Frugal Cooking

Fish poached in a rich tomato sauce

~ Kitty
Poached Fish

This is a dish which I came up with a few weeks ago. I often fry fish, but I had bought some tomatoes which were disappointingly too soft for salad and needed cooking, so I decided to make a sauce to poach the fish in. A much healthier option! I had a good idea in my head of how it would turn out, but it wasn’t until I was able to smell and taste that I realised that it had a distinctly Spanish feel to it.

I used Nile Perch, quite a strong meaty fish which is pretty cheap here in Dubai (we’ve been having a low-spend January). I served it with Buckwheat cooked with mushrooms (based on this recipe), and frozen peas because I hadn’t been organised enough to get any other green veg.

This served two adults and a child with some leftover.

p.s. I made it again last night and forgot to add the spinach, it was still very yummy!

Ingredients

  • a small onion
  • a couple of cloves of garlic
  • a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes, halved (you could also chop larger tomatoes into chunks, I just happened to have cherry tomatoes which needed using)
  • a teaspoon of oregano
  • half a teaspoon of paprika (you can add more later to taste if you like)
  • a teaspoon of vegetable stock powder, or half a teaspoon of salt
  • frozen spinach – this is difficult to measure out because it usually comes in a big block. I banged the frozen block (while still in it’s packaging) on a hard work-surface to break it up a bit and used as close to a handful as I could.
  • a teaspoon of tomato paste
  • two pieces of a meaty fish, I used Nile Perch.

Method

It is best to make this in a large shallow pan with a lid if you have one.

Gently fry the finely chopped onion and garlic until soft. Next add the tomatoes along with the spices and stock/ salt and gently cook with the lid on the pan until the juices have come out of the tomato. Put the spinach in a jug or bowl and add just enough boiled water to cover it, when it has defrosted add the spinach and water to the tomatoes along with the tomato paste, turn the heat up and leave the lid off to allow some of the liquid to boil off (at this point I would start cooking the bulgar wheat). After about five minutes taste the sauce and add more seasoning if it is needed (this is all down to personal taste).

Turn the heat down so that the sauce is gently simmering and place pieces of fish on top of the sauce. Put the lid on and let the fish steam for about five minutes, then turn the fish over and cook for a few minutes longer. The exact cooking time will vary depending on the type and thickness of the fish; it needs to be served as soon as it is completely cooked through, if it is left much longer you risk it becoming a bit tough or rubbery.

Serve with the buckwheat and some green vegetables.

  • how to poach fish
  • nile perch
  • how to poach fish

Bread and Butter Pudding with Dates

~ Kitty ~ 1 Comment
Date Bread and Butter Pudding

I often don’t get through a whole loaf of bread before it starts going dry. I hate to waste things so I have been putting dry-ish bread in the freezer for months, with the aim of eventually getting round to making bread and butter pudding.

Now that it is January I am in fridge and freezer emptying mode; I do this every year to try and use up Christmas leftovers and decrease spending for a while. A week into the new year we had a fantastic leftovers meal of vegetable pie, invented by my mum, followed by bread and butter pudding made by Steve. A cheap delicious meal, no food waste, and an evening off from cooking for me – winner! Steve based the bread and butter pudding on a good-old Delia Smith recipe from our old family recipe book. He adapted the recipe to use dates instead of currants and candied peel, and omitted most of the sugar other than some lovely crunchy demerara sugar on top.

Ingredients

  • 8 slices of bread, buttered
  • a handful of chopped dates
  • 12 fl oz/ 350ml milk
  • 3 eggs
  • A couple of tablespoons of demerara sugar
  • Grated rind of a small lemon
  • Ground nutmeg

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.

Rub butter onto the base and sides of a deep oblong baking dish (Delia Smith says a 2 pint dish, I just choose one which looks about right).

Butter the bread and cut it into triangles. Place a layer butter side up into the dish and sprinkle on some chopped dates, add another layer of bread and repeat.

Measure out the milk (you can add cream if you are feeling decadent or have some to use up, as long as it adds up to the correct volume). Add the whisked eggs to the milk and then pour over the bread. Delia adds sugar, the lemon rind and nutmeg to the milk, but I prefer to add them at the end for a delicious crunchy topping.

Sprinkle the sugar, lemon zest and nutmeg onto the top and then bake in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. It should end up lovely and gooey in the middle with a crispy top. The crispy sugar and lemon is delicious.

