Creative Austerity

Is it possible to be both creative and economical? Stupid bloody question really, as some of the world's great dishes are peasant in their roots, and thus made using the simplest ingredients. The mushroom lasagna I cooked the other night was not exactly simple, but it was economical, and it was the tastiest thing I have put on the table in months.

Mushrooms in place of a meaty ragu was an idea I'd been mulling over for a while, partly because I've committed to doing more vegetarian dishes. An interview with a vegetarian chef (she was making Christmas dinner lasagna) was another spur. Even plain button mushrooms are moist enough to help with cooking the pasta, a nice protein boost, and both cheaper and healthier than using beef. 

The milk for the bechamel was flavoured as ever with onion, carrot, pepper and herbs - bay, thyme and sage - so was packed with flavour already. I made the sauce, though, with about 50g of Stilton. Blue cheese goes well with mushrooms, and this made the sauce - stiff as behoves bechamel for lasagna - really special. 

The market-bought 'shrooms were just sliced and sweated in vegetable oil (plus a teeny bit of truffle oil from a bottle someone kindly bought for us last Christmas), then the lasagna was layered sauce, pasta, sauce, fungi, grated cheddar, pasta, sauce, fungi, cheddar, pasta, sauce, grated Parmesan. 

It cooked to cheesy brownness in 40 minutes at 180 Celsius, filling the bottom two floors of the house with appetite-inducing aromas, within which the few drops of truffle-oil played a surprisingly big role. Ruth was out at a leaving do (plenty of those at the university currently), but SC and I, having already prepared a plea in mitigation with a tomato and cucumber salad, finished all bar a mouthful, both of us tempted to seconds and thirds.  

Back-of-the-envelope calculations make the cost well under £3, and it was good enough and solid enough (unlike my ragu version) to have graced at least a gastro-pub table, if not somewhere more upmarket. It would have fed four with ease too. 

So yes, sometimes you can be creative and economical. Long-winded answer really. 

Unreal Christmas Cookbook VI

Celebrated as a celebrity, indeed the celebrity's celebrity, that woman whose gifts are beyond all knowing - Katie Price - has (not in any way) her new cookbook (which doesn't exist as far as we know, but truth is stranger than friction as she might say) out for the Christmas market. Imagine if we could unite her talents with those of Golum Best, Kim Kardashboardian, and Can'telle, what power would be ours?

Anyway, the book takes a new approach to food, and one that is quite refreshing in itself, and fairly entertaining, devoted as it is to which dishes, implements and sauces she would like to use on ex-husband and crap singer Peter Andre. The first chapter of near Proustian prose entitled 'I hate him, I really really hate him,' sets the subtle tone. It gets racier, however, the highlight for this reviewer the section on 'Painful places to put a skewer'.

One (non-existent) detail was annoying: in the space devoted to combat desserts she seemed incapable of deciding how big her vanilla bombes should be: in one illustration they are enormous, the next small, then bigger again, then huge... Whatever their size, the whipped-cream topping looked delicious.

The magazine Gab has paid over £35 for the serial rights to the book, the first instalment  'My Cookbook Hell - Katie Price tells all' will feature as soon as the current serial 'My Broken Nail Nightmare - Katie Price tells all - finishes.

Don't Waste That Pumpkin

How many of the pumpkins bought for Halloween actually get used for food? Even a good percentage of the many squashes grown on the nation's allotments probably get stuck in a bowl on the table as a nice natural decoration to be thrown away when they fall to bits. I felt very virtuous yesterday using a Turk's Turban squash as part of our Sunday roast extravaganza. And it was lovely.

The fruit, for such it is pedants, had been sitting in our conservatory for a month, picked to avoid being nicked before halloween, then playing the role of something I'd get round to eventually, which turned out to be yesterday.

Thanks to Nigel Slater, as ever fab ideas, annoying writing: I got the basic idea from his Tender Part 1.

The squash was peeled, cleaned of stingy bits and seeds, and cut into one inch dice (that's 2.54cm dice for those of a modern bent), then rolled in loads of crushed garlic, thyme from outside the back door, and Maldon salt (how very Middle Class is that?). Roasted (in a solid Le Creuset dish so piling exotic bourgeois onto solid Middle Class) along with the chicken and some red onions to make use of the oven it smelled fantastic, the outside crisping and garlicky the inside soft and melting.

