About twelve years ago, while the house in which I now live was being done up, I spent almost four hours, quietly fuming, in wait for a couple of tilers. By the time they eventually arrived I was primed and ready for attack, but before I could open my mouth one of them approached, smiling, and said “Sorry we’re a bit late, we went fishing”. And handed me a salmon.

I can’t tell you whether they caught it legally or not, I didn’t ask, but I can tell you that it was absolutely delicious. I don’t think I’d had salmon as good before and I know I haven’t since.

It’s become harder and harder to get decent salmon. Wild salmon had become a rarity anyway, but the ban on commercial drift net fishing in 2007, though a very good and necessary step, now means we are largely confined to the farmed sort.

The French food writer James de Coquet had something to say about this: “Salmon are like men: too soft a life is not good for them.” And he was right, the easy life of the farmed salmon results in fish that is flabby and lacking in flavour. I’ve no comment on the men bit!

So although Lidl’s frozen salmon often comes in for a drubbing, I think, given the general low standards, it’s a bit unfair. It may not be anywhere near the standard of the tiler’s wild salmon, but it’s no worse than others which cost a lot more and it’s better than some.

If you are lucky enough to get hold of wild salmon, then the simplest of cooking is in order - grilled or fried in butter, served with mayonnaise and a wedge of lemon, it’s a true feast. But with lesser salmon a little more effort improves things considerably.

This is one of my favourite ways of serving it. It’s easy and quick, looks really pretty on the plate, and the ham and pesto bring flavour without overwhelming the salmon. It couldn’t be easier to make - it’s more assembly than cooking.

I let the fillets half defrost in the fridge, sandwich them around a generous pesto filling, squeeze over a little lemon juice and wrap in slices of Prosciutto. Then put them back in the fridge to fully defrost.

Wrapping them while they are still a bit stiff just makes it less fiddly.

Cook in the oven at 170°C for 20 minutes. Slice and serve.

These were served with caramelised leeks and a turnip puree and were lovely. Absolutely everything was from Lidl.

Tags: Pesto, Proscuitto, Salmon
Posted in Best Buys, Recipes | 7 Comments »

One of my very favourite cookbooks is a slim volume first published 1948, Cooking in Ten Minutes, by Edouard de Pomiane. That’s my elderly and rather battered copy on the left.

When I first got the book I was immediately hooked when in the first couple of pages I read this instruction, intended to be followed the moment you arrive home:

“Put a large saucepan of water onto the fire. Slip on the lid and let it boil. What is the use of this water, you will ask? I don’t know. But it is bound to be useful, either for cooking or washing-up or making coffee.”

How could you not love that?

His language is as concise as his recipes. Take this recipe for Plaice Meuniere:

“Wash the plaice. Dry it. Flour it. Fry it in a pan containing smoking butter. Salt. A slice of lemon.”

Some instructions are less practical, such as the bit on cooking trout, which begins: “You must buy a live trout.” Right.

The easiest thing in the world after a rough and tiring day, such as I had yesterday, is to reach for the phone to order up a take away. But in much less than the time it would take to arrive it’s possible to have tasty and much more satisfying food on the table, by adopting or adapting de Pomiane’s minimalist recipes or, even if it might make him turn in his grave, sometimes just by using a few store cupboard cheats.

One of the things about getting dinner on the table fast when you are tired is that you don’t want to have to think.

Measuring and weighing is out, chopping needs to be kept to a minimum, stir-frying is the cooking method of choice and the dish doesn’t need to have a name or to follow any rules, it just has to taste good. Having a few little cheats on standby is not just permissible but advisable.

The cheat in this particular 10 minute dish is Lidl’s Thai curry paste. This isn’t always available, but I’ve taken to buying a three or four jars to have in the cupboard whenever it is.

Although it is not by any stretch a brilliant or authentic curry paste, if you completely ignore the name on the jar, and just think of it as a sundry condiment it actually has a good robust flavour and a nice bite. A couple of judicious additions and you end up with a dish that tastes as though you took a lot of time over it.

