A no-food-shopping weekend

I've often wondered how long we could last for food without going to the shops. Of course there are things you'd run out of pretty quickly like fresh milk, fruit and vegetables but if you had a reasonably well-stocked storecupoard and freezer I reckon you could easily survive a week.Anyway I managed it for a couple of days over the weekend. My husband was away, and I was working on the book so I thought I'd see how I got on. (I didn't plan it ahead so I didn't stock up beforehand, honest!)Here's what I ate:FridayLate back from London so I skipped supper and had a banana. Easy.SaturdayBreakfastA...

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Why I don't like pressure cookers

I forgot to tell you - I acquired a pressure cooker. A reasonable deal on Amazon - 50% off - but . . .It's just as bad as they always used to be, except marginally less scary. Now you may well have a pressure cooker and love it to bits but here's why I don't like them.I've made two things with it, a chicken stock and some cannelini beans and both would have been better if I'd made them the conventional way.The handbook advised me to cook my chicken carcasses for 40 (yes, forty) minutes which seemed an incredibly long time but as I hadn't used it before I took their word for it. Of course it came...

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Why I love dried limes

Shopping splurge vindicated! Well, almost. I made this fantastic Iranian-style chicken stew last night with half of the fresh herbs and the dried limes I bought. It was loosely based on a recipe in Sally Butcher's Persia in Peckham, the book I told you about yesterday but since I seem to have got fixated on lamb lately I used chicken thighs instead and went off on a tangent from there.The essential ingredient is dried limes which is one of those addictive ingredients that you can't stop craving once you discover them. They're unprepossessing little brown husks which you pierce then pop in a chicken...

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A far from frugal shop

Confession time. Last night I had a far from frugal shopping spree - the equivalent of a dieter having a couple of slices of chocolate cake or a teetotaller falling off the wagon. But it's a temptation to which any foodie is prone.I spent £21.11 ($42.31) at the Bristol Sweet MartI'd been looking forward to going there since I found out about it a couple of months ago. Although it sounds like an Asian sweet shop it is in fact a fabulous Aladdins cave of a grocers with every type of herb, pickle and spice you could possibly want.I went with a purpose which was to stock up on some of the ingredients...

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Now Jamie's cutting back

A press release from Jamie Oliver's (or possibly Sainsbury's) people dropped in my inbox to announce that Jamie would be fronting a new 'Feed your Family for a Fiver' drive. He's a good bloke, Jamie, but you have to admit it's a bit ironic being paid 1 or 2 million pounds, whatever it is by Sainsbury's, to tell us how to survive on a shoestring.And Sainsbury's could presumably have lowered their prices at any time to help the cash-strapped families they're suddenly so concerned about. As I point out on my student website beyondbakedbeans today, take a look at some of the other prices they're charging...

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Easter leftovers

We've been away for a couple of days over Easter so we don't have any leftovers to finish up. But this is the kind of weekend that generates them so I'm wondering what I would do if I had.First turkey, which is now almost as popular an Easter meal as a Christmas one. The most helpful approach, I find, is to divide the leftovers into three categories - white meat, brown meat and the carcass. White meat's not the problem. Everybody loves it - it eats well cold: in sandwiches or in salads. Brown meat (the kind you get on legs and thighs and on the underside of the carcass) I find needs to be cooked...

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Newspaper-wrapped trout

At the last minute I abandoned the idea of pan-fried trout and almonds because my neighbour downstairs told me that she always used to wrap trout in old newspaper to bake it and that seemed such a brilliantly frugal thing to do I couldn't resist it.You simple soak a couple of sheets of newspaper in water (two spreads of a tabloid, two pages of a broadsheet) place the trout in the middle, stuff it with lemon and herbs, season it and wrap it in wet newspaper. Then you bake it at a moderate heat (180°C/Gas 4) for 25 minutes. When you unwrap it the skin comes away in one piece leaving you with fabulous,...

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Frugal Fish

I suddenly realised I'd got a bit fixated on meat and it was time to turn my attention to fish. (And veggies, obviously. That's next)My impression up to now is that if you don't like farmed or tinned salmon (which I don't much) and don't like bones and don't want to eat unsustainable fish or fish that's been flown half way round the world there aren't a lot of options. But in a world of rapidly rising food prices fish seems to have stayed relatively stable.This is what I found in my local Sainsbury's:A frozen packet of whitefish fillets (Alaskan pollock, apparently) for £1.27 for 520g. OK, that's...

