Jamie's Beef Stew with Herb Dumplings

On the 4th January 2010, Sainsbury's ran an ad on TV featuring Jamie Oliver using the Sainsbury's Basics Casserole Beef and promoting it to the general public, touting its price ("£2.50.. what you pay for a burger of chips", he said). On the eve of the ad's anniversary I decided to try to recreate it for dinner. I could do with a good stew to keep me warm, and the idea of herb dumplings for staple with stew was certainly enticing, or at least worth learning for future stew recipes.

One of the problems I came across while trying to prepare this though was the lack of availability of the Sainsbury's Basics Vegetable Selection, which consists of a parsnip, a carrot, a potato and an onion. I remembered seeing it on the racks of vegetables at my local Sainsbury's just before I left for my holiday, so I was surprised that I wasn't able to find it this time. To compensate, I decided to use the Basics Casserole Vegetables. Thought priced similarly (£1.00 for the selection vs 90p for the Casserole Vegetables), the packet contains a different range of vegetables (namely suede, carrot, leek and onion), and is about a third of the weight. On the upside however, I get to save time on chopping things up, though I have to use an onion from my own larder to complete the ingredient list.

The full recipe can be found here (those of you with an affinity to Facebook can find it here). Due to copyright concerns and to avoid duplicating unnecessary information I shall just stick to showing pictures of the meal preparation as I went along.

Since I didn't really want to get my fingers too dirty grating butter or rubbing it in the flour to form breadcrumbs, I used a knife to chip bits off the butter before using it to mix everything in.

I'm happy to verify that the casserole vegetables can be used to substitute the relevant ingredients in Jamie's recipe, and have settled down to a very enjoyable dinner tonight. However, since I didn't have a weighing scale, I didn't measure out enough flour for the dumplings, and so they turned out to be a gloopy mess sticking to the casserole contents. They were still edible however, and lent a nice bread-like fragrance.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Casserole Vegetables	£0.90	450g	+£1.10 for 700g	Not known, probably not much.

Those of you interested in seeing the ad can find it below. Enjoy.

[This post is dedicated to my brother and his coursemates who will be here in the UK for six months on exchange. Enjoy your time here guys.]

Beef in a Bag

So it appears that another item in the Sainsbury's range has been demoted from the regular in-house range to Sainsbury's Basics. After the Grated Hard Cheese, the other product I have spotted to have had the chop is the pitted olives (both black and green). When the recession hit hardest, Sainsbury's actually reported a spike in sales of its Basics range, so one could speculate that they are rebranding several of their own-brand products in a bid to get customers who identify with Sainsbury's Basics to purchase them.

For today, I decided to grab the olives and some Basics Diced Beef. I would then add some mushrooms to the mix, and then use a method I learnt from Jamie Oliver to cook it in the oven. It basically involves making a foil bag to put the ingredients in, before popping the lot in the oven. It also makes for convenient meals as well as the bags can be prepared in advance and frozen for future meals.

So we start by slicing up some garlic, the olives and mushrooms.

On a 30cm by 30cm sheet of foil, place the ingredients in the centre and season with black pepper. Fold the sheet in half, and then fold each side twice towards the centre, creating a bag. See the second picture down from this sentence to have a rough idea of how it should be done.

Pop into the oven and bake at 225 degrees Celsius until done.

This was a very effective way of cooking the Basics Diced Beef, well known for its toughness and hence the need to resort to slow cooking methods. The mushrooms also provided the liquid which could be used to further stew the beef. I suppose I am now looking forward to baking the second bag of beef that I also prepared in the same session, some time in the future.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Black Pitted Olives in Oil	£0.99	90g	+£1.20 for 180g	Different methods of dressing and styles.

Poor Man's Kedgeree

Kedgeree is one of those interesting anomalies that have found their way onto British tables claiming to be of Indian origin despite not actually being found on the subcontinent. Somewhat like Singapore fried noodles. It consists of buttery or creamy rice spiced with curry powder, parsley and sometimes chilli, cooked together with hard-boiled eggs and flaked fish, the latter often being smoked haddock the number of times I have encountered recipes for the dish. I have only cooked this once before, for my unsuspecting housemates a few years back, following a recipe by Jamie Oliver.

When Basics Smoked Mackerel appeared on the shelves, I told myself that I really should do a post about Jamie Oliver's Kedgeree using Basics ingredients. I would be able to show my fellow countrymen a slice of the lesser-known aspects of British cuisine, and given that Jamie Oliver is closely associated with Sainsbury's in recent times, it would also be significantly interesting (if not highly amusing). Now, after several months of procrastinating, I've finally gotten round to it.

The photos above and below are for those of you who are wondering how the fish is stuck to the plastic tray without any visible film.

Unfortunately, Sainsbury's does not carry curry powder or chillies in their Basics line, so we will have to make do without. Start by boiling the mackerel in water for 5 minutes, using enough water to cover the pan.

Once done, transfer the water used to boil the fish to 1.5 cups of rice.
Meanwhile, deskin and flake the fish, taking care to pick out any bones.
Chop up a small onion and about four cloves of garlic, and fry until soft.
Begin to hard-boil an egg in the meantime.
Add 1.5 tablespoons of mustard and stir vigourously, taking care that the mustard does not stick to the pan.
Add the rice and fish and stir through.
Quarter the egg and add to the pan. Squeeze lemon juice and stir through. Serves two generous portions.

The result was rather good, despite the absence of anything spicy. The tanginess of the lemon contrasted well with the saltiness of the smoked fish, and the rice cooked this way was very filling. More importantly, this blog post shows that you can even use Basics products to recreate recipes from your favourite celebrity chef!

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Smoked Mackeral	£1.86	250g	+£0.01	Added spice