Tilda's BBQ Rice

I receive a few press releases and sometimes samples of foods and books and things to hopefully mention on my blog,  

A day or so before we left on our hols *** I received a pack of  Tilda's Limited Edition Barbecue Steamed Basmati so took it with me and contributed it to a meal my friend was cooking - sticky pork chops which were yum. I think she was pleased with it!

It is not my normal way to buy pre-cooked anything in general, and probably not something like rice in particular, but I can see that if you were that way inclined this would be a good purchase. The flavour is fragrant, smoky and spicy with fennel, chipotle, smoked paprika and my friends' 15 year old daughter Ruby thought she detected a hint of five spice.  Mind you she is not just any 15 year old, she is a Future Chef 2013 finalist so may well be right. 

Anyhoo Tilda Limited Edition Barbecue Rice has a warm complex taste and now I find myself looking at the other flavours in their range such as Coconut & Lime Leaf, Mexican Chilli, Lemon, British Curry, Egg Fried and Pilau.

In other news ...

***  I have fallen in love again - with the Highlands and Islands.  We had a superb time and I could wax lyrical but instead I have started a new Pinterest board.

Now I am home I hope to accumulate some new leftovers to play with and will report back asap.  

Man Food ~ Worldwide Pants!

In much of my blogging I talk about the things I do with leftovers and it is possible that there may be some confusion as to where said leftovers come from. 
Well quite a few come from wonderful creative spicy interesting meals that I have cooked myself (ahem) but some come from the HUGE manly dinners I cook my darling every single night.

I don't know if you are familiar with the American comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond", we watched it a lot in the Caribbean.  At the end of each episode the logo of the television company, World Wide Pants, is shown on the screen together with a picture of a meal, presumably cooked by Marie in the programme, being laid down.  

Because of this, when dinner is ready, I often call my real man by shouting out "World Wide Pants".  I don't know what the neighbours think but that is by no means the worst thing I call out to him.

Anyhoo here are some pictures of Real Man Food together with ideas of what to do with any leftovers - slim chance though that may be.

1.   Roast Dinner 

Roast meat of some description, always five lovely homemade Yorkshire puddings (unless I make six), mushy peas, veggies, potatoes and rich homemade gravy. You can see by the knife action that he is eager to get started on it.  A chicken dinner is a little different - homemade bread sauce and stuffing replacing the Yorkshires. 

Leftovers - leftover meat can be used to make pie, shepherds pie, rissoles, sandwiches, salads etc.  Leftover yorkies, if not influenced by gravy etc. are good popped in a hot oven for a few minutes and then eaten for breakfast with honey or maple syrup and butter.

2.   Steak and Kidney Pie

Bought in puff pastry, sorry) with veg and mash. Sometimes its a chicken and leek pie or a minced beef pie.

Leftover mash can be fried and served with breakfast,

add leftover veg to make bubble and squeak or munged with other leftover things (eg. fish for instance) formed into cakes and fried for lunch.  See here for lots of ideas for leftover pastry trimmings.

3.   The manly fry up 

This typically includes bacon, sausages, kidneys, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, oven chips, onions rings, peas and 4 slices of bread and butter.  Sometimes the meats are different, maybe a bit of steak or gammon for instance, and occasionally there are beans and an egg but no peas.

Leftovers - I can hardly think of anything to do with leftover chips but if you do have to reheat them DO NOT USE THE MICROWAVE or they will go soggy. Reheat them and onions rings in the oven. Sausages are good in sandwiches (handy sausge sandwich hint here). Any of the other leftovers could be used in a frittata. Crumble black pudding over kedgeree or add to stuffing.

4.  Toad in the Hole

I have written about this before (including this picture which I am rather pleased with and the incredibly easy peasy Yorkshire pudding recipe) it is served with veg, potatoes and gravy.

This is tricky so far as leftovers are concerned but as there never are any I'm not bovvered.

5.   Mince and Dumplings

This is a real favourite. I have no idea why there are only nine dumplings showing in the picture because without ever measuring the ingredients I always seem to make him 11!  The recipe is here - see how many you make! Veg with this but no potatoes.

Leftovers - there are never any dumplings left but if there were I find the best way to re-use them is to slice in half and fry the dry cut surfaces in butter till crisp and golden and they are heated through.  If there is a lot of mince left I can make him a pie.  If just a little he might have a Sloppy Joe type thing for lunch or sometimes I add some beans, cumin, chilli and something tomatoey to make myself some chilli con carne.

Read More Here

I am so keen on using up leftovers I wrote a book, originally called The Leftovers Handbook it is now in its 2nd edition as Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers.  In it I give all the information, ideas, recipes, handy hints, cook’s treats, storage info, ideas of what goes with what that I can think of for over 450 possible leftovers. 

Shakespeare got it wrong about porridge!

I have received an interesting infographic about porridge!  Click here to see it in all its glory.

I know, I expect we all do, that oats are good for us and seemingly Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and even Tony Blair are porridge fans (although, of course, the last one  may be lying!).  

