Yesterday was the hottest day of the year but a few weeks ago we had a spell of cold, wet weather when I was craving spicy, comforting food. So I made a big batch of this chilli, using a mix of beans (kidney, butter and fresh green beans) cooked in big portions to have plenty…
Tag: Cheap recipes
Lemon sole with caper sauce
Here’s a restaurant quality dish you can have for a home cooked price – I spent £2.57 on a single lemon sole. It’s a classic French dish (sole meunière) and cooking the fish on the bone deepens the flavour. Just be careful as you eat to remove the bones as you go – it’s worth the…
Beetroot burgers
Here’s a recipe inspired by a four day cookery and meditation retreat at Sharpham House I went on recently. This was the recipe I made as soon as I got home from the trip. It was for supper that same evening – I couldn’t wait to start trying out what I had learnt, even after…
Spanish hunter’s chicken
This started out as a chicken cacciatore (Italian hunter’s chicken) – minus the mushrooms, which I think are traditional in hunter’s chicken (of any nationality). But I had lots of red peppers to use up, and pitted black olives, so I was in two minds – Spanish chicken, or chicken cacciatore? So this is a…
Pea and mint soup with Parmesan crisp
This soup ticks all the ‘cheap, fresh and easy’ boxes. It’s also incredibly quick and can be made in less than 10 minutes. I always have a bag of frozen peas in the freezer and a mass of mint growing in a pot in the garden – so I have everything I need to rustle up…
Broccoli and Stilton soup
I was sitting up in bed on Saturday morning planning my week’s food shopping – reading through recipes online, as well as my cook books, while drinking cups of tea in the warm. I came across this article (How to make the perfect broccoli and Stilton soup by Felicity Cloake) so decided to add this soup…
Chicken, chickpea and chorizo stew
I can make this from scratch in about 40 minutes which is enough time to cook on a weekday evening after work. It’s perfect comfort food on an autumn evening. There isn’t very much work to do – just a bit of chopping and slicing and then stewing everything for around 35 minutes. You don’t…
Antonio Carluccio’s beetroot lasagne
I was very sad to hear of the death yesterday of Antonio Carluccio. I loved watching him in cooking programmes over the years and listening to him talk about growing up in Italy during the war and foraging for food – to make meals from mushrooms and nettles. His cooking reflects so much of the…
Rosti topped fish pie
The use of grated potatoes to create a crispy rosti topping turns this fish pie into something a bit special. You can use any fish really but I used two large haddock fillets which were reduced to £2.90 in Sainsbury’s. I also bought a packet of raw prawns for £3.90 – the prawns make the…
Cheap, fresh and easy 