Savoury mushroom pancakes (23p)

Dec15

The meal

The ingredients:

  • 120 g plain flour
  • 2 eggs (small or medium)
  • 210 ml milk
  • 90 ml water
  • 1 tbs cooking oil
  • pinch of salt
  • 300 g mushrooms
  • Small red onion (or half a big one!)
  • salt and pepper – grated peppercorns, not the fine powdery stuff.

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Mix the flour and salt, mix in the eggs, add the milk and water, kept mixing until it is smooth. Then leave it for half-an-hour while you cook the other bits.

Fine-chop the onion and fry until it is soft and put it on one side. Thin-slice the mushrooms and pile them into the pan.

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Cook on a medium heat (i.e., if your dials read the typical 1-6, cook on 3). The moisture comes out of them and they cook in their own juices until they’ve shrunk to about one-third of the original volume. When the pan starts to dry and some of the mushrooms start browning they’re done. Mix the onion back in.

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Now for the pancakes! Stir the tablespoon of oil into the pancake mix. You don’t need any oil in the pan, just get it really hot, add a small ladle-full of the mixture (about 70 ml to be pedantic) and off you go. Have a go at tossing the things to turn them over. The occasional one does end up on the deck or concertinas itself up in the pan, but that’s all part of the fun. I find each pancake takes about three minutes. Makes six, less casualties.

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The frying pan’s the important thing – got to be in good condition. Don’t put up with one that’s losing its non-stickiness, bin it and get a new one.

Spoon the mushroom-onion mix along one side of each pancake and roll the things up. Eat immediately or reheat in the frying pan – I like them best this way, browned on either side and slightly crispy – and with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I’ve even eaten them cold.

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Two with a cup of tea and a wedge of good bread makes a meal for 23p.

There’s always variations: could add some bacon bits, or alternatively cook the mushrooms with a good shake of all-purpose seasoning, although this takes away the essence of the dish – that you can taste the mushrooms.

Gyros – Polish layered chicken salad (99p)

Dec13

Another one from time spent in Poland. (I’m English with a bit of Scottish thrown in, by the way.) This is a good table-filler which I ate with friends on numerous occasions, and I’ve done my best to recreate the dish as I remember it. Gyros is pronounced ‘gee-ross’, with the ‘g’ hard as in ‘goat’.

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Seven layers in my creation. Feel free to adjust quantities according to personal preference or experiment with other ingredients. From bottom to top:

  1. Chicken – 200g of meat, well chopped up. Can brown the chicken in a frying pan with a bit of all-purpose seasoning or stock for a bit of extra flavour. I’ve also made this with pheasant, which was delicious.
  2. Tomatoes – two beef tomatoes with the seeds removed, chopped up small, and with a generous squeeze of ketchup on top if you want.
  3. Red onion – half a red onion chopped up small. Can use white onion, but makes it a bit too oniony for me.
  4. Gherkins – three sliced up.
  5. Petit pois – 150g. Sweetcorn is normally used, but I don’t like sweetcorn. Gently press everything down a bit at this point.
  6. Mayonnaise – 200 ml, well-mixed with a flat teaspoon each of turmeric, coriander, paprika and all-purpose seasoning, dolloped across the peas. (Gyros flavouring can be bought ready-made in small packs from Polish shops.) Best made a few hours before so that the spice flavours can leech properly into the mayo.
  7. Lettuce – half an iceberg lettuce well chopped up. I also sprinkled grated carrot on top for visual appeal.

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I actually find this tastes best after half-a-day, when the various flavours have melded together a bit. Total cost, including electricity cooking the chicken (6 hours in a slow-cooker on ‘low’ overnight), £4.30.

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Makes five servings. With a chunk of buttered bread and the mandatory mug of Earl Grey, a meal for 99p.

The day of the duck (£3.55)

Dec12

Tesco is currently selling some plump-looking frozen ducks, £5 for a 1.9 kg (4 lb 3 oz) bird. More expensive, but 50% larger than the £2.50 frozen chickens. Having never tried the meat, decided to give it a go. A viable alternative to chicken?