For two people you need:

1/2 jar lidl Thai curry sauce
2 chicken breasts
A fistful of green beans
A few baby sweetcorn
Onion
Red pepper
Lidl green pesto
Lime or lemon
Oil or butter

I’ve been deliberately vague about the amounts of veg and other ingredients, since exact quantities don’t really matter. Actually the veg you choose doesn’t really matter that much either - this is about making it tasty and making it fast, so use what you’ve got, just pick veg that only needs a little cooking. Green beans and baby corn work great because you can just grab them and chuck them in.

If you’re thinking that using Thai curry paste and green pesto in the same dish seems a very peculiar thing to do, well, maybe it is, but it honestly works.

To do this in 10 minutes, which is exactly how long it took, proceed as below.

Put the oil a large pan or wok and set on a hot ring. Then put on the rice to cook.

Slice the onion and pepper and put in the pan with the other veg. Stir them occasionally and cook for about 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile, in a location close to the pan so you can continue to stir, thinly slice the chicken breasts.

Tip the veg into a bowl and set aside for the moment. Add some more oil to the pan and let it heat back up to smoking point. Put in the chicken and toss it around the pan to brown the pieces on all side. When the chicken is well browned return the veg to the pan. Add the curry paste and a good generous teaspoon full of green pesto. Stir though well and cook for couple of minutes. If it gets a bit dry add a couple of spoons of water.

It’s done. The rice is cooked too. Squeeze a little lemon or lime over the the chicken and serve.

Let someone else do the washing up.

Tags: Curry Paste, Fast, Pesto, Staples
Posted in Low carb, Recipes, Staples | 1 Comment »

If the first secret of frugal eating is planning, the second is being prepared to change the plan at the drop of a hat. Or more precisely at the drop of a price. It’s why we were unexpectedly eating scrumptious pineapple desserts at the weekend and why we’ll have mushroom soup tonight.

Lidl mushrooms were reduced last week by almost 60% to 49c for a 250g pack. Now that’s a deal.

The problem with most mushrooms on sale these days is that they are actually pretty tasteless, and not just the ones in Lidl either. So, to make a soup with some ooomph, you need to add quite a lot of flavour in the cooking, doing all you can to maximise the soup’s “mushroominess”.

You can do this with careful cooking but also with a little swirl of extravagance at the end.

Pictures of creamed soup are really sort of pointless aren’t they? They just look like coloured liquid. But trust me, this tastes very good!

2 onions, chopped
1 large stick celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic
250g mushrooms
1.5 pints chicken stock
1/2 a small head cauliflower or 1/4 a large one
1/2 teaspoon pesto
1 oz butter
Salt and pepper to taste
50ml cream
White Truffle Oil

Put half the butter in a pan with a lid and melt until it starts to froth. Lower the heat, then add the onions and celery. Sauté until the onions are becoming transparent. Add the rest of the butter and the mushrooms. It’s fine to add the mushrooms whole. Stir the mushrooms to coat them well in the butter as it melts.

Cover the pan with a lid, reduce the heat to low and let these vegetables stew gently for about 15-20 mins. Make sure the heat is low enough that the vegetables don’t brown. The mushrooms should start to release liquid and keep things moist, but if it is getting a bit dry add a few spoonfuls of stock. Then add the chopped garlic and continue stewing for another 5 minutes.

This slow cooking really brings out the flavour of the mushrooms and also makes the onion very sweet.

Put the cauliflower in a saucepan with the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then add the mushrooms and the other veg. Simmer for about 20 mins or until the cauliflower is soft. Remove from the heat and stir in the pesto.

You can now blend the soup either by pouring it all into a blender or whizzing it with a stick blender. In either case blend until it is really smooth. Return to the heat, stir in the cream. Taste the soup before adding salt and pepper - if you’ve used a stock cube it may well be salty enough already.

Serve with a swirl of white truffle oil on top and crusty rolls on the side.

This makes around 2 pints of tasty, satisfying and very mushroomy soup.

What Did it Cost?

Everything for this soup, apart from the stock which was homemade and the oil which came from a deli, was bought in Lidl. Homemade stock is hard to price so I’ve put the price of one stock cube on it.

Costs: mushrooms 49c; celery 10c; onions 12c; celery 10c; garlic 5c; pesto 5c; butter 15c; cream 20c; stock 25c; truffle oil €1.20.

