So farewell Frugal Cook . . .

How long should a blog last? It's a question, I guess, that more and more bloggers will be asking themselves over the next year or so. This one has lasted just over 21 months which isn't bad but I feel its time has come.The online world has changed a lot in the past couple of years. When I started in January 2008, with the specific purpose of recording my progress writing The Frugal Cook book, there weren't nearly as many blogs as there are now. But the big change has been Twitter which has in some ways made blogging superfluous - especially if you already have a website. I know you can't tweet...

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The cost of a recipe is relative . . .

The other day I roasted a mallard duck (which I'd found at a good price at our local butcher, I hasten to add). Mallards are quite small so there was only enough for 2 plus a carcass with a fair bit of meat on it for stock. I left it overnight in the AGA and the result was superb so I started thinking of dishes to set it off. Beetroot risotto, inspired by a recipe from The Larder Lout, one of the students who collaborated on my recent student cookbook, emerged at the top of the list but I hadn't got any beetroot and had run out of risotto rice. I also fancied some horseradish in it and a dollop...

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Floyd's Greek Mushrooms

My husband continues to upstage me on the frugality stakes, bearing bargains back to the house on an almost daily basis.This week's triumph was 750g of mushrooms, reduced to 79p in the Co-op. Needless to say it's yours truly who has to make good use of them and ensure they don't go to waste.For those of you who can't envisage 750g of mushrooms, it's a lot. About 1 1/2 lbs and mushrooms are really light. Of course there are a number of things I could have done with them - mushroom soup, mushroom quiche, Mushroom duxelles (a thick, delicious paste of cooked down mushroom and onion) but flicking...

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A salad, a stir-fry and a soup

It's been a super-frugal week in the Beckett household so far, thanks not to me but my husband who has been trawling for bargains in the local Co-op/Somerfield. As you may know the Co-op took over Somerfield some months ago and finally seems to be in the process of introducing its own lines. That seems to be good news in the case of fresh fruit and veg which have improved in quality and gone down in price.At the weekend he managed to pick up a decent-sized cos lettuce for 25p which I turned into a faux-Caesar salad (above) then yesterday proudly brought home some reduced sprouts (35p) and cheap...

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A beginner's guide to okonomiyaki

This week I was introduced to okonomiyaki by a couple of friends who had spent time in Japan. On the face of it it didn't sound that much of a draw - a sort of Japanese pancake with cabbage and various other bits in it - but after I'd eaten it I could completely understand why they'd been raving about it.In fact it's more like a particularly delicious bubble and squeak. You can order various varieties which are cooked by the server on a hot plate in front of you teppanyaki-style or at least you can at Abeno in Museum Street which is where we all went. I had a Tokyo Mix which included prawn, squid...

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When cheap food is too cheap

Pride comes before a fall they say and my smugness at my bargain buys these week met with an appropriate reminder that even experienced cooks can make mistakes. My £3 rabbit was inedible. Or, to be precise, since it smelt so bad we didn't eat it I'm pretty sure it was inedible. Bad enough to have to chuck the whole dish away, along with the bacon, onions, carrots, apples and very nice cider I'd added to it.It wasn't off otherwise I'd have picked it up before I cooked it. It just had that unappealing whiff of stale meat you get from meat that's been kept too long in the freezer. My suspicions should...

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How to cook breast of lamb

I bagged a couple of terrific bargains on my way back to Bristol yesterday at an extraordinary shopping complex called Darts Farm just outside Exeter. Farm shop doesn't even begin to describe it: it's a gourmet shopping mall on an epic scale - more like the out of town shopping centres you find in the US. You'd expect it to be expensive but it isn't, suprisingly. Or, put it another way, it needn't be. I picked up some good value fruit and vegetables grown on their own farm (including over a pound of rhubarb for 49p), a whole rabbit for £3 and a breast of lamb for £1.50. Personally I don't like...

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Homemade crostini

One of the economies that gives me most satisfaction is my homemade crostini bases. They're one of those things that are invariably overpriced in smart delis - you can pay £3 plus for a pack.If you bake them yourself you can make them for about 80p. You just need a stale(ish) ciabatta or similar shaped long loaf - I tend to pick up mine reduced in the supermarket. Slice thinly and place on a couple of baking sheets that you've drizzled with olive oil, moving them around so they get evenly smeared with oil then drizzle a little more oil on the other side and bake in a medium hot oven for about...

