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.

Tiramisu

With February comes Valentine's Day, and with that come the joys and perils of courtship and romance. During this period, the sharing of gifts and food is just as common as the sharing of affections, and desserts often feature heavily. I fondly remember in particular my ex-flatmate, who, in the run-up to 14th February, made tiramisu repeatedly so that he can perfect his recipe and technique for his then-girlfriend. Needless to say, the entire household benefitted from all the tiramisu prototypes lying around. Given the timing of this post, I thought that it would be appropriate to attempt tiramisu.


One of the key components of tiramisu is Savoiardi biscuits (known as sponge fingers in the UK), soaked in a blend of espresso and Marsala wine. As none of these are available from the Sainsbury's Basics line however, we are going to have to make do with shortbread fingers, instant coffee and brandy.

In a region where people are very serious about their coffee, I've always been surprised that a product like instant coffee can thrive here. Sainsbury's Basics only recently introduced their version of instant coffee very recently, but would be handy to people like the final year medical students in my flat, who are currently studying for their final exams and would probably appreciate preparing a hot caffienated drink for cheap. The coffee itself is nothing yo write home about though, and from a cook's perspective, would be more useful in chilli con carne and stews than in desserts, where the ingredients get more attention.

As noted earlier, Sainsbury's do not have Basics sponge fingers, so I decided to use