Spring was wet and grey, the dull miserableness continued through June, July and August and it’s not looking like there is much chance of an Indian summer. It’s mightily depressing.  So now and again I try to create summer inside by making food that is redolent of sunny days.

At the Farmer’s market on Thursday I bought some sweet and tangy pink grapefruit, the kind to which the addition of sugar would be a travesty. Combined with avocado and prawns from Lidl this made a salad that looked, and tasted, just like summer.

To make enough for two you need:

1 pink grapefruit
1 soft, ripe avocado
About a cup full of frozen prawns, defrosted

1 dessertspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Small piece of chili
Squeeze of lime

Salad leaves
2 scallions
Black pepper

The dressing on this is scant and light, it doesn’t need much and certainly needs nothing heavy. It’s simply made with very finely chopped chili, mixed with the olive oil, vinegar and lime.

Peel the grapefruit with a sharp knife, removing all the white pith. Cut into segments. Cut the avocado into chunks. Mix these with the prawns and stir in the dressing.

Serve on a bed of leaves, sprinkled with finely chopped scallion and a good shake of black pepper.

I used Lidl’s Mediterranian salad, which has a nice mix of leaves (Escarole, Frisée, Radicchio and Lollo Rosso) and which I think is good value at €1.29 for a 170g bag.

I know some people tut-tut about ready prepared bags of leaves and in a way it is ludicrously expensive compared to tearing it up yourself. But I like the variety of both colour and flavour in the mixed bags and if I bought three or four different lettuces most of it would end up being thrown away.

We ate this salad looking out on rain teeming down on the garden (which I suppose should be full of lettuce, but isn’t). It may not have been a good summer for people, but the flowers and plants just loved it and are still blooming in rampant profusion.

See all those apples? We have three trees positively groaning with fruit, all of it delicious. There isn’t a hope in hell of us eating all of them, so if anyone is in or around Kilkenny and wants some, let me know.

Tags: Apples, Avocado, Grapefruit, Prawns, Recipes, Salad
Posted in Farmer's Market, Recipes | 5 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 »

This isn’t one of those curries that involves careful and lengthy grinding of your own spices nor is it an ‘authentic’ anything. It’s just an everyday dinner, quick, easy and (thanks to Lidl) cheap to prepare. It tastes terrific and always goes down a treat.

So, this is what you need to make enough for two people. Apart from the rice, it’s all made in one frying pan – use the sort that has a lid – and takes about 20 minutes.

1 onion and a half onion
1 stick celery
1/4 of a red pepper
2 cloves garlic
100g Sugar snap peas
4 scallions
Pat of butter
1/2 can of unsweetened coconut milk
Juice of 1/2 a lime
1 packet (250g) of frozen King Prawns, thawed
Curry powder
Chili powder
I cup raw Basmati rice

Step 1: Start the rice

Before you do anything, get the rice on. I’m not going to apologise for telling you how to cook the rice, since a lot of people have poor results with Lidl’s Basmati, but I’ve found that it turns out great with this method.

You need a saucepan with a well fitted lid. Put a full cupful of rice into the saucepan. We’re not talking an American cup here – just a cup or mug from your cupboard, the size isn’t of the essense. Fill the same cup with cold water and add to the rice. Then add another two dessert spoons full of water, 3 if you used a large mug to measure the rice.

Cover the saucepan and bring the rice to the boil. Keep an eye on it and as soon as it starts to boil reduce the heat and simmer for exactly 5 minutes. Then turn the heat off, but do NOT remove the lid or move the saucepan. The rice will finish cooking in it’s own heat and will be absolutely perfect after 10 mins and will stay perfect after that, while you get the curry cooked.

Step 2: Make the sauce base

Melt the butter in the pan over a medium heat. Very finely chop the half onion, pepper, celery stick and garlic. Add to the butter, cover with the lid and leave to sweat in the butter for about 10 mins. You don’t want them to brown, just become nicely soft.

Step 3: Add the veg and season

Meanwhile chop the other onion roughly and slice the sugar snap peas in two lengthwise. Add the onions to the other veg in the pan and cook uncovered for about 2-3 mins, stirring occasionally. Turn up the head slightly and add the curry powder – whatever amount you like really since everyone has different tastes on this. I suppose I add about a heaped teaspoon of medium-hot curry powder.

Stir this around until the curry powder has soaked up all the butter. Add the peas and stir in well.

Step 4: Make it into a curry!

As soon as you’ve added the peas, add the coconut milk. Stir well, bring to a gentle simmer and then add the prawns. Keep the pan simmering gently for about 5 mins. It’ll be done then, so meanwhile……..

Step 5: Prepare the garnish

Cut the scallions in half lenthwise, then cut those halves in half lengthwise so that you have strips of scallion. Toss in the lime juice and sprinkle with a little chili powder.

Step 6: Serve and Eat!

The good bit!

Although prawns are undoubtedly a luxury, this is cheap enough to be a weekday dinner. This is how the costs pan out:

Lidl Ingredients: Frozen King Prawns €2.99, Onions: 10c, Pepper 25c, Celery: 12c, scallions 30c, Lime 15c, Garlic 10c, Sugar Snap Peas €1.00, Rice 20c.

Other Ingredients: Coconut Milk – I buy this from Dunnes. Can’t recall the name of it, but it’s the chinese branded one, which is both the cheapest and the best one they have. I think it’s about €1.20 per can. So, 60c for this recipe.

Cupboard Ingredients: curry powder, chili powder. Say 20c.

Total cost is almost exactly €6.00, or €3.00 per person. And worth it!

Tags: Curry, Prawns, Recipes
Posted in Recipes | 5 Comments »