Aubergine and Preserved Pepper Bake

~ Kitty ~ Leave a comment

This is the first recipe from my new kitchen… in Dubai! Yes, the ‘quiet year’ we had planned after the craziness of last year all went to pot when we moved half way around the world. Our possessions from the UK arrive today, hurrah! We have been rattling around in a rather empty apartment until now. As I have shared with you previously a kitchen with limited resources makes for some creative cooking… as does a  frequently breaking fridge-freezer it turns out. grrr. I am never buying a second hand fridge-freezer again!

There is nothing quite like a broken fridge-freezer to inspire a new use-it-up recipe. Sometimes these dishes are a bit ‘interesting’, however this one I will definitely make again. Past successes have included ‘disaster jam’ (can’t waste frozen fruit). I wasn’t sure what to call this one, ‘disaster vegetable moussaka bread and butter pudding’ – doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!

aubergine

Ingredients

  • Dry bread, buttered
  • Two aubergine (Eggplant), sliced
  • One red pepper
  • Four tomatoes
  • Stuffed peppers preserved in oil
  • Salt, pepper and chilli flakes

Method

Pre-heat the oven to about 180oC.

Fry the pepper and tomatoes in some oil from the preserved peppers (the deliciously flavoured oil is too good to waste).

Place the bread butter-side down in an oven dish.

When the pepper and tomatoes have started to cook down add half to the dish as a layer over the bread. Add some of the preserved peppers, focusing on putting them in any gaps between the bread.

Add a layer of aubergine followed by the rest of the pepper and tomato mixture and the remaining preserved peppers.

Top with the last of the aubergine. Add a spoon of the flavoured oil onto each aubergine slice and season generously with salt pepper and a spice mix of your choice – I used BBQ chilli flakes.

Bake in the oven for approximately half an hour.

Enjoy!

  • eggplant
  • aubergine bake

Basic Kitchen Project – debrief

~ Kitty ~ 1 Comment

basic kitchen

As promised in my previous post, here are some notes to close-out the Basic Kitchen project.

The first thing to say is that it was certainly hard work – I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I didn’t work part time, and if I didn’t enjoy cooking.

What I was really rubbish at was keeping a good record of what I spent, which isn’t very helpful for a roundup of how the project went! We were pretty close to £10 each week though. What I will share with you are some shopping tips and things which I consider to be the ‘best buys’, and the favourite things we ate.
Shopping

The first week we really missed green vegetables and colourful food – not that we ate badly, it’s just that the cheapest vegetables tend to be carrots which can get rather dull. In subsequent weeks we managed to do some good market shopping for vegetables. The best bargains came when we went to the market not long before it shut.

I would highly recommend finding out the best time to visit your local market.

Most of the meat and fish we bought came from the reduced section of the supermarket, with the exception of the wonderful ‘cooks bacon’ (the cheap offcuts). This meant that I had to think on my feet a little bit when shopping.

A good buy was the pack of beef sausages which I got in the first week. I used some straight away and then froze the rest in batches of three. Really yummy in casseroles.

Another bargain was some reduced beef mince. I decided at that point to reintroduce a big frying pan with a lid so that I could bulk cook traditional Bolognese. This fed us for a number of meals and cost just a few pounds. I will write up a Bolognese recipe for you at some point.

A good way to get protein and good flavour into budget food is to buy ‘cooks bacon’ from your local butcher or supermarket. These are the ‘scrag ends’ or offcuts – exactly the same meat as rashers of bacon but not a uniform size. If you’re going to chop it up for cooking anyway then why buy anything else?

I started the project with stock cubes, mixed herbs, chilli flakes and salt and pepper, in the hope that over the weeks I would be able to add to my spice cupboard within my budget. This was not possible. This is a bit of a disappointing discovery but hardly a surprise – £10 a week may be sufficient to eat healthily (if you have the time and energy to shop and cook carefully) but it doesn’t allow for very exciting ingredients. When I did my £5 challenge at the start of this blog in 2016 I allowed myself the use of what was already in my store cupboard, including spices; I found it significantly more difficult to cook creatively without this.
What I Cooked

One of the things I really enjoy about restricting my budget is that it forces me to be creative with what I have. Despite being somewhat limited this time – with having only chilli, mixed herbs, salt and pepper, I still found that I made some good discoveries.

