We had people over lunch on Sunday, including one friend who has diabetes. Apparently she loves puddings and is always naughty and ends up eating sugary things she shouldn’t. So I resolved to come up with a pudding suitable for diabetics. The other criteria was that it required lots of rhubarb. Ever since I mentioned at work that I’m featuring rhubarb recipes on the blog, everyone is bringing in their homegrown rhubarb for me, which is wonderful but the freezer is beginning to feel the strain.
There are lots of ideas for diabetic-friendly desserts on the Diabetes UK website. I came across an apple cinnamon cake, that I liked the sound of. It uses a sugar alternative called Splenda and wondered if it might work with rhubarb instead. My husband was not enthusiastic when I told him about the fake sugar cake, and so I decided to make two versions, one with Splenda and one with normal sugar to test whether there was any perceivable difference.
When it came to serving the cakes after our Sunday lunch (roast pork accompanied by, yes of course, a rhubarb compote), I started to wonder why I hadn’t opted for an easy, tried-and-tested pudding. But thankfully the cakes turned out well, although for some reason despite cooking them at the same time and rotating them in the oven, the two cakes were completely different colours. The Splenda cake was a lovely golden colour, while the normal sugar version was a deep brown.
And both cakes got the thumbs up. No-one could taste any significant difference between the two, including Marge, our diabetic friend, who ironically decided to have a big slice of both! It’s a very moist, squishy cake, and served warm it’s really much more of a pudding than a cake, especially when you have it with creme fraiche or ice cream as we did.
Have you baked with Splenda or some other sugar alternative? How have you found it?
Rhubarb Cinnamon Cake
a little oil for greasing the tin
100g plain flour
8 heaped tbsp Splenda granulated sweetener or ordinary caster sugar
1 level tsp ground cinnamon
6g baking powder
3 eggs, beaten
3 tbsp skimmed milk
2 tbsp lemon juice
75g low fat spread, melted
250g rhubarb, chopped into 3cm chunks
Preheat the oven to 200°C / Gas Mark 6. Grease a cake tin (around 23cm) with a little oil
Sift the flour into a large bowl and mix in Splenda or caster sugar, baking powder and cinnamon.
Make a well in the middle and whisk in the eggs and milk, followed by the melted low fat spread.
Gently fold in the rhubarb.
Pour the mixture into the tin and bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes until golden or brown (depending on what sugar you use it seems) and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Turn out onto to cooling rack and leave to cool just a touch before serving.
As these cakes feature rhubarb, lemon and spice I’m entering them into this month’s Recipes for Life challenge for the charity SWALLOW, which you may recall is hosted by me!
And as rhubarb is such the seasonal fruit of the moment, I’m also entering it into Ren Behan’s Simple and in Season blog event, where you are guaranteed to find a whole host of delicious seasonal delights.
This is an exciting time of year for cooks; a time when so many special fruits and vegetables come into season for just a brief and tantalising spell. As with rhubarb and wild garlic, we are making the most of English asparagus and it features on our menus on almost a daily basis.
Generally I tend not to do too much to asparagus. I simply steam it and serve with a squeeze of lemon and melted butter or a soft poached egg. Our girls go crazy for it, especially when they can eat it with their fingers. But I do also enjoy asparagus in a simple tart, like this one, with ham and Parmesan. It’s incredibly easy to make, especially if you forget about making your own shortcrust pastry and buy in ready-made instead, and it’s just as good eaten cold the following day.
Asparagus, ham and Parmesan tart
175g plain flour
salt
75g butter
250g asparagus
2 eggs and 2 egg yolks
200ml Greek yoghurt
50ml milk
100g Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
100g chopped ham
Preheat the oven to 190°C / gas mark 5.
To make the shortcrust pastry, sift the flour into a large mixing bowl with the salt. Using your finger tips, rub in the butter until it resembles soft breadcrumbs. Add enough cold water to make the mixture come together to form a firm dough. Cover with cling film and rest in the fridge for half an hour.
Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the pastry to line 9 inch well-buttered flan dish. Line the pastry with foil or baking paper and fill with baking beads or rice. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until the pastry just starts to turn golden. Remove the beads or rice and the foil, and brush the pastry with a little of the egg you’ll be using in the filling. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes so the egg seals the case. Allow to cool slightly while you prepare the filling.
Lightly steam or boil the asparagus until only just cooked; it should still have a little bite. Refresh in ice cold water to stop further cooking and to retain that beautiful green colour. Drain well.
Gently beat the eggs and the extra yolks (which give it that lovely vibrant yellow colour) and combine with the yoghurt, milk and Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
Arrange the chopped ham and asparagus in the pastry case and pour over the cheesy egg mixture. Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until the filling is set and golden. Leave to cool a little and serve at room temperature with a simple salad.
As this is such a seasonal tart, I’m entering it into Ren Behan’s Simple and in Season blog event, which this month celebrates its second anniversary. You’ll discover lots of tasty recipes over there using asparagus as well as the likes of rhubarb and wild garlic.
One of my many and varied jobs at the moment is editing a magazine called Manna. I’m thoroughly enjoying working on the summer issue as the theme is Food & Farming, which means I get to talk to people across Somerset who are involved in producing our food.
One of the highlights so far has been interviewing an incredibly inspiring farmer called Anita near Clevedon in North Somerset. We chatted solidly for three hours about the rewards and challenges of running a farm while bringing up a family, stopping only when her husband popped into the kitchen to let us know one of the cows was calfing and to see if I’d like to take some action photos. Of course I jumped at the chance and I very nearly blubbed when the gorgeous little heifer came into the world.
As well as the herd of dairy cows, Anita also has free-range poultry. At the end of the interview she insisted I take away with me a huge tray of eggs. I loved the fact they were all sizes and colours. These are the ‘imperfect’ ones the supermarkets won’t take.
While we do appreciate eggs in our house, we’d have been hard pushed to get through this little lot, so I shared them with my good friend Sarah. We’ve been enjoying more than our usual quota of eggy breakfasts and I’ve made a batch of lemon curd. But of course, we also had to make meringues.
I’d seen a recipe for chocolate meringues on the BBC Good Food website and have been meaning to give them a try, so here was the perfect opportunity. Mine turned out nowhere near as neat and pretty but they tasted just the ticket; light and crispy and a little bit chewy. The plain chocolate also stops them from becoming overly sweet. Which means you can easily much your way through quite a few in one sitting.
The original recipe suggests you put all the meringue mixture into a piping bag and then “make a hole in the mixture all the way to the funnel tip. Pour the chocolate into the hole.” I don’t have the most delicate of touches admittedly, but I just couldn’t pull this off, even after several attempts. So instead I simply layered the meringue and the chocolate in the bag, which worked OK. If you can get it to work, please come back and tell me how you did it!
Next time I make them, I think I might try adding some chopped nuts to the chocolate. And maybe sandwich them together with some whipped cream for an indulgent dessert…
Chocolate meringues
This is a recipe I adapted for the Aga. For a conventional oven, take a look at the original recipe on BBC Good Food.
100g dark chocolate
4 egg whites
1 tbsp lemon juice
200g caster sugar
Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a small bowl. Microwave on a low setting for a minute and then stir. Repeat again for another minute and so on, until the chocolate has just melted. Allow to cool a little while you move on to the eggs.
In a clean, large bowl add a tablespoonful of lemon juice to your egg whites and whisk until they form stiff peaks. Then add a tablespoonful of caster sugar and whisk it in, then whisk in another and repeat until you’ve worked in all the sugar. Your meringue will now be looking sumptuously thick and glossy.
Line a couple of baking sheets with greaseproof paper.
Spoon a little meringue into a piping bag and then pour in a little chocolate. Keep alternating until you’ve filled the bag. Pipe meringues onto the baking sheets about 4-5cm across, taking care to space them well. Keep going until you’ve used all your meringue mixture. Depending on how big your piping bag is, you may need to refill once or twice.
Start by baking the meringues at the top of the roasting oven for 5 minutes and then transfer to the bottom oven for 40-50 minutes. Check every now and again as you don’t want them too crunchy. I think they’re perfect when they’re still a little chewy.
