Roast Beef Rides Again

One of the supermarkets has been running a campaign - actually a rather laudable one - showing people that a roast will do more than the Sunday lunch for which it was bought. Roast chicken is an austerity staple, as a decent bird will give you the roast, a curry/risotto/wrap/sandwiches, and broth or at least stock made with the carcase. Beef is no slouch on the second coming front either.

Tonight we will be having one of my takes on leftover topside, and almost as importantly on the gravy that graced it. We ate this a fortnight back and it was enough of a hit for there to be requests for it to be repeated with the excellent beef (Henry Rowntree's superb Aberdeen Angus, and no he doesn't sponsor me, it's just that even a teenager notices the difference) remaining after we feasted post the England - Wales match.

The gravy (ultra-garlicky as I roasted a whole head with the beef, and squidged the soft contents into the meat juices) will be flavoured with smoked paprika, a chilli chopped very finely, Worcestershire sauce, some ground cumin, cayenne, and plenty of pepper. The beef, chopped into 5mm dice, is mixed with its gravy and a tin of Heinz beans, and the resulting mass used to fill wraps that fill a 300mm x 200mm cast iron dish perfectly. Atop this goes a sauce made with tinned toms cooked with a chopped onion and flavoured like the filling, with loads of grated cheese - cheddar and Parmesan - on top.

Cooked in a 180C oven for 30 - 40 minutes (when the cheese is browning it's ready, though I tend to warm the Le Creuset cast-iron dish over a low flame first to speed things up and ensure it is piping hot inside as well as out-) it has the added benefit of looking rather lovely.

The result is filling, rich in vegetables, and tastes good. But then in our family lore most things taste good with Parmesan. And it doesn't need a £1 packet of ready-mix fajita magic dust to give it a Tex-Mex touch.

I'll try to remember to take a photo or two.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

Faced with a block of tofu rapidly approaching its sell-by-date (it had seemed like a good healthy idea in the shop), some chicken leftovers from a roast at the weekend also in need of quick use, and the liquid and veg remains of a very unsuccessful stew, I incorporated them all in a curry.

The stew remains (which as stews do proved tastier after a day or so in the fridge than they were when first cooked) were put through a sieve to get the juices, the chicken cut into small chunks, and the tofu simply sliced into bits the size of a big Lego brick. A chopped onion and a few pieces of red pepper were fried, then some slices of fresh ginger added (another fridge bottom find, so calling it fresh is stretching things). Juice poured in and thickened with cornflour, flavoured with soy sauce, curry powder and lots of cayenne, followed after a minute or two of simmering by the tofu and chicken, and the lot left to bubble quietly while rice was cooked.

The fridge curry can be a horror, a reminder of student days, but this one was really good, the cayenne giving it a back-of-the-throat kick, the tofu and chicken contrasting textures, and the sauce thick and satisfying. I do love it when a plan comes together, though I would have been happier had my son not insisted on calling the dish a soup.

Risotto for Pennies

Risotto in some form features on the menus of many high-end restaurants, with a twist or two to make it different. The basic dish, however, is good old-fashioned peasant cooking. Which means it can also be cheap (another thing that appeals to restaurateurs but that's another area altogether). Last night I fed the three of us for I'd reckon under £2, though how you cost the leftover chicken from the weekend roast is tricky.

In the morning I made the stock from the chicken carcase, stripped of flesh, very necessary to decent risotto and it's sensible to squeeze the most in money and flavour terms from your bird. An onion (5p), bayleaf from the garden, and two Sainsbury's basic carrots (a knobbly carrot is a carrot is a carrot), (10p) simmered very gently for an hour to make wonderful liquor and to fill the whole house with its scent.

The evening meal was done in 25 minutes. Another onion (5p) chopped fine and fried in oil, with a similarly treated red pepper (again knobbly basic, 25p), then a third of a pack (say 45p) of basic cooking bacon (top bargain, you tend to get big thick slices that make chunky dice as used here), half a pack of risotto rice (so less than 50p) fried until coated, then usual risotto method - add hot stock until it is soaked in, cook at medium heat giving a stir every now and then, more stock, until the rice has only the memory of chalkiness at its heart. Add diced leftover chicken to just warm through (cook it too long and it goes stringy and unpleasant), a knob of butter to melt and give it a lovely unctuous texture, season and serve. As we are not on our uppers I went wild and grated some parmesan, probably adding another 70p to the overall reckoning, though even then discounting the chicken it comes to well under £2. A veggie version using mushrooms in place of the meats (and mushroom stock) - Sainsbury's today selling a (special offer) carton of brown mushrooms for 50p - is equally good.

The world, by the way, is becoming full of special offers as we become more discriminating (meaner) about our food purchases. Local fresh foods particularly so.