This was another of those dishes that not only tastes good, but looks superb, a rich sunshine gold, something to raise the spirits at this time of the year when it seems to go dark about 15 minutes after dawn.

Student Survival - Shopping Tips

I am making a sort of personal cookbook for my son in the fervent hope he gets his grades and starts at university next year. The thought struck me while starting on that that shopping tips would be even more useful, given he can do quite a few dishes already, but has never yet done a supermarket (or other) shopping run.

So for what they are worth, and in no particularly logical order, my top tips for student shopping survival:

1. In supermarkets check out the 'ethnic' food shelves. You'll find rice, coconut milk, spices and plenty more that is appreciably cheaper than the same foods (different brands) on the next aisle.
2. Recipe bacon aka cooking bacon is a wonderful deal - the ends, off-cuts and errors not suitable for pretty packets. Same bacon, and often with big chunks perfect for stews. And who cares if their bacon butty is made up of mis-shapes?
3. Tinned tomatoes - buy the cheapest - basic, value, whatever they call them in your store. Some colour variation, maybe a tiny bit of skin, but no difference in taste or standard. Which price sounds better, 31p or £1?
4. Don't be put off by Aldi and Lidl's lack of fancy decor, they do good food and at low prices. Lidl's Parmesan is the best supermarket one I've found, and it is between 35% and 50% cheaper than the stuff from certain other big name places.
5. Markets can be brilliant for fruit and veg, much cheaper than supermarkets and ethically often great as veg tends to be local.
6. Chinese supermarkets are another source of good and cheaper ingredients. When I get the chance I buy noodles in them for about a quarter of the Sainsbury's price, and tins of bamboo shoots and water chestnuts for 60p to 65p compared with 90p.
7. 'Basic' peppers again are a bargain, just more interesting shapes than the dearer ones. They don't come from bad plants. They are not 'off'. 
8. If you buy veg etc in supermarkets, a quick glance at the bagged up price and the loose price per kilo is worthwhile. Mushrooms you pick and put in a paper bag are a good 10% cheaper than the plastic boxes. 
9. For meat if you can find a butcher's shop (or stall on the market) use it. They will do small bags of mince (ragu, chilli con carne, etc) where supermarkets tend to do 250g minimum. Meat as spice in a ragu needs 100g or less.
10. Don't buy the cheapest bread. Bread should be a pleasure, and the crappiest sliced rubbish is not. Same thing with 'mild' cheddar - and with the latter you need twice as much to get the same flavour as you have with strong stuff, so it's a false economy.
11. Buy in season, when gluts mean cheap prices. The other side of this is don't buy stuff flown half-way round the world - food-mile guilt and the freight adds to the price. 
12. Some 'specials' are worth going for, others not. BOGOF fresh foods risks the 'free' one (not free) going off, so you wasted money and resources. Tins, however, are good value as they keep.
13. Own brand works for simple things like rice, pasta and bread. A brand's price includes a hefty proportion of advertising spend and something for sharper packaging. Who cares?
14. Protein isn't just found in meat. Mushrooms, tofu, Quorn, and beans are good alternatives, and a lot cheaper.  

Any other suggestions?

Something More on Toast - Student Survival (Again)

I'm a great believer in simplicity in the kitchen, or the home kitchen at any rate. For a domestic cook it's clearly easier to get something quite basic right than to master some 13 stage three days of preparation grind your own hand-picked spices splendour. Though I love cooking I don't necessarily want to spend my whole day in the kitchen. I also think that in cookery as with children mixing paint and anyone unskilled mixing cocktails if you have too many ingredients you end up with brown.

The colour of my breakfast this morning was indeed brown, or at least grey-brown, but the flavour was wonderful. Four quite large mushrooms sliced, fried gently in a little butter till the juices ran, a tsp of plain flour stirred into the juices and cooked for a minute or two, then a bare sherry glass of milk stirred in and cooked until there was a shiny sauce that spooned onto toast was thick enough not to soak into it. Salt, pepper, eat. As with a previous post about a boiled egg I took huge pleasure in getting something as good as it can be, a very rare moment.

