Delicious budget meals for frugal entertaining: Chicken, pak choi and chorizo risotto recipe

Posted in Chicken, Rice and Pasta | 2 comments

Delicious budget meals for frugal entertaining: Chicken, pak choi and chorizo risotto recipe

Danny and I love pak choi (also known as bok choi and Horses Ear). This Chinese vegetable is a member of the cabbage family and cooks in two minutes when it’s sliced and simmered fast. It’s a great side vegetable with a richer dish as it tastes very clean – a cross between spinach and cabbage. The white stalks have a satisfying crunch. Tonight I decided to add it to a chicken and chorizo risotto. It needed to be added right at the end, just before the cooked chicken so as to retain some of its crispness and texture. It worked really...

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Best budget recipes for 50% or less: Sam’s perfect oven chips. Best homemade oven chips recipe

Posted in Vegetables and Sides, Vegetarian | 12 comments

Best budget recipes for 50% or less: Sam’s perfect oven chips. Best homemade oven chips recipe

Danny has cut our potato bill from around £4 a week to 80p a week. Our cold dark barn is the perfect place to store spuds. He was horrified when he discovered how much that we were spending on potatoes. The price rose steeply last winter. The past warmer winters meant that most UK spuds were susceptible to blight - harvests were small and prices shot up. Since then he has been looking out for marked down spuds in the supermarkets. Generally he finds them for 40p for 2.5 kilos. They are hung in the dark barn in thick Hessian sacks. Perhaps...

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Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Crispy fried sprats recipe

Posted in Fish and Seafood | 10 comments

Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Crispy fried sprats recipe

When I lived in London I often ordered whitebait as a starter. I thought that they had to be deep fried and would be a palaver to rustle up at home. Also I rarely found them in the shops. Eventually I discovered that they can be fried in a little oil and were fun to prepare shaken in a bag of seasoned flour. Danny sprang in through the front door brandishing a 450g bag of sprats last week. Reduced from £2.49 to just 36p. I have never tried sprats. It’s the sort of dish that I imagined Peggotty’s family would sit down to in their converted...

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Delicious budget meals for frugal yet scrumptious entertaining: Chicken and Romano Pepper Risotto

Posted in Chicken, Rice and Pasta | 16 comments

Delicious budget meals for frugal yet scrumptious entertaining: Chicken and Romano Pepper Risotto

We have done very little entertaining over the past eighteen months. The major reason why we’ve slowed down is cost, and time. When I seriously thought about why we were not entertaining, I twigged that I was hung up on the cost rather than the time and the taste of the food. It’s taken all these months to realise there’s no need to spend a fortune or take a day off to cook. We eat well most nights. Why not open our door and share? You can entertain on a budget as long as the food is delicious. And there’s the rub. Entertaining on...

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Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Continental style warming winter pie recipe

Posted in Beef and Steak and Veal, Savoury Pies | 9 comments

Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Continental style warming winter pie recipe

I woke this morning with one eye puffy, bloodshot and streaming. It was agony. What had happened during the night? Danny was alarmed. “You can’t decorate with just one eye. Your painting will be asynchronous." "What on earth does that mean?" "It's an IT term. Meaning intermittent amongst other things.”  He explained. Past caring I crawled under the duvet as he shot down to Newmarket to ask the pharmacist’s opinion. He returned with a small bottle marked Red Eye Drops. I applied the potion and snoozed in bed all day, curled up with the...

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Delicious cheese, potato and parsley frittata recipe

Posted in Vegetarian | 10 comments

Delicious cheese, potato and parsley frittata recipe

We left the Pickled Walnuts Challenge evening with a box of beautiful blue and greeny blue eggs laid by Magic Cochin's Spice Girls. “I think that those eggs are destined for a frittata.” Smiled Danny as we drove away. Our hens have not yet started laying again. I check the nesting box every morning. Our Senior Girls are now into their fifth year, so it will be a slow start. Peace and Hope should be laying by Easter.  So a present of fresh, free range eggs is treasured. We haven’t had a frittata for ages. My favourite is the simple one...

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Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Plaice with a creamy prawn sauce recipe

Posted in Fish and Seafood | 12 comments

Best great budget recipes for 50% or less: Plaice with a creamy prawn sauce recipe

We stopped eating fish for a while a few years ago as it was just so expensive. I made a fish pie one Christmas and the ingredients cost over £15.00. Then I realised that there are often amazing bargains on a late Sunday afternoon from the Waitrose fish counter. With these and the regular offerings from the Tesco condemned food section we now have access to quite a lot of great fish and sea food for at least 50% of their normal value. A lot of fish is tossed into the freezer to be turned into fish pies but if we find plaice or sole these...

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Delicious budget meals for frugal entertaining: Honey glazed gammon baked with star anise and tamarind recipe

Posted in Pork Ham Bacon Sausages | 8 comments

Delicious budget meals for frugal entertaining: Honey glazed gammon baked with star anise and tamarind recipe

Ham is generally superb to cook and eat. Gammon can be a bit disappointing with its rougher texture and stronger taste. A few weeks ago a good friend gave us two small joints of gammon, bought from the back of a lorry at a Bank Holiday market. The first one was simmered very slowly in the slow cooker and Danny gave it the thumbs down. “It tastes piggy.” The dogs didn’t agree. This weekend I spotted the other one, nestling in the freezer. Loathe to give the dogs another treat, I remembered Smart Wife's deluxe budget dish. “I’m going...

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Our best bolognaise sauce recipe

Posted in Rice and Pasta, Sauces Gravy Dressings | 14 comments

Our best bolognaise sauce recipe

I love pasta. Danny was so so for years. When we visit Italy I am keen to sample as many of their sauces and starters as possible – looking for secrets and hints for the ultimate pasta sauce recipe. Danny sticks to steaks and puds. “They’re the same price and I love steak.” Danny is Chief Taster back home so he leaves the R and D to me when we are on holiday. We haven’t eaten spaghetti bolognaise for ages.  So yesterday I thought I’d try and make a sauce with less meat. Cheaper? Yes. But I was aiming to create something that was...

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Skinflint soup recipe: broccoli stalk, last week's courgettes and post Christmas Stilton combine and rule

Posted in Starters and Soups | 21 comments

Skinflint soup recipe: broccoli stalk, last week's courgettes and post Christmas Stilton combine and rule

I hate throwing out the thick broccoli (calibrese) stalks. The Penultimate Paramour used to chop them and use them in stir fries but they always tasted a bit rough and to be quite honest, stalky. They are tough miniature tree trunks and probably needed a bit more time than a quick whisk in a hot pan. This morning I tottered downstairs. Before you could say "bacon sandwich" I was chopping an onion. I had an hour before leaving for work. The broccoli stalk was going to be the heart of a tasty soup. Poking about in the fridge I found some...

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