Back in the day, when I was a young thespian-type, this is the noise you’d hear coming from all us extras on stage attempting to emulate the murmur of chit-chat. And it’s exactly how Twitter and the wider blogosphere sound right now. Yes, it’s rhubarb season and recipes and conversations about rhubarb abound. Oh, and of course, there are quite a few mentions of
“Asparagus?”
and the occasional
“Wild garlic….”
and perhaps a slightly hopeful
“Strawwwwwwwberry!”
I’m partly to blame of course for the fascination in all things rhubarb, as this tart and tasty perennial is one of the three set ingredients for May’s Recipes for Life challenge I’m hosting, together with lemon and spice. We’ve already seen some delicious rhubarb recipes entered, from ice cream and fools to scones and muffins – you can take a look at all the entries submitted so far here.
This fragrantly spicy rhubarb and lemon sorbet is my second entry. It’s incredibly simple and absolutely delicious, and so ideal for Recipes for Life, as we’re trying to come up with a selection of easy recipes for SWALLOW members, all adults with learning difficulties, to prepare during their cookery lessons and ultimately to feature in a charity cookbook.
I served my sorbet with an oaty sultana and cinnamon cookie on the side; a perfectly crunchy, slightly chewy biscuit with which to scoop up your sorbet.
Spiced rhubarb and lemon sorbet
250g rhubarb, washed and trimmed and cut into 5cm chunks
110g caster sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of ½ a lemon
75ml water
1 star anise
Half a cinnamon stick
Place the rhubarb, caster sugar, lemon zest and juice, water and spices in a saucepan and cook over a gentle heat for around 10 to 15 minutes until soft.
Leave to cool. Remove the star anise and cinnamon stick, and then blend the rhubarb in a liquidizer until smooth.
Pour into in an air-tight container and place in the freezer. Give it a good stir every hour or so to prevent ice crystals forming. Keep doing this until the sorbet is set, which will take around four hours. If you have an ice cream maker, which I don’t – sadly – then I guess it’s even easier and you can leave it to churn itself.
Serve your sorbet with an oat cookie on the side…
Cinnamon oat cookies
125g butter
200g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
150g rolled oats
125g plain flour
Pinch of salt
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp ground cinnamon
75g sultanas
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease and line two baking trays with baking parchment.
Put the butter in a large saucepan and melt over a low heat. Remove from the heat, add the sugar and combine well.
Add the beaten egg and mix it in. Next add the oats, flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and sultanas and mix it all together thoroughly.
Use a tablespoon to spoon the cookie mixture onto the baking trays, making sure they are spaced out well. Squish the mixture flat with your fingers.
Bake the cookies in the oven for around 15 minutes until golden. Leave to cool for a few minutes on the tray before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Stored in an air-tight, they’ll keep for up to five days. As if they’ll get the chance!
I’m entering this sorbet into May’s Recipes for Life challenge, as well as Ren Behan’s wonderful Simple and in Season community blog event, where I think you may find a fair few rhubarb recipes this month!
Take part in the Recipes for Life challenge and you could see your dish featured in SWALLOW’s new charity cookbook!
We are now well and truly into rhubarb season, as Sarah who works for SWALLOW knows only too well. She has a huge patch of rhubarb in her garden and she doesn’t know what to do with it. So this month we are using the Recipes for Life challenge to help Sarah out by providing her with lots of delicious ideas on how she can put her rhubarb to good use.
Of course, the rules of the Recipes for Life call for a trio of ingredients, and so we’re teaming the rhubarb with lemon and spice – ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, chilli, cardamom, star anise – whichever spices take your fancy and tickle your taste buds. All you have to do to enter the challenge is to combine these three ingredients to make a tasty, simple and wholesome dish and post it on your blog. Make sure any other ingredients you include are easy to come by.
We’re using Recipes for Life to come up with a stock of easy recipes for members of SWALLOW’s cookery club to make in their sessions. SWALLOW is a fab charity based in Midsomer Norton in South West England, supporting adults with learning disabilities to lead more independent lives. The challenge is running for six months and at the end, the best recipes will be included in SWALLOW’s new cookery book to help raise much-needed funds for the charity.
