Fab Food 4 All – Bangers & Mash

Megadarra with roasted broccoli for Live Below the Line

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013Posted in Campaigns, Recipes, VegetarianTagged broccoli, credit crunch munch, Fab Food 4 All, Fuss Free Flavours, lentils, live below the line, megadarra, mujaddara, onion, rice, roasted broccoli, Save the Children3 Comments

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

1 tsp (2g) ground cumin
ASDA 57p for 41g = 2.78p

2 tbsp vegetable oil (60ml)
ASDA sunflower oil £3 for 3 litres = 3p

1 onion (80g), finely sliced
ASDA Smartprice brown onions £1.16 for 2kg = 4.64p

2 cloves garlic, crushed
ASDA loose garlic 30p for approx. 8 cloves = 7.5p

300g frozen broccoli, defrosted
ASDA Smartprice broccoli £1 for 1kg = 30p

1 tsp (2g) mild chilli powder
ASDA mild chilli powder 80p for 44g = 3.63p

100g plain yoghurt
ASDA Smartprice low fat natural yoghurt 45p for 500g = 9p

Total cost = £1.53. Cost per serving = 38.25p

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

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.

Spicy bean burgers for Live Below the Line

April 26, 2013Posted in Campaigns, Recipes, VegetarianTagged bean burger, burger, credit crunch munch, Fab Food 4 All, Fuss Free Flavours, kidney beans, live below the line, Save the Children, spice, spicy, vegetarian11 Comments

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.

Spicy bean burgers

2 tbsp vegetable oil (30ml)
ASDA sunflower oil £3 for 3 litres = 3p

1 small onion (80g), chopped
ASDA Smartprice brown onions £1.16 for 2kg = 4.64p

1 tsp (2g) ground cumin
ASDA 57p for 41g = 2.78p

1 tsp (2g) paprika
ASDA 58p for 46g = 2.52p

4 cloves garlic, crushed
ASDA loose garlic 30p for approx. 8 cloves = 15p

1 x 400g tin kidney beans
ASDA Smartprice kidney beans 400g = 27p

Breadcrumbs made from 1 slice of white bread
ASDA Smartprice medium sliced white bread 50p for 22 slices = 2.27p

Pinch of salt (1g)
ASDA Table Salt 29p for 750g = 0.04p

Grind of pepper (1g)
ASDA Smartprice Ground Black Pepper 25g for 20p = 0.8p

1 tomato, sliced
ASDA salad tomatoes £1 for 6 = 16.66p

Lettuce leaves (40g)
Sainsbury’s Basics young lettuce leaves £1 for 75g = 13.33p

4 soft bread buns
Sainsbury’s sesame seed burger buns 70p for 6 = 46.66p

Total cost = £1.34. Cost per serving = 33.5p

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.

Virgin Bloody Mary soup – a recipe for Live Below the Line

April 25, 2013April 26, 2013Posted in Campaigns, Recipes, VegetarianTagged bloody mary, credit crunch munch, croutons, Fab Food 4 All, frugal, Fuss Free Flavours, garlic, live below the line, red pepper, Save the Children, soup, tabasco, tomato, virgin mary, worcester sauce6 Comments

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.

Virgin Bloody Mary soup with garlic croutons

Serves 4

1 tbsp vegetable oil (15ml)
ASDA sunflower oil £3 for 3 litres = 1.5p

1 onion, chopped (around 100g)
ASDA Smartprice brown onions £1.16 for 2kg = 5.8p

1 celery stick, sliced (around 35g)
ASDA celery sticks £1 for 350g = 10p

1 red pepper, chopped
ASDA red pepper = 40p

1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
ASDA Smartprice chopped tomatoes 400g = 31p

500ml vegetable stock (made from one stock cube)
ASDA Chosen By You vegetable stock cubes 12 for 78p = 6.5p

Dash Worcester sauce (5ml)
ASDA Lea & Perrins £2.16 for 290ml = 3.72p

Dash hot pepper sauce (5ml)
Tesco Frank’s Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce Original 148ml for £1.00 = 3.37p

Salt (2g)
ASDA Table Salt 29p for 750g = 0.07p

Pepper (1g)
ASDA Smartprice Ground Black Pepper 25g for 20p = 0.8p

2 tbsp olive / vegetable oil (30ml)
ASDA olive oil £1.98 for 500ml = 11.88p

4 slices white bread, cubed
ASDA Smartprice medium sliced white bread 50p for 22 slices = 9.09p

3 cloves garlic, crushed
ASDA loose garlic 30p for approx. 8 cloves = 11.25p

Total cost = £1.35. Cost per serving = 34p.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

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.

Let’s do brunch!

