Welsh Rarebit (or Rabbit)

Welsh rarebit is probably one of those things you wished you knew about in university, to add variety to your diet while using up your endless supply of bread, grated cheese and beer that you have access to. I had originally planned to make this after doing the post on Beer Cheese Soup, but never got round to doing so. Now that the opportunity has presented itself again, I shall do so. I shall also keep in mind that cheese and beer are good pairings in cooking.

Welsh rarebit is essentially a heavy cheese sauce enhanced with Worcestershire sauce and mustard, and on occasion, eggs, served on hot toast. Approaches to preparation vary widely. The origin of the term is uncertain, but is largely attributed to the Welsh traditionally being poor, so much so that cheese to them is a form of meat.

The recipe I will use today is derived from the one I found on the BBC. The brew I will use is Sainsbury's Basics Bitter. As I am not much of an ale drinker myself, I will just leave a couple of photos showing the ale.

 Make a roux by melting Basics grated cheese and adding flour. Add the beer gradually until a thick sauce is formed.

Add Basics mustard and black pepper, and Basics vinegar, in lieu of Worcestershire sauce.

Spread on toast and grill.

On the whole, the toast tastes good, and offers away to stretch grated cheese with a couple of other ingredients that should be cheaply available to any student. A 1.5kg Basics flour is easily available for just over 50p, and leftover beer is usually available after most student gatherings. This could even be used for the breakfast on the morning after drinking parties, using whatever beer has not already been drunk.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Bitter	£0.99	4x440ml	+£1.96	Better tasting ale

GUEST CHEF - Marcus "Pierre White" Lim

Dear readers, no doubt in recent days you may have heard that your regular, trusted blog author has been laid low from an acute case of salmonella poisoning, due in no small part to a rather misjudged attempt at making custard from some pigeon eggs he found on a ramble through Hyde Park.

In much the same way a trusted senior executive is often jetted in to rescue an embattled, and embezzling CEO, or how shadowy American forces are parachuted in to extricate a banana republic dictator, I am very glad to be invited by Señor Alwyn Tan to guest host this gleaming bastion of bargain banqueting, this towering mansion of marked-down mastication, this truly magnificent den of discount dégustation.

Today, we will be recreating an old classic, oven roast chicken breast stuffed with sage-infused mustard butter, wrapped in seared Serrano ham, over a bed of ravioli alla spagnuola.

As usual, apply to your nearest Sainsbury's for their cheapest choice products as follows:
1. Basics Chicken Breast (£4.27)
2. Basics Tomatoes (£0.67)
3. Basics Mushroom Tortellini (£1.12)
4. Basics Salted Butter (£0.54)
5. Basics Mushrooms (£0.85)
6. Basics Tomato and Herb Sauce (£1.67)

The other three products are not in the basics range, but as Alwyn is busy vomiting up his smaller intestines in the next room, I feel it safe to embark on a few value judgements the cheap bugger would otherwise nix.

Firstly, Taste the Difference Serrano Ham at £1.87 for five slices,

Fresh sage at £0.78, and

Sainsbury's French Dijon Mustard, at £0.57 - a whopping 12p more expensive than their basics tin of yellow goo.

Preparations - Meat course
To begin, chop the tomatoes in sixths, and then the mushrooms.

Layer fresh sage leaves seven deep, roll up lengthwise, and shred. Take a moment to breath in the smell, and think of the French countryside.

Combine shredded sage in a bowl with four tablespoons of French dijon mustard and three of butter. Mix well. Think of a French milkmaid churning butter.

Slice chicken breasts halfway through the fleshiest parts. Think of the French milkmaid's.....er.. cows....

Spoon a generous amount of sage butter into chicken breast. Then, carefully wrap with two slices of Serrano Ham for each breast.

Sear breasts in a hot oiled pan for 30 seconds on each side, until brown.

Transfer to a pan and roast in preheated 210 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Preparations - Tortellini

Sautée mushrooms in pan, when brown, add tomatoes.

Combine in saucepan with Tomato and Herb sauce. Bring to boil

In separate saucepan of boiling water, boil tortellini for no more than 7 minutes.

Spoon generous amount of sauce into bowl, then using a slotted spatula, spoon three heaps of tortellini into bowl.

Mix sauce and pasta, then transfer to plate.

Remove chicken from oven, let rest for 2 minutes.

Slice and serve.

Just d'alors! We are done, no? What is it you say? It looks too good to be just a Sainsbury Basics dinn-ah?

Mais oui! You are correct, a maintanente, it eees 'ow you say eet? A bluff...

You think a dinner pour deux like dees costs only £12.34?