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Should frugal cooks forget the idea of seasonal food?

A bit of a shock in Waitrose on Saturday. (I know, I know - it's not by any means the most frugal place to shop but it's my nearest supermarket and it was simply chucking down . . . )It was cheaper to buy out of season strawberries than in-season rhubarb. By quite a margin. 400g of Spanish strawberries cost £1.59. 400g of rhubarb - admittedly Dutch so it had some way to travel - was £2.99. I thought rhubarb was supposed to be a UK crop at this time of year.It seems part of a growing trend I've spotted for shops to charge more for in season foods rather than less. Like Purple Sprouting Broccoli...

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Moroccan style lamb with dates, prunes and apricots

I'm completely converted to cooking with meat on the bone. It's cheaper and it's much, much tastier. True, it's a bit more work. It also tends to be fattier so you have to make your stew, cool it, take the meat off the bone (not essential but people find it off-putting and it looks a whole lot better), refrigerate it and skim off the fat but you're left with a really fantastic meal for the following day(s) which need no effort or last-minute attention.I cooked the lamb knuckles I brought back from Wales with some Moroccan-ish spicing, root veg and dried fruits and have to say it was quite delicious....

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Buying direct from the producer

A quick overnight trip to Wales to research a piece on lamb proved an unexpected source of bargains. Apparently the producer (a partnership of two farmers who trade under the name Gower Salt Marsh Lamb) can barely give their cheaper cuts away.They couldn't have been more delighted when I picked a pack of lamb knuckles (£1 each) and one of kidneys (given away) rather than walking off with one of their few remaining packs of lamb steaks (the salt marsh lamb season having ended in December). It's apparently the same with hearts and other offal.It's certainly a cheaper way of buying meat than in farmers'...

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Tomatoes transformed

Even though I know tomatoes are not in season every so often I crave their clean-flavoured freshness as opposed to the cooked taste of tinned tomatoes or passata. Especially for tomatoes on toast.The problem of course is that they're still underripe but that can be countered by dry-frying - or nearly dry-frying them so that they acquire something of a chargrilled flavour. I char the toast too.The ideal pan for this is one of those ridged grill pans but you can use an ordinary frying pan. You heat it for a couple of minutes till hot, take a slice of decent country bread, spray or drizzle it both...

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The great thing about short ribs

Finally made my short rib recipe over the weekend and what a great meal it makes!You basically tackle it just like a stew - brown the meat, sweat off some onions and carrots. stir in a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste, a little flour then pour in a good half bottle of leftover (but still drinkable) wine. Bring to the boil, pour over the ribs (tucking in a couple of sprigs of thyme along the way and adding extra water to cover if you need) then cook over a very low heat or in a very low oven for 3 1/2 to 4 hours - it needs that long to render down the fat and make the meat fork tender.Then,...

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Cheap cuts aren't cheap - and nor is anything else, it seems

I finally found a beef cut that's popular in France but hard to find here (back in England) - cotes de boeuf or beef ribs, ironically sold at my local organic butchers as pot au feu. It's not ridiculously expensive at £8.75 a kilo (though that includes quite a lot of bone and fat) and should easily serve four. But it would have been no more than 8 euros a kilo (about £6) in France.It underlines just how pricey so called 'cheap cuts' have become - including mince and braising steak. The only thing that's really cheap still is offal and how many people like offal? Not a lot.I managed to spend £33...

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What to bring back from France

Frantic last-minute packing - no idea why it's always this chaotic.However enough time to zap down to the local supermarket (Intermarché) and stock up with a few foods (and the odd drink) that are more expensive in England than France. Or which it's not easy to get hold of back home.I didn't buy all these but made a hit list:Cheaper than in EnglandTop of the list is Dijon mustard - far, far cheaper here than in England (.56€/43p for 320g, less if you buy a bigger jar)A string of garlic. Better price. Better qualityGround coffee. Much cheaper - €2.95/£2.26 for 2 packs - don't know whySaucisson...

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What to do with leftover lettuce

With two days left to go in France before we pack up and head home I seem to have a fridge full of lettuce - mainly outer leaves I've saved to do something useful with. Some, frankly have had it and have had to go straight in the bin (such profligacy offends me these days) but there's still a fair amount.What can you do with leftover lettuce? Well you can make soup but somehow it doesn't seem quite summery enough yet despite a blistering 22° C here today. You can add it to another soup as I may well do with the watercress soup I'm planning for tonight. You can chuck a few shredded leaves into...

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