Sweet Potato & Spinach Curry with Desiccated Coconut!

If you're cooking on a tight budget, substitution of ingredients is fairly standard. You tend to use what you have in the cupboard no matter how compelling Nigella may be when she's adding a pinch of dried mosquito posing pouch into the pan (I'd use smoked paprika as a near enough replacement).

I'd not cooked this dish for a long time and had always used coconut milk, but not having any and being unwilling to shimmy along to the Earlsdon Co-op to make a purchase, my thoughts went to the desiccated coconut on the shelf. 

A quick bit of googling and it appears that you can get coconut milk and flour from boiling desiccated coconut! I couldn't be bothered to go the while hog, but thought that a short cut of boiling the desiccated coconut would add both flavour and texture to the curry. I think it worked rather well, and was a lot cheaper. 

Ingredients

3 sweet potatoes

Spinach (I used frozen)

Large cooking onion

3 cloves garlic

Red pepper

Peas

Cherry tomatoes

Medium curry powder

Stock cube - vegetable 

Sweet paprika

Celery salt 

Black pepper

Cooking oil - I used olive

Fry the onion and garlic slowly, add the curry powder to taste, start with teaspoon. Add in a decent pinch of sweet paprika and of the celery salt. 

Stir well, then add the sweet potatoes, chopped into smallish pieces, and the red pepper. Another good stir and then in goes the stock. Cover everything.  

 After about fifteen minutes add the spinach, the cherry tomatoes and the peas. Cooked for another five or ten minutes until the sweet potatoes are nice and soft. 

I served this with homemade flatbread

Bread, bread, cake and pie!

Tonight I'm following on from the huge success, even if I say so myself, of my whole meal loaf with a loaf of white bread. 

I'm also going to make some flatbread to go with a sweet potato & spinach curry. 

With a couple of brown bananas there's going to be a banana cake. 

And I'm going to make tuna empanadas, albeit with a wine-less pastry in consideration of our ludicrous taxes. 

More later...,

Lentils with Cabbage and Bacon

The ingredients for this dish probably total about £1, if you shop sensibly. Oh - and it's delicious!

Ingredients

Four rashers of bacon (I used bacon bits from the market, hence coming in on budget)
Four cloves of garlic
Two large carrots
One turnip
One onion
The outside leaves of a cabbage
150gms lentils
Splash of olive / cooking oil
Pork stock cube
Teaspoon of smoked paprika
Pinch of cayenne pepper (to taste)

Fry the onion in the oil. I love olive oil, but I used rapeseed for this and I'd defy anyone to be able to tell - partly because I use very little. Add the garlic and the bacon. Chop the carrots and turnip fairly small and throw those in. You can use pretty well any veg with this recipe - I just happened to have them in the fridge.

Give everything a good stir and add the smoked paprika and the cayenne pepper. Watch the latter as it's hot! Far easier to add more later in the process than have a meal that's too hot for comfort. I just chop the stock cube, throw it in and add hot water to the mix. If you want to make it up in a measuring jug, do feel free. Add a decent amount of water stir vigorously and then add the lentils.

The lentils will absorb the water - add more to keep the sauce from burning and to achieve the finish you're looking for. I wanted to serve this with rice, so I was looking for a sauce the consistency of a nice madras curry.

Immediately add the cabbage. I've said use the outside leaves, which retain a really nice texture and flavour, but you can use any type of green that you have available.

The lentils will take between 20 minutes and half an hour to cook, by which time the sauce will be delicious. As well as the spices, you have the garlic and the cabbage producing a really good flavour. I have put both chorizo and black pudding in versions of this meal. The black pudding can either be cooked separately and added at the end or put in with the bacon, in which case it'll disintegrate and add to the overall deliciousness of the sauce.

In the picture I've served this with Cajun egg fried rice.

