I hesitated before uploading this recipe because it's much longer and more time-consuming than the recipes I normally post and also rather more extravagant. BUT it's a) really delicious, b) a great way to use up the pumpkin you'll have left over from your pumpkin-carving session later today and c) the perfect recipe for Thanksgiving. (It comes from my book Food, Wine & Friends, which I know my publisher will want me to mention ;-)If you're short of time you could make the purée and freeze it then make the recipe for Thanksgiving in four weeks' time. If so, don't add the eggs, flour and cream...
Friday, 31 October 2008
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
What to do with a butternut squash
As my husband's been away this week I've been exceptionally frugal, living largely off the contents of the storecupboard. (I eat a lot less meat when he's not around!)The starting point for several meals was a butternut squash I'd forgotten about. Fortunately they last an age. I'd planned to explain on my student website Beyond Baked Beans how to cut up and cook one (now done) but have managed to stretch it into several days eating for one.First I cut it up (the bit that puts so many people off, I think) and roasted it, half as a whole piece and half cut up with some wedges of red onion and a...
Monday, 27 October 2008
Waste-watching with the WI
It's never occurred to me to join the WI (I'm not much of a joiner, to be honest) but they certainly seem to be putting the 'Jam and Jerusalem' image firmly behind them these days. First there was 'Calendar Girls', now it seems they're in the vanguard of efforts to cut down on the nation's food waste.According to a report in the Independent on Sunday yesterday they've pioneered 10 'Love Food' local groups across the country, with the help of the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign and have been swopping tips and inspiring each other to help cut their food bills. One mother of four has cut her monthly...
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Lobster wars
News in the papers today that Lidl is selling £4.99 lobsters. And - not surprisingly - that they're being snapped up.It's a bit like the stunt which Woolworths pulled a year ago, selling a 'basics' champagne for £5 a bottle: much less about perceived market demand (we can all live without lobster, for goodness sake) but getting new shoppers into their stores.Lidl has something else to gain which is to steal a march on its rivals Aldi which has managed to create the impression that it has the best quality offering of all the discounters (and is now selling cut-price lobsters too, I am informed,...
Friday, 24 October 2008
Brussel tops rock!
I've got a bit of fixation about sprouts at the moment having discovered they are quite ridiculously healthy. Not only does an average 80g serving contain more vitamin C than an orange but they apparently contain higher levels of cancer-fighting compounds than any of their fellow brassicas including broccoli.People hate them though, don't they? And for good reason. If they're boiled too long - as they generally were when I was a kid they go disgustingly soggy and sulphurous. I don't like them raw, I must admit, which is the best way to eat them from a health point of view but I've taken to stir...
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Jazzed-up sardines
Annoyingly my husband is just as smart a shopper as I am, if not even more frugal (unlike me, he doesn't get easily distracted from the task in hand). His bargain buy this week was three tins of sardines for £1 in Somerfield. He likes sardines. I do - sort of. I know we're all supposed to eat a couple of portions of oily fish a week but I struggle. They just taste very . . . oily and fishy and look rather miserable and unappetising unless you jazz them up a bit with other ingredients which is what I did with two of the tins (above).You simply break them up roughly into a bowl, add a little grated...
Monday, 20 October 2008
How to cook ox cheek
I finally managed to track down some ox cheek, not from Waitrose which has so far failed to stock it locally despite a barrage of publicity a couple of weeks ago, but in my local butcher Sheepdrove. They’d obviously responded to the Waitrose offal initiative: an assistant told me they’d never sold ox cheek as a separate cut up to now - it just got chucked in with the mince - but they’d had several requests for it.I bought 485g for just £2.52 which is amazing for organic beef but found I ended up with quite a bit less once I’d trimmed off all the connective tissue of which it has rather more than...
