Tag Archive | onion

Lent Potato Salad (39p)

Apr14

greece-flag-17A hot (or cold) potato salad inspired by a recipe on Giota Nikolau’s ′Grandma’s Food′ blog, a site which has many wonderful recipes. It is all written in Greek, but with help from Google translate and the wonderful photos on the site, her recipes and ideas can be followed.

It is still Lent in the Greek Orthodox church calendar, their Easter day being Sunday 19 April, making this their Orthodox Holy Week and a time of fasting – no meat, fish, wine, oil, wine, dairy or eggs, so my version of the recipe almost meets the criteria, bar the splash of oil for frying and knob butter for flavour.

Ingredients (serves four):

  • Three baking-size potatoes.
  • One onion, red or white.
  • Dried oregano.
  • Tin of beans – I used a tin of Flageolet beans that I found at the back of the cupboard, but would normally use the cheapest kidney beans, or indeed anything suitable hanging around in the cupboard or fridge that needs using up – some fresh green or string beans, for example.
  • Salted butter.

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Method:

  • Slice the onion up and fry until soft and translucent, then put it aside. Don’t over-fry the onion, keep it a little al dente.
  • Peel and chop the potatoes into inch-sized lumps, then simmer them in a saucepan for 15-20 minutes until soft. Keep a close eye on them so they don’t dissolve and you end up with a watery potato soup.
  • While they’re simmering, empty the can of beans, rinsing them under the cold tap, and add them to the simmering potatoes half way through.
  • When the potatoes are ready, pour off the water and transfer to a bowl, sprinkling in a pinch of dried oregano.

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And that’s it. Makes about four portions. Serve hot in a bowl with a good knob of  butter on top, or can be eaten cold.

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Estimating electricity use and washing up costs, and with a mug of Earl Grey tea, that’s a meal for about 39p.

 

Chicken Yassa (£1.50)

Oct4

Yassa is a spicy chicken dish from Senegal, made with onions, spices and seasoning. In spite of the large quantity of onion, it doesn’t taste oniony at all. More complex versions of this recipe exist, adding different spices, vinegar or other ingredients. I deliberately kept mine as simple a possible.

I went a bit over-the top quantity-wise with this, making enough to feed a family of six. For just one or two people, divide the quantities below by three.

greeds

Ingredients (serves six)

  • 6 breast fillets (or equivalent amount of meat).
  • Three onions, red or green, finely chopped or sliced.
  • Juice of three lemons.
  • 1 cup (½-a-mug) of ground-nut (peanut) or olive oil.
  • 1 well-heaped desert spoon of Dijon mustard.
  • 1 heaped teaspoon of cayenne pepper.
  • 1 Habanero chili, seeds removed, finely chopped (optional) – or some suitable alternative like powdered or bottled hot chili.
  • Soy sauce (optional).

WEAR DISPOSABLE GLOVES when de-seeding and fine-chopping the Habanero chili. It is very hot, and might make your fingers sting. Absolutely do not put your fingers anywhere near your eyes, in your ear, up your nose or anywhere else tender while chopping. You’ll soon regret it. Wondering just how hot these raw chilies were, I cut one in half and licked the end. It was like licking the end of a cattle-prod. The finished dish is not particularly hot, just has that extra tang. but if you’re really not a fan of chili, leave it out, and add soy sauce for some extra flavour instead.

chili

Method

Chop the chicken into small chunks or thin slices and put this in a large mixing bowl. To the bowl add the onion, lemon juice, oil, mustard, cayenne pepper and chili, and stir everything together. I also added a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce, although this is not strictly necessary and depends on personal taste.

chopped

This needs to marinate for half-a-day, so best to do the preparation in the evening and leave it in the fridge overnight, ready to cook the next day.

The customary way to cook this is to fry it on a hot plate – a hot frying pan will do just as well – until the onion is well softened and caramelised and the chicken just starting to brown.

cooking

Serve immediately with mashed potato, some yam or sweet potato mash, rice, or anything really. I microwaved a can of red kidney beans (rinse the goo off them first and put in a ceramic dish to microwave) which went very well. It would also go well with the flatbreads from my previous post.

finished

Can be kept in the fridge or even frozen, I suppose, but this is a food best served freshly cooked. Everything considered, come out at about £1.50 a meal.

 

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.