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Chicken, Za'atar and other stories

It's been a hectic few days since we got back from France. Trying to finish one book, publicising another and launching a student cooking campaign. I'm not sure where the time has goneIt hasn't left much time for cooking that's for sure but this weekend we made best use of the annual Organic Food Festival in Bristol and did our weekend shopping there.Interestingly it wasn't that expensive. Sheepdrove, our local organic butcher had a special offer on frozen chickens for £5 each which was unmissable so Sunday night's meal was built around that. Because it had been a balmy late summer's day (what...

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Why DON'T Frenchwomen get fat?

Having blogged the other day about how easy it is to eat healthily in France a totally contrary thought occurred. Why don't Frenchwomen - and men - get fat? By all rights they should. French restaurants always have a prix fixe menu - usually two or more - alongside the à la carte which are almost always better value than ordering dishes individually. We have deals here in the UK too but they're usually two course ones which makes it easy to eat moderately. In France menus almost always include a dessert and sometimes cheese as well so it's more economical to eat 3 courses than two starters.So...

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Baked aubergines with cinnamon, pinenuts and coriander

We spent the day yesterday at friends for a big family party, all cooking in the kitchen together. My contribution was a couscous salad and a vaguely middle-eastern baked aubergine salad which everbody seemed to like and as aubergines are at their best right now I thought I'd share it. I used an interesting cinnamon, apricot and date seasoning mix they happened to have in their storecupboard but cinnamon would work equally wellServes 8-101 kg of aubergines6 tbsp olive oil3 medium-sized onions, peeled and roughly chopped3 large cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped1 tsp ground cinnamon 1...

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Why it's easy for the French to eat healthily

As you know I was going to give the blog a break but I've been overwhelmed at the quality of the produce in the south of France since we've been here. The apricots and grapes above come from a marvellous greengrocer in the small seaside resort of Le Grau d'Agde. It's open year round but is at its peak at this time of year. Our lunch yesterday consisted of tapenade and goats cheese, bought at the daily market, a bunch of hot peppery radishes (1 euro or 87p at current exchange rates) a couple of huge, misshapen but sweet, sweet tomatoes (€1.20/£1) and 5 fat figs (82 cents/71p). 4 out of our recommended...

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The frugal cook is away

Taking a break from the blog for a couple of weeks while I'm on holiday in France - unless I come across an impressively frugal dish. Enjoy the rest of Augu...

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Gorgeous grape, honey and cardamom compote

I made the best recipe for a while the other day. By accident from virtually free ingredients and it was so ridiculously simple. My chef friend Stephen gave me a big bag of seedless black grapes to take home from a tray that were about to go over. We nibbled a few then I realised I would have to cook them to save them. I destalked them and put them in a saucepan with about a tablespoon of honey I'd rescued from the tail end of a pot and shaken up with boiling water to dislodge it and about 6 cardamom pods, brought the whole lot to the boil and simmered them for about 7 or 8 minutes.Result: an...

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Our new student cookbook

It’s always a great moment when you finally hold a copy of a book you’ve written in your hands. It makes all the hard work - and believe me it is hard work - worthwhile.This time it's been a particular thrill because I've worked with three of the students who have collaborated on my student website Beyond Baked Beans: Signe Johansen, Guy Millon and James Ramsden. By luck I stumbled across three students who could not only cook but cook really well. Sig and James have done cookery courses (Sig at Leith's, James at the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland) and Guy's father Marc is a food...

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Steak and onion baguette

It's a strange world out there in supermarketland. We were shopping last night and picked up a 400g pack of Somerfield's 'Best Ever' thin cut steak on a half price offer for just £2.83. That's roughly the same price as a pack of premium mince.I reckoned it probably wouldn't be that tender so bashed it thoroughly with a rolling pin then marinated it in a small glass of red wine, a couple of tablespoons of oil and a good pinch of Herbes de Provence for half an hour.In the meantime I cooked down 4 sliced onions in good slosh of olive oil for about 15 minutes then added a knob of butter and kept on...

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How to cut your restaurant bill

One of the few upsides of the recession is that there seem to be an unprecedented number of good deals in restaurants at the moment - provided, of course, you can afford to eat out.Arbutus, which is one of London's most appealing restaurants, for example has a fixed price pre-theatre dinner for £17.50 for 3 courses - basically the price of a main course in a mid-price restaurant. And the food is terrific. My daughter and I kicked off with porchetta with pecorino (finely sliced, carpaccio style, served with a few leaves and a delicious dressing). She had Welsh lamb breast, pressed into a neat...