December 30, 2012Posted in Bread, Cakes and biscuits, RecipesTagged beet greens, Breakfast Club, brunch, Chez Foti, cookies, Fab Food 4 All, fabulicious food, foodycat, fritatta, Fuss Free Flavours, Garden Deli, kavey eats, minestrone, monomulia, muffins, mushrooms, nduja, omelette, quesadillas, rarebit, speculoos, swiss scrambled eggs8 Comments

During December I’ve very much enjoyed hosting the Breakfast Club for Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

The theme I set was brunch, and we received a surprisingly diverse and incredibly delicious array of not-quite-breakfast-yet-not-quite-lunch dishes, all equally perfect for this festive season when we’re allowed to roll out of bed just that little bit later than normal.

So without further ado, let’s crack on with the round-up…

Helen from Fuss Free Flavours delivered our first dish with these very timely Turkey, Cranberry & Stilton Christmas Brunch Muffins – an absolutely delicious way to use up those Christmas leftovers, and they don’t even require an egg!

Turkey, cranberry and stilton Christmas muffins from Fuss Free Flavours — Turkey, cranberry and Stilton Christmas muffins from Fuss Free Flavours

Next on the menu is this Beet Greens & Red Pepper Frittata from Eleni at On Top of Spaghetti. It’s easy to prepare, healthy and tasty, and ideal for brunch or perhaps a light lunch with a side salad. What’s more, it’s a great way to use those beet greens that many people don’t even realise you can eat.

Beet green and red pepper frittata from On Top of Spaghetti

As Louisa from Chez Foti says herself, these White Chocolate & Cranberry Christmas Cookies make for a “wickedly good brunch snack with a cup or two of coffee” and are just the ticket during the festive period when sweet treats are de rigeur, even at breakfast!

White chocolate and cranberry Christmas cookies from Chez Foti

I can’t believe I’ve never thought of combining beans and cheese on toast with a poached egg myself, but that’s exactly what Laura from Credit Munched has done in her Buck Rarebit. The combination sounds just so ‘right’ and perfect for a lazy brunch.

My turn next and my offering was a simple but tasty Courgette and Mushroom Omelette with Garlic and Parsley. It’s ideal for when you crave a cooked breakfast but don’t want to go to too much effort.

Courgette and mushroom omelette with garlic and parsley from Bangers & Mash

Now while these Swiss Scrambled Eggs, Croissants and Shakes from Fabulicious Food might look designed to be a hangover cure, they’re honestly not. Ren came up with this delicious breakfast-brunch to fill her family with much-needed vitamins and goodness to aid recovery from the winter flu bug. I’m sure they were fighting fit in no time…

Mushrooms on toast, especially using good homemade bread, has to be a top contender for my favourite brunch dish. And these Mushrooms on Rye Toast from The Garden Deli look simply beautiful, don’t you think?

Mushrooms on rye toast from The Garden Deli

Sometimes brunch becomes much more like lunch than it is breakfast. And in times like these, wouldn’t you love a Minestrone Soup like this one from Divine Foods Living to set you up for the day?

Minestrone soup from Divine Foods Living

These Nduja Potato Cakes from Foodycat make for a hearty, grown up brunch, especially served with a Bloody Mary. I must admit to having to google nduja – it turns out to be a spicy, spreadable sausage made from pork and is a Calabrian variation of salami.

Elizabeth from Elizabeth’s Kitchen describes these Christmas Breakfast Muffins as the best tasting muffins she’s ever made, and I have to say they do look incredibly good from her photos. Made from granola, marmalade, orange juice and apricots, they are the perfect breakfast in a cake.

Christmas breakfast muffins from Elizabeth’s Kitchen

It might not look like your usual late breakfast dish, and indeed I did have to persuade Kavey from Kavey Eats to enter her spectacular Speculoos & Mascarpone Pancake Cake into this month’s Breakfast Club, but personally I think this would make a superb, albeit slightly decadent, brunch. I also think I could gladly tuck into this amazing creation at just about any time of day…

Speculoos and mascarpone pancake cake from Kavey Eats

I adore poppy seeds in any baked goods and they look particularly scrummy in these Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins from Mondomulia, and isn’t the photography simply stunning too? They’re perfect for a festive brunch, but I think they’d be great at any time of year. I might also try baking a batch for my daughters’ lunch boxes in the new year.

And last, but certainly not least, come these fantastic Brunch Quesadillas from Camilla at Fab Food 4 All. Filled with bacon, mushroom and cheese, these tasty tortillas would make an ideal brunch for New Year’s Day to help sort your head out after that one-too-many-glasses-of-fizz from the night before.

So there you have it. A particularly fine round-up of brunch recipes, I think you’ll agree. Thanks to Helen at Fuss Free Flavours for inviting me to host December’s Breakfast Club and to all you wonderful bloggers for linking up your yummy recipes.