Recipes for Life: how to enter
Display the Recipes for Life badge (shown above) on your recipe post, and link back to this challenge post.
You may enter as many recipe links as you like, so long as they are based on the three main ingredients selected for this month and accompanied only by everyday items.
Send your recipe URL to me at vanesther-at-reescommunications-dot-co-dot-uk, including your own email address and the title of your recipe or post. The closing date this month is Tuesday 28 May 2013.
Feel free to republish old recipe posts, but please add the information about this challenge and the Recipes for Life badge.
As entries come in, links to these will be added to this page and at the end of the month there will be a round-up of all entries received.
SWALLOW staff and members will choose their favourite recipe at the end of each month, and the winner will receive a small prize.
A selection of recipes entered each month will be featured in the SWALLOW cookbook to be published later this year, helping the charity to raise much-needed funds for its ongoing work.
As my first entry, here’s a very simple rhubarb compote. It’s lovely served with roast duck, pork or lamb, and I’m also rather partial to it in a big thick cheese sandwich.
Rhubarb compote
knob of butter
small onion, chopped
1 tsp chopped ginger
½ tsp mixed spice
150g rhubarb, chopped
handful of sultanas or raisins
2 tbsp apple juice
2 tbsp lemon juice
Melt the butter in a pan and gently cook the onion and ginger until soft and golden. Stir in the mixed spice and cook for a couple of minutes.
Add the rhubarb and dried fruit and mix well to coat the fruit in the spicy butter. Cook for a few minutes before adding the apple and lemon juice. Stir and allow to stew gently for around ten minutes until the rhubarb is soft and mushy but still holds its shape. Serve at room temperature.
It’s been another fantastic month for the Recipes for Life challenge. I must admit, when I was first told the three ingredients the SWALLOW cookery club had decided on for April, I wasn’t sure how many recipes we’d receive. But as ever you lot have excelled yourselves and we’ve ended up with an incredibly varied and mouthwateringly tempting array of dishes all using the three set ingredients of pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes.
So without further ado, let’s take a look at those delicious dishes and, most importantly, announce this month’s winner…
Don’t theseSlow Cooker Sweet & Sour Sausages from The Crazy Kitchen look good? The list of ingredients might look long, but don’t be fooled – this is a quick and easy dish to prepare, just perfect for a midweek supper. And what’s more it’s a very frugal dish, making one pack of sausages go a long way.
Sausage chilli
We had to bend the rules slightly for this Sausage Chilli from The Garden Deli. Sarah was very keen to take part in the challenge but as Sarah is vegetarian, we really couldn’t make her cook with meat. So Sarah entered her sausage chilli using veggie sausages and then I (or rather my husband) tried out her recipe with pork sausages – see below. And we can confirm it works superbly both ways! Here’s how ours turned out:
Sausage chilli – mark two
The whole family loved it. Sarah’s chilli is a feast of colours, flavours and textures, and perfect for little ones as it has just the right level of spice without being too hot.
BBQ pork ribs with sweetcorn salsa
Next up is a dish that’s making me yearn for summer! Doesn’t your mouth just instantly water when you look at Under The Blue Gum Tree’s gorgeous photos of her sumptuous BBQ Pork Ribs with Sweetcorn Salsa? The ribs are smothered in a simple BBQ sauce made from store cupboard ingredients – the trick is not to marinade the ribs but instead to pour the sauce on for the last 10 minutes of cooking time – and served with a zingy salsa made from roasted corn and fresh tomatoes.
Slow cooker pork Creole
JibberJabberUK has come up trumps with this satisfying Slow Cooker Pork Creole – as she says it might not be 100% authentic, but it’s a great way to add a bit of spice to your family’s food. It’s an incredibly versatile dish, so you can throw in whatever vegetables you happen to have in the fridge or freezer.
Sausage pesto pasta
You may recall that Helen from The Crazy Kitchen entered not one, not two, but three dishes into last month’s Recipes for Life. And she’s worked her magic again! This Sausage Pesto Pasta is her second entry for April’s challenge and I know my own family would absolutely love this. The recipe is simplicity itself but you just know it’s packed with flavour and would satisfy even the grumbliest of tummies.