Well I don't like porridge, so there!  It's not the taste, it's the texture. If you are happy with the mouth feel there are, of course, all sorts of wondrous additions such as maple syrup, jam, honey, butter, clotted cream or whisky that will make it even better. 

Luckily for me I am still able to get my oats (you understand that I had to get that it somewhere, don't you?) in other ways as I do know some fine things to do with leftover (or purpose made) porridge. 

So, although Shakespeare said, amongst many other things: 

it seems he may have been barking up the wrong tree so to speak as cold porridge, used properly, can be a really good thing!

Honey Oatmeal Scones ~ based on an Original Idea by Mrs. Beeton

Quite a while ago now I wrote an article for Vegetarian Living on Mrs. Beeton’s Vegetarian Cooking and this was one of her good ideas.  In my grandmother’s edition Mrs. B says to knead into cold porridge “as much flour as will enable it to be rolled out ¼” thick but that was a bit too basic and heavy for me so here is my version.

300g cold porridge
30g soft butter

1 tbsp honey

self-raising flour

(or plain flour and baking powder in the ratios 100g flour:1 tsp baking powder)

~   Preheat oven to 375ºF/190ºC/170ºC fan/gas 5.
~   Mix together the first three ingredients and then work in the flour to make a soft, sticky but manageable dough.
~   Knead lightly then roll out on a floured board to a thickness of about 20mm.
~   Cut into rounds or other shapes and lay on a greased baking tray.
~   Brush with milk and bake for 20-25 minutes till risen and golden.

Porridge Hotcakes

These are even better then normal pancakes served with maple syrup, butter and perhaps a tad of smoky bacon.  

See here for the oat pancake recipe and also find out how to make  Dried Cherry Muffins and Chocolate Chip Brownies from leftover Porridge.   Or how about ...

Oaty Banana Cake

120g soft butter

2 cups light brown sugar

2 eggs

475ml (use a measuring jug) leftover porridge

140g  plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 ripe bananas - coarsely chopped

~   Lightly grease a cake tin or loaf pan.

~   Preheat oven to 350ºF/180ºC/160°C fan/gas 4

~   Cream together the butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

~   Whisk in the the eggs and the porridge

~ . Sift together the dry ingredients and fold into the batter.

~   Fold in the bananas.

~   Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake till risen, golden and springy to the touch - 35-40 minutes.

~   Cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out.

This is really good drizzled with Sticky Toffee Sauce, the recipe for which is here where you will also discover that I am actually bananaphobic so ... I add chocolate and grated orange zest to the above recipe instead!

Further info and a few other ideas for leftover porridge (and at least 449 other potential leftovers) can be found in Creative Ways to Use Up Lefovers. 

Read More Here

Lovely lunch for 15p!

~  Menu  ~

Pease Pudding Soup

Multigrain Bread

Glass of Fizzy Water

This week is the Live Below the Line Challenge an initiative of the Global Poverty Project; the challenge is to spend no more than £1 per person per day on food and drink for 5 days.  I apologise for not mentioning this before but have only just become aware of it - good luck to everyone taking part.

Actually I myself personally eat so very frugally (and deliciously) I think I would often be hard pushed to eat cheaper and am sure I am often well below £1 a day although to be fair I do have a small appetite!

For lunch today I had pease pudding soup - every week or two I cook my Geordie lad a piece of ham and use some of the stock to make pease pudding  

A bag of split peas costs 49p for 500g.  I cook half a bag per batch so say 25p and this makes enough pease pudding accompany my darling's ham dinners say 3 times plus sufficient for a soup or a curry for me, that's 25p divided 4 so say 6.5p.  

The stock is a by product and possibly costs nothing as it is only water and seeped out ham juice.  I use 1 small onion.  

We recently bought a bag of little 'culinary' red onions for 12p reduced from £1.20 and as it contained um ... quite a few lets say 1p for the onion which is a bit high I think.  Incidentally these onions are still perfectly fine although about 3 weeks past their best before date.  

I used an abstemious amount of olive oil to cook the onion and, the stock being salty, nothing was spent on salt although I did have myself a sprinkle of black pepper. 

 So my bowl of delicious, homemade soup cost 7.5p, let's be generous and say 15p with the slice of toast I ate with it.  

This is typical of the way I eat but the funny thing is although we could no way claim to be flush with money I cook this sort of thing because I like it!  I am always telling my darling that if he wasn't so fond of meat and was more fond of 'interesting flavours' I could feed him much more cheaply but he loves his manly meals and at least I get to be creative with the leftovers.

I drank a glass of fizzy water with this - 17p for 2 ltrs so negligible really.  I only have it because I find sparkling more refreshing than still.

Incidentally I saw this good idea for storing onions on Pinterest ...

Speaking of best before - we had some of the best rhubarb ever, which I made into a crumble (recipe here), the other day.  It was sweet and tender, juice and very pink.  It cost 30p instead of the original £3.00 but I didn't cook it for a few days and it was still as perfect can be.