One Flame Student Survival - Curry for Pennies

The one flame idea partly comes out of my experience living in France for a year as an assistant, when I had a single Calor Gas burner on which to cook, and partly from the fact that the less washing up there is the more likely people are to make their own food, which means eating better than you would from the chippie, and brings a social aspect with it. So how about this for a student meal for three, a common number in shared houses?

Fish curry in 30 minutes, with the cost well below £1.50 each again. This hits the protein spot too, not easy for budget meals. It's not authentic, but it is tasty.

Use a large and deep frying pan, heated quite high. In a couple of spoonfuls of vegetable oil fry three sliced onions until they start to brown a little - don't turn your back - then add a red chilli cut fine (stand clear, it's pepper spray time), and an inch or so of root ginger cut into teenie strips, and turn the heat down to medium. After a minute for these to cook through add two cloves of garlic chopped fine, then pour in a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tsp of sugar, plus a tin of coconut milk. When this is bubbling gently add a pack of frozen whitefish fillets (cheapo and they're good, it's pollock - no honestly). Cook till they are beyond defrosted and into cooked, and gently break them up. At the end season with salt, pepper, and spices - buy a plastic packet of garam masala - nicer than 'curry powder' and it costs less - from the ethnic shelves for about 60p and it will last all year, this only needs a tsp. When it is all cooked through serve with basics pitta bread in place of far more expensive naan.

The economics: (all Sainsbury's unless stated, so Morrison's would generally be cheaper still) 520g frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; tinned toms (Lidl) 31p; coconut milk on offer now 50p; 3 onions 15p; garlic 8p; chilli 15p; ginger about 10p; 6-pack of Basics pittas 22p. Spices 3p. The lot for £3.29 give or take a few pence. And the fish alone gives you about three quarters of your protein GDA. A veggie version of this can be made easily and more cheaply still, substituting two 69p tins of chick peas for the fish (so for three that's less than £1 each).

Mean beast that I am I buy Lidl chopped toms in bulk - they won an Observer taste test a while back (or one of the other Sundays) and at 31p each are maybe 40 per cent cheaper than own brand elsewhere, and 1/3 the price of advertised stuff - and I dare you to find a difference in quality.

One Flame and Three Courses for under £1.50

Doing the university visit round with SC made me feel firstly terribly sad - it is only about three weeks since my first day at uni in 1977 - and secondly inspired to share a few things about student food survival learned - annoyingly - after my student days.

Student finances are tight. But however fun the cheapo fried chicken thing briefly is, most students not in fully catered accommodation want a proper meal now and again. There is something civilised and satisfying about sitting down at a table with cutlery and plates, the mealtime spreading before you. This got me thinking of how to do a de Pomiane (several courses very rapidly prepared) for not very much money, and with the one flame proviso. The first result is as follows, a three course meal for under £1.50, ready in about 10 minutes.

First step is get a big pan of hot water boiling - pasta for the main. Little pans don't do it. You want a big volume of water so when the pasta goes in the water is only below boiling-point briefly. Pasta done in water not yet boiling, or in too little, goes gluey.

Put spag for (hungry) one in the water, then prep your first course, tomato salad. One large tomato or two medium ones should be sliced quite thinly (easy with a serrated blade), the slices laid in one layer on a plate big enough for them all. Dress with just a couple of drops of oil per slice and a tiny bit of salt, plus pepper if you fancy. Add wafer-thin slices of raw onion, or garlic, to pep it up if you want, and to increase the vitamin C content. First course is done, but as the toms have probably been in the fridge, let them warm for a minute or two before eating, and this allows the salt to work too.

Grate a small amount of Parmesan - a little goes a long way. My tip is buy Lidl's for price and quality. This with a thin slice of butter and a crushed clove of garlic is your pasta sauce.

Eat the tomato salad, then when the spag is ready (don't buy quick cook, it's pointless and not as nice), about eight minutes, drain the water off (but leave it moist), and in the hot pan mix with your cheese, butter, and crushed clove of garlic (peel the clove, put it under a broad-bladed knife turned sideways, and thump it hard).

Pudding is an apple. Granny Smiths are tasty, crunchy, and you can get seven or eight for £1.50 if you look in the right place.

Not too much protein in this, though the cheese has about 7g, and the spag 11g, so roughly a third of our daily need, but I'll post another three-course cheapo menu later in the week to address that.

The economics: Two medium toms from Sainsbury's £1 pack with seven in cost 29p. 500g of own-brand spag £1, they suggest 100g for a main course, to fill up I'd say 150g at least so 30p. 10p for butter, and about 40p for Parmesan (200g for £3.75, so 21g for 40p - you need the flavour and the calcium). An apple for 22p. Garlic two cloves 4p. Half a medium onion 5p. Total £1.40.

Lidl Wonder

The supermarket Lidl gets lampooned by comics, though I wonder when for example multi-millionnaire Russell Howard last shopped in one. It's an easy target, the focus being on value rather than looks and gimmicks so attracting the less well-off as a large part of the clientele. Food writers, however, have a lot of positives to say about the store: on my recent press trip to SW France the topic came up and they received nothing but praise, with one of the five almost in need of counselling for an addiction. On last year's jaunt to Parma (never did get the freebie ham I was promised, never mind, life is a veil of tears etc) the same thing was discussed, with similar pluses (one wine highly recommended by a guy who knew his stuff).