Oven baked tortilla
And for her third offering, Helen from The Crazy Kitchen brings us this ever so easyOven Baked Tortilla – a great one-pan meal, which Helen says is one of her favourite dishes to prepare when they’re away on holiday as it’s just so simple to do.
Pork, sweetcorn & tomatoes with vermicelli rice noodles
The brilliantly named Fun as a Gran came up with a wheat, egg, dairy and gluten-free dish of Pork, Sweetcorn & Tomatoes with Vermicelli Rice Noodles. I love the fact there is “no fancy measuring” and the recipe can be adapted up or down at the drop of a hat to cater for any number of people staying for dinner.
Pulled pork wrap with tomato and chorizo salsa and sweet sweet sweetcorn
Here’s a great first-time entry from Spurs Cook: Pulled Pork Wrap with Tomato and Chorizo Salsa and Sweet Sweet Sweetcorn. I’m a big fan of slow-cooked pork, especially when it’s seasoned with a whole host of rich, warming spices like paprika, cumin, cayenne, chilli and fennel, and I’m intrigued by the idea of the sweetness of the sweetcorn intensified even more with the addition of honey. Got to give it a go!
Very retro sweet and sour pork
How about this for a taste of summer sunshine? Chez Foti’sVery Retro Sweet and Sour Porklooks just glorious and I bet it tastes every bit as good as it looks. Sweet and sour flavours are always a firm family favourite and this looks so much better for you than the horrible battered version with a gloopy sauce you so often find in takeaways. Like Louisa, I think I might add a touch of chilli too in the adult version…
MyCheat’s Ciabatta Pizza is the next entry and to be honest hardly deserves to be described as a recipe as it’s just so easy to make. It’s simply sliced bread with your favourite pizza-style ingredients chucked on top and either grilled or baked in the oven. A quick and easy dinner to throw together when you don’t have time to make your pizza dough from scratch.
Red rice accompanied by pork, sweetcorn and tomato
And last but most certainly not least is a second entry from Fun as a Gran – Red Rice Accompanied by Pork, Sweetcorn and Tomato – another dish that’s easily adaptable depending on what you happen to have in. It features lovely nutty red rice served alongside pork steaks in a sauce made from a can of chicken or mushroom soup. It reminds me of some of my favourite student recipes!
Well, who would have thought pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes could lend themselves to such very different dishes? I look forward to working my way through these over the coming weeks.
But of course, what you’re waiting to hear is the name of this month’s winner. And so I’m very pleased to announce that the winner of first prize in April’s Recipes for Life challenge, as chosen by SWALLOW’s cookery club, is…
Huge congratulations to Helen for her well-deserved win, particularly as this means she’s now scooped first place two months in a row! The guys at SWALLOW said they liked her tortilla because it features a good selection of veggies and was just a little bit different.
Special mentions also go to Under The Blue Gum Tree’s BBQ Pork Ribs and Chez Foti’s Retro Sweet & Sour Pork, which the group said both looked and sounded gorgeous too.
So well done again to Helen – a little gift will be coming to you in the post in the next few days. Watch this space to find out the three set ingredients for May’s challenge, and let’s see if we can knock Helen off the coveted top spot – surely she can’t make it three in row? Or can she?!
If you’d like to find out more about the work of SWALLOW and perhaps get involved in their Twenty for 20 appeal as part of the charity’s 20th anniversary celebrations, please take a look at their funky new website.
Here’s my final frugal recipe offering for Save the Children and the Live Below the Line challenge, which will see thousands of people this week attempting to spend just £1 a day on food and drink – the equivalent to the extreme poverty line. My previous creations have been a Virgin Bloody Mary soup made from tinned tomatoes and red pepper, and Spicy Bean Burgers made from tinned kidney beans.
Admittedly it might not look all that appetizing, but it is tasty and cheap and filling. And at less than 40p a portion, that’s no mean feat.