Eating economically with Bacon Bits

I am very fond of bacon and have discovered the perfect compromise between quality and economy - packs of bacon bits from Coventry Market. You can buy 800gms for £1.50 - that's a lot of bacon - and it's good quality, so no crappy white saline/fat oozing out whilst it's frying. You may get rashers you may get odd chunks - luck of the drawer - but if you're flexible it's the most economical way to eat bacon.

Available from the butchers nearest to the cafe.

Smoked Haddock Fishcakes

Or how to feed a family of four with a £1.60 fillet of naturally smoked haddock...

As the Coley recipe suggested, I'm a big fan of Clive Miller on Coventry Market. I was really buying veg, but had a bit of a hankering for comfort food and purchased a small smoked haddock fillet. Natural in this case means without colourants. 

Ingredients 

Small smoked fish fillet

Butter

Cream (optional)

Milk

1 egg

Breadcrumbs 

6 small potatoes

Three spring onions

Peel and boil the potatoes until they're ready for mashing. Broadly, this means they fall off a fork if you prong them and they're starting to crumble. Drain and mash the potatoes. Add finely chopped spring onions. 

Whilst the potatoes are boiling you've time to prepare the fish. I deboned and pulled the black skin off the fish before putting it into a small frying pan with a knob of butter and enough milk to cover the bottom of the pan. Season with black pepper to taste. The butter will stop the fish sticking as the milk reduces. It needs about four minutes on each side. The trick is for the milk to reduce as the fish cooks, leaving a delicious reduction to fold into the potatoes. 

When the fish is cooked flake it and add it to the mash with the reduced milk and butter sauce. I added a little double cream at the stage because I had some in the fridge. Don't add too much or you'll not be able to form the fish cakes. 

You don't need to breadcrumb the fish cakes, but I had a crust and an egg going spare. I zapped the crust in a food processor, although you can use a grater. Some like to bake the breadcrumbs to make them crunchy, but I think that comes with the frying anyway. Breadcrumbing is easy but messy - into the flour, then the egg, then the crumbs. 

Your fish cakes are now ready for frying until golden on both sides. 

I served with stir fried pak choi and peas in a cheddar cream sauce and finely cut chips. 

If you want a bit more zing, finely chop a chilli (or use powder) and add to the pan when cooking the fish. 

Sour Cherry, Coconut & Almond Rocket Fuel

All you need for the perfect cherry liqueur:

Sour cherries, pitted and halved

Almond essence

Desiccated coconut

Bay leaves

Bottle of basil flavoured vodka

2/3 bottle of odd sweet whiskey liqueur

1/2 bottle of strange rum liqueur

The amounts of ingredients added were based on a debate between Head Chef Sarah and I along the lines of "Whaddya think?" and "Go on, stick a bit more in"

Mix well, place in dark cupboard and agitate daily. 

After 24 hours the liqueur has gone from the industrial waste colour in the picture to a rather nice light cherry colour - and it smells good! 

More updates to follow. 

Coventry Market: making sense of shopping

As anyone who knows me will testify, I'm a bit of a fan of shopping locally in general and of Coventry Market in particular. I think market shopping is more fun than trawling around a supermarket, but it's also a lot cheaper. Partly that's because, unless you're more disciplined than I am, it's very difficult to buy only what you need at a supermarket   - but mostly because it's much, much cheaper. 

Today I spent around £12.50 and bought:

0.8 kg bacon

Pork hock

0.5 kg ox liver

Filet of natural smoked haddock 

Cabbage

1.5kg potatoes

3 punnets strawberries

13 apples

6 large tomatoes 

Bag of white onions

2 bunches of spring onions

I compared the prices of the apples, bananas, strawberries, tomatoes, spring onions and bacon to Tesco Online (before getting bored) and, for their cheapest items, I'd have paid £12.97 rather than the fiver that they cost me at the Market. 

This is hardly a scientific survey - and I got a great deal on the strawberries and spring onions, but I think it's pretty compelling. 

Shop at the market!!

