I have had a few disasters recently. The stove-top rice pudding, made using risotto rice? Never again! The rice took so long to cook that it completely defeated the point of a getting to eat quickly. And to be accurate, it never properly cooked so the texture was somewhat chalky and the grain spent the night expanding inside me. Enough said.
A recent favourite has been noodles in miso, with vegetables and chilli. Last night, after starting the whole process I realised we had no noodles, fish sauce or proper soy sauce. Instead I used wholewheat spaghetti and low-something (salt?) soy sauce. It was actually not too bad - what a resourceful cupboard we have! - but on the whole I prefer noodles in soup, and the pasta with sauce. The gent sent me into a frenzy of envy with the news he is making Puttanesca this week. How delicious!
As I type, I am drinking lukewarm coffee from a flask and eating re-heated chicken korma from the bacteria cabinet at Sainsbury's - with sweetcorn thrown in for good measure. It is just what I wanted: this is the life! The frugal life, to be precise. February is my designated month for catching up on finances. I am taking a flask of coffee in to work: at £5 or 6 a bag, the Monmouth coffee is a wild extravagance - but far cheaper than drinking in a cafe. A flavour investment.
My Monday supermarket raid is turning up lunches from pate and rocket, to lentil soup with parmesan shaved on top. Parmesan is another item which is expensive yet has a big flavour and lasts a long time. This all supplements the days when I don't bring into work a little tub of home made Thai curry and rice, or stew from the night before. The ready-made, already-hot korma is a wild treat at more than £3 per tub.
Next on the menu this week: piles of potatoes and carrots from the veg box. The Moro 'carrot hummus' recipe will be employed for lunches, and I have rather a craving for mashed potato. With sausages - or, really, just with butter and cheese mixed through, and some pepper and salt.
More on coffee. El gentino and I had a wonderful lahmacun moment in Dalston recently (to my dismay I forgot the website url). Meandering home through the backstreets we passed this place and half-registered it as somewhere to try:
http://www.tinawesaluteyou.com/
Closer inspection yields that it uses suppliers such as Brindisa and Neal's Yard, so now it is with some urgency that we need to visit!
It also mentions another purveyor of fine coffee in London which I had previously made a mental note of, Square Mile Coffee - this is their blog.
For good measure, another wonderful-looking place to visit:
www.tasteofbitterlove.com
Hurry up March, I need some sweet mullah to carry me forth on a wave of coffee tasting!
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Frugal eating, I love it! Two top soups you may fancy trying... Tomato and red lentil - two ingredients that are always in the store cupboard. Heat the tinned tomatos, add a little extra water. Add red lentils and simmer until cooked. So quick, so simple, so cheap! The other recipe is chicken and sweetcorn. I cooked some corn on the cob for lunch then used the water for stock. Added shredded chicken salvaged from a chicken carcass (to be boiled up to make stock for yet another soup) then added frozen sweetcorn. Simmered then given a brief blitz to thicken and make creamy while keeping texture. Delicious! Thanks for putting frugal to the front of the culinary mind, I feel the urge to create some interesting yet inexpensive dishes!
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