Yoo are mistaken! eet was actually flown in from my restaurant on zee Amalfi Coast, and would 'ave cost yooo almost two 'a-hndred euros, plus service.

What you say? eet does not look like a two 'a-hndred euro meal, well zehn, Ah speet in your face, Ah have nev-ARH been soo insulted in mah lahfe.....

To contact our Guest Chef, you may write to:

Marcus "Pierre White" Lim

Ristorante The Le Tratteria

512 Rue le Fiffi, Via del Puttacesca

The Amalfi Coast, BRISTOL

BS1 2EL

[Editor's note: Today's post is brought to you by a good friend of mine from my secondary school days. If you haven't done so already, please peruse the oxygen masks that have deployed from the overhead compartments. We shall resume our normal programming shortly.]

Burger Salad Pasty

I still had some leftover dough from the last post. I figured that I could attempt to make a pasty of some sort, using the one remaining Basics burger patty in my freezer and some vegetables.

I still remember being introduced to the pasty when I was much younger, seeing it on the lunch menu and thinking that the word "pasty" was probably a typo. The person serving me wasn't particularly happy that I asked for "cornish pastry" however, and got me to repeat the correct word twice and explained to me what it really was before giving me what I wanted.

Since I was using burger patty as pasty filling, I thought it might be a good idea to also use common burger condiments for seasoning. To this end, I chose mustard and French dressing, the latter a key component in the Big Mac special sauce, according to Top Secret Recipes and other sources. In addition, while getting vegetables for today's lunch, I noticed that the Sainsbury's Basics mushrooms were now quite interesting. The supermarket chain has been offering 2-3 large flat white mushrooms for 50p for some time now, and it seems that some of the large mushrooms that don't make the cut find their way into the Basics range. I mean, look at the size of these!

So start by chopping up the ingredients you want in your pasty. I used the mushroom, a Sainsbury's Basics burger patty for meat, and 2 cloves of garlic for flavour.

Fry the ingredients, meat first, then garlic, then vegetables. Add half a teaspoon of Basics mustard and Basics French dressing to season.

Throw in a few spinach leaves picked from the Sainsbury's Basics Young Leaf Salad to add to the wok. prepare the pasty casing by taking the dough from the Murtabak recipe and pressing it into a flat sheet on some aluminium foil. Place the filling into the centre, and wrap into a pasty. Or at least some semblance of it.

Bake for 200 degree Celsius in the oven until golden brown.

This is a hearty alternative to your regular burgers, and a nice way to use up leftovers. Given its similarity to curry puffs, and the availability of Basics canned chicken curry, I might want to look into making some, once I get over having to deep-fry stuff and cleaning up after that.

Ramly Burger

Summer is upon us, and with that comes the holding of barbecues. What one eats at a barbecue would vary from region to region. While the most popular item to be had from a grill pit on the seaside back home would be chicken wings, if one were to join a summer party held in somebody's backyard in London the order of the day would almost certainly be burgers.

It is hardly surprising then, that Sainsbury's would introduce Basics Beef Burgers in the fresh meat aisle, to capitalise on the season and the current economic downturn. One look at this burger though, and the prospective consumer might think twice.

For a start, the burgers are small, and are grey in colour. Even if one were to buy in bulk, for 50p more per packet one would be able to choose from a range of juicy-looking Quarter Pounder Beef Burgers, or even venture to the Taste the Difference range. Unless you're catering for a large number of people that you resent, yours truly would strongly encourage you to spend a bit more and have a more enjoyable barbecue.

That said, this blog serves two purposes. Since this post has fulfilled the first, it can proceed with the second, to attempt to provide students from my home country with the means of using Basics items to create meals they are familiar with back home or might encounter here. This time, we shall write on the former.

The Ramly Burger is a curiosity from Malaysia, perhaps the country's answer to the American McDonald's. In reality the term refers to the burgers served up at stalls run by Ramly Moknin and his franchisees, but ask anybody in the know and they would almost immediately think of the variant where the patty and condiments are wrapped in egg. As Mr Moknin does not appear to want to enforce consistency between franchisees, the burgers served between stalls may vary highly; Wikipedia notes that some burgers might be cooked with condiments as interesting as curry powder.

We are in London though, and the British might not be as adventurous. As such, we will stick to the items that we can find in my refridgerator, and that would be the grated cheese from my previous post and the Basics mustard.

Preparation is straightforward. Cook the patty using your usual method. If frying, you might be interested to know that some Ramly franchisees might slice the patty lengthwise to form a butterfly shape, to speed up cooking. This method is controversial, critics saying that doing so would result in a dry patty.

When done, fry two eggs as you would a sunny-side up, trying to spread the white as much as you can.
Add your condiments, and then the patty. Attempt to wrap the egg around the patty and flip over to seal the package.