Cajun Blackened Coley Steaks

A key theme of this blog is great food for those on small budgets and when it comes to fish there are some tasty options if we steer clear of the obvious. 

The finest fish in Coventry can be found in the Market - the natural home of the budget-conscious foodie. I asked Clive Miller, a fabulously knowledgeable fishmonger and supplier to Blue Bistro, what he'd recommend based on price and taste and he didn't hesitate: coley steaks. 

Coley is, despite the efforts of many great chefs, seen as a poor-mans cod. Well, great - if ignorance keeps this tasty fish in our price range. 

Clive, whose knowledge of how to cook fish is second to none, recommended a Thai curry. Delicious as this sounded I didn't have all the ingredients I needed.  So, keen to stick to my budget but with my taste buds tuned to spicy, I went over to the Nut Stall on a mission. 

If you don't know already, the Nut Stall has a great selection of spices and dried herbs, including exactly what I was looking for: a Cajun spice mix. Of course, I could produce a Cajun spice mix myself, but I'd be a muppet to design a dish on a budget that requires eight ingredients just for the flavouring. Their excellent Cajun mix cost just 60p and will be used for all sorts of delicious treats. 

Ingredients

Coley steaks

A good knob of butter

Three garlic cloves

Cajun spice mix

Melt the butter in a pan. Crush the garlic cloves and add them to the butter. Give it a minute or so to infuse the flavour of the garlic. 

Coat the steaks in the garlicky butter. This provides a deliciously sticky base for the Cajun spice - which you should apply liberally. I used a frying pan, but a griddle would do the trick. I reckon about 3 minutes on each side. The fish should be, as the title says, blackened. 

I dressed the fish with roasted sweet red peppers and served with a curry fried rice, a variety of which will be featured on the blog soon.  If I'd not run out of potatoes I'd probably have been tempted by smoked paprika roast potatoes as an alternative. 

The fish was delicious - we'll be seeing more Coley in the blog before too long. 

Easy Tuna Tapas

Tapas are my favourite things and these are really very nice. 

Ingredients

Beetroot - we used puréed from the Polish Deli

Cucumber

Roasted red pepper

Baguette

For the tuna:

Can of tuna

Spring onion

Gherkin

Cider vinegar

Smoked paprika 

Black pepper

Chop the spring onion and gherkin finely. Drain the tuna well - especially if you're using one in oil. Mix, adding the smoked paprika and the vinegar. Pepper to taste. 

Spread the bread with the puréed beetroot, add a slice of cucumber and then spread some of the tuna mixture on.  Top the tapa off with some roasted sweet red pepper. 

Enjoy!

Chilli Apple & Pear Sauce

Sometimes the traditional British roast needs a kick up the backside, and this alternative to apple sauce for pork dishes certainly does the trick. You could also serve this with a veggie roast dinner or as a condiment for sausage & chips.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

3 apples

3 pears

Half a small red onion

Good pinch of chilli powder to taste or a finely chopped red chill

Pinch of cumin

Teaspoon demerara sugar (or any sugar) 

Water

Butter

First peel and core the apples and pears then chop them into small chunks. Peel and finely chop the onion. Put a good knob of butter into you pan and fry the onion. Don't let it get too hot - you want soft onions. After about 3 minutes stir in the chilli and cumin. Stir and then add the apples and pears. Give them a good stir and then add enough hot water to keep everything moist. 

Stir regularly and roughly crush the fruit with a wooden spoon. You don't want to lose all the texture, but you need a good, thick sauce. Keep adding water in small amounts - you don't want the sauce to dry out or burn. Taste the sauce - if it's not got enough kick add a little more chilli. Don't go crazy - you want balance not blisters.

After about ten minutes add the sugar and a little more water. Stir vigorously and then add a good knob of butter. Taste it again and add more butter if you fancy it. 

That's it - the sauce is ready. Can be served hot or cold - delicious with left overs, as in the pic where it's served with pork and bubble & squeak