Also known as mujaddara, this is a peasant dish made from lentils and rice, popular across the Arab world. It’s supposed to be made with brown or green lentils. I made mine with red lentils, which is possibly why mine went a little mushy but my family weren’t to know and ate it without complaint for lunch today. Well, except Mia the youngest, who complains about everything the first time she tries it. She got into it two after a few mouthfuls. I was lucky enough to use fresh broccoli from our vegetable patch, but you’ll see I’ve costed frozen broccoli in the recipe below as this, I’ve discovered, is the cheapest way to buy vegetables.
Megadarra with roasted broccoli
Serves 4
250g red split lentils, rinsed and drained East End red split lentils from ASDA £3.50 for 2kg = 43.75p
800ml vegetable stock (made from one stock cube) ASDA Chosen By You vegetable stock cubes 12 for 78p = 6.5p
250g brown basmati rice, rinsed and drained ASDA brown basmati rice £1.68 for 1kg = 42p
Put the lentils and stock in a large pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for around ten minutes before adding the rice and cumin. Simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes until the lentils and rice are cooked and the stock has been absorbed. You may need to add a little more liquid if it starts to dry out before they are cooked.
While the lentils and rice are cooking, you can get on with preparing the onions and the broccoli.
Fry the onions in a tablespoonful of oil over a low heat. Cook gently for around half an hour until soft and golden. Add the crushed garlic and fry for another couple of minutes before removing from the heat.
To roast the broccoli, place in an ovenproof dish and toss with a tablespoonful of oil and sprinkle with the chilli powder. Roast for around 25 minutes until just tender and darkening.
To serve, stir two-thirds of the onions into the lentils and rice, and serve in bowls with the rest of the onion and broccoli on top with some yoghurt on the side. Dig in!
And as with all my Live Below the Line dishes, I’m entering this into April’s Credit Crunch Munch co-hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All.
This is my second dish for Save the Children and the Live Below the Line challenge.
From 29 April, thousands of people will be getting sponsored to live below the extreme poverty line for five days, with just £1 a day to spend on all their food and drink. I’m not sure I could do it. But I’m playing my part, in a very tiny way, by trying to come up with some vaguely tasty dishes that cost less than 40p a serving to prepare from scratch. My first offering was a Virgin Bloody Mary soup made from cheap tinned tomatoes and a red pepper, costing less than 34p a bowl.
I’ve managed to save an extra halfpenny (not that they exist anymore) with these spicy bean burgers. Based on cheap tinned kidney beans pimped with garlic, cumin and paprika, this recipe creates four burgers costing just 33.5p each. You could probably even allow yourself a dollop of mustard or tomato ketchup. What luxury! But no skinny fries on the side I’m afraid.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan and gently fry the onion until soft and golden. Add the cumin, paprika and garlic and fry for a couple more minutes but don’t let the garlic brown.
Remove from the heat and leave the onion, garlic and spices to cool a little before you add them to a food processor. Next add the drained kidney beans, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Blitz but not for too long – you want a fairly chunky texture. Shape by hand into four patties.
Heat the remaining oil in the frying pan and fry the burgers over a medium heat until cooked through and crispy on the outside. Turn them over gently to prevent crumbling.
Serve in toasted buns with a slice or two of tomato and some lettuce leaves.
As with my last Live Below the Line dish, I’m also entering this into April’s Credit Crunch Munch co-hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. If you’re looking for frugal food ideas, this is a very good place to start.
When Save the Children first invited me to contribute some frugal recipes for the Live Below the Line challenge, I knew immediately I had to get involved. Trying to eat good food on a budget is what I’m all about after all. But as soon as I started pulling together possible recipe ideas, it dawned on me this was going to be really rather difficult.
People taking part in Live Below the Line are getting sponsored to live below the poverty line on a measly £1 a day for five days from Monday 29 April to Friday 3 May. That’s just £1 for all their food and drink. No foraging or gifts allowed. £1 wouldn’t buy you a cup of coffee in your average cafe. It’s harsh, but it’s also the reality 1.4 billion people around the world wake up to each and every day.
Everyone taking part in Live Below the Line for Save the Children will be doing their bit to raise awareness of the plight of people facing extreme food poverty, while raising vital funds to help change the lives of vulnerable children everywhere.