  • One Pot Pasta! This is a one pot wonder. It is so simple to make, and easily varied depending on the ingredients to hand, that I wrote up two different versions of it (and made it many more times than I wrote about). It also makes for less washing up – bonus. One Pot Pasta has definitely entered my repertoire for good – just this week I made a delicious creamy version with bacon, onion, homemade stock from the freezer, crème fraiche and cheese. Yum.
  • Mackerel stuffed with haggis – I appreciate that this won’t be to everyone’s taste, but this was a truly magnificent and decadent meal – which cost only £2.30 to feed three people. It goes to show that, with making good use of the reduced section of the supermarket and some imagination, you can still make a rather impressive dinner party meal on a tight budget.
  • Breakfast Muffins – these were very yummy and cheap to make, and even such a reluctant breakfast eater as myself enjoyed them.

I found that I cooked a lot of tomato based dishes, because tinned tomatoes work well with chilli and with dried herbs. I managed to vary things a little by using fresh herbs from the garden; flat leaved parsley and sage were in season and I was very glad of them. I have to say though, that after a while I got somewhat bored of Italian inspired dishes and simple chilli dishes and really craved curry! Curry can be a fabulously cheap to make if you already have the basic spices, especially when you use a lentil base.

Anyway, that’s that. I hope that you found some inspiration from my little £10 a week project. I would love know what your favourite frugal recipes are. If you fancy writing up a favourite recipe as a guest blog post that would be fabulous – do get in touch.

‘over and out

Kitty x

Breakfast Muffins

~ Kitty ~ 3 Comments
Breakfast Muffins

These Breakfast Muffins are perfect for people who (like me) are awful at eating breakfast. They are small yet filling, cheap and easy to make.
breakfast muffins
One of the things which Steve and I struggled with when I started the Basic Kitchen project was what to do for breakfast. I have to say that breakfast isn’t my strong point at the best of times – it is my least favourite meal of the day, but if I don’t eat it I am miserable.

The solution came from Steve’s all time favourite recipe book, published in 1984 by the New Zealand Girl Guides – not something you can pick up in you local bookshop I’m afraid. One of the good things about using this book for the Basic Kitchen project is that it uses cups, so scales are not required. We did of course have to add a muffin tin to our collection of basic utensils, but it was well worth it considering that they are so cheap to make.
girl guides cook book
The book contains two versions of Bran Muffins – one of which is in the section on cooking for big events and asks you to mix in a ‘large bucket’, the other makes a rather more sensible number of muffins! Over the last few weeks I have tried both recipes, adapted and doctored them depending on what I have in the cupboard, and come up with the version below. The original recipes are at the bottom of the post – a big thank-you to the ladies who originally contributed the recipes to the book, and to the New Zealand Girl Guides who gave me permission to publish them here.

When we made the ‘mix in a bucket’ version a few weeks ago Steve calculated that they cost 7p a muffin. I haven’t calculated how much the recipe below costs, because my pregnancy brain is rebelling!

This recipe is fantastic for using up cereal which is going a little soft – a common occurrence for me since I don’t like breakfast very much! In the last few weeks I have made the muffins with ‘All-bran’ and with bran flakes which already had dried fruit added to it. I found that bran flakes needed a bit of crunching up before using.
bran muffins
Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 heaped teaspoon instant coffee (optional)
  • 2 Tablespoons golden syrup
  • 2 Tablespoons butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar (optional – I leave this out if I have included sugary dried fruit such as prunes, if I do add it I use dark sugar)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 1/2 cups of bran
  • a handful of dried fruit (something sticky and sweet such as prunes or dates work well)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180oC.

First warm the milk, syrup and butter in a pan and dissolve the bicarb of soda and coffee into it (I just want to drink it at this stage!). Take the pan off the heat and then add the bran, crumbling it in your hands, so that it can begin to soften.

Mix the rest of the dried ingredients together, then mix in the egg and the milk mixture. Stir in the dried fruit.

Bake in the centre of the oven in lined muffin tins for approximately 15 minutes.

When cooked, remove onto a cooling rack. Once cool they can be stored in an airtight tin for up to a week.
Bran muffins

Bran Muffins

breakfast muffins

breakfast muffins

Breakfast muffins

Beef Sausage Stew

~ Kitty ~ 3 Comments

It seems that here in the UK winter is going on and on. This stew was really warming and delicious; and cheap, being made using sausages from the reduced section of the supermarket, ‘cooks bacon’ and vegetables bought at the end of the day from my local market.