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Remoska roast veal with rosemary and garlic

Although I can't think, given the current weather, why we ever switched off the AGA, I'm getting increasingly persuaded by the virtues of its temporary replacement, the Remoska - about a tenth the size but similarly versatile. Tonight I rustled up a Sunday night supper from the freezer, veg rack and storecupboard- a small rolled shoulder of veal joint from the Real Veal Company I brought back from the Bristol Wine and Food Fair a couple of weeks ago and froze with assorted root veg, some home-grown rosemary and almost half a head of fresh elephant garlic that had been sitting round in the veg...

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Check your till receipt!

This afternoon I found I'd been short-changed by Tesco on a special offer. It's the second time in a month that's happened - that I've been aware of although there may well have been other occasions.I bought a couple of packs of herbs on a 2 for £1 offer instead of their normal price of 82p and 79p but the full amount was rung up at the till. I thought the total was more than I expected and checked the receipt. When I took it back I found that I'd been overcharged 61p.A similar thing happened the other day at Somerfield on a 2 for 1 deal on kitchen towel.I'm reluctant to conclude it's deliberate...

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A pinch of umami . . .

Just as I was thinking about posting on the subject of umami (following last night's delicious umami-rich supper of roast haddock and mushrooms) an animated discussion has broken out on Twitter on the virtues - or otherwise - of adding Marmite to a spaghetti sauce.It was prompted by Nigella's discovery, revealed in Observer Food Monthly today, that adding Marmite to a classic al burro sauce makes for a particularly tasty, child-friendly meal, a tip she got from her mentor, Italian food writer Anna del Conte.Marmite, of course, is rich in umami - the so-called 'fifth taste' (the others being sweet,...

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To eat better, eat less . . .

I've made a couple of purchases in the last couple of days that were not strictly frugal but they weren't extravagant either. One was two very small punnets of raspberries (from a farm called Pixley Berries which makes fruit cordials) which I bought from our local greengrocer. I didn't weigh them but I would doubt if they were more than 125g each which at 99p a punnet wasn't cheap. But they had auch a fabulously intense flavour you could eat them on their own so no need for cream or even sugar. Worth every penny.I also picked up four packs of back bacon at the Bristol Wine & Food Fair for...

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My new frugal appliances

As predicted the weather has turned cold - or coldish - again so we probably could have left the AGA on but who knows what it will be like next week? And besides I'm getting quite used to our new cooking arrangementsThe induction hob in particular is fantastic. I have to admit I was deeply sceptical when my husband suggested it and pretty well gave in to humour him but as usual he had researched the subject exhaustively and was (annoyingly) right: they are incredibly efficient. For those of you who are unfamiliar with them they only kick in when a compatible stainless steel pan is placed on them...

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Grilled lemon chicken and courgettes

Well the AGA is now off - phrew! - and we've got our summer cooking kit organised. Last night I gave the Cuisinart grill a run through its paces and was pretty impressed. I've only ever cooked with a George Foreman grill before which is fine for burgers but not much else - this had a much better system of heat transmission and a heavier lid which seems to cook single pieces of meat and veg more effectively.I simply took a couple of chicken breasts, separated the fillet and sliced the remainder in half lengthwise to create pieces of a roughly even thickness. I marinated them for about an hour in...

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Should one switch off an AGA in summer?

For the last two or three weeks I've been vaguely wondering whether we should switch off the AGA. Now with the weather getting seriously sticky it's getting positively uncomfortable to sit in the kitchen - a problem since that's where we eat.It's also, obviously, where we cook and where we dry clothes. No AGA = a trek to the launderette every time we change the sheets. The main problem though is that there are no alternative cooking facilities other than a kettle (we rent our current flat) which is presumably why AGA owners keep them blasting away year-round. When I checked online just now I...

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Another riff on pasta, tomatoes and pesto

Just to show that the current leftovers jag is still in full swing today I managed to rustle up another pasta dish with the remains of Friday's feast and a few other odds and ends from the salad drawer. In effect it was a double pasta sauce. I fried a sliced onion and red pepper for about 7-8 minutes until they were beginning to brown then stirred in a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, a tablespoon of tomato paste and a chopped tomato. I left it bubbling away while I cooked about 200g of Mafalda corta pasta with a handful of green beans, adding a few sugar snap peas towards the end of the...

