Leftover lamb biryani

Leftover lamb makes the most amazing biryani. Biryani is a spiced, indian rice dish, and it is so simple to make! Especially if you cheat with some pataks curry paste ;)

I boil about a handful of basmati rice per person. Basmati is expensive compared to the value 40p a kilo rice, but trust me, it is worth the extra expense when it comes to indian food.

I usually add mushrooms but didnt have any this time. So I chopped an onion, grated about 4 cloves of garlic into the pan and fried in some olive oil. Then added a pepper, and half of my leftover lamb. Add a good tablespoon of pataks curry paste (I used a bit of tikka and balti) andd stir it round to coat everything.

Add your boiled rice and another tablespoon of curry paste (you will have to use judgment as to how much you need to add, it will depend on how much rice you have), stir through and fry for 5 mins or so.

Thats it! your done :)

So simple and yummy. You could do this with just veggies, add a couple of chicken drumsticks, add some meat it is a dish on its own. Were having it with mango chutney and popadoms.

I still have a slice of lamb each left to go with cous cous for tomorrows dinner.

I did some baking today, using up all the fruit/veg in the fridge (plus the blinking stilton!)

I made a tomato and cheese (half cheddar, half stilton) quiche for our lunches tomorrow, a banana loaf (which was eaten att lunch-time with friends who came over for lunch!) and a fruit crumble with apple, pineapple and blackberries. Topped with a crumble with oats and pinenuts. I still have a lot of pineapple left so will be finding a way to use that up soon.

The parsnip, thyme and parmasen loaf was GORGEOUS! We polished that off at lunch along with he brocolli and stilton soup :) so will put another loaf on overnight to be fresh baked for morning breakfast. Cant beat fresh bread and home-made jam! 

Epic whoopsies and treacle tart.............

Sometimes, I go to look for reductions, and come back with a pot of hummous and colslaw and having spent £5 on petrol. But every so often, it pays off:

£10.15

There is a little joint of topside beef which we sliced into two steaks - £2.50

Pack of brasing steak - £1.50

Pack of 2 Duck breast fillets (naughty treat! v.expensive) - £2.00

2 packs of 4x Turkey quarter pounder burgers 60p each - £1.20

2 packs of 650g lean mince beef 80p each - £1.60

A pack of salad leaves - 15p

3 x cans parioli tomatoes - FREE! (with 50p coupons at tesco)

3 x ristorante pizzas 40p each (with coupons) -£1.20 (for tea tonight)

Bottle of red wine  - £3

pack of extra mozerella for pizza - 40p

I got lots of veg and froze on monday. But it has been weeks since I got meat. And ive never got it this cheap before! so very, very, very happy right now! :) I had to do a major re-shuffle of my freezer, but i'm so happy with my £10 spend.

I had a budget of £20 for this week, I have £5 left for the rest of the week, as I have been trying to make an effort to shop for reductions.

The only thing is, it is SO stressful! Seriously, there were people swearing, shoving and grabbing, one guy literally snatched a pack of mince out of my hands after the guy reduced it for me. You have to have nerves of steel and accept the fact that most people are going to be very aggresive :(

But, today at least, it was worth it! :) Came away with lots of bargains to feed my family for the week and beyond.

I made a treacle tart for the first time! :)

Whizzed up all the hot dog buns that were going off into bredcrumbs:

Line a pie dish with shortcrush pastry:

Blind bake for 10 mins

Heat up 300g golden syrup, 50g black treacle in a saucepan

Add 150g breadcrumbs, juice and zest of 1 lemon, and about 2 tsp grated ginger, a shake of salt.

Mix in breadcrumbs once melted and add to your pastry case. Bake for half an hour.

Also, parnip, thyme and parmasen loaf turned out HUGE:

Smells kinda fruity and herby. Cant wait to try it! :)

Odds and ends make for interesting recipes......

End of the week, and ive been fortunate enough to pick up quite a few reductions this week very cheap. Unfortunately that means I have a lot of cooking to do quickly before it goes bad and I am determined not to waste anything!

This was meant to be lunch today. The bockwurst sausages on the right are a german smoked sausage with 84% meat content, and were reduced to about £1 for 5. The  hot dog rolls on the left, I bought to go with them, were reduced to 24p and unfortunatly have a few spots of mould. So I will be removing the mould and whizzing them into breadcrumbs later for a treacle tart. Hubby has asked me to do a meal he has been wanted to try, ever since finding a picture of facebook. So this is what we did with the sausages: 

(Warning: could be considered slightly freaky and certainly isnt a respectful way to treat such lovely sausages)

Chop up into chunks.

Grab your spaghetti:

Bad picture sorry, but skewer the sausage chunks with spaghetti! 

Cook n a pan of boiling water for 10mins.

We topped ours with cheese and no veggies whatsoever on request of hubby. Usually I would do a tomatoe based sauce with onions and garlic.

I also had 3 tiny, very sad looking parsnips knocking around the bottom of the fridge.

So, I decided to make a parsnip, parmasen and thyme loaf, a la Jack Monroe (www.agirlcalledjack.com)

Peeled, and grated the parsnips, added a good few pinch's of 'parmasen' cheese (which was actually tesco value italian style cheese that was reduced, grated and frozen!) from the freezer and also a few pinch's of chopped thyme from the freezer. Added this lot to the breadmaker along with 2 cups of warm water, a glug of olive oil, 3 1/2 cups of strong flour, a shake of sugar, a shake of salt and a couple of teaspoons of dried yeast.

Its in my bread-maker right now and smells amazing! I love herbs and cheese in bread so this should be good.