I served the stew with soda bread which is very quick and easy to make. Although I have a favourite soda bread recipe which I have written up before, I decided to have a go at the recipe from Jack Monroe’s ‘Cooking on a Bootstrap‘ blog. Jack’s recipe is much more simple than the one I had been using and worked very well.

Beef Sausage Stew

Ingredients

This made three portions.

  • 3 Beef Sausages
  • 3 Rashers of Bacon
  • 1/2 an onion
  • 1/2 red pepper
  • 3 Tomatoes
  • 6 Mushrooms
  • 1/2 tin of chickpeas
  • 1/2 tin tomatoes
  • Chicken or Vegetable Stock
  • 1/2 teaspoon Chilli Flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon Dried Mixed Herbs
  • A couple of tablespoons of chopped flat-leaved Parsley

Method

Finely chop the onions and red pepper. Put these in the pan along with chopped bacon, sausages and a little oil or butter. You won’t need much oil because fat will quickly come out of the bacon and sausages. Fry over a medium heat for about five minutes, stirring frequently.

Beef and Sausage Stew

Next, coarsely chop the tomatoes and mushrooms and add these to the pan along with the dried herbs, chilli and some black pepper. Let everything cook together for a few minutes and then add half a tin of tomatoes, about a mugful of stock and the chickpeas. Note, I used chickpeas because this is what I had in the cupboard, butter beans would also have been good and is a more traditional pairing with sausages.

Allow to simmer on a low heat for ten to fifteen minutes; as with many stews the longer it cooks the more the flavours develop. So this stage depends very much on how hungry/ impatient you are feeling!

About five minutes before you are ready to serve add the fresh parsley. Make sure you taste the stew before serving and season with more pepper, chilli and/ or salt if required.

Serve with a chunk of fresh bread, I made soda bread which is incredibly quick and cheap to make.

Costs

  • 3 Beef Sausages – £0.39 (reduced from Tesco)
  • 3 Rashers of Bacon – about £0.15
  • 1/2 an onion – £0.05
  • 1/2 red pepper – £0.17 (Peppers are usually rather expensive, however I went to my local market as they were closing up and got three for £1 which is pretty good)
  • 3 Tomatoes – £0.17 (Again, from the market – six for £0.50)
  • 6 Mushrooms – about £0.50
  • 1/2 tin of chickpeas – £0.35 (I only used half a tin, but I have included the full cost and will exclude it from the cost of the meal tomorrow)
  • 1/2 tin tomatoes – £0.35 (I only used half a tin, but I have included the full cost and will exclude it from the cost of the meal tomorrow)
  • Stock Cube – £0.04
  • 1/2 teaspoon Chilli Flakes – £0.01
  • 1/2 teaspoon Dried Mixed Herbs – £0.01
  • A couple of tablespoons of chopped flat-leaved Parsley – from the garden

So, this cost £1.84 for three portions, with some leftover ingredients for another day.

Fresh Mackerel Stuffed with Haggis

~ Kitty ~ 2 Comments

… fresh mackerel stuffed with haggis, and served with three vegetable mash and whiskey sauce.

Trust me, this was wonderful!

fresh mackerel with haggis

It is difficult not to be decadent when my good friend ‘Winemaker Sarah’ (so called because she makes wine for a living, and I have many Sarah’s in my life) comes to stay. Sarah always arrives with a car full of delicious goodies from which we create weird and wonderful things. Two of the ingredients for this meal came from Sarah’s car – whiskey-infused cheese and, bizarrely, a swede.

The mackerel was from the reduced section of Tesco and was a whole 68p. Because it was in the reduced section it was already wrapped and I wrongly assumed that it was a couple of fillets – as it turned out I was glad that my mum brought me up to be able to gut fish!

The haggis came from the freezer, the last of the leftovers from Burns Night. I used the rest a few weeks ago wrapped in chicken and bacon. Yum.

This served three, despite only having one small fish (slightly biblical?) and I am at at loss to describe just how delicious it was.

Ingredients

  • One mackerel
  • a few tablespoons of haggis
  • flat leaved parsley
  • splash of lemon juice
  • splash of ginger wine
  • a small swede
  • two carrots
  • a few potatoes
  • 1/2 pint of milk
  • tablespoon of flour
  • whiskey-cheese

Method

A ready gutted and filleted fish would be easiest to work with, but briefly a word on gutting fish:

Take a very sharp knife and carefully open up the belly of the fish from tail to head. Remove the innards then take the knife and use it to break the spine at the tail, gently lift the spine trying to bring as many of the little bones with it as possible. Rub the inside of the fish with course salt to clean it.

gutting and stuffing fish

Fill the cavity of the fish with the haggis and a couple of sprigs of parsley and then wrap snugly in foil. Bake in the bottom of the oven at 160oC for 25 minutes.