So the full pot, which is about 4-6 servings of soup depending how hungry you are, costs about €2.60, or around 45c-65c per serving.

A Little (Worthwhile) Extravagance

The truffle oil I’m using cost something like €30, or maybe a little more, for 250ml. It seems very expensive but I used less than half a teaspoon per bowl of soup, which was plenty. Admittedly it almost doubles the cost of the soup!

One of the advantages of getting good value where it’s available is that it allows you to splash out on more expensive ingredients at other times. The truffle oil adds a wonderful deep earthiness to the flavour and turns a good soup into a really special one for what is still a very economical price.

Tags: Mushrooms, Pesto, Recipes, Soup, Truffle Oil
Posted in Recipes | 3 Comments »

I remember the precise moment I first tasted Pesto.

It was on a school trip to Rome, in a small cafe overlooking the Villa Borghese Park, and I was completely blown away. It was without question the most delicious taste I’d ever experienced in my life to that point and it changed how I thought about food.

I’m not saying the Lidl’s Green Pesto, at €1.39 a jar, is likely to have that big an effect on anyone and I know pesto is not much bother to make - I do make it quite often. But when you just want a spoonful or two even a little bother can be too much. And be honest, how often do you actually have basil and pine nuts to hand?

Well, apparantly Lidl don’t often have pine nuts to hand either - this pesto uses cashew nuts instead, with just a token 1% pine nuts, which is presumably to allow them to add “alla genovese” to the label.

The purists may tut-tut and say that it’s not the real deal, but it tastes good enough to qualify as a staple and I always keep a jar handy, it’s a quick and tasty ingredient or flavouring for everyday cooking.

I use it all the time - to flavour mayo, stirred into sauces and soup, on vegetables, as a topping on grilled fish, simply spread on toast and of course with pasta - pasta and pesto has to be one of the ultimate comfort foods.

Last night I used it to make chicken stuffed with pesto and garlic cheese and wrapped in Prosciutto, which is a favourite dinner around these parts.

The picture isn’t wonderful - I need to take the time to use a tripod - but it tasted great.

It’s simplicity to make. Just slice the chicken breasts in two lengthways, almost the whole way through, and flatten them out. Smear one side with pesto, the other with garlic cream cheese (I used Lidl’s Crefee Cheese, which I love), fold the breasts over again and wrap in slices of Prosciutto. Then into a preheated oven (at 190 C) for 20-30 mins depending on size. These took 25 mins.

Aside: Fear of salmonella means too may people overcook chicken to the point of dry stringiness. I’ve seen suggestions that boneless breasts should be in the oven for 45 minutes.

No they shouldn’t.

While you do need to take care that they are fully cooked, don’t cremate the poor things. People regularly complain that chicken is a tasteless and dry meat - 9 times out of 10 that’s because it’s been over cooked.

I always make at least one more of these than I need for dinner, because nice as they are hot they are even better sliced thin when cold to use in sandwiches or with a salad.

For dinner we had them with mushrooms in a creamy sauce, broccoli and roast turnip. This is what it cost to serve two:

Lidl Ingredients: Pesto: 35c, Cheese: 20c, Prosciutto: €1.00, Turnip: 35c; Broccoli: 50c; Mushrooms: 60c; Red Pepper: 15c; Cream: 20c.

Other Ingredients: Chicken breasts €2.00 (These were actually free range and very big and tasty, I found 12 of them at a great price on the reduced shelf in Dunnes a couple of weeks ago and froze them); various seasonings, about 10c.

So a very nice and hearty dinner cost €5.45 for two, or about €2.73 each.

Tags: Chicken, Pesto, Recipes, Staples
Posted in Recipes, Staples | 2 Comments »

Are you one of those people poking their heads tentatively around the doors of the local Lidl for the first time? This quick run down of what I consider to be the best buys there may be a useful introduction to the unfamiliar products on the shelves.

I haven’t mentioned veg here because, well, veg is veg. Nor have I mentioned fresh meat, because that’s a story for another day.

The list below is in no particular order.

