Rice Cooker Risotto

Mention chicken breasts and the last thing you would probably picture would be chicken breasts with skin on them. So you could imagine my surprise when I saw that Sainsbury's have expanded their line yet again to include, amongst other things, skin-on chicken fillets. I was trying to look for ways to get rid of my bottle of Sainsbury's Basics White Wine as well as what is left of my rice before my household leaves my current flat. A risotto with chicken, courgette and some sort of salted meat for flavour sounded promising, so I decided to pick this up along with several other groceries.

While I was at it, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make a risotto using the rice cooker, but nonetheless still opted to brown the chicken first for better flavour.

Heat the Basics pepperoni in a pan. Once enough oil has been extracted from the pepperoni add the chicken breasts to the pan, skin-side down, and brown.

Dice the chicken breasts while deglazing the pan with Sainsbury's Basics White Wine.

Wash the rice once. Crumble the now crispy pepperoni into the rice, and add the chicken breasts after dicing, along with diced Basics courgettes. Add the deglazing from the pan, and a generous amount of Basics Hard Cheese.

Fill with Sainsbury's Basics White Wine, such that the water level above the rice and other ingredients is one joint of your index finger. Top up with water if necessary. Cook in rice cooker until done.

The wine dominated the flavour of the rice, so perhaps I should have made up for it by adding more cheese and perhaps other herbs as well. Overall however I am satisfied with how this has turned out and would consider exploring more combinations I could put into the rice cooker.

British Chicken Fillet Portions (skin on): £8.33/kg, approx. 300g
+£0.90 for fillets with no skin

Bolognaise and Toast

In the days when the Pizza Hut back home still had unlimited pizza buffet available, my father would often help himself to the bolognaise sauce and have it with the thin garlic toast, saying that it was probably the best way of getting maximum value out of the buffet. He had a point: by avoiding the deep pan pizzas which filled you quickly with heavy dough and cheap smoked meat (like ham or pepperoni), you get to the highest value ingredient in the buffet other than salad, namely, the minced beef.

I have one last serving of Basics frozen mince to get through, after which I am once again left to my own devices. The idea for making a pasta sauce came about as I noticed that I have not reviewed the Basics Tomato Soup on this blog, and was curious as to how effective it was as a substitute for the Basics chopped tomatoes, which is about 7p more expensive. Knowing how well it can substitute may also be useful to know when caught in a pinch.

I do not recall ever having tinned soup for my meals, though I would imagine it has kept many a university student in the UK alive. The most I remember is my friend having tomato soup and roll in a pub when I visited her.

The smell of browning Basics frozen mince in the kitchen is starting to take its toll on me and my flatmates, so I was rather grateful to learn from a friend of mine at church this morning that using wine in cooking would help reduce strong smells from cooking.

Once the mince has been browned and Basics white wine has been added, add the Basics tomato soup and herb mix. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Skim off all the fat while waiting for the whole thing to reduce by about half its volume.

Transfer to bowl. Sprinkle Basics Grated Hard Cheese and serve with toasted Basics Sliced White Bread.

This turned out surprisingly well, and would serve as an excellent example of rustling up a pasta sauce without actually having any pasta sauce or canned tomatoes available. The tartness of the tomato soup can still be felt, but with clever use of herbs and other seasoning it shold be easily masked.


Creamed Tomato Soup: £0.24, 1 serving
+£0.35 for More variety, Be Good To Yourself

Roti John Redux

Regular readers would know by now that I have been striving to finish the big bag of Basics Mince that I have in my freezer. Since we are due to move out of our current flat soon I have also been reluctant to buy groceries, and have been trying to get by with whatever little is left in our kitchen.

My most recent find is a Sainsbury's Basics part-baked baguette that I had left forgotten. The first idea that came to mind that involved both this and mince was Roti John, which I covered some time ago. In the interest of variety though, I decided to take a different approach, baking the baguette sliced in half, topped with the already cooked mince drenched in egg.

This turned out well, and probably is slightly healthier than if I were to fry it. The idea could perhaps be taken even further and done on a barbecue, although I only have vague memories of seeing the hawkers back home doing this at their stalls.

