Chicken stock rules!

Any of you who have been in a professional kitchen will know that most chefs have a pan of stock or demi-glace sauce on hand to deglaze their pans. Well, you can do the same just as effectively with chicken stock.

The carcass of the chicken I bought a couple of days ago has made the most fabulously rich, jellied stock which I was saving for a soup or risotto. But the Toulouse sausages I was frying for lunch today produced such great stuck-on pan juices I had to prise them off somehow* and the stock was conveniently at hand. Two or three ladlefuls and I had some really intense rich pan juices that went perfectly with the accompanying lentils (cooked with garlic and parsley). I could have used a little wine or wine and stock combined but sometimes wine can make a sauce too acidic if you haven't time to cook it down.

And there's still enough stock for the soup . . .

* Incidentally you can't do this once the pan juices have burnt so it's worth keeping the temperature low when you're frying

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When not to follow a recipe

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is how important recipes are. Or rather aren't. Basically they're a set of guidelines. Too often we take them as gospel.

Certainly I did when I first learnt to cook. Unless you're shown how to cook you tend to take instructions literally. If a recipe says 2 large eggs and you only have medium eggs you go out and buy some. If it says a pinch of cayenne and you only have chilli powder or hot paprika you don't know you can use those perfectly well.

Frugal cooking is about making use of what you've got rather than continually buying new ingredients, often for just one recipe. Last night was a case in point.

I'd bought this big bag of chicory (see yesterday's post) and decided to make a Simon Hopkinson recipe I remembered of chicken baked with chicory and bacon. (There was some bacon left over in the fridge.) The chicken pieces in the supermarket clearly came from mass-produced poultry so I bought a free-range Label Rouge chicken - on special offer - and jointed it, gaining a carcass for stock in the process

Couldn't remember what other ingredients there were in the recipe and came home to find I needed two lemons. Fortunately there was a rather elderly lime lurking in the bottom of the fridge so I used that and some tarragon vinegar instead, deglazing the pan with the vinegar to get rid of the vinegary taste. (Could obviously have used ordinary white wine vinegar) No chicken stock either yet so used some vegetable bouillon powder and some white wine as recommended. Never a problem to find wine in this household but I could have got away without it.

I also used less chicory than the recipe recommended because I wanted to save a couple of heads for today.

Despite all the changes the dish tasted great and cost me less than it usually would.

Am in danger of getting intolerably smug.

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A crisp, healthy winter salad

Yesterday's shopping trip wasn't wildly exciting but yielded some good bargains. 2 kilos of oranges (11 in total) for €1.99 (£1.48), a kilo of endive or chicory for €1.39 (£1.04) and a huge bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley for 78p. That'll last all week.

I don't know why chicory is so much cheaper in France. You'd be lucky to get two heads in England for the price I paid. We'll bake some tonight with the 'Label Rouge' chicken we bought (also reasonable value at €6.53 or £4.86) and probably have some tomorrow wrapped in ham topped with cheese sauce but today I used two to make a simple salad together with a couple of the oranges, some chopped green olives and a can of mackerel (the latter ingredients retrieved from the back of the storecupboard). And a generous handful of chopped parsley. The dressing was made from the juice of half of one of the oranges and some of the oil from the olive jar. Lots of pepper - a bit of cayenne wouldn't have gone amiss - but you couldn't fault it for healthiness. Oily fish and all.

If you can't get hold of any cheap chicory you could substitute fennel or celery.

Incidentally, as you may have gathered, I didn't flake out as a result of eating the out of date Caprice des Dieux which was perfectly fine. Not that I would urge you to follow my example. Heaven forbid.

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How much do sell-by dates matter?

I've done a lot of chucking out in the last 24 hours. Three pieces of cheese from mother-in-law's fridge, one from my own.

A couple of them were well over the hill (oldies are hopeless about sell-by dates) but mine, a piece of Comté that officially expired on the 28th of January didn't look too bad. I remember when I was a child my mum would have simply cut away the mould and cheerfully served up the rest but if I advised you to do that the health police would be down on me like a ton of bricks. So out it went.

What I should of course have done before going away was grate it and freeze it then I could have added it to a sauce or a topping. Hey ho . . .

I did however find an unopened box of Caprice des Dieux, a creamy brie-style cheese to which my youngest son is very partial but somehow escaped his attentions over Christmas. That expired on the 21st of January, almost two weeks ago, but looks - and smells - absolutely fine so I shall risk it. You wonder what they add to it to give it this kind of shelf-life. If I survive I'll report on the outcome.

To compensate for all this waste I raided the fridge and storecupboard for our lunch - spaghetti amatriciana-style made with some leftover pancetta (in date, I hasten to add), a small jar of tomato and chilli pasta sauce, extra garlic and a dash of red wine vinegar (useful for adding zip to shop bought sauces). Some parsley would have been nice but we haven't been shopping yet. That pleasure is to come.

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Vive la frugalité!

Like many Brits these days we split our time between England and France. We have elderly mums in both countries both of whom like us to spend as much time as possible with them. This month it's my French-based mother-in-law's turn.

So the frugal eating experiment moves to France. It'll be interesting to see how much cheaper it is. Unfortunately the exchange rate isn't too great at the moment but food generally costs less than in the UK.

Vive la frugalité!

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The perils of brown food

One of the problems about using leftovers is that everything can end up looking sludgy. I fell into that trap last night with my pheasant and mushroom pilaf. Good though it tasted it looked unrelievedly brown.

In my defence I should say that I deliberately didn't buy any fresh herbs which would have immediately made the dish look - and taste - more appealing. We're off to France on Monday and I'm trying to run the fridge stocks down instead of chucking away a bin bag full of unused food. Parsley would have done but coriander would have been better. And even a few finely chopped mint leaves

Other ingredients, currently missing from our store-cupboard would have also helped. Some finely snipped dried fruits (apricots or figs would have been nice with the pheasant); some nuts to add crunch (we normally have some brazil nuts lying around but cashews or pistachios would have worked). Oh, and a final squeeze of Seville orange juice would have been lovely.

They'll be gone from the shops by the time we get back so must buy a few to freeze. Although you can create a similar flavour by mixing orange and lemon juice they have a unique aromatic bitterness which gives a lovely lift to game like pheasant or duck.

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Town vs country

Yesterday I bought a pheasant. It cost £5 which isn't bad if you compare the cost with a free-range chicken but I hesitated because it feels to me like a luxury ingredient.

That's very much an urban point of view. If I was living in a country village then I might well have been able to get a brace for that price or, indeed have traded something I'd grown or produced for a free bird from a neighbour. Game is cheap in the country. If I was thinking of making a curry on the other hand I would probably pay far more for my ingredients than I would in a large city. So you can't be absolute about which ingredients are cheap.

Anyway, I pot roasted the pheasant for about an hour and a half with some root veg spiced with sweet smoked pimenton and a pinch of cinnamon, a small (about 50ml) glass of leftover Christmas port, a similar glass of white wine and some stock. After it had been cooking for an hour I removed the lid for the remaining cooking time to brown the bird. While the pheasant rested I skimmed the fat off the pan juices (tiresome but well worth doing). We ate the two breasts with the roast veg and stir fried sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes which I'd first boiled and then peeled (easier that way round than peeling them first). The veg by the way cost £1.78.

The legs and remaining meat on the carcass will make a pilaf for tonight. The carcass can be used for stock for a soup. The leftover veg can be fried up bubble and squeak-style with some cold ham or other cold meat. With a few modest additions we should get three more meals for our £7 outlay.

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