Credit Crunch Cookery

Times are hard (so the papers are telling us) and so it is time to look at ways of stretching our resources a little bit farther.

Effective cooking is one way we can do that. What do I mean by effective? Not wasting ingredients, and being careful about where we shop.

For example, today being Sunday we have just had our family Sunday dinner. Roast chicken, Yorkshire pudding, braised carrots, cabbage and creamed potatoes (yum yum!). It being Sunday we all had larger than usual portions, so we are effectively catering for four adults (rather than two adults and two children).

The first place to make some savings is when buying the ingredients. To keep the price down I bought a large chicken from a budget supermarket, which came to £3.49. This is compared with a medium chicken from one of the larger "name brand" supermarkets for £4.49.

The chicken provided us with enough meat for two meals. The potatoes I bought locally for around £1.50 for a 4kg bag. My wife bought a "stew pack" from our local grocers for £1, which contained half-a-dozen large carrots, three onions, half a large cabbage and a decent sized turnip (so again, more than enough for another meal or two).

So the total cost for our Sunday dinner is around £6. But remember, that doesn't give us just the one meal. Half the meat on the chicken was used for the meal (and we were serving up LARGE portions here). The other half is going to be used in a Sweet-and-Sour sauce for our main meal tomorrow.

But wait, there is more. We've still got vegetables left to use, and the chicken carcass. As I type this the carcass is simmering away nicely to make chicken stock, this is going to be used tomorrow in a cabbage and cheese soup (using the remainder of the cabbage from today).

As for the rest of the vegetables, they'll end up being used in a vegetable stew (or we might use it to go with some stewing steak). The potatoes will be used throughout the week as parts of various meals too.

So our £6 outlay is going to give us the best part of four meals.

Thinking of Sunday lunch, another good budget stretching ingredient you can use is Pork Shank (ask your butcher for this one). This is the shoulder bone, shoulder meat and a good portion of skin (which is just the thing for making a good amount of pork crackling). A shoulder from our local butcher costs around £1.75 and easily provides enough roast pork for the four of us. The only thing to remember with a shoulder is to slow cook it for a couple of hours on a medium to low heat to get the meat nice and tender (three to four hours should do it).

Remember, just because you want to save some money, doesn't mean you can't eat well.

Squid in American Sauce

A couple of months ago I'd bought a tin of Ocean Sea "Squid stuffed with tentacles in American Sauce" whilst in our local Lidl. I quite like squid. I especially like the look on other peoples faces when I order it in a restaurant.

My children also like squid, and if I'm trying to eat battered squid rings it tends to be a fight as to who gets them.

Squid stuffed with tentacles is another matter entirely. Now I've had barbecued squid with tentacles once before, and quite enjoyed it, in fact the tentacles are the tastiest part of the squid (you'll probably have to trust me on this), but the kids for some reason didn't fancy trying any.

The big problem with the tinned squid is this: what the hell do I do with it now that I've bought it? The tin itself doesn't give any clues on how to cook it. Do I eat it out of the tin? Should I reheat it? Should I drop it in the bin and run screaming from the kitchen? What do I do?

Google wasn't a lot of help this time round, in fact other than finding other people with the same question about what to do with it, there wasn't an awful lot of answers.

I did, however spot some hints, so if you are brave enough to have these in the cupboard and want to know what to do with it then read on:

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Cooking Squid in American Sauce

Ingredients

1 tin of Squid in American Sauce
1 medium potato
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

Peel and cube the potato (1/2 cm cubes is probably about right), then fry in the oil over a medium heat until starting to brown (around ten minutes). Stir constantly as otherwise the potatoes will stick to the bottom of the pan.

Turn down to a lower heat, add the sauce from the tinned squid and cook for another five minutes, stirring regularly.

Finally, add the squid and cook for another five to ten minutes until the squid is tender.

Serve, and enjoy!

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I really should have photographed this (I'll have to do that next time), so you'll just have to trust me when I say that it really doesn't look that appetising, even to someone who actually enjoys eating squid. As my eight-year-old daughter said as she examined the pan, "That looks like yuck!"

The important thing is the taste, and boy, does this ever taste good! The potatoes melt in the mouth, the American Sauce turns out to be a spicy chilli, onion and tomato sauce, and works to flavour the squid really nicely. The squid was nicely soft with a pretty meaty consistency.

More surprising was the opinion of the kids, my daughter and five-year-old son both dug in and after trying the potatoes, both of them moved on to the squid and the tentacles. Seeing as they came back a couple of times for more squid (my son nearly ate as much as I did) I'll certainly have to look at getting this again.

You get around half a dozen small squid to the tin, and this works surprisingly well as a snack meal. Just don't look too closely at it before you eat it.

footnote

I've just had another search and have found an alternative recipe. Don't say I don't spoil you. . .