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.

Me and my Inner Womble!

The 'flu bug I had ages ago affected my appetite, my energy to cook and therefore the amount of leftovers I had for some considerable time.  The last few days, however, I feel that me and my inner womble are back on form.

Wombles, as you know, can't abide human wastefulness but they do appreciate the good food scraps that our species throw away because the burrow's cook, Madame Cholet ( pictured) is a dab hand at making great meals out of leftovers.  Unfortunately, however, a large percentage of the human race don't live near Wimbledon which is why, hopefully, this blog and my book, Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers, come in useful.  

Yesterday's Lunch ....

Pease Pudding Curry!

Rice

Cashews

Sparkling Water

Pease Pudding Curry (Geordie-Indian Sub Continent Fusion) was quick, easy and delicious.  One of my storecupboard staples is Patak's Madras Curry Paste.  I cooked half an onion my favourite way and, when it was soft and starting to caramelise, I stirred in a teaspoonful of said curry paste.  Once that started to smell so delicious that my Real Man asked "pooh, what's that stink?" I stirred in the leftover pease pudding (the amount you see in the picture) and a little leftover ham stock to soften it a bit. 

For another pease pudding dish, this time Geordie-Italian fusion, see here. 

Today's Lunch ...

Boursin Stuffed, Panko Crusted Potato Cake

White Wine Spritzer 

This just came about because I only had two large potatoes left last night when cooking mashed potatoes for dinner. One was too small, two was too much. Today I mixed a dollop of roasted garlic mayonnaise into the leftover mash, wrapped it round a remanant of Boursin (garlic and herb), rolled it in panko crumbs (lots more to do with panko crumbs here) fried and ate it. Both my lunches were truly delicious, both were made out of leftovers and both were decided on the spur of the moment.

Read more here.

Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers  

All the recipes, ideas, hints, suggestions, information etc. I can think of for over450 potential leftovers. Madame Cholet would be proud of me!

Geordie~Italian Fusion Pizza!

~  Menu  ~

Ham and Pease Pud Pizza

Sparkling Water

(tho' should have been Newcastle Brown, Red Wine or a cuppa)

Marzipan Trimmings

Coffee

Today, for a minute or so, I was at a complete loss for an interesting lunch so decided to sort out the fridge a bit and see if I could be inspired.  I was, almost immediately.

I took out the almost obligatory ham and pease pudding and behind it was half a pizza base (I have to admit to cheating here - if I am only having pizza for myself I buy roasted garlic flatbread from Tesco, cut it in half and this makes two dinner pizzas for me, I do often make my own pizza bases too - promise!) and inspiration struck...

Traditional Geordie Pizza! 

I spread the base with pease pudding, topped it with sliced ham, baked till crisp and served it with a green salad all drizzled with balsamic glaze.  This was so very much deliciouser than I was expecting!

Almost every week I cook my real, and Geordie, man a ham and make pease pudding with the stock, for pease pudding recipe see here, it's very easy and worthwhile!

Whilst my pizza was cooking I marzipanned our Christmas Cake and then after eating the pizza I sat down with a cup of coffee and a few marzipan scraps. 

After a little while I went into the kitchen for more marzipan scraps and on my third or fourth visit for more I decided to gather all the scraps (that were left) and keep them to make Chewy Marzipan Cookies ~ see here for the recipe, I don't think you'll regret it!

The ice cream shown in the picture, sandwiching the cookies so delightfully, was, of course, made in accordance to my super easy no churn, no ice cream maker recipe which my book Lush Ice Cream without a Machine  is all about - in this case I made Cherry Ice Cream, obviously!

overs which is why I wrote Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers to encourage others in my passion!

Curried Lentil Soup and Beyond

~ Menu ~

Curried Lentil Soup with Crisp Poppadoms 
Sparkling water – what! 
A palette cleansing crispy and crunchy Granny Smith Apple

Last night I had a simple dahl for my dinner. I made quite a lot of it as I had plans which, I have to admit, included this soup for today.

