Austerity and Healthy Food

Over recent years one of the regular excuses voiced about poor eating habits is that healthy food costs more than unhealthy. Since we decided on our alternative eating programme [yes there is a deliberate hint of silliness in the name] I have made one major discovery in that regard: by spreading butter thinly, and almost banning it from cooking, one uses less and thus spends less. Who knew?

Same applies to oils and dressings. I think a general rule can be discerned here: if you use thus buy less of something, it is cheaper than buying and using lots.

As we are eating less meat and more veg, the sums are in our economic favour there too.

Last night's meal was pork tenderloin marinated in ginger, cumin, pepper and cassia bark all ground up, the six little slices (£3.15 for the piece) popped in a sealable bag with that mix and some scrunched up bay leaves and lime leaves from our own trees, then left in the fridge for about seven hours before being beaten with a mallet and griddled. Result: loads of flavour to make up for the relatively small amount. It was as the divine HFW says 'meat as spice.'

What was more important to the meal was the brown rice (I used to hate it, but this stuff is almost perfumed - and I swear it used to be browner, but then Wagon Wheels used to be bigger, and all this used to be fields too) served mixed in with a pile of lightly steamed veg - carrot, mange tout, frozen broccoli, ditto peas, ditto okra, doused in soy sauce and pepped up with five-spice. Say 35p for the rice, £1.65 for the veg and soy, so the meal for three of us £5.15. Not cheap, not dear.

I'll do the same thing without the meat next time, but adding a few mushrooms and more veg - a pepper, and definitely garlic. The substitutions would bring the cost down to about £3. Which to fill three stomachs healthily (three people rather than one ruminant - or do they have four?) seems like a bargain.

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. 

Just Imagine - Meat Free Christmas?

I am working on an article for Lancashire Life about the vegetarian alternative at Christmas. Imagine the impact in most British homes of the suggestion that this was to be a meat free Christmas. My son would be devastated, my father (if, contrary to his habitual threats, he makes the trip up here again this year) would pack his bag and return to Norfolk. My wife, however, would probably welcome the change and the implicit health benefits of cutting down on animal fats. But then she also welcomes my plan to buy in a whole air-dried ham as part of our festive fare this year.

The imagination requested in the title means more than those reactions though. The two chefs interviewed thus far have offered some clever ideas, and not just theoretical ones but dishes they cooked last year or plan to cook this year. A raw pudding; Christmas (veggie) lasagne; a wild mushroom and Stilton strudel...

My conscience is regularly pricked by the knowledge that we here eat too much meat - in the West in general, and this household in particular. When I cook vegetarian or near vegetarian dishes we are no less satisfied, our systems don't collapse (far from it in terms of what euphemistically we'll call digestive health), and we enjoy them.

Last night the bulk of our main course came from a huge range of veg, home grown and bought in, this being a vegetable soup along minestrone lines (though the stock was chicken from the carcase of Sunday's roast bird). For the first time in weeks I made my own bread, so that accompaniment had flavour. It didn't have imagination though, something that I clearly need to work on if I am crowbar more vegetarian food into our diet.

To fire that imagination I'm going to have to buy some veggie cookbooks - though anything that features brown rice or wholewheat pasta is banned - and visit a veggie restaurant or two, something that apparently today will be less painful than the last time I did so. That was in Germany on business, so quite a while back. The menu was dismal, and the least offensive offering was pasta with pesto. The pasta was in that state of soggy rigor mortis that comes when it has been poorly drained and left at one side for five minutes before serving; the pesto had no zing to it (I suspect it was from a long-open jar not freshly made). I was dining there because a week of large lumps of boiled pig (roughly how I'd define Germany's national cuisine) with boiled spuds had fired me with a need for something else. The pasta and pesto inspired a return to boiled pig.

Austerity and Aligot

Last week I was on a press trip to the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, and very enjoyable too. During the four days we visited six Michelin-starred restaurants. This was a privilege, though the urge to be different produces such horrors as foie gras with raspberry sauce alongside works of perfection like a coddled egg in an asparagus crust, the yolk when cut oozing unctuously into a morel sauce.

But that is clearly not austerity fare (though a variation on that egg dish, effectively a subtle scotch egg, could be). Aligot, however, most certainly is. At the market in Rodez we tried this local speciality, which is simply very smooth mashed potato blended with melted cheese (young Tomme d'Aguiole or Cantal) and garlic. Happily the last Michelin-starred place we visited served some with a beautiful piece of lamb, a real bow to culinary tradition. That I think had a bit of cream in it, not a heresy but a variation, perhaps a refinement, and still traditional. They matched perfectly, unlike the foie gras and raspberry car-crash.

A bit of research shows that the proportions potato to cheese are 2:1, with garlic to taste and likewise seasonings. An acceptable-ish substitute for the Tomme would be Mozzarella, or a mixture of that and a harder cheese like cheddar, melted before marrying. I will be making some soon, either to eat on its own (now that is comfort food Nigel) or to accompany lamb. It forms strings as you try to fork it up from the plate. Huge quantities are not needed, such is its richness.

Savoury Rice

It sounds like the old racist denial: I am not a vegetarian but.. Vegetarian food tends to be more economical than something served with a slab of expensive meat, and I try to cook something vegetarian at least once possibly twice a week. Don't we all? How virtuous. Cheap, simple and somehow beautiful to look at this is a take on Chinese fried rice - on my business travels in South East Asia in a previous life I was jokingly chided for requesting this at a meal, but it's something I really enjoy if made well. And for three of us I reckon the cost is less than £2. The biggest cost is the two peppers so it could be even cheaper substituting another carrot and/or a red onion to keep the colour thing going.

Boil enough rice for everyone and then some left over (the next day or even the day after rice kept in the fridge makes a great basis for a packed-lunch salad). Washing it well before cooking helps the grains separate which is pleasing to the eye and the fork, though it reduces the nutritional value a little.

In a wide and deep non-stick frying pan heat some vegetable oil over a medium flame and throw in a finely chopped onion or even two, a carrot in tiny dice, and a pepper likewise - ideally two of different colours. I buy a pack of the miss-shape 'basic' peppers every week from Sainsbury's, a bargain and no different in terms of taste or freshness. Cook until the onion is transparent, then add a chopped clove of garlic. Crumble in the rice and stir so it gets coated in oil and mixed with the veg. Defrost a handful of frozen peas and/or sweetcorn and add them, mixing into the rice near the end of cooking - they need to warm through not cook. Flavour the rice according to what you have and what you fancy, but soy sauce is all but a must: one or two of the following is adequate - not please more than that: 5-spice powder, sesame oil, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, turmeric, even curry powder if push comes to shove. Be gentle with the spicing, don't overwhelm the rice.

If you need some protein a few thin strips of bacon is good, or some small prawns. As with so many dishes you can play tunes with this, one of the best being turning it into mushroom fried rice (which means you can do without one or even both peppers) by adding near the end of cooking half a dozen or so thinly sliced mushrooms sauteed gently in another pan. Tip in their juice of course.