with your ingredients at home.  If I posted and ate strictly from what was in the budget aisle all the time, this blog would be nothing but "101 Things to do with coleslaw and ham"   Again, not fun for anyone.   


3.  Repetitiveness.  Related to the above.  Soup and sandwiches had been done to death and when I was out of ideas I was repeating myself.  I enjoyed home made tomato & rice soup and leftover bolognese the first 6 times, but these pit-stops were not something I wanted to share. 

4.  Relocation.  I have a new job and have moved home to Belfast from my fun times in Dublin.  With that goes a new kitchen.  More cupboard space, gas fired hob, but the smoke alarms go off regularly.  Took a while to sort that out.  Cooking was...impractical.


But it's time to get back in the saddle and sharpen the old knives up.

Let's get back to what matters - fun, interesting, cheap food!

I came up with a few principles for the blog.  The primary axiom for me is that I have both a useful direction for, and fun, typing words about, and eating, my thrifty cooking.  

So my goals are:

1.  Always Reduced  - I'd like to always include at least one item from the Reduced section.  It may be tenuous and the same one over time, but I want to make best use of the ingredients I have to hand, and it's kinda the raison d'etre.

Always look for a bargain.  These garden veg were 80p down from £4, only because they were upside down.

2.  Challenge Ready Meals - Every month (or so) I'll try to improve a ready meal or low value prepared item, say, a tin of sausage and beansfrom the "Value" or own brand section.  
  It may be pointless trying to supercharge a culinary Nissan Micra, but I think it's fun to try ;-)
  I'll also try and replicate the recipes myself using fresh and discount ingredients to prove the obvious - that you're better making your own food from scratch!

I'm fairly certain I can do better than this myself, but I'll let you know when I open it and taste it first...

3.  If you have it, use it - I reserve the right to use non-budget ingredients when I can afford to make best use of what I have to hand.  So should you, you're making something you want to eat - make it taste the way you like!  If you have ras el hanout and rosewater, brilliant.  If you have to improvise with 59p curry powder and a Turkish Delight bar, more power.

These kebabs were a fantastic eat - it was worth investing in the skewers and harissa sauce.

4.  Health is Wealth - Ideally, the recipes will be healthy as well as cheap.  So expect lots more veg in recipes, even if I have to buy them at full price sometimes.  It's worth it in the long term.

That's a minestrone I did which was not just delicious, but full of bucketloads of healthy veg.

Epilogue

While I didn't post in the last year, I have a lot of notes and photos taken from when I did sit down of a night, and eat something that was made from the "About to be binned" counter.  

So being regular with posts shouldn't be a problem for a while.  It'll also solve issue number 2 as above - if I can't justify buying something in the section to cook, I have plenty of recipes in the archives to be published.

As I type, I've just been to the local supermart - there's going to be Middle Eastern themed dinners posted up on Sunday.

Finally I remind myself of my favourite quote when it comes to quick cheap tasty food:

"There is too much talk of cooking being an art or a science - we are only making ourselves something to eat." - Nigel Slater, Real Cooking.