1. Nuts

All the nuts are good, all the nuts are cheap. Half a kilo of peanuts for €1.39 is a winner, as is the same weight of Cashews for €4.19 - the latter are a bit overly salty so I throw them in a colander, give them a good shake and then store in an airtight jar. Not that they stay stored for very long.

But my pick here is the Walnuts, which are truly of exceptional quality, moist and fresh tasting, and only €1.99 for a 200g pack. You’d pay more than that for the standard dried up and bitter ones on many supermarket shelves.

Best Buy: Walnuts

2. Cheese

You won’t find much fancy stuff here, but what is there is mostly very good. The Vintage Mature Cheddar is a well known bargain, generally priced at 3.79 for a large 400g slab but currently at a euro less than that.

I love the Garlic Cream Cheese in the little 99c tub. This is a very handy pot to have around - a spoonful on top of a steak or floated on Leek & Potato soup or mixed though a sauce adds loads of garlicky goodness with minimal effort.

There is very keenly priced Feta available most of time, but I haven’t bought it in a while so can’t remember the exact price.

The Parmesan may not be the world’s greatest but it’s cheap at less than €20 per kilo, or around €4.00 per wedge, and tastes good to me. Ditto the mozzarella, which is 79c a pack. It comes in two varieties - standard and low fat. Personally I think the low fat one tastes a bit odd, so I stick to standard.

Best Buy: Vintage Mature Cheddar

3. Chocolate

I’ve gone on about this before, but there are some amazing chocoholic treats in Lidl. The Ecuador 70% and the Trinidad 75%, at 1.49 for 100g, are very good dark chocolates which are almost always in stock and they have recently been joined by a Fair Trade 70% chocolate, at the same price, which is also excellent.

I’m a high cocoa junkie, but there are also less dark bars in the same range - branded J.D. Gross - if you prefer a milder chocolate. These are all chocolates from a single region, sometimes a single estate, and are easily as good as expensive luxury brands.

Look out for occasional special edition J.D. Gross bars, which appear maybe once or twice a year. The three best of these are Kul Kul, a 78% cocoa chili chocolate from Papua New Guinea; 81% Arriba from Ecuador which has cocoa nibs in it and is a really intense chocolate hit; and the San Martin 77% from Peru which is an exceptionally smooth dark chocolate.

Best Buy: 70% Ecuador Chocolate

4. Ham, bacon & Sausages

The Prosciutto is, for me at least, the nicest of the ham buys and at €1.99 for 8 good slices it’s a snip. The Serrano at the same price is a wee bit too salty. Genuine Parma is excellent and very well priced at €3.99 a pack.

Probably the bargain of all bargains in Lidl is their bacon offcuts, which are sold as a large and very unappetizing looking lump for €1.99. However simply unwrap and dump the whole lot into a moderate oven for 30-40 mins or so, drain off the fat when it’s done and then chop the cooked bacon into small pieces.

It’s a kind of messy process, but you’ll end up with an absolutely vast volume of bacon bits for half nothing. I freeze these in plastic cups covered with cling film and they come out fine.

The salamis and other continental sausages are brilliant, particularly the Chorizo which tastes better to me that much more expensive deli ones. I’m also partial to the Pepper Salami, which costs 2.99 for 200g - great on pizza, in a salad or just as a snack.

Best Buy: Prosciutto

5. Cereals

Most of the Lidl cereals I avoid - I’ve found them either overly sugary or a bit bland for my taste. However I know people who think the cornflakes are great and who buy lots of the others. The ones aimed at kids look horrific though - what exactly is added to make bright blue cereal?

But don’t walk past, because there is one real star here: Special Muesli Luxury Fruit & Nut - the one in the blue pack. This is an excellent muesli that easily stands up to comparison with much more expensive brands. It has more nuts (and better nuts) and fruit than others that cost multiples of the price. It’s normally €2.49 for a decent sized 750g pack, but is reduced to €1.49 at the moment.

Best Buy: Luxury Fruit & Nut Muesli

6. Biscuits & Cake

They have some good fancy biscuits, but at 39c for a pack of Custard Cream or a large pack of Bourbon Creams, 45c for a pack of Chocolate Chip Cookies and 69c for very good shortbread, all of them perfectly tasty, it’s a great place to stock up on the more everyday kind.

