Posie’s Place

Since we’re all still in the hold of this Global recession everywhere you look there are recipes for using up leftovers and ideas and tips on how to get the most for your money.

A new show which has been very popular on the BBC recently is Economy Gastronomy. It features money saving ideas to allow families to cook tasty, healthy and nutritious food on a budget.

One of the main cornerstones of Econonmy Gastronomy is to have a bedrock recipe which you use as the basis to create multiple meals for the week.

Our bedrock recipe this week was a roast chicken  and in order to use up the leftover roast chicken Arruzo con Pollo was the next recipe in the chain.   The recipe said it serves 4 but it’s 4 huge portions so I would say it feeds 6.

Here’s the recipe, enjoy!  We certainly did.

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This is another rather unorthodox recipe from Sue Style and her great book Eat and Two Veg.  I must apologize to the purests among you but I’m no food snob and I like to experiment so I thought I would give this a try.. and what do you know, we loved it!!

See what you think..

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This Nigel Slater recipe came from his show called a Taste of My Life.

I’ve been looking for a more authentic recipe to try and since my son adores pasta I thought this would be ideal for a nice relaxing family meal.

I was right, clean plates all round!  It was delicious, rich and filling, perfect!

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This recipe comes from the New Covent Garden Soup Company’s  – Soup & Beyond book.  I can really recommend the Covent Garden cookbooks as I have a couple and so far all the recipes I’ve tried have always been delicious.  They saved my bacon on Christmas Day when I had a soup disaster and found I had all the ingredients for the Lentil and Bacon soup in the cupboard!!

Anyway, back to the risotto.  We were shopping at a local farm last weekend, at this time of year the local produce is amazing and they had some really great looking green and yellow courgettes so we bought a load and then weren’t sure what to make with them.  Mid week Stewart was looking through the cookbooks trying to find inspiration and the Covent Garden book fell open at this page and he decided to test it out. It was simply divine!  Really tasty!  Matthew loved it too as he had a little bit for lunch the next day!

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I really adore Spaghetti Carbonara and it’s one of Stewart’s favourite’s too!  We’ve been looking for a simple and authentic recipe for a while and this one ticked all the boxes.

This recipe comes courtesy of Nigella Lawson’s Feast.

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This zingy little number really pepped up my Sunday afternoon. Cobbled together in the same time as it took to prepare the spaghetti, that’s definitely what I call fast food! See what you think.

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Last night I was watching the new series from Nigella Lawson called Nigella Express. As you would expect from the title it’s about cooking great tasting food with minimal effort and time. The episode I watched showed Nigella’s take on an Alsacian classic, “Coq Au Riesling”. Living in here in Basel on the doorstep of Alsace good Alsacian wine is not difficult to come by so I decided I’d put Nigella’s claims to the test.  So here it is..

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What to do with a huge tray of turkey escalopes??? That was the question facing me today. I’ve been trying to use up all of the meat we had in the freezer and so over the past week or so we’ve been eating quite a lot of red meat and it’s much more than I’m used to so I really want to steer clear for a few days. There was a special offer on at the supermarket and since I can’t resist a bargain I bought a tray of turkey, my only problem was that there was 1.5kg of the stuff..

As I walked/waddled/hobbled around the supermarket last night I tried to figure out at least one dish I could use the turkey for… and then thanks to seeing some smoked bacon lardons I had one of those eureka moments.. I would make a lasagne. This would not be a traditional lasagne as Stewart doesn’t care for bechamel sauce. I have decided to try one of those, I’ll make it up as I go along recipes and hope it turns out ok.

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The doctor had referred me for a massage on Monday to help my back but it feels worse today than it did before. I was hoping to feel the benefit by now but instead I’m just having pangs of pain in one of my nerves. Good news is that I went to the Diabetes clinic on Tuesday and my blood sugar is well under control so the food plan is working!! I can’t tell you what a relief that is!

Anyway, back to food related matters….

After digging out my copy of “Cook with Jamie” the other night I’m on a roll and have decided to test drive another recipe. We both liked the chicken wrapped in pancetta the other night and as I’ve already said it’s about time I started to ensure that our freezer was was well stocked with homemade dishes. The bottom drawer of the deep freeze was still quite full of meat prime for making some casseroles etc and today when I looked I found a couple of packs of minced beef. Perfect!!

Whenever I buy minced beef I always make sure it contains no more than 5% fat otherwise I buy rump steak and ask the butcher to mince it for me. There is nothing worse than coming across a UFO (unidentified foreign object) in your mince after you have slaved away all day making a culinary masterpiece, it’s been my experience that the very lean minced beef has a much lower chance of containing anything nasty since you a pay a premium price.

I’m a bit predictable when it comes to recipes using minced beef, generally I make one of three things:

a) Chilli con carne

b) Meatballs (a recipe based upon one from Natalie which I think in turn was based on an Antonio Carluccio recipe)

c) Traditional Scottish mince and tatties

Instead of following my usual meatball recipe I thought it would be nice to give Jamie’s recipe a try.

Jamie’s original recipe was called Pappardelle With A Ragu Of Tiny Meatballs and he gave the recipe for making the pasta but I’m not bothering making fresh pasta.

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As any regular readers know I love curries, especially Thai and Indian curries. Stewart and I also love noodles and so when I found a recipe for Thai noodle curry I knew this was one which had to tested.

This recipe is a slight adaptation of one from Appon’s Thai Food. I have featured recipes from Appon’s site in the past and they’ve always been a real hit.

You’ll find Appon’s original recipe here Thai Noodle Curry (Mi Ga Ti). I didn’t stray too much from the original and I must say that the combination of sweet, sour, spicy and nutty flavours was amazing! Thanks for another hit recipe Appon!!

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