It is the 'continental' goods that get the thumbs up from foodies: their Parmesan is absolutely excellent and inexpensive; lardons are equally good, chunky with a smoky flavour; and Black Forest ham is superb. On a mission to get their super-cheap and high quality paper goods yesterday I bought among other things the ingredients for tonight's aubergine parmigiana, so pretty healthy, great flavours, and economic.

2 x aubergines @ 40p each (top bargain)
1 x tin of chopped toms 31p
1 tray lardons (of 2 tray pack for £1.79) so 90p
Parmesan 50g (200g pack £2.89) 72p

Added to this will be a tsp of sugar, an onion or two finely chopped, several cloves of garlic likewise, and a spoon or two of olive oil. The lot still coming in at under £3 by my reckoning. If it is preceded by pasta with chilli, garlic and olive oil (I love the way Italian household meals tend to comprise two complementary dishes like that), the three of us will feed well, with three fine contributions to our five- for which here read seven-a-day.

The method is simple for anyone who cooks at all: peel and slice the aubergines quite thinly, salt if you wish but often these days that's not needed, bitterness in the fruits now much reduced. Blanch the slices for a minute in water acidulated with either a squeeze of lemon or a glug of wine/cider vinegar. Make a sauce by frying the lardons and onion, adding garlic as they are nearly done, then stirring in chopped toms and a tiny bit of sugar, cooking for at least 15 minutes, preferably a very slow simmer for 40.

In an oven-proof dish assemble: thin layer of sauce, layer of aubergine slices, grating of Parmesan, repeated until finishing with a good layer of Parmesan. Pop in a medium/low oven say 160 centigrade for about 80 minutes, though it is flexible and could cook (well watched) at say 220 centigrade in 35- 40 minutes, though the flavours won't have developed as well.

Two Reasons for Shopping at Morrison's

My normal shopping run is done at Sainsbury's, merely because it's five minutes by car. I buy plenty of meat and good cheese at Booth's, paper-goods and Parmesan at Lidl, but don't often venture to Morrison's as it is  a 15-minute drive. As I was on another errand that took me near there today, however, I did my weekly shop in the store, and was again impressed.

It was not the fact that the end bill was definitely cheaper than I'd have paid at Sainsbury's, whatever their special offer guarantees say. It was the meat and veg that shone out as so much better.

As to the meat: their range of cuts is far wider, and the meat just looks better than JS's does. Lamb ribs, pork ribs in the piece, pork hock, ham hock, hearts, pig's trotters, crackling sheets, and plenty of other cheaper options that indicate they have confidence those shopping there know how to cook. 

I was sorely tempted by the trotters, one of my favourite things, but SC loathes them and Ruth doesn't care for them.  There is another cook book in that - in my business travel days I made a point of eating trotters whenever I saw them, which means I have fond culinary memories of a couple of Chinese versions (one of them another thing where star anise lifted a dish), one a stew thing, the other a dim sum platter; a Portuguese stew with chick peas; Ste Menehould breaded trotters in France (when I ordered these the French colleague dining with me accused me of not being English, which for the French is a compliment I think); and a spicy chorizo-enriched stew in Bilbao. 

The fruit and veg section has kept up the campaign started some time ago to expand the offer - lots of varieties of mushrooms, for example, along with a good selection of exotics. I didn't go mad, but along with the usual stuff bought frisee and plantain which would not normally feature on my list.  

I admire their courage, presenting the market with a chance to cook proper food, to try new things, and to enjoy cheap cuts along with the steaks and roasts. Two racks of pork ribs are now in our freezer for either a pig-out of BBQ ribs one night, or as starters for two different Chinese meals, and our Friday-night-is-steak-night for SC and self will be with two small but thick pieces of rump each (a bargain because of the size), bulked out with a lamb cutlet that the butcher cut from the carcase for me as they had none left when I asked. 

Parson Woodforde and the Great British Pie

Not that I am stuck in the past, but my new reading is Parson Woodforde's diary, or at least the Folio Society's selections from it. Somewhat less than brilliant observations: how did the middle classes and above actually manage to stand in the 18th century? The good parson drank vast quantities of wine, cider, beer, arack, punch, rum and brandy, yet it was his brother Jack who was the sot. And what did it do to their livers? One wonders if the frequent reports of deaths of apoplexy were the terminal points of organ damage caused by alcohol.

From the foodie point of view (or has foodie become as unacceptable and derogatory as luvvie now?) there is much to be gleaned from the pages of his journal. He lived well, and his guests could generally rely on a table laden with several major main-course components - a fowl, boiled pork, rost (his spelling) beef, perhaps a leg of mutton.