When you have put the fish in the oven chop the carrot and swede and bring to the boil. The potatoes won’t take as long to cook, so chop them and add them when the rest of the vegetables have been bubbling away for about five minutes. When each of the vegetables can be easily pierced with a fork drain and then mash them with some butter and pepper.

Because I have stripped my kitchen down to (less than) the bare essentials as part of the Basic Kitchen Project I put the vegetables to one side, cleaned the pan and then made white sauce.

Heat the milk slowly, do not allow it to boil. Put a heaped tablespoon of plain flour into a mug and add a splash or two of milk and mix to a paste. Pour some of the warm milk into the mug and mix thoroughly, then return the mixture to the pan. Maintain the low heat and stir the sauce as it thickens – keep a close eye on it! When it has begun to thicken crumble the cheese into the sauce and allow it to melt. If (like most people!) you don’t have a friend who rocks up at your house with whiskey cheese then you can add a tablespoon of whiskey to the sauce at this stage.

For the last five minutes turn up the oven to 200oC, open up the foil from around the fish and add a splash of lemon and of ginger wine then return to the oven for 5 minutes.

Cost

This one is a little difficult to cost, mostly because I cannot find where I wrote down the weight of the haggis which I used. The haggis was a ‘leftover’, but I appreciate that most people won’t have this kicking around at the back of their freezer! ‘Winemaker Sarah’ found the ginger wine while she was poking around in my drinks cabinet – a common occurrence when she comes to stay.

  • One mackerel – £0.68
  • a few tablespoons of haggis – ?
  • flat leaved parsley – from my garden
  • splash of lemon juice – ?
  • splash of ginger wine – ?
  • a small swede – this was a (bizarre) gift, but if I had bought it at Asda it would have been £0.50
  • two carrots – £0.30
  • a few potatoes – £0.30
  • 1/2 pint of milk – £0.25
  • tablespoon of flour – ?
  • whiskey-cheese – a gift. If I had used cheddar  I reckon it would have been about £0.30

So, not the best costing I have done as part of this project! I will go with it being approximately £2.30 plus gifts and leftovers – still, not too bad for a particularly decadent evening.

One Pot Pasta – v.2

~ Kitty ~ Leave a comment

I am so enamoured with the idea of One Pot Pasta, that the night after I first discovered it I made it all over again! This version didn’t contain tomatoes and therefore tasted less ‘Italian’ – instead it was peppery, herby and garlicky, and the bacon contributed a lovely saltiness.

This version of One Pot Pasta was full of lovely veggies – just what this pregnant lady needed. One of the things Steve and I noted after the first week of the Basic Kitchen Project is that we missed green vegetables. This isn’t to say that we ate badly. I find that carrots are one of the cheapest ways to get vegetables into your diet and we have relied quite heavily on them both weeks. This week however we made a trip to the market and added some more green.

Once again this made two evening meals and two lunches – I am eating the leftovers ‘as we speak’ (‘as I write’ would be more accurate).

One Pot Pasta

Ingredients

  • half and onion
  • a clove of garlic
  • a large carrot (well, almost – I ate a chunk of it raw before it got into the pan!)
  • broccoli
  • bacon
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried herbs
  • lots of black pepper!
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (from my garden)
  • about 3/4 pint chicken stock (once again I didn’t measure it, sorry!)

one pot pasta

The method is almost exactly the same as when I made it previously the only thing to mention is that I added the broccoli about 5 minutes after the pasta so it didn’t go ‘soggy’. So, rather than waffle on about the method I will get straight to the costs.

Cost

  • One onion – £0.09
  • A clove (or two) of garlic – £0.05
  • A large carrot – £0.13
  • Broccoli – £0.45 (this was the remains of the what I used with the sausages & chips, so about a third of a head)
  • Bacon – £0.15 (see my note on buying bacon at the bottom of this post)
  • 1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs – £0.01
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes – £0.01
  • Stock cube – £0.04
  • Fresh parsley from my garden – free
  • 4 cups of wholewheat pasta – £0.29

Total = £1.22

One  things which is making my limited store cupboard more tolerable is growing fresh herbs. I will write about this in another post.