Pork and Beef Burgers

The hectic pace of work recently, a desire to find solitude in the evenings, and a general reluctance to cook have led to me eating out almost every other weekday. This in turn has led to me developing an especially strong penchant for burgers. At its peak, I found myself browsing websites in the States dedicated to the sandwich, since, in all honesty, they are probably more familiar and more comfortable with it than the British are.

Truth be told though, I have always loved burgers. From the McDonald's cheeseburgers I grew up with, to becoming acquainted with Gourmet Burger Kitchen in the UK, to being told stories of the burgers in Shake Shack in New York City, there was something rather alluring to a juicy patty of prime minced beef with a slice of cheese in a sesame seed bun.

Eating out tends to be a rather expensive affair however, and with a bag of frozen Basics mince yet to be finished, it would almost be criminal if I did not try my hand at making my own burgers. After all, the idea seems simple enough - roll the mince into a ball, flatten to a patty, and grill. Alter the patty composition if desired, and serve with whatever makes a burger tasty.

Defrosting the mince in a microwave proved to be a little tricky. I found that it is best to microwave in small batches to avoid uneven heating. 1.5-2.5 minutes on defrost should suffice.

Form balls to be flattened to patties later on.

Those who might want to make fun of the photo above might be surprised that this is a result of a valid technique - smashing - and is popular though not without controversy across the Atlantic.

Serve in sesame seed bun with Basics iceberg lettuce and other condiments of choice.

The burgers turned out really well, largely thanks to the crust the patty developed through the Mallard reaction. As these were burgers, I ate with my hands, leaving no cutlery to wash up, always a nice bonus. One main problem would be controlling the defrosting of the mince in the microwave so that it is defrosted and not cooked, and forming up patties that do not fall apart. Off the top of my head you could either use binders like egg white, or freeze the patties overnight between baking sheets.

Cheese and Tomato Tortelloni

I still have a sizable amount of Basics frozen mince to go through, and when deciding to invest in a bag, I had in mind several ideas to run down my current supply. When I went to get it at my local Sainsbury's however, it turns out that the grocer has revamped their fresh filled pasta range yet again. The Sainsbury's Basics filled pasta have been given a makeover as well, and accordingly, the price has been marked up. This is nonetheless information that would be relevant to the blog, and so I bought myself a bag with the intention to have it together with the mince.

The Basics Tortelloni come in two different variants; I went with Cheese & Tomato as I was planning to have this with meat, choosing to stay away from the Ham & Cheese one.

I do remember having a lot of this at one point in my working life, since it was very easy to prepare and was generally healthier to have than frozen pizzas. This particular pasta itself was okay, and of no noticeable difference to the regular filled pasta that I was familiar with prior to the revamp.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Cheese and Tomato Tortelloni	£1.70	375g	-£0.01 for 300g	More variety

Frozen Mince

During Sainsbury's transition of their value line branding from Low Price to Basics in 2005, my local store were selling discontinued products at bargain prices. One of these happened to be the Sainsbury's Low Price Frozen Mince. It was an interesting if bizarre product, if memory serves: for about 75p after deductions I had in my possession 1.5kg of frozen pellets consisting of about 40% beef and 20% pork, with soya protein, fillers and other things like flavourings and preservatives making up the rest. Cooking the pellets in a pan made them dissolve into a fine powder, with which you would then add, say, pasta sauce to make bolognese, binding agents like egg whites to make meatballs, and so on.

For a time I received a lot of attention from my friends and the university hall cooking group I was in, not because the Low Price mince made me popular, but because people were concerned that I might actually die from sustained consumption of this product. I recall my fellow hallmates doing a double-take when I joined them for dinner eating spaghetti with powdery bolognese sauce, and even the famous Marcus "Pierre White" Lim went so far as to condemn it as dog food. Back then, this product was perhaps the ultimate representative of Sainsbury's value branding prior to the revamp, and the reason why consumers were intrinsically adverse to the idea of buying supermarket value brand products.

Well, I'm still alive, 8 years later. Since starting this blog, I have wanted to retell this experience to readers who might take an interest to this, but have until now lacked the determination to finish a kilogramme of low-grade mince. Recently however I have been told that I will have to move to a new location yet again, and that would mean that I lose use of the deep freezer. Add to that the recent scandal involving Tesco and their Tesco Value frozen burgers containing 30% horse meat, and I have a one-time opportunity to present this product and use it in a variety of ways over the coming weeks.

Unlike its predecessor, the Sainsbury's Basics Beef & Pork Mince is purely meat, specifically, 65% beef and 35% pork. Of interest is the cooking instructions saying that the frozen pellets can be fried in a pan without oil.

As a light introduction to this product I decided to recreate one of the recipes I previously featured on this blog, by combining the mince with a can of Sainsbury's Basics Baked Beans I bought a while ago for no particular reason.

Surprisingly, the pellets turned into familiar looking cooked mince, which was a relief, as I was frankly not looking forward to my days of eating meat powder.

I was glad that I have gotten acquainted with the Basics frozen mince, which, combined with the Basics baked beans and left to simmer for awhile, provided much needed warm comfort on a bitingly cold winter evening. The mince does contain some small amounts of gristle, but for the price, this is probably worth it. It does take up a lot of space in the freezer however, so plan accordingly.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Pork & Beef Mince	£3.00	1kg	+£3.49 for 1.5kg	100% beef mince

Satay Pasta

Satay Bee Hoon is one of the lesser known features of the cuisine where I come from. A dish of rice vermicelli topped with peanut sauce, kangkong and seafood of various kinds, you would strangely find this served not at the same stalls selling satay, but stalls dedicated to selling only the one thing. Sad to say, the one stall that I frequented for is no longer there, its proprietor refusing to give out his recipe for fear of cultural dilution.

Strangely enough, at one point in time, the army's combat rations featured satay pasta, a vague analogue to the Satay Bee Hoon that my fellow citizens know and love. Amongst them, the males would have encountered the pasta through National Service; reactions vary wildly, from revulsion to fondness. It is through recollecting some of my moments wearing green, as well as a need to use up the ingredients in my kitchen in creative ways, that led me to doing this tonight.

Blend the Basics Peanut Butter and Cream Cheese together, while waiting for the pasta to be ready.

Shred the Basics Seafood Sticks and merge with the mixture. When the pasta is ready, tip some of the pasta water in to smooth it out, before

This was as awful as it looks. Do not cook for others. Do not cook even for yourself, unless absolutely necessary.

Cheese-crusted Crabstick

When I was back home for the holidays, I attended a friend's wedding. One of the items on the banquet menu was crab claws coated in a parmesan-crust. The contrast in flavours between the savoury parmesan and the sweet crab meat was also interesting, and certainly something I have not come across before. Fellow guests at the wedding were largely in praise of the parmesan-crusted crab claw, and it went down as one of the more memorable things during the wedding.

On the way back to the UK, thoughts of that particular dish kept returning, and on further contemplation I realised that we could possibly replicate it using Sainsbury's Basics ingredients, namely the seafood sticks and grated hard cheese. With this in mind, I decided to put in some extra effort for lunch to experiment and toy with the idea.

Prepare the cheese crust by mixing breadcrumbs with Sainsbury's Basics Grated Hard Cheese. Dip each Basics seafood stick in oil, before dipping into the breadcrumb mixture, ensuring even coating.

Bake or deep-fry the crabsticks and serve.

Lack of technique notwithstanding, this was pretty good. There was a nice contrast in texture, between the crispy cheese crust and the chewiness of the crabstick. The flavours were also similar to what I remembered from the wedding banquet. An extension to the idea would be cheese-flavoured crabstick tempura, which, together with the cheese-crusted crabstick, might serve as an interesting yet cheap form of finger food for parties.

Crabstick Baguette

While on holiday back home, a friend related his college experiences to me. Outside his university, there was a sandwich shop which was very popular amongst students. One of the sandwiches that they offered was the crabstick baguette, which, as the friend related, was the epitome of cheap food, being a combination of cheap protein (ie, the crabstick), cheap mayonnaise and bread made from cheap flour. For the price the quantity was substantial, but one quickly got sick of the sandwich halfway through.

Intrigued by the idea of having crabsticks in a sandwich, I decided to try to do a take on the crabstick baguette offered by that sandwich shop. The British happened to like fish fingers in a sandwich, so why not crabsticks? I replaced the mayonnaise in the sandwich with cream cheese as the Sainsbury's Basics offering is known to be awful, and comes in a big tub that I would have trouble finishing. Other items I used include the Basics Young Leaf Salad, Basics Seafood Sticks and Basics Part-Baked Baguette.