Not bad, for a first try, in my opinion. The patty consists of 70% beef, and certainly reminds me of the burgers I've had whilst at various fairs in the UK. It was a good idea then, that I prepared a Ramly burger, or at least, a cheap knockoff of it, because on its own it would probably have been rejected, if not by me, then at least by my stomach.

Given London's reputation as a major gastronomical city, I think the Ramly burger could catch on, especially if marketed as authentic street food, which it is, and affixed with an upmarket price tag. There is a Malaysian restaurant that would be well-positioned to do this - the Awana in Sloane Street. A delegation was sent from my country to study the feasibility of a state-coordinated effort to introduce its cuisine on a long-term basis to Londoners. Perhaps Malaysia should follow suit.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Beef Burgers	£1.50	4 x 100g	+£0.97 (+£0.50 if on offer, see notes)	Higher meat content, quarter-pound patties, healthier looking burgers. Currently on 2 for £4 offer.

Hot Dog Hotpot

Since today's post involves sausages, you might like to take a look at the previous post that I have done if you have not done so already. As mentioned there, the meat content of the Basics sausages was highly similar to that found in hot dogs, and since I had the necessary ingredients available, I thought I should attempt to parody Allegra McEvedy's Hot Dog Hotpot, as shown on the first episode of BBC's Economy Gastronomy.

Meanwhile however, some major things have happened with Sainsbury's Basics line since the last time I cooked something for this blog. Notable among them are the absence of Basics cooking onions (at least at my nearest branch), and the change in packaging for the chopped tomatoes to cartons, as shown below.
Just a couple of words about the cabbage: Sizing is highly inconsistent. This might actually play out to your advantage if you can get a head of cabbage bigger than what you might get if you spent a bit more. I decided however to get a smaller head since I know I wouldn't be able to finish this on my own.

I'm going to take a few liberties with the recipe linked above, and will document these here. For a start, I decided to chop up the sausages to speed up cooking time, and also to ensure that they are thoroughly cooked. If possible, grill the sausage slices as well, to remove excess fat.

Start frying slices of onion, minced garlic, and the sausage slices until the onions are caramelised and sausages are browned.

Add mustard and vinegar and mix until combined.

Tear off a few cabbage leaves, wash and chop roughly. Add this to the pan and continue cooking until softened.

Since Sainsbury's Basics range does not include egg noodles, prepare Basics spaghetti, but halve the required cooking time. Add this to the pan, along with half a Sainsbury's Basics chicken stock cube, before adding the chopped tomatoes.

End result was acceptable. It does not help that the sausages tend to be rather bland, and all the ingredients required for the recipe are rather lacking in substance, eg. the lack of intensity in mustard.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Sausages	£0.48	8 links	+£0.49	Almost twice the meat content. Skip both and go for the more premium brands for health and culinary reasons.
Cabbage	£0.69	Variable	+£0.13	More consistent sizing
Chicken Stock Cubes	£0.10	10 x 10g	+£0.86	No palm oil

Chunky Cottage Pie

As far as I can tell, pies feature quite heavily in British cuisine. In fact, if memory serves, the first meal I ever had from college catering at my dormitory was cottage pie. These were relatively cheap, simple affairs: beef mince (or lamb mince if you wanted shepherd's pie) was cooked with some seasoning and root vegetables if the caterer was feeling generous, before this was used to line a baking tray with gravy, with the whole thing topped with mashed potato. While the concept of not using pastry to make a pie may take some getting used to, many of my British colleagues are fond of a good cottage pie, and it definitely serves as effective comfort food during the harshest of winters. Apparently, this post is being written in the middle of a British Pie Week.

I had quite a substantial amount of beef stew left over from the previous post, and hit upon the idea of pairing it with mashed potato for a quick dinner. Funnily enough, Wikipedia says that cottage and shepherd's pies came about as a means of making use of leftover roast meat by topping it with a mashed potato crust.

The Basics mashed potato mix is found to have a higher potato content than its regular counterpart (98% vs 86%). In fact, its contents are just dehydrated potato flakes, and little else, which would benefit those who are looking for fewer additives in their food. Care must be made in preparing however; if too much water is added you may end up getting what looks like wallpaper paste. If this happens, just add more potato flakes until the desired consistency is obtained.
Preparation is trivial and will only be expressed in photos.

It might be a good idea to season your mashed potato during preparation. Pepper and salt might be one idea. Where I work, from time to time the canteen serves mashed potato containing wholegrain mustard, which I find to be a good idea.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Mashed Potato Mix	£0.34	250g	+£0.53 for 432g	More comprehensive mix, no need for milk