An aside: why does that sauce, made with flour, need only a brief simmer to lose the floury flavour?

As my son gets nearer to university age I'm thinking more and more about the sort of economic and simple dishes students should be able to cook. I think he will be able. Those creamed mushrooms, with more toast to fill the bottomless stomach of youth, would suffice for the day's lighter meal. And it would cost well under £1. Substitute two baked potatoes (one of the few things I cook in the microwave - quicker, cheaper, and no loss of flavour) for the toast and it's a substantial main course, still with intelligent shopping less than £1. How many students have the resources to do that, though, compared to the number living off supermarket pizza?

The World Must Know - Perfect Pizza

It seems odd to have learnt how to make perfect pizza dough from a Scot named Ron Mackenna while touring Michelin-starred restaurants in South West France. His portfolio career is as intriguing - he's a defence lawyer in Glasgow and restaurant critic for a national newspaper. But it is his family recipe that I have used recently to great effect (no criticism, which speaks silent volumes). The story behind the recipe is that his ancestry is part Italian.

Previously I used a bread-maker dough that included sugar and pretty much worked but didn't quite hit the spot. Ron's recipe is wonderfully simple, always a quality to be praised in cookery - if it works, and this does.

The ingredients: 500g flour (I use a roughly 50/50 mix of white bread and plain as the latter makes the bases crispier), 325ml of cold water; 13g of salt; a 7g sachet of dried yeast. To this after a few experiments I now add 2tbsp of olive oil to make the dough more elastic. Mix the ingredients well in a big bowl, knead for 10 minutes then leave somewhere warm to rise - the old double-in-volume cliche is a good marker. Divide the risen dough in four lumps and roll these out into pizza shapes then leave them for half an hour or more to rise again. Put on your toppings and cook in the hottest temperature your oven can reach - mine is 250 Celsius but it struggles to stay there.

On my birthday recently I thought I'd be lazy and bought two pizzas from M&S. They were disappointing in so many ways - badly seasoned, mean toppings with little flavour, but most of all the base was nowhere near as tasty and properly pizza-y as Ron's.

Pizza is a perfect Thursday meal, in two ways. Like half the country I do the main food shop on Friday, so by Thursday the cupboard may not be bare, but the lumps of meat tend to have gone - though there is always a tin of chopped tomatoes. That - drained - does for two bases, with additions that tend to include garlic, briefly sweated mushrooms, more garlic, thinly sliced onion, a few prawns left in the freezer, slivers of the last pepper in the fridge, a tin of sardines with the bones removed by the maker or me, slices of ham or salami, and if I have remembered mozzarella. Elizabeth David (great writer, great inspiration, huge snob) demanded minimalist pizza toppings, I dare to disagree - it is a using up meal, a making the best of stuff meal, but with judgement.

It's a Thursday thing too in that we always eat our meal in the lounge that day for some long forgotten reason. And pizza is perfect for that, Ron's perfect pizza making it even more so if that were not philosophically impossible.

Update: I tried this using the dough setting on my breadmaker, and it was better than my hand-kneaded version.

Unreal Christmas Cookbook V

Although it is difficult to be sure, we wonder if in Nigella Lawson's new (unreal) cookbook just (not in any way) out for the Christmas market we detect a reaction to her recent domestic problems and divorce from well-known contemporary art and profits collector, Thatcher acolyte and all-round good guy Charles Saaaatchi.

Take for example the opening dish which doesn't actually exist, (E)minced and boiled lamb's testicles (naturally served with a bucket of velvet double cream and smoothly whipped chocolate sauce). Or another: Roast crimson ox-heart pierced with a thousand pine-scented and magnificent cocktail sticks (with a full gallon of Cornish clotted cream and delicate yet firm and active chocolate shavings).

The cover of the non-existent book too gives a hint about her emotional turmoil, the divine Nigella's deeply decollete [still can't do the accents] nightie-cum-ballgown in black rather than her trademark red, matching the bear-fur coat draped around her perfectly. Those who have looked at her face in that picture say she looks very sad too.

