It kind of goes without saying that eating on a tight budget requires at least some degree of planning. It also helps if you can do at least some cooking in advance, if only to avoid the temptation, after a hard day’s work, to blow the budget in the interests of getting food fast and with minimal effort.

So I spent a couple of hours on Sunday getting myself organised.

Some of this involved very minor chores:

1. Separate the turkey into 2 bags of 2 portions each and freeze.
2. Cut the 400g of cheddar into 8 equal(ish) parts.
3. Remove (but don’t discard) the outside leaves of the cabbage. Cut out (but don’t discard) the thick stems from these leaves, then store the remaining leaves in the fridge.
4. Sliced up the rest of the cabbage finely and store in a sealed container in the fridge.
5. Remove (but don’t discard) the stalks of the broccoli, divide into florets and store in the fridge. Sliced broccoli stalks are great in a stir fry and also make an excellent soup ingredient.

Most of the preparation time involved cooking the minced beef, which will form the basis for 3 dinners this week, and making some soup for the freezer. The two extremely cheap recipes below are, I hope, the main things that will keep me on track this week.

Beef & Tomato Base

This isn’t a recipe for a finished dish, so if it looks as though it’s lacking something in the picture below, that’s because it is! What you end up with is a basic cooked beef mix that can then be used as a base for other recipes and which freezes very well.

800g minced beef
1 large onion
2 stick celery
1/4 red pepper
Garlic to taste (I used 3 bulbs of Chinese Garlic)
1 tin plum tomatoes
Salt and black pepper

1. Prepare the Beef
Fry the beef until it is well browned. I did this in three batches, otherwise there is too much meat in the pan for it to brown properly. As each batch is cooked remove to a dish and set aside.

2. Prepare the Veg
While the beef is browning, chop the onion, pepper, celery and garlic into small pieces. When the beef is done, add all except the garlic into the pan, with a little olive oil, and cook gently till the onion is just transparent. Then add the garlic and the tin of tomato. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Cook the Sauce
Put everything into a large oven proof dish with a well fitting lid. Mix very well. Cover and put into a low oven (140 C) then forget all about it for 3 hours. You can stir periodically if you like, but it isn’t strictly necessary.

This results in a rich meaty sauce, which smells wonderful. Allow it to cool completely, then divide into three equal portions. Freeze two, keep one in the fridge for tomorrow.

Cost Beef €2.89; Onion 10c; Pepper 22c; Celery 20c; Garlic 13c; Tomatoes 25c.
Total: €3.79, or about €1.26 per portion.

Note: I’ll be honest, I don’t usually buy Lidl mince, it is a little fatty. But it tasted very good when it was done and it was extremely cheap.

Spicy Tomato & Veg Soup

This is where I used up all the bits of the veg that I trimmed off but didn’t discard earlier.

1 Onion
5 baby new potatoes, peeled
1/2 Red Pepper
2 stick celery
Stalks of 2 heads of broccoli
Stems of cabbage
1 carrot
Garlic to taste (2 bulbs in my case)
All the above should be chopped roughly
1 tin plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon red pesto
1.5 pints chicken stock
Salt, pepper, paprika and chili powder to taste
Olive oil or butter

Note: Carrot wasn’t on my shopping list, but there was one rather tired looking one in the fridge so I chucked it in. I always have concentrated homemade chicken stock frozen in ice cube bags, but you can use a cube.

1. Prepare veg
Put a little olive oil or butter in a pan and gently fry the chopped onion, potato, carrot, pepper, celery, cabbage stalks and broccoli stems until the onion is just transparent. Keep the hear low - you don’t want the veg to brown. Add the garlic for the last minute or so.

2. Cook Soup
Put the prepared veg along with the tin of tomatoes and the stock into a saucepan, bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 20-30 minutes. Use the broccoli bits as to decide when it’s done - they should squash easily when pressed with the back of a spoon.

3. Zap It
When it’s done, remove from the heat and blend everything. I use a stick blender, but you could just as easily throw the lot into a food processor or blender and zap.

4. Season
Return the blended soup to the saucepan, add the pesto and the seasoning to taste, then simmer for about 5 minutes more. Allow to cool.

5. Freeze
I freeze this in plastic cups covered in clingfilm, which makes it easy to defrost in portion sizes. I got 8 cups, each a little over 1/3rd pint, of good thick soup from the above recipe - actually I had a half cup over, which I just chucked into the beef mix above.

To defrost, squeeze from the cups into a saucepan and heat.

Cost: I’m not going to break it all down - it’s kinda hard to put a price on broccoli and cabbage stalks! - but it comes to under €2.00 for the lot, or about 25c per portion.

Tags: Beef, Recipes, Soup, Tomato, €50 Challenge
Posted in Recipes, €50 Challenge | 12 Comments »

Lidl’s standard Olive Oil is very cheap - €3.99 for a litre. However, while it’s fine for cooking with, it isn’t really of a high enough standard or an interesting enough character that I’d use it for salads or in any situation where the flavour of the oil really mattered.

It claims to be an Extra Virgin Olive Oil but to be honest I’m not really convinced.

I’m totally convinced by a current special buy however, part of an Italian food promotion. This is a monoculture oil made entirely from Italian Bosana Olives, costs €4.49 for 500mls, and is a real bargain.

It’s a light, soft oil with a mellow flavour and a slight peppery after taste. It may not pack the mighty punch that some expensive oils do or have their strength of character, but then you don’t always want that sort of oil.

The mild but distinctive flavour and light texture make this a perfect oil to use as a dressing on salads - it adds to the flavour of the other ingredients without overwhelming them.

It would also be great served in a bowl for dipping good bread into or drizzled over meat or fish just before serving. This isn’t an oil I’d cook with - real Extra Virgin never is and this seems to me to be the real thing.

I suspect that this oil will sell fast and there is generally only limited stock of these sort of specials - so don’t hang about too long before getting yourself some.

Try it with a tomato, mozzerella and basil salad - a typical dish of Sardinia which is where the Bosana olive comes from - the combination is a match made in heaven.

This is one of the simplest as well as the tastiest dishes in the world, just slice the tomato and mozzarella and tear up some basil leaves. Arrange the lot on a plate, drizzle with the olive oil and season with black pepper. 2 minutes tops.

This was lunch today. Everything except the basil came from Lidl. It was very, very good.

Tags: Bargains, Best Buys, Olive Oil, Recipes, Salad, Specials, Taste Test, Tomato
Posted in Best Buys, Taste Test | No Comments »