Friday, 17 October 2008
Chocolate cappucino cake
The food news story of the past few days is that we're all getting back into baking. I'm not sure that isn't one of those slightly whimsical ideas the media gets into its collective head (I can't smell any baking smells wafting from our neighbouring flats) but it's a nice, comforting thought anyway. I must confess I'm not an avid baker - which is just as well otherwise I'd be the size of a house - but I did come up with a really great recipe for The Frugal Cook which I adapted from a splendid book called Best Kept Secrets of the WI: Cakes and Biscuits. It's not terribly thrifty (or healthy,...
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Head to head with Delia
Great news: I've finally got a couple of advance copies of the book which looks really amazing. This is the 18th book I've written (must be mad!) but it's always a thrill when you finally get your hands on the first copy*. A bit like having a baby - it makes all the pain worthwhile!The not such good news is that Delia is reissuing her Frugal Food at the end of the month which means we're up against the mighty Delia publicity machine - tough for a small publisher and a non-celebrity author. In Borders yesterday there were posters trumpeting 'Delia's back!' I gather it's basically a re-issue of...
Monday, 13 October 2008
Our £2 pheasant feast
Our best buy at the Dartmouth farmers’ market we shopped at on Saturday morning was two trays of pheasant legs at £2 each. (£2 a tray, not £2 a leg!) From a real farmer which, it has to be said, is unusual at farmers’ markets these days.I don’t know about you but I’m getting more and more disillusioned with them. Most seem to be full of stalls offering overpriced cupcakes and chutneys. Very few offer genuinely local food. And why is it that the only cooked food being produced seems to be burgers and sausages? Surely someone has the wit and imagination to produce something a little different -...
Saturday, 11 October 2008
B & B's are the new boutique hotels
Well, that's what I'm predicting anyway. Who's going to be spending a couple of hundred quid on a snooty designer hotel when a homely B & B (Bed & Breakfast) offers equal comfort for a third the price?We've just been down to Dartmouth for the annual food festival and I promise you I can't think of any hotel I've been to that has a better view than the guesthouse we stayed in (Mounthaven). We breakfasted above a terrace that overlooked the whole of the town and the Dart (above), a dazzling kaleidoscope of gold and silver, shimmering in the morning sun. You wouldn't have got a better view...
Thursday, 9 October 2008
In the Indy's 10 best autumn cookbooks!
Great excitement this evening. Call from a friend to say The Frugal Cook is listed among the Independent's 10 best autumn cookbooks along with Jamie, Nigella, Gordon and Rick. It's tough to get into that sort of list if you're not a celebrity so this is a fantastic boost. Many thanks to Sharon Browne (of BBC Good Food who compiled the list)And it is, I hear, finally on its way. It's being printed overseas, as most books are these days - in 'Frugal's' case in Dubai - and should be in the bookshops in the next couple of weeks. I hope . ....
Online money-savers
Just a useful link from the Guardian's money pages today - 50 ways to save money onli...
Monday, 6 October 2008
Bring back quiche!
I was testing recipes for my new cheese book at the weekend and made this really scrummy (though I say it myself) Leek and Stilton quiche. Quiche, note, not tart. (Another example of francophobia that we consider the idea of quiche hopelessly outdated)Well it couldn't be better suited to these hard times. Home made short crust pastry is cheap and simple to make. Leeks are in season, Stilton curiously underpriced compared to other blue cheeses, eggs and single cream (I could have used milk) still reasonably priced. There was easily enough for six.The downside again is time. You have to make the...
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Omelette paysanne
It's a sign of the disfavour into which French food has fallen that we'd rather talk about frittatas than omelettes these days. Even though they're virtually the same. We also buy pancetta cubetti rather than bacon bits - at about 3 times the price. There's a lot in a name.Anyway, this simple meal was prompted by good old bacon - a small bag of offcuts that I spotted in a local butcher yesterday for just 35p. I also had a leftover cooked potato and some parsley to use up, some eggs and an onion (which one should never be without). I went through the bacon offcuts and trimmed off the excess fat...
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