4 posts tagged “poverty meals”

God bless BBC iPlayer. It gives me access to sooo many cooking shows. And then -with one click- I can keep any of the recipes profiled.

This is my version of one of them. With thanks, as always, to Nigella. This makes a vast amount of food... Definitely a cook to freeze. Hence it's inclusion under poverty meal.

Note that isn't as cost effective in the Southern hemipshere... But I have a vegetable market at the end of my street that also sells European cheeses, etc so I got most of the ingredients for a couple of pounds.

Ingredients:
- 100 grams prosciutto
- 2 crushed garlic cloves
- 8 spring onions (they're smaller here)
- Bunch of rosemary
- teaspoon of celery salt
- 700 grams trimmed, chopped chicken thighs (must be thighs. Not boobies or other chicken pieces.)
- 2 tins chopped tomatoes (must be Italian tomatoes)
- 2 tins drained cannellini beans (must also be Italian. In fact, try and make sure everything is Italian. It seems to make a noticeable taste difference... Even for smokers like Phil.)
- 3 bay leaves
- teaspoon of sugar (no singing!)
- half a bottle of white wine (Italian. and something fruity. No grigio.)
- more olive oil than you are probably used to

You'll need a reasonably large stock pot.

Directions:
- Chop and fry the prosciutto, spring onions and garlic in a decent amount of olive oil in the pot. The goal is to flavour the oil, so make sure it doesn't evaporate/absorb. This is why I said "more olive oil than you are probably used to". It depends on the pan, etc. You'll work it out
- Pour in the tomatoes and the wine
- Stir in the herbs, the celery salt and the sugar
- Drop the chicken pieces in
- Do the salt/pepper thing if you feel like it
- Bring to boil, reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 25 minutes. (This is when you drink the rest of the wine.)
- Just before serving, stir through the beans until they are heated through... Then serve! (Nigella uses the beans so she doesn't have to make rice or potatoes. It totally works.)

Note: I simmered for a lot longer because Phil was more than an hour late (typical). So you can do the same thing. Just watch that the prosciutto doesn't go bung. What I am trying to say is that the cooking time may vary but it's still safe to sit down, have some wine, etc and just check it every five or so minutes.

Serves:
Two fat gays, a large, semi-professional sportsman with enough to freeze and reuse as a whole other meal for two people.

Things I learned from Nigella:
'Cacciatora' means 'the hunter's'. So it's hunter's chicken in the sense of 'simple, rustic, mountain cooking with few rules and a heavy reliance of seasonal ingredients.'

Bliss.

Oh! And speaking of seasonal cooking... How handy is this resource? (If you live in the Northern Hemisphere.) I'm going to cook affordable (obviously) versions of all of these foodstuffs except brown trout.

Okay that title was pretty much just for Bill and Dan -but feel free to ask me about it. Anyway today has been a day of many new beginnings.

Bought my first vodafone prepay card in YEARS -and yes, it is still preposterously expensive. How do people in south Auckland afford both P and cell phone credit? Robbing liquor stores can't be that lucrative. (Maybe I'm doing it wrong?)

The other thing we did today was actually buy our plane tickets! In retrospect I probably should have opened with that rather than a pre-paid cell phone card because it's slightly more interesting.

We'll be flying Qantas via Sydney and Bangkok. Why? Because I have a ludicrous amount of points that I have accrued over the years and we want to upgrade from economy to 'premium economy'. (I assume that means they peel the foil pack on your microwaved feces for you? Because some times that foil can be hot.)

Also we get to use the lounges because of our Qantas Club membership and the only way to make a 27 hour flight bearable is to stop several times so that both you and the plane can refuel without being cut off by snooty/lazy air hostesses. I don't care if some of them are male these days. Hostesses!

Oh yeah, the date is July 20. And we're flying (wait for it) QF 1. Should be easy to remember. It's just one number and I also will go QF 1 about seventy or eighty times in the 'dedicated premium economy bathroom' during the flight. What is it about airplanes that make me pee so much? Is it the heroic amounts of alcohol I drink before and during the flight? Or the one small bottle of water I also drink in the hopes of cancelling out said alcohol?

Poverty Meal 2 Update:
I have good news on the second poverty meal. (Tonight we ate chilli con carne but I just obeyed the directions on the Old El Paso pack so it isn't worth blogging)

We tried some of the White Trash Fudge last night and it made us nauseous. Somehow those extra 12 hours do more than make the whole thing solid. Because it was our classy dessert tonight (chilli and white trash fudge. I wonder what the poor people are doing right now?) and it was good!

So that's two from two.

Because you should never be ashamed of your roots!

I think this is going to be a series so I kinda wish the tags worked better in vox. (Can you hear me, Six Apart?!)

Anyway, as previously mentioned, it's my birthday this week and we are also saving like crazy old ladies. So, in lieu of a birthday cake we have instead made White Trash Fudge, because it doubles as dessert for at least three nights. Yes, that really is how cheap I have become.

Ingredients

1. Can of condensed milk.
2. 500 grams white cooking chocolate.
3. Half a bag of cooking M&M's (told you it was white trash).
4. Zest of 2 limes.

Preparation

1. Heat condensed milk and cooking chocolate together to combine.
2. Stir in other ingredients.
3. Pour into lined baking tray and refrigerate for 24 hours.

We're at four hours and it looks pretty set. One other thing, the lime makes it smell really good so next time I am going to throw some leftover Bacardi in it just to make it a bit more white trash.

This recipe was also amended from 4 Ingredients. Except they used macadamias instead of M&M's which is too rich for my blood and no where nearly trashy enough.

Best consumed listening to/dressed as Dolly Parton.

Yeah, that's right. This counts as a blog post. You thought I was kidding?

Ingredients

1. 6 chorizo sausages, cooked, and cut fancy (on sale).
2. Most of a bag of mushrooms, washed and halved.
3. 1 onion, chopped, not diced.
4. 1 cup vegetables (do you really care what vegetables? Let's just say 'frozen' and 'on sale').
5. 1 can cream of mushroom soup (on sale).
6. Some grated cheese (haven't decided how much because it's so fucking expensive. Why don't I just cook with cocaine?!).
   
7. 1 glass white wine ($10 bottle. Reduced from $16. Go Foodtown!).
   

You see, the white wine cuts through the 'poor' taste of the other ingredients -plus it means I have to open a bottle of wine so by the time the casserole comes out of the oven I'll be drunk.

Preparation

1. Fry the sausages and then cut them up.
2. Combine all the ingredients in a casserole dish.
3. The first point was supposed to be 'preheat oven to 190 degrees'. So do that.
4. Put the 'food' into the oven for forty five minutes. Check it. Stir. Cook for another fifteen.
5. Whilst waiting, drink the remaining wine -possibly from the bottle.
6. Cry.

This freezes even better than your black heart (barbara streisand). So you can inflict it on yourself later as well. An added bonus!

And that's that. Many thanks to the writers of the truly awesome 4 Ingredients Cookbook. This recipe was amended from one of theirs.