All in all, the resulting sandwich was tolerable, although the sweetness of the crabstick combined with the savouriness of the cream cheese got some getting used to. This would be another useful idea to have, as thus far, I have only seen crabsticks being used in instant noodles and pasta.

Diced Bacon

My current job has seen me working longer hours than I used to do, which means that I now have less time to do weekday dinners. As a result, I now look out for things that can save me preparation time when at Sainsbury's. The Basics Diced Cooking Bacon you see above caught my eye on my last visit.

It seems that Sainsbury's have been introducing a few new Basics products in the meat section, although on close inspection many of them do not appear to be cheap, or at least, cheap enough to warrant the Basics branding. Some of them are even more expensive than say, cheaper cuts of own-brand pork. The Basics diced bacon stands out however, since till now, the cheapest form of diced bacon was the diced lardons, which go for a cool £1.99 for a 250g pack. By contrast, the Basics equivalent is 99p for 200g.

I decided to give these a try, pairing them with whatever leftover Basics vegetables I happened to have with the fridge. Comparing the photos above and below, you can tell that the bacon will shrink significantly, so perhaps this might not be so good if bacon is meant to serve as the protein in your meal.

Overlooking that however, the richness of the bacon goes pretty well with the clean-tasting vegetables.

On sampling, the Sainsbury's Basics diced bacon is certainly flavourful, and would probably be a very viable alternative to using lardons in recipes like beef bourguignon and coq au vin. The bacon shrinks significantly, but if you're using it merely to flavour your food I doubt this would be a major issue. Given also that the alternative would be to buy and dice the big chunky forms of Sainsbury's Basics bacon (also 99p, for 670g, but you would have to spend the next few days eating chunky bacon), you might give the already-diced form serious consideration.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Diced Cooking Bacon	£0.99	200g	+£1.00 for 250g	Less shrinkage, more regularly-shaped pieces

Beef in Tea

During the house move I chanced upon this. It was a recipe book left behind by one of my flatmates, most likely from my homeland. I remember these rather fondly, seeing them in local bookstores, with rather interesting recipes with a distinct Asian slant.

Most of the recipes in the book describe rather unusual, if not outright weird, cooking techniques. One that caught my attention in particular was for cooking beef in a strong brew of tea. The idea sounded very strange, but given that the British are known for being regular tea drinkers, I thought I would give this a try, and proceeded to buy Sainsbury's Basics tea bags.

A quick search on Google reveals that Basics tea is actually one of the better products in the line, and certainly one of the most value-for-money. The next brand up costs more than twice as much for half the amount of tea.

The pleasant, slightly sweet fragrance of tea wafts out when the box is opened. I brewed a cup for myself to see if it was good as it smelled. Sad to say, the tea was rather weak, perhaps because I was using a larger mug. This is more or less in line with reports made by others on various Internet forums, but most were happy to just use two bags per cup, which still works out to be slightly cheaper than the regular Sainsbury's own-brand tea.

The recipe book called for beef stewed with tomatoes and radishes, but I decided to go with Sainsbury's Basics green beans instead. These are unlike the string beans featured earlier in the blog, perhaps of a different variety. They retail for 99p for 200g, which make it similar in price to the Basics string beans. On hindsight, using these beans in a long-cooking stew may not have been for the best, and it might have been better to go for hard root vegetables.

I decided to go with mushrooms as well, since the glutamates they contain can add to the umami or meaty flavour of the beef.

Marinate the beef beforehand if desired. Brown the beef with garlic and onion, adding the chopped vegetables once the surface of the beef is no longer raw. In the meantime brew one cup of tea using 3-5 bags of Sainsbury's Basics tea bags.

Brew 1-2 more cups of tea using the same bags. Cover and simmer for one hour.

The stew has a long turnaround time, mostly the one-hour spent simmering. The resulting stew was very pleasant however, if a little bitter from the tea, and with some tweaks I'm sure it would be very welcome especially with the cold winter approaching.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Tea Bags	£0.29	80/250g	+£0.41 for 40/125g (!)	Slightly stronger tea?