Sausages and Chips

~ Kitty ~ 1 Comment

There is very little to be said about this meal – it does what it says on the tin!

The sausages were in the reduced section of the supermarket – £1.04 for eight beef sausages, £0.13 per sausage. We cooked three potatoes, which I reckon was about £0.30. A head of broccoli was £0.70 and we used about a third of it. So, in all this meal cost approximately £0.80 for two people!

sausage and chips

Method

Heat the oven to about 180oC. Chop the potatoes into medium sized chips, sprinkle with mixed herbs, black pepper and a little oil and then place the sausages on top. Bake in the centre of the oven for approximately half an hour – you will know when they look cooked.

Chop the broccoli and put in a saucepan with a pinch of salt and water hot from the kettle. Cook for up to five minutes – depending on how crisp you like your vegetables.

This would be nice served with gravy, but because I am currently limited to one saucepan I didn’t bother.

One Pot Pasta

~ Kitty ~ 21 Comments

One Pot Pasta

This is a one-pot-wonder! A very simple pasta recipe which leaves you with very little washing up – winner.

The cost was approximately £1.50 for four portions – dinner for two plus leftovers for lunch. I have just eaten my leftovers outside in the sunshine, which is the first time I have eaten al fresco this year – always an significant occasion I feel!

One of the things I have been struggling with since stripping down my utensils to (more than) the bare minimum is only having one saucepan. Since starting the Basic Kitchen project I have struggled with anything which is served with pasta or rice. When I made veggie chilli I had to make the chilli, put it to one side, wash the pan and then cook the rice. When I made the delicious spicy stew I was too tired and hungry to spend time washing the pot and cooking rice so we dipped bread in it instead. This is an important point. I was clear at the outset of this little project that I am coming at this from a position of privilege – I do have money, I work part time so I do have time and usually energy, I love cooking and don’t consider it a chore. If it is difficult for me to cook with only one pan how much more so for someone who, for example, is working long hours for little pay or who is a carer?

So, discovering that pasta can be cooked this way was a revelation. I also think that the pasta is tastier because it absorbs the stock and tomato.

One of the nice things about this recipe is that it can be almost infinitely varied, so it is great for using up things which you have in the fridge. For this meal I used a base of bacon, onion and mushroom, but the recipe which gave me the inspiration used veggie sausages, sundried tomatoes, spinach and soy cream.

Have a go! Experiment! I would love to know what variations you make.

One Pot Pasta

Ingredients

  • One onion
  • A clove (or two) of garlic
  • 125g Cooking Bacon (see note below)
  • About 5 mushrooms
  • 1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
  • Black pepper
  • Tin of tomatoes
  • 1/2 pint vegetable or chicken stock (note, if you are not adding a tin of tomatoes you will need more liquid)
  • 4 cups of wholewheat pasta

Method

Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in a little oil and black pepper; when cooking with bacon you only need minimal oil because the bacon fat will melt. After a few minutes add the mushrooms, chilli and mixed herbs.

Boil the kettle to make the stock (I had to guess the amount because I don’t currently have a measuring jug – all part of the fun of the Basic Kitchen project!). Add the pasta, tinned tomatoes and stock to the pan and give everything a good stir. Cook on a low heat with a lid on the pan for ten to fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally. You may find that you need to add a little more boiling water if the sauce begins to dry out. Test the pasta to see if it is how you like it (I like mine to still have a bit of ‘bite’) and taste the sauce. Add further seasoning if necessary.

Serve with some cheese on top.

Cost

  • One onion – £0.09
  • A clove (or two) of garlic – £0.05
  • Bacon – £0.15 (see below note)
  • About 5 mushrooms – £0.47
  • 1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs – £0.01
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes – £0.01
  • Tin of tomatoes – £0.40
  • Stock cube – £0.04
  • 4 cups of wholewheat pasta – £0.29

Total cost = £1.51  – pretty good for four servings!

A note on bacon. By far the most cost effective way to buy bacon is to get what I call the ‘scrag ends’ – the bits which the butcher ends up with when he has cut all the perfect shaped rashers. I usually try to get this at the butchers because it is a cheap way to get high quality meat, however, I did my shopping in Tesco this week so the bacon was seriously cheap but not ‘butchers quality’. Buying bacon in this way is always a bit of a surprise – sometimes you get tiny offcuts, other times thick pieces which are almost gammon steaks. This packet contained three gammon steaks – so guess what we will be having for supper later in the week! So, all in all, 60p well spent!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin