My first rolled lamb breast (yorkie & roasties recipes)

I have a baseline price with meat, I dont like paying more than £2.50 per kilo. Lamb is one of my favourite meats but at a minimum of £5 per kilo, I can never normally afford it. Breast of lamb is one of the cheapest cuts you can get and I was fortunate enough to get a 1.1 kilo joint reduced to £2.80 a few days ago at Tesco. Close enough :)

Its quite a fatty joint, Ive never cooked one before, but I did a bit of googling and asked my friend, it seems slow cooking/roasting is the way to go. I originally wanted to stuff it and slow roast it, but in the end I went for the slow cooker in the hope that i'd get a little more meat from it.

Apparently, veg takes longer to cook in the slow cooker than meat, so you should always put veg at the bottom. So I had half a swede (reduced, 15p), chopped half and 3 carrots, put them in. A bag of baby button mushrooms from the freezer went in, and some chopped pepper. The chicken stock left from last weeks chicken, a carton of passata, 2 good handfuls of fresh rosemary (from the freezer), salt, pepper and a bit of boiling water to dissolve the chicken stock. I fried a red onions and 3 garlic cloves and added them. Then I placed the lamb ontop and stuck it on low for about 8hrs.

If your wondering about the box ontop and the tea towel, well thats what happens when you overload your cooker. The lid wouldnt shut so it couldnt get up to heat, the jug on the left is the pint of liquid I removed in order to shut the lid, the box is to keep it shut as liquid kept trying to escape. And the tea towel, is because said liquid was successful at escaping! I owe the poor thing a very large clean up operation tonight.

Serving with home-made yorkshire puddings, stuffing balls (leftover in the freezer from last week) and roast potatoes.

Yorkshires and I have a very turbulent relationship, much like me and pastry. They either work beautifully or they go horribly wrong. These ones came out like this:

It was a batter mix (I still have 20 to use up!) But mixing your own batter form scratch produces way better yorkshires. Jamie Oliver has a brilliant recipe:
3 eggs
115g plain flour
pinch of salt
285ml milk

Pour a little oil into a muffin tray wells, I use a pastry brush to brush oil round the sides too so they dont stick as they rise. You need to heat this oil until it is smoking! Talking seriously hot here. I left the tray in for half an hour on 250. When the oil is hot enough, quickly pull the tray out and pour the mixture into the wells, about half full or so. Put them back in a shut the door. My oven is rather pathetic so I do yorkshires on their own so it can concentrate all the heat on them or they just dont rise well enough.

Another tip, if you can, keep a muffin tray just for yorkshires! Not only does the tray get rather manky, but with using oil in them all the time it builds up a nice non stick coating after time.

 Now, for roast potatoes, you can just chop the potatoe, pour over some oil and bang in the oven for 45mins. simples. Today I was really craving very crunchy, fluffy roasties. So I put a bit more effort in. Peel, chop and boil them for about 10 mins. Just long enough that the outside softens, but you dont want them cooked. Drain them. Then rough them up. Honest! bang and shove and toss them around in the colander until the outside is all fluffy:

This way, the oil clings to them better with a rough surface, so does the salt and gets them a lot crispier. Also The insides are really nice and fluffy as theyve already been softened slightly by cooking.

Pour oil over and toss around to cover evenly, Salt well (it helps them to crisp up), pepper and ive added some rosemary since im serving it with lamb.

 Put in the oven for about half an hour, maybe 45 mins. Im adding the stuffing balls to the same pan after half an hour.

The lamb will be sliced and served with the veggies and stock poured over. Leftover lamb with be chopped and put back into the stock (as a stew/casserole) and served for lunch tomorrow with rosemary focaccia bread.

Rosemary and sea salt focaccia

I LOVE this bread! Its so fragrant and the texture is all chewy! Love love love it! Ive only made it with an instant mix before, this was my first attempt making it 'from scratch' and it was surprisingly easy.

500g white flour (I used strong white bread flour)

280ml warm water

1tsp yeast

1tsp salt

3 tbsp olive oil

a bunch of fresh rosemary (recipe said 1 tsp dried rosemary)

Mix it all into a dough and kneed for several mins until it becomes soft and pliable.

Leave to double in size in a warm place, this could take anywhere from 40 mins to 2 hours depending on how warm it is.

Tip onto a greased and floured baking tray and shape into a flatt-ish rectangle about 3/4cm thick.

Leave to double in size again.

Dimple all over using the tips of (clean!) fingers and brush with olive oil (i used a pastry brush) sprinkle over some coarse rock sea salt and some extra fresh rosemary and bake for about 20-30mins on 180.

This is a lovely 'special' side dish to go with some plain soup or a simple meal.

Batch baking recipe - Carrot cake

Ok, so as facebook friends will know, I had a not so minor meltdown yesterday. OCD monster strikes again. Thanks for everyone who sent me hugs and remined me not to listen to the negative voice inside.

So I was supposed to be making treacle tart monday, but I just could not roll the pastry out, it just crumbled. And I didnt have enough butter defrosted to make another batch. I was trying to think of a cake I could make that wouldnt require butter, and notied the 2 kilo's of carrots on the side waiting for freezing/cooking. Carrot cake usually uses oil, and I had some walnuts, so I doubled a recipe and adapted it to fit my trusty lasagna tray. Half of this recipe is in the freezer and half is in an air-tight container for snacks and desserts through the week. I didnt take any picture as my phone had died and I did it in a rush.

320g sugar

350ml oil 

6 eggs

280g grated carrot

200g walnuts (if you want to!)

zest of 2 Oranges (not strictly necessary but nice)

350g self raising flour

2 tsp bicarbonate soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

If you want you can add raisins/sultanas too.

Its probably not the right way but I just measured it all into a big baking bowl and switched the whisk on, it came out fine.

Line a large square tin with greasproof paper. Pour into prepared tin and bake for 45mins or so on 180, leave it in the tin for 10mins to cool before tipping it into a wire rack and cooling and slice into squares.

Sweet and sour chicken noodles

My 4th meal with my chicken, is sweet and sour chicken noodles. I am cheating tonight and using a sauce as it is a meeting night here, and I am terrible for over-working myself and then being too tired and in pain to get to our meeting.

So, I used:

2 handfuls leftover roast chicken

1 x pack noodles 

Sweet and sour sauce (Ill explain this a bit later)

1 carrot

1 pepper

1 red onion

Half a handful chopped spring onions (good job I had them chopped in the freezer)

Cashew nuts

Now, you can buy a jar of sweet and sour sauce at any supermarket. Id recommend buying several when on offer. Lidl has them on their half price weekend offers for 34p jar regularly.

The one i'm using I got from approved food recently (along with the noodles). It is a 1.1kilo jar of concentrated sauce (in other words it makes double, 2.2kilo sauce) and I am obviously not going to use it all today! It was 99p. 

So, when I have leftover sauce from a bulk pack, or even that ive made myself, I freeze the remainder like this:

Re-Useable silicone muffin cases in a muffin tray, then peel the cases off and transfer the frozen sauce portions into a labelled bag. Ive put 'makes double' on mine to remind me to add as much water as there is sauce.

It provides little portion-sized sauces you can pop out of the freezer and defrost whenever you need them.

So, today I used 100ml concentrated sauce and added 100ml of water to make 200ml of sweet and sour sauce.

Chop your veggies, or take your pre-chopped veggies out of the freezer, and stir fry until softened. Add noddles and sauce and let it warm through for a couple of minuits. These noodles are pre-cooked, it was a case of 12 packs noodles for 99p. But usually I would use half a pack of dried noodles, pre-boil them and add to the stir fry cooked.

Stir through your cooked chicken and cashew nuts, and your done! dead easy :)

I found half a pack of spring rolls and prawn toast at the bottom of the freezer leftover from a trip to jack fultons month, so will be serving with them.

And......

All gone! I could have stretched the chicken out an extra meal, but we have had enough leftover chicken and we wanted a really decent meal before the meeting tonight, so I put all the leftover chicken in.

Im not sure what tomorrow will be yet, I'm thinking about making a pizza, but I have some cobs to use up so maybe sausage and egg cobs with potato wedges. Will have to wait and see.
Very happy with my £4 this week :) 3 main meals for 4 and a lunch for 4. I usually do this once a month or so. I still have the chicken stock in the fridge to use up too so will have to think of something for that later.

'Baguette' and butter pudding

I dont usually go shopping midweek, but on Monday we went down to asda when hubby got home from work, and I picked up this baguette for 15p. We had some of it with our meal on Monday, and some for Tuesdays lunch with brie, but still have a lot of it left. Its Thursday now and its gone rather hard and stale, no good for eating 'fresh'. So I was pondering what to do with it, having already got a bag of bredcrumbs in the freezer.

Bread and butter pudding I have made many times, its very easy and not too sweet. Cant say ive ever done it with baguette before though. Can it be done with baguette? Were about to find out ;)

Slice your baguette and spread with butter, line the bottom of a dish, you should probably grease the dish first, unfortunatly I forgot! Then sprinkle some sugar over the top. Repeat with another layer, sprinkle with sugar.

When your finished cutting your baguette and your left with all those bread crumbs, scoop them up and put them into your breadcrumb bag in the freezer, they come in very useful when you want to top a pasta bake or make a treacle tart.

I used 3 eggs, and about a pint and a half of milk, used the little bit we had left of the semi skimmed milk and the rest was made up with powdered milk.

Pour your milk/egg mix over the top and bake for about 30-45mins, untill its fairly solid and all puffed up.

While that was baking I also stuck in some stuffing for lunch. We had some leftover roast chicken with stuffing on some cobs I picked up for 15p of monday.

This is such and easy lunch and the kids LOVE stuffing, plus its 15p per pack! Cant beat that, serve with side salad.

I didnt need the whole pack of stuffing and still have half left. Ill just roll them into balls and freeze them until I need them.

nom, nom, nom, nom!

Chicken and chickpea curry

Meal number 2 from my chicken, is chicken and chickpea curry.

You need to soak your chickpeas overnight if using dried (I have and used a small handful per person).

 I always start by frying my onions and minced garlic even if im using the slow cooker, boiled onions dont have the right texture somehow. I added 3 cubes of my curry paste (recipe posted earlier in february), my fried onions/garlic, and bowl of chickpeas to my slow cooker.

Then I had a rummage round for veg, there was grated carrot and chopped celery in the freezer, so added a handful of each, some plum tomatoes that needed using and half a pepper in the fridge, so added them too.

I added a carton of passata and stuck it high (at about 9.30 am) while I went out in the garden for a couple of hours. This could all be done in a pan in one go. The most important thing to remember is dont add your cooked chicken or yogurt untill everything else is already cooked, these just need to warm through rather than cook.

Lunch by the way was leftover mash, veg and stuffing from last nights dinner, with fresh gravy.

yum!

Anywayssss, after lunch, and more gardening, at about 2.30pm, everything had cooked and it tasted rather tangy and strong. I switched it the the warm setting and left the lid off for it to cool a little (just until it wasnt bubbling anymore) then I added some yogurt and coconut.

I only used half a packet of creamed coconut the rest is in the fridge, so I will need to come up with a recipe to use that up this week too.

I added about 2 handfuls of cooked chicken.

Stir through, put the lid back on and keep on warm until hubby comes home.

Serving ours with basmati rice, naan and mango and ginger chutney with popadoms. Non of which ive made myself as I managed to get some smashing bulk deals from approved food (yay!)

And I still have this much chicken left:

I think it will last another 2 main meals and a lunch. Ive got the stock cooling and will be posting shortly how to cook with this. Im thinking maybe a chicken pie tomorrow and sweet and sour chicken noodles on friday. Maybe.

Making the most of your chicken.

Not very pretty, I did warn you. But that chicken is sooooo succulent! 

So, drain off all the juices that have run out of the chicken, these are very rich and can be used either in soup, risotto, pasta sauce, for gravy, any number of yummy recipes.

Strip every last shred of chicken off and place all the skin/bones/carcass, back in the slow cooker.

On the plate is about 1 and half breasts that I will be serving for dinner tonight with roast trimmings (yorkshire, stuffing, mash, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, the works).

In the tuppaware box on the left is all the leftover chicken that will be our meals this week. This becomes a bit of a game, how far can I stretch my chicken. 

Place the tub of stock and tub of extra chicken in the fridge/freezer.

Pour about 4 pints of water into your slow cooker, add seasoning (I added two bay leaves, pinch of herbs, salt, plenty of pepper and 3 minced garlic cloves) and put your slow cooker on low overnight. Easy peasy.

I will show you all how to strain your stock and use it later, and I will be posting all the yummy recipes that I make from this £4 2kg chicken. Stay tuned! Xx