I have made curry from scratch many, many a time; grinding and blending my own spices, but when just cooking for myself (my man can’t abide spice) in a small caravan a curry paste is the way to go and Patak’s Madras Curry Paste is an excellent choice. Red lentils are wonderful things, they are healthy, delicious, cheap and quick and easy to cook. I make the dahl in 2 parts and then mix them together. The following quantity makes enough dahl for at least 3 meals for one person (or 2 small meals for 2 people or 1 meal for 3 and a bit people).

Red Lentil Dahl

250g red split lentils 
cold water to cover plus hot water as needed 
2 medium onions 
1 tablespoon olive oil 
4 teaspoons Patak’s Madras Curry Paste or to taste 
Salt & Pepper 
small bunch fresh coriander – chopped

Cook the lentils ...

~   Put the lentils into a medium sized saucepan and add enough water to cover by a depth of ½” or so.~   Bring to a boil, stir, turn down the heat and simmer till the water is absorbed and the lentils are softening.
~   Keep an eye on the proceedings and top up with hot water as necessary, continuing to simmer till the lentils have softened completely and break down into a purée when stirred, this only takes about 20 minutes or so.

Simultaneously cook the onions …

~   Peel and thinly slice the onions.
~   Heat the oil in a small pan and stir in the onions till coated with oil.
~   Add a little salt, turn down the heat, press a piece of foil or a butter wrapper directly onto the surface of the onions to cover completely.~   Put a lid on the pan and cook slowly, checking and stirring occasionally, till the onions are utterly tender.~   Stir in the curry paste and cook for two of three minutes to fragrant.

Combine ...

~   Stir the lentils and the onions together, taste, season and then stir in the coriander, keeping back a bit to garnish.

So that’s what I had last night with some basmati, poppadoms, a little yogurt (plain, not strawberry), mango chutney and a small salad. Anyhoo - today, for lunch, it was a simple matter to add a little vegetable stock to some of the leftover dahl and heat and stir together to make my soup topped with some frazzled poppadoms – see end of this post.

The rest of the dahl I shall freeze for future use. Another way I like to serve it is as a fritter, formed into a cake and fried to crisp, speaking of which … My sister and I had this on our first menu in our first restaurant back in the 70s (we were somewhat ahead of our time) and it was one of those dishes that it is impossible to take off the menu – people ordered it anyway – but we did vary it slightly over the years. Here is a menu from the early 80s showing it evolving …

A similar dahl can be made with split peas but they need several hours soaking before cooking which leads me on to ...

Pease Pudding from Up North

This dish is originally from the North East of England and, my man being of the Geordie diaspora, is something we eat fairly frequently. For a very cheap and simple dish it is delicious and makes me wonder if perhaps its not as grim Up North as we’ve been led to believe.

Soak 250g yellow split peas for about 8 hours in cold water. Meanwhile gently simmer a gammon joint till tender. Drain the peas and use some of the resulting gammon stock to cook them exactly as above to a soft purée, adding more stock as necessary. They take quite a bit longer than red lentils – say 45 minutes. 

Just this with no additions or perhaps, if you like, a little butter and black pepper ( don’t salt without tasting – the stock is usually sufficiently salty) is absolutely delicious served with the hot ham, new potatoes, fresh veggies and a drizzle of honey mustard salad dressing; the salt and the sweet are brill together. Pease pudding is also good formed into patties and fried to serve with the next day’s ham or in ham sarnies with or without the honey mustard dressing. Oh yes – you could also add some cooked onions, shredded ham and stock to make a great soup. And so we go almost full circle! Details of these two pease pudding ideas here.

A word on poppadoms …

Although it might sound romantic; one’s poppadom floating up into the blue, wafted on a tropical breeze, it’s actually quite irritating. In the Caribbean a lot of eating is done al fresco whilst enjoying the glorious sunshine or the wonderful resonant, warm and caressing night, cooled by the delicious trade winds. These same trade winds can play havoc with light and aerodynamic food, poppadoms being a case in point. For this reason I started cutting them into strips before frying – this way they not only make a very attractive garnish they are also less likely to blow away.