If you’ve teenage boys in the house you’ll know they tend to look on biscuits not as individual items but as things that are eaten in units of a pack, so these sort of prices are particularly welcome.

I have never tried any of the cakes - bought cakes are not generally on my list of favourites - so I can’t really comment on them, except to say that they seem to be popular items in other people’s trolleys (you do look in other people’s trolleys don’t you?).

Best Buy: Bourbon Creams

7. Sauces, Dressings, Mayo etc

I’m not sold on most of the bottled or jarred sauces I’ve tried in Lidl, but then I’m not sold on pre-prepared sauces generally. Lidl often have some flavours of better known sauce brands in stock - recently I’ve seen Pataks and Lloyd Grossman - at prices much lower than are usual, so if you use these there can be bargains available.

The mayonnaise is not bad - it certainly isn’t a premium one but it isn’t offensive, takes flavouring well, and is very cheap. It’s available in standard and low-fat versions.

The exception to my lack of enthusiasm about this section is the Red and Green Pesto. These should quite simply be in every kitchen all the time. The red is (marginally) better than the green but both are wonderful kitchen standbys.

A bowl of pasta with a spoonful of either one stirred through and a grating of cheese makes a super fast, super cheap, super tasty lunch. They also make good dips.

And they are very cheap - just €1.39 each.

There are also tubes of tomato puree which are great value. If you prefer to make your own tomato sauce, as I do, the tins of plum tomatoes at 29c each or chopped tomatoes at a similar price are the business.

Best Buy: Red Pesto

8. Frozen Fish

The frozen breaded fish is as good as any you’ll get, but isn’t something I use a lot of. My favourite buy in this section is prawns. Aside from the ordinary bags of frozen prawns for €4.99 for 500g, a price which makes prawn salad a fairly routine weekday lunch around here, there are others not always in stock which are great buys, notably the €2.99 King Prawns used to make this curry.

There are often fish specials, and they are almost always worth a look. There were lovely fish Kebabs available earlier this year and I’ve just bought some vac packed Scottish Mussels in Garlic butter which look tasty - they’re in the fridge, when we get to them I’ll let you know!

Around Christmas they have lobster at pretty amazing prices, though they are very small ones. If you do decide to indulge you’ll really need one per person even for a starter.

A very handy freezer standby is the pack of two pieces of salmon with spinach in puff pastry. I don’t have the price here, but if you need a tasty dinner involving no effort beyond bunging something into the oven, then these are just the ticket.

Best Buy: King Prawns

9. Bread

Most of Lidl’s bread is fairly routine though good value, but there are two stand out products. One is the part baked bread buns with seeds on top, at €1.69. These bake up in about 10 mins to crusty and delicious little loaves that also look really appealing. The second is the 89c Sunflower Bread, a dense, moist, nutty flavoured brown bread that is not just tasty but healthy also.

The muffins, 9 for €1.69, are also tasty. These have become noticeably smaller over the last few month though - I hate when they do that, just be honest and put the price up!

Best Buy: Sunflower Bread

10. Boring but Necessary Stuff

Tinfoil, greaseproof paper, refuse sacks, freezer bags, kitchen paper, loo roll etc - none of this makes for exciting shopping, but we all need them. They are cheap here, sometime astoundingly cheap, and of good quality.

Cleaning products vary in quality. I’ve not been that happy with the washing machine tablets (though the fault may be at least in part with my ancient washing machine), but the 3 in 1 dishwasher tablets have been excellent, and I live in a hard water area so they are well tested.

However the stand out cleaning product for me is the W5 Power Cleaner, in the pink bottle, which costs €2.79 for 750mls.

This is hands down the best general kitchen and bathroom cleaner I have ever used and it goes a long, long way. It’s brilliant on ceramic hobs. I imagine it contains all manner of dreadful things, the contents list is very vague, but it sure does its job.

Best Buy: W5 Power Cleaner

Tags: Bargains, Best Buys, Biscuits, Bread, Cereal, Cheese, Chocolate, Cleaning, Fish, How to Shop, Meat, Nuts, Pesto, Prawns, Sauce, Specials
Posted in Best Buys | 8 Comments »