Save the Children has challenged food bloggers to devise dishes that cost less than 40p to make from scratch. Every single ingredient has to be costed; every grind of salt and every splash of oil.
As I was thinking up ideas, it quickly became painfully clear just how difficult it is to eat well on such a low budget. Fresh vegetables and meat are practically out of reach, making tinned and frozen foods so much more attractive. While sliced, white bread might offer virtually no nutritional value, it does has the advantage of being cheap, and fills you up for a short time at least.
If you’re going to try to eat anything vaguely tasty or interesting while on the Live Below the Line challenge, as opposed to surviving solely on beans on toast, it pays to cook in bulk to get your money’s worth. Team up with others as it’s pretty much impossible to cook cheaply for one. And plan your meals. For instance, to get the cheapest onions you need to buy a big bag of them. So then you need to plan a whole list of meals to make sure you get your money’s worth. That’s why the three dishes I’ve come up with for Live Below the Line all revolve around onions, oil, garlic and spices to make sure I made the most of them.
Coming in at just under 34p a serving, the first of my dishes is a spicy tomato and red pepper soup, flavoured with celery, Worcester sauce and hot pepper sauce rather like a Bloody Mary, but alas without the Vodka. You really couldn’t sneak that in on this budget! I did intend to use Tabasco but found I couldn’t afford that either, so had to find a cheaper alternative. The soup is served with crispy garlic croutons, which I reckon is a pretty good use of cheap white bread, and helps bulk it out.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan and cook the onion, celery and red pepper until soft. Stir in the chopped tomatoes and vegetable stock. Add a dash of Worcester sauce and hot pepper sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste. Leave to simmer gently for 10 to 15 minutes while you get on with the croutons.
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive or vegetable oil in a frying pan and gently fry the garlic until it has just turned golden. Throw in the cubed bread and stir well so all the pieces are coated in oil. Turn the bread out onto a baking tray and cook in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. When the croutons are looking crispy on the top, use a spatula to turn them over and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes depending on how just how dry and crunchy you like them.
When the soup is cooked, blend in a liquidiser until you achieve a fairly smooth consistency but not completely – it’s good to have a little texture. Serve in bowls and sprinkle a handful of garlic croutons on each. Grub’s up!
As this dish is so utterly cheap and cheerful, I’m entering it into April’s Credit Crunch Munch, a wonderful blog challenge celebrating the very best in fantastically frugal food. This month it is co-hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All.
I feel a bit of a fraudster posting this sausage chilli on my blog.
Firstly, it’s not actually my recipe. It comes from Sarah over at The Garden Deli, who is as talented in the kitchen as she is in the garden. Sarah really wanted to enter April’s Recipes for Life challenge – the three set ingredients this month are pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes. As a vegetarian, she obviously found the pork element a challenge too far. And so we agreed that Sarah would create a vegetarian dish and I’d then try out her recipe to see if it would also work with meat.
The second reason I’m feeling a little fraudulent is because I wasn’t even the one to try cooking Sarah’s dish. I handed that honour over to my husband Jason. This means Sarah’s recipe received a proper testing. Not that Jason’s a bad cook. He’s actually a very good cook indeed and is probably one of the main reasons I got into cooking in the first place. No, it’s not a case of him being useless in the kitchen and needing clear instructions. It’s just that he is very thorough and precise and when he’s following a recipe, rather than his own instincts, he’ll follow it to the absolute letter.
The verdict? We all loved Sarah’s sausage chilli and can wholeheartedly confirm it works just as well with pork sausages as it does with vegetarian ones. Jason found the recipe instructions absolutely faultless (although his hands are clearly much larger than Sarah’s when it comes to measuring coriander by the handful) and he had no problems on that score. It’s a feast of colours, flavours and textures, and perfect for little ones as it has just the right level of spice without being too hot. This is my kind of tasty, healthy, family food and a recipe I’m sure we’ll be coming back to again and again. Thank you Sarah!
You can find Sarah’s original Sausage Chilli recipe here. We hardly played with it – simply substituted the vegetarian sausages for pork ones, and used frozen sweetcorn instead of tinned.
Bangers & Mash 