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Living off leftovers

As time goes on I'm more and more convinced of the virtues of shopping as and when you need it rather than doing a big weekly shop.We're still living off the leftovers of the supper I cooked for friends on Friday night - admittedly with a couple of food gifts: a carton of lettuce and pea soup (made to use up leftover leaves) from Stephen Markwick of Culinaria who I dropped in to see on Saturday and a highly original gift of gulls eggs and n'duja, a very spicy Calabrian sausage from one of our guests, fellow food writer Xanthe Clay. Our lunch today must be the least conventional fry-up ever: gulls...

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Spaghetti with pesto and roast tomatoes

I'm on a bit of pesto kick at the moment. The local greengrocer is full of fat bunches of basil and there's no other way to use one up before it goes off even if you add basil to everything. Not that making pesto is a hardship. It's so bright and flavourful and vivid in flavour - light years away from the drab, almost khaki-coloured paste you get in jars. Since I posted the recipe on my student site beyondbakedbeans.com we've been having it slathered over everything which is why there wasn't quite enough to make the sauce I devised for our pasta lunch today (Napolina spaghetti being on special...

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Lamb legs are the new lamb shanks

I know I've been banging on incessantly about how cheap cuts are no longer cheap but here's a perfect illustration. Incited by my recent observations that men aren't as frugal as women when it comes to food shopping, my husband picked up a half price leg of lamb for £8.99 in Somerfield the other day.I never really fancy a full English roast in this sort of weather so decided to make an old recipe I haven't made for years from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery which you can find (the recipe, not the book) online hereThere was a time when I would have conscientiously trotted down to the shops and...

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Salt and pepper wings

It's been a manic week on the work front so I thought I might dig up a recipe from The Book. (There is a Frugal Cook book in case it's slipped your notice ;-) I also had a rather enticing pic of it I remembered I hadn't published.The main pleasure of eating chicken wings is the lovely sticky, finger-licking, almost Marmitey goo you get if you cook then sufficiently long, a texture and flavour that sometimes gets masked if you cover them with a marinade. If you can have salt and pepper squid I thought, why not salt and pepper wings? It cuts down on the other ingredients you need to use and makes...

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So are men frugal?

There's an interesting trend I've been noticing over the last few weeks and months which is that almost all my followers and most of the people who comment on this blog (with a few honourable exceptions) are women. Does that mean men aren't frugal?I think it actually says more about the dynamics of blogging than about frugality. Women are more prone to support and get involved with a blogger they like than men are, I would say but there is an interesting point here which I was discussing with a colleague on a work trip I've been on this week (hence the gap in posts) which is that men are frugal...

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Quick chickpea, spinach and turmeric curry

Having been reading a lot recently about how incredibly good turmeric is for you I’ve been devising ways of upping the quantity I use. It turned out particularly well with this super-easy (and frugal) chickpea curryServes 22 tbsp light olive or vegetable oil1 medium to large onion peeled and roughly chopped2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric1 tsp ground cumin1/4 tsp chilli powder or hot paprika or a shake of hot pepper sauce1 small can or 1/2 a 400g can of tomatoes or 200ml of passata1 400g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed2 handfuls of sliced fresh spinach leaves...

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The lure of old cookbooks

I finally got to post about the two old cookbooks I picked up for a song in Topsham the other day. Do I need them? Absolutely not - the shelves are already bulging with cookbooks but for less than the price of two glossy magazines, how could I resist?The first - for which I paid a princely £3.50 - is Len Deighton's quirky and original 'Où est le Garlic' first published by Penguin in 1965 (this is the '67 edition). Deighton was a successful thriller writer who turned his hand to cookery writing. The appeal is equally though in the charming comic strip illustrations (below), done not by Deighton...

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So what did you cook when you were a student?

My publisher Absolute Press released details of our new student book yesterday which is called The Ultimate Student Cookbook. It's a big claim but we make it because it combines my 6 years experience of writing for students in the Beyond Baked Beans books and website with that of three current students who have been contributing videos, recipes and tips to our Facebook page this year.As a bit of fun I thought I'd ask my fellow tweeters on Twitter what they used to cook at uni and got a flood of fantastic replies. There were all the usual suspects such as spag bol (or Slag Bol) as Oliver Thring...

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Spring vegetable, herb and goats cheese risotto

I've been editing a new bumper edition of my Beyond Baked Beans student cookbooks recently (of which more later) and once again wondered where to place risotto. Is it an everyday recipe or a special occasion one?What makes most people treat it as special occasion eating is that it needs pretty much full-on attention. Not that that's problematic - all you need is a glass of wine and someone else to chat to while you're making it but it creates the impression it's difficult. It truly isn't - the two things you need to remember are to cook the rice sufficiently (2-3 minutes) before you add any liquid...

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