Somewhat inspired by this at the weekend I served visiting friends a roast chicken and a venison and beef pie, along with vegetables various. Not unsurprisingly the pie was the hit - everybody loves a pie. Please someone commission me for that TV series/book/world pie-tasting tour. Venison from Lidl, beef from Henry Rowntree, both meats cooked together in a low (125C) oven with bay, thyme, carrots and onions for two and a half hours, then freshly cooked onions, carrots and turnips added and the lot covered with cheaty Jus-Rol puff pastry. I am a fan of own brands, but for some reason the Jus-Rol stuff seemed better than the last lot of Sainsbury's I used - though they may be made together for all I know. The juice from the oven cooking was reduced and thickened with cornflour (how terribly unfashionable) then half of it spooned into the meat and veg before the pastry lid went on. About 30 minutes at 180C finished the thing off, the puff pastry lifting clear of the filling at the end. This was a pie, a Great British Pie.

Christmas Future - Sanity and Austerity

This is not the refrain of the middle-aged grump that Christmas starts earlier every year. Though it appears to do so - Miracle on 34th Street (the original, not the inferior Richard Attenborough version) currently on Film 4 while November is far from over. But as we seem to clutch on to Christmas as some sort of lifestyle lifeboat I was wondering what is to this generation what the giant turkey was to my mother's.


In the Seventies there was a mania at Christmas for having the biggest turkey as some sort of status symbol. Mad. People regularly found their ovens too small to cook the damn things, and had to remove the legs for cooking separately, mothers forced to rise before dawn to start the cooking if it was to have any chance of being eaten before nightfall. Turkey risotto, sandwiches, broth, curry, rissoles and cold cuts followed the big day's feast seemingly endlessly. Ad nauseam for sure.


I guess that the goose, rather a return to the 19th century perhaps, has become the contemporary equivalent - I must admit that I've never cooked a whole one, only a leg and a breast bought on different occasions (at Lidl btw). Two years ago I did a small sirloin, and have heard that it - or a rib of beef - is gaining in popularity. The pheasant has been mentioned in dispatches for the Christmas board, which seems more a nod to snobbery than enjoyment - I have never had one roasted in either domestic or commercial circumstances that was worth the effort of eating, however many slices of fatty bacon are wrapped over it. Dry and tough is invariably the rule that way; braised or stewed is another matter. The three/four/five bird roast is another option growing in favour. Never having tried this I can't comment on how they turn out.


Of course there are turkeys and turkeys - there's a world of  difference between a frozen battery-reared jobbie and a Kelly Bronze, for instance. The latter is expensive but worth it for a special occasion, which December 25th surely is.With austerity pushing cooks towards economy it's unlikely the behemoth bird will make a comeback.

My own prediction for Christmas future is the increasing importance of the stuffing, sausages, and other accompaniments meaty and vegetable. They show care and generosity (of time and effort). For us, though we remain in funds, I think the smallest turkey crown I can find and either a small beef joint or a goose breast again will feature. And possibly for variety, if I can get the timings right, a frozen pack of four quails that is already in the freezer (Lidl again), the antithesis of the titanic turkey of Christmas past.

Colour? Bah! Humbug!

Forgive the title if you would, always the most difficult part of a post to write, and a longish life influenced by punning newspaper headlines makes it hard to avoid such tropes.

When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.

Even in the early years of James I's reign such artificial colouring (powdered sandalwood one of the ways of doing it btw for bright red) was thought to be 'countrified', yet we still do it, the worst offender that luminescent-yellow smoked haddock which hurts the eye when surveying the fish counter. Colour? Bah! Humbug! indeed. Sadly that is cheaper than the undyed version - a bit illogical other than on grounds of volume, so let's stop buying it. When I was a kid my local mini-supermarket, Taygreens, in an echo of an Arthur Lowe anecdote I love, sold two cheeses, cheddar and red cheddar. Even then I couldn't see why people wanted red cheese which looked like someone had mixed it with paint.

On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.



Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.

Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.

The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.

Alternative Austerity Christmas

Not sure how alternative or austere this really is, but Lidl have frozen goose breast in stock, enough meat to feed four, and so rich that it really does fill you up. You'll not have much meat left over afterwards as it isn't a huge slab - is that a plus or a minus? I bought one for about £8, which is a fraction of what a turkey crown sets you back (am sure of that as I just bought a free-range one of those too from M&S as it was the best I have seen). Will cook both on the day, and with a bit of careful timing have the goose fat in which to make crispy roast spuds (saving £2.40 or so for a jar of that marvellous stuff). The goose breast must be lifted above the dish in which it roasts, to let the fat drip off and keep the meat out of it, otherwise you end up eating something like meaty lard (mmmmm, meaty lard - Homer).

Lidl is excellent for continental stuff like this - their chorizo is really good, and cheaper than other supermarkets, parmesan is actually the best packet version I've found and is cheap too, and they sometimes have pheasant at bargain prices. Pheasant always stewed or braised btw, I am yet to eat a roast pheasant that was worth the effort. I'm happy to shop in slightly less cheerful surroundings for such savings, though they could do with improving their veg, not often tempting enough.

As regards pheasant, I have childhood memories of my father occasionally being given a brace which he would hang in the garage. Once he went further than was sensible, the result (or one mouthful) being perhaps the vilest thing I ever ran to the toilet to spit out.