Our favourite utterly imaginary recipe, however, is a little more relaxed, one dish so typical of her giving fans, statins reps and heart specialists everywhere hope that Nigella's despair is over: Warm and melting creme fraiche and dark and tangy yet subtle bitter chocolate tart with sculpted clotted cream topping to be served with unctuous butter and spring meadow milk chocolate sauce is an instant classic. Someone we know was so taken with it that they gave a brief strangled cry the first time they read her deathless prose. Another - deeply moved - had a catch in the throat when talking about it, though a third suggested it should be treated with caution. Some might consider rather stronger action more appropriate.

Due to Overwhelming Demand

A flood of comment, singular, asking for the recipe for the brisket mentioned in the previous post. As with so much of what I cook it's more method than measurements.

First have one bloody big piece of brisket, ours was just shy of 6lb, ready at room temperature. If I had been confident of my butcher locating flat-rib I'd have used that in place of brisket. Prepare a dry rub with a nice finely ground blend of spices, my own preference the other night being a tsp of peppercorns, a tbsp of coriander seeds,  two tbsp of cumin seeds, two whole star anise (anises?), a tsp of sea salt, three cloves and a tsp of piment de Jamaique as we say in Preston, or allspice if you prefer, and a tbsp of palm sugar. Rub this all over the beef as erotically as possible in the circumstances.

In a chicken brick or similar closed pot big enough (derr) to take the joint put some slices of carrot and onion in the bottom to keep the meet raised slightly, plus a few cloves of garlic. Pour in so as not to wash the meat clean of dry rub (derr again) enough boiling water to touch the bottom of the brisket, put the lid on and put into the oven preheated to about 180C, then immediately turn the temperature down to 120C and leave for about eight hours - it could actually have stood another two at least.

The end result is, or should be, easy to pull apart, the crust beautifully blackened by the spices rather than the heat.

Drain the excess juices off every two or three hours, but leave enough in to maintain the steaming-roast effect. After resting the meat for at least 25 minutes serve pulled into shreds with BBQ sauce or if you have time a reduction (how trendy) of the juices tweaked to your taste.

To be eaten in wraps or flat-breads with sauce, fried onions, dill pickles, red cabbage, friends and beer. Although as Malcolm Bradbury so astutely pointed out eating people is wrong.

While the Oven's On - One Flame Again

Being a mean beast who cuts things very fine (Ratty in Wind in the Willows) I don't like to use the oven for just one thing, especially as ours is one of those with a double-sized space one side and a mini version (only ever used to warm plates) the other. So I try to remember to include a few unpeeled onions to give the makings of a simple onion with cheese veg dish, some beetroot, or baking potatoes, or most often a gratin.

The one-flame cookery idea easily incorporates such economy, as why should one flame mean on dish only? Saturday's party (very enjoyable thanks) included a 6lb brisket dry rubbed with spices and sugar roasted at about 120C for nearly eight hours. That would have been a profligate use of the oven had it been just for one dish. So I also did a big potato gratin, loads of onions, loads of cheddar, slow cooked for two and a half hours, and a toffee-crumb apple and quince pudding, conscious assuaged.

Gratins are such a simple thing to do as I was explaining to hopefully-soon-to-be student Sternest Critic. What they do need is time and thus patience. It's not something to throw together for a quick snack. And they can be very cheap filler-uppers. That was secondary in my thinking for the bonfire bash for which its forgiving nature was uppermost in my thoughts: it was ready a good half an hour before I took it out, but didn't spoil at all (if anything the cheese got a nicer browning) for being left longer, and could have remained at that heat without damage for another hour. Again it could have been cooked at 180C and been ready in less than half the time.

It's also the sort of cooking I love - no recipe, just a basic idea and method. If you have to weigh the ingredients for a gratin you're trying too hard. Just peeled and sliced spuds and onions (the latter very thin), grated cheese, layered onion-spud-cheese  then repeated, a bit of salt and pepper, and cooking liquid (hot) which can be milk, milk and cream, stock or at a real pinch just water. The alchemy of baking turns these basic staples into a meltingly delicious whole. We have lots of celeriac on our allotment, another grateful for the gratin treatment, and parsnip likewise, so I have no excuse for not doing more and bringing in more variations as autumn turns to winter.