Once home, removed the giblets (neatly packaged in a plastic bag inside the bird), and it now weighed 1.6 Kg (3 lb 8 oz). Also, incidentally, bought an oven thermometer (£2 normally, although mine was 75p off the discount shelf). It’s reassuring to see that the temperature in the oven really is the same as it says on the dial.

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I had intended to cook the duck in my relatively economical slow cooker, but even if I had chopped it up it would not fit in, so in to the oven it went for 1½ hours – the most expensive way to cook something like this. After pouring off the juices the weight had reduced to 0.9 Kg (2 lb). Dissecting the cooked carcass, I picked off all the lean meat I could find, ending up with 286g (10 oz), or 17% of the original weight. My cunning plan was falling apart.

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I prepared the meat for the dish I intended – the meat piled on slices of beef tomato on a wedge of lightly toasted and buttered homemade bread – by breaking it into small pieces and browning it in the frying pan with some all-purpose seasoning. It shrank even more.

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There was enough meat, just, to make four of these open sandwiches. Cost of each one? At least £1.75 each. For my lunch had two with a cup of tea, so something like £3.55 for a single meal. Way over my budget!

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Have to admit that it was delicious, like sort of beefy chicken, and the meal kept me going all afternoon and evening. For that reason I might do it again some time for friends or family, but a replacement for chicken? No!

Zapiekanka (76p)

Dec11

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For each serving:

  • Half a baguette
  • 100g mushrooms
  • 50g grated cheese

Zapiekanka (plural zapiekanki) is the archetypical street food sold all over Poland. Simple, filling (with good quality bread) and tasty. A small bread stick halved and buttered, with a layer of cooked mushrooms, some grated cheese on top and then grilled.

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I fried the mushrooms well, reducing them down on a medium heat until all the water had bubbled off. Don’t worry about the pan looking too full, the volume shrinks down like magic, leaving them with a rich flavour compared to the British habit of only half-cooking mushrooms. Sprinkled with cheese and grilled until it started browning. Zapiekanki are typically topped with ketchup, but I prefer a pinch of seasoning.

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This is the most basic version. One could elaborate at will, say with onion, bacon bits or capers, though this might upset purists – the food originated during the lean years of Communist rule. Mushrooms were always cheap or free, with people scouring the woodlands for them each autumn, just as they do today in this much afforested country.

I used Tesco ‘Everyday Value’ cheese, loose mushrooms and the cheapest baguettes. The cost of the meal, including electricity and cup of tea: 76p …  a little more than I’d expected, but at least under my £1 target.

Footnote: Looking out of the window while cooking, could see a rather impressive 22⁰ degree halo round the moon this night.

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Potato and onion soup (51p)

Dec10

A while back I got hold of a copy of ‘A Girl Called Jack‘ for £4.47. It’s a recipe book with very low-cost meals and inspired me to do a bit of cooking. Initially posted my experiences on Facebook, but it’s getting tiresome hunting back in time there to relocate recipes, so here’s the blog – a personal notebook and reference point for anyone interested. Here goes, with recipe no. 1  …

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Inspiration: cookingonabootstrap.com

  • 500g tinned potatoes
  • 1 onion
  • sprinkle of cumin
  • chicken stock cube dissolved in a mug of boiling water
  • 150 ml plain yoghurt. (I used Greek yoghurt, which was 50p, compared to 75p for plain yoghurt. The latter would have been better though, the tangyness of the Greek yoghurt overpowers the flavours of the other ingredients.)

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After soft-frying the onion with the cumin and simmering the potatoes with the stock for 10 minutes, the idea is to blend everything.

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I don’t have a blender, so mine was more a broth, having mashed the potatoes and finely chopped the onion. My eyes are still stinging.

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Didn’t feel it needed the cumin. Maybe single cream or even milk would work. Very filling with a slice of bread, and the above quantities made enough for three such meals.

Estimated cost of each meal, including cup of tea, bread, butter and electricity used, 51p.