Earlier in the week, I couldnt post due to little boy stealing my phone (camera!) We did a 2 kilo chicken in the slow cooker. Made some home-made colslaw and jacket potatoes to go with it. I managed to pick up a really good pack of cooking bacon from sainsburys for £1.09. Some of the packs are basically full of rind and fat. This one had a good few steaks in it. so I made a chicken and bacon pie the next day with a little of the bacon and a little cooked chicken, lots of leftover veg in the fridge:

Also in the piccie is the tomato, bacon and cheese quiche on the left. 

Made a chicken risotto with the remaining stock and a little chicken for the third day. And ive frozen the rest, which consisted of a whole breast and most the meat from a leg. 

Last night, I made my way down to sainburys with a £10 giftcard and bought a half leg of lamb for dinner. We had family over and no time to defrost anything. I have half that joint left n the fridge which I will be stretching over the next 2 day, 1 with cous cous and 1 biriyani.

Also, last week and this week too I made a vat of brocolli and stilton soup, Ive been making a lot of this as i've managed to pick up a lot of reduced brocolli recently and have NO freezer space! (Literally, theres a chair ontop of it keeping it shut!) and I still have a 650g block of stilton leftover from the christmas reductions. (I had 3 blocks at 80p each). I usually serve my soup with walnuts and a good crusty home-made bread with butter:

As I said I have no freezer space so this is in the fridge for lunch for the rest of the week.

Im thinking the remaining stilton may end up in some stilton and walnut scones.

I made my first ever bakewell pudding last night and it was amazing! Will definitely be making it again. But for this week I have a treacle tart and an egg custard to make. Will (hopefully) post pics when I get round to making them!

Eves pudding

Well, my version of it! Probably not the right way of doing it but it is yummy non the less.

I found 6 of these! My daughter loves to take a bite out of an apple and then hide it in the house for me to find. I didnt fancy a crumble so decided to make an eves pudding instead. Really simple to make and a bit nicer than a normal sponge.

Apples (I used 6 half eaten ones!)
100g SR flour
100g Sugar
100g Butter
splash of milk

I lost my vintage pyrex dish somewhere so ive used a pie dish instead, grease it with a leftover butter wrapper.
Peel chop and slice the apples, line the bottom of the dish evenly.

My four year old little boy is my photographer today.
Mix the cake ingredients in a bowl, add a splash of milk if the mixture is too thick, and spread ontop of the apples.

Bake on 180 for about 40mins or so.

My apples somehow rose to the top, this was lovely served with custard!

Oh look! Some chocolate muffins magically appeared! :P

One of those days bolognase....

We had such a fab time on Monday! Group homeschoolers trip to the Magna science museum. It was a LOT of walking though and i'm really hurting today, throbbing all over. Its days like today when i'm so grateful for my kitchen gadgets! I've put a ready made bread mix in the bread maker, just add water so no fighting the brain fog thinking about measurments. And i've just put one of my standbye staple meals into the slow cooker, Bolognase! I make this so much I dont need tothink about it and once youve prepped everything, you can stick it in the slow cooker and let it do all the cooking for you, which is priceless for days like today. Because i'm struggling so much to move today, ive used pre-chopped veggies from the freezer. Days like this are why I have pre-chopped veggies in the freezer.

Grated carrot, chopped celery and some chopped peppers, about a handful of each, in the cooker.

You can just stick onions in the slow cooker, but they really taste a lot better if you fry them in olive oil first (imagine boiled onions? yeah, not nice.) These are frozen pre-chopped onions. I would normally add grated garlic, but i'm feeling extra lazy today, sooooo......

Frozen pre-minced cubes of garlic (oh yes! *that* level of laziness!)

We really like a lot of garlic in our italian type foods, so I added 4 cubes (equivelent to 4 cloves.)

I had some chopped basil in the freezer so added a few pinches and some extra dried herbs.

I really dont like using canned mushrooms, but I have non in the freezer or fridge so these had to do. I discovered them recently actually in tesco, they were about 9p for 250g sliced mushrooms. So I keep a few in for emergencies.

Lea and Perrins is my special ingredient, a few splashes of that along with a few splashes of red wine make a huge difference to the depth of flavour.

I normally use canned tomatoes but I have a lot of passata in my cupboards at the moment as they were cheaper than tinned and more versatile. I usually use two or even three cartons and add lentils too, but my poor slow cooker was looking rather full so I just put the one in.

My breadmaker in the background there was kindly donated to me from a very kind lady off freecycle, years ago. Its only a cheap tesco model, and ive used it almost everyday for the past 4 years! Its on its last legs, but its holding out for the time being.

I brown off the mince just a little, other recipes say brown it off completely, which you can do, I like to do mine until about half of it is browned off then add it to the slow cooker.

When I see lean mince reduced or on offer I fill the freezer, its so versatile. 

As I said, I add a couple of splashes of red wine, lots of fresh ground black pepper, and I also add some beef stock. A couple of teaspoons/cubes depending on how much your making. I find it adds flavour but also helps combat some of the acidity from the tomatoes/wine etc.

This is a 3.5ltr slow cooker, full to the brim. I used a 600g pack of lean mince and plenty of veggies. I would normally add a couple of handfuls of lentils at this stage, but its so full already I havent bothered. This will be on high for about 5 hours, it will do tea tonight, lunch for hubby to take to work tomorrow and a meal tommorow night, I will be making it into chilli.

If you have any bacon add that to the mince when you brown it! It goes amazing in bolognase!

So that is my very lazy family meal, for when your having one of those days :)