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

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?

Beanless Chilli

There is a well-known cultural divide across the Atlantic, between the British and the Americans. As a result, there tends to be differences in just about everywhere, from speech (try asking an American and a Briton what suspenders are, for instance), to table etiquette (while Brits tend to cut steak up as they go along, the Americans will cut it all up first), to cuisine.

While people Stateside don't think of jacket potatoes as anything more than a baked potato with butter, perhaps at most sour cream, chives and bacon bits, served as a side to go with steak, over here in the UK people tend to have it as a meal on its own, using a wide variety of toppings - tuna mayonnaise, coronation chicken, and chilli con carne, just to name a few. And while the British don't think of chilli con carne as much more than just a bolognese sauce with chilli and kidney beans, in the States, there's a mind-boggling variety of chilli types, debates over the inclusion of beans that can border on the religious, and closely guarded spice mix recipes.

Amongst the more unusual things I have encountered while reading up on American chilli include the use of beer and coffee, and even the norm in Cincinnati, Ohio of serving chilli with spaghetti and grated cheddar. With about one serving to go in my pack of Basics minced beef, and plenty of odds and ends from the Basics range in my kitchen, I decided to try incorporating some of my discoveries in a beanless chilli.

Fry some Sainsbury's Basics mince together with some Basics garlic. Season with Basics black pepper and herb mix, and a dash of Basics vinegar.

Start adding in Basics beer (lager or bitter is fine), in quantities of about a mouth at a time. At some point stir in some Basics instant coffee as well.

Add Sainsbury's Basics chopped tomatoes and leave to simmer. Meanwhile, soak some Basics spaghetti so as to remove it of its starch. Add to the pan and simmer everything together until the spaghetti is done. Sprinkle with grated Basics cheddar (or Basics grated hard cheese, if you don't have cheddar), spike with your chilli of choice, and serve.

This turned out well, generally speaking. It was difficult getting the balance between the beer and coffee right,  but they lend an unusual, if bitter, edge to the final result. Certainly an interesting way to use your bolognese ingredients, and not too difficult to whip up if you already know how to do spag bol.

Mee Hoon Kueh

Growing up at home, Mee Hoon Kueh (面粉馃), literally "Flour Cake" in Hokkien, was something I ordered regularly when my family ate out, and is still something I would readily order when I fly home to visit family and friends. It is a simple hand-made noodle soup with various ingredients, commonly minced pork, leafy vegetables, a poached egg, shitake mushrooms, all topped with fried ikan bilis, or small anchovies.

Prior to my arrival in the UK as an university student, the local government gave us a pamphlet listing recipes contributed by various students who have been or are currently there, that we could make use of should we start to miss the food back home. Amongst them was one for mee hoon kueh. I did not give much thought to it, and soon forgot about it all. When I started this blog however, this was one of the things that I realised I could try doing, given the relatively simple list of ingredients and preparation. Again however, I forgot, until last evening, when a conversation with a friend back home led me to try this at home, limiting myself to Sainsbury's Basics ingredients, where possible.

It turns out that mee hoon kueh is surprisingly easy to make. There are numerous recipes out there on the Internet, but the one that I was drawn to the most was at Soy and Pepper, a food blog written by an overseas Singaporean. As the Sainsbury's Basics range is lacking in both ikan bilis (small anchovies), and even dark green leafy vegetables, I had to leave out some of the ingredients where I can.

Prepare some Sainsbury's Basics Minced Beef by seasoning with Basics pepper and a little Basics vinegar. Wrap and leave in the fridge.

Combine water and Sainsbury's Basics flour in the proportions suggested by Soy and Pepper so that you have a simple dough. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes to an hour.

Prepare your vegetables - I used choi sum bought from Chinatown here. Break the flour ball up into golf balls and flatten each one out as shown. Use extra flour to prevent sticking.

Prepare some stock using Sainsbury's Basics chicken stock cubes.

Add the mince once the stock is boiling. Skim off any scum and unwanted fat that appears.

Pinch off bite-size pieces of dough and add to the pot. They should cook within 10-20 seconds.

Finally, add your vegetables, and an egg to either beat into the soup or to poach.

If only I had discovered this sooner. This proved to be a filling, warm and hearty meal, which, given the recent drop in temperature in the UK, was welcome. The preparation, while not very involved, will involve some waiting time, so perhaps this is best done on weekends, or prepared in advance. The flavour can certainly be worked upon; I have noticed that some other recipes call for the use of shitake mushrooms in addition to ikan bilis to make the stock. Given that the Sainsbury's Basics range has neither of these, perhaps one way to achieve a similar effect is to boil and concentrate stock from Sainsbury's Basics mushrooms and Basics canned tuna.

Beef Pot Roast

Braising is best suited for cheap but tough cuts of meat, where the time that slow cooking affords goes into tenderising the meat and mingling of flavours, leading to a very rich dish, and meat that has melt-in-the-mouth texture. Finding braised meat while dining out however is difficult, unless you happen to be in Chinatown, where cheap cuts of meat are favoured for their cost-effectiveness. Braised beef brisket happened to be one of the few things I ordered when I was out with friends for dinner while at university. I still order it today, and it happens often enough that in recent times I found myself looking at the Sainsbury's Basics Beef Pot Roast, wondering if I can braise beef the way the Chinese restaurants do.

There are a couple of techniques that the Chinese use for tenderising meat that I was told about quite some time ago. While searching for recipes to braise the beef, there appears to be some confusion and lack of familiarity on the Internet about using such techniques, and as such, I thought I will try to shed some light on the matter, and use the techniques in my braised beef to see if they will work.

The first techinque involves adding bicarbonate of soda to the beef, leaving it to stand for a while, and then washing it off. This is the more difficult of the two techniques as if the soda is not properly washed off it will adversely affect the final flavour of the food. From what I've read on the Internet so far, the bicarbonate works by making the beef more alkaline (hence the ruined flavour if not washed off), allowing the coiled up proteins in the beef to straighten out, making it more tender.

The other technique involves covering in cornflour. This then acts as an insulating layer when frying so that the direct heat doesn't result in a toughened cut of beef. Since we are limited to the Sainsbury's Basics range, we shall use Basics plain flour instead, along with whatever we want to marinate the beef in (we use Basics black pepper and herb mix here). An extension of this technique, known as 'velveting', involves marinating the meat in cornstarch, egg white, and rice wine along with other seasonings for about 30 minutes.

So while waiting for the beef, prepare anything else that you want to braise together with the beef. I have opted to go 'Yankee-style', as described by Wikipedia, and included a parsnip and carrot. Chop up some onion as well.

Heat a wok, before adding olive oil. Fry the onions until they just start turning brown, and then start browning the beef.

Deglaze the wok using Sainsbury's Basics vinegar, and then transfer contents into a saucepan or pot. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook until tender.

This was only fairly successful. The parts of the beef that were in contact with the bicarbonate of soda and flour were tender, with the rest of the beef making for rather tough eating. While it is reassuring to know that the techniques work, my approach to braising beef might need a bit of tweaking before I can try it on my friends. 

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Beef Pot Roast	£6.49/kg	by weight	+£unknown	Better quality beef?

Cheese-infused Beef Ragu

It's been brought to my attention that the price of beef has gone up at Sainsbury's over the weekend. Sadly, the Sainsbury's Basics range was not spared, and so, a packet of diced beef now retails for £2.75, a 25p (10%) increase. I thought I should mark the occasion by making a beef ragu, using some interesting information I picked up a couple of weeks ago.

The Toasted Salami Sandwiches that I did the last time left me with the rind of the Basics Italian Hard Cheese. I was about to throw it away when I read on the web that many enterprising chefs would use the rind of hard cheeses in soups and stews, adding a rich flavour to whatever it infused. Armed with this knowledge and a sense of curiosity, I set upon making my own cheese-infused pasta sauce.

So I start by frying some an onion and garlic on high heat, before tossing the beef in. Seal the beef, you want it to be pink on the inside while seared on the outside. This will hopefully allow the beef to remain tender with the beefy flavours sealed in while the sauce is stewing.

Add the Basics herb mix and ground black pepper for seasoning, and then a splash of vinegar, before putting in one packet of Basics chopped tomatoes. At this point, drop the cheese rind in and mix everything thoroughly. Leave to stew until half the liquid evaporates.

The rind did lift the flavour subtly although it did not provide much more than that. I attribute it to the type of cheese used: had I used a strong quality Parmigiano-Reggiano it's likely to have made the sauce more cheesy. Still, it's a good way to make use of your cheese rinds.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Diced Beef	£2.75	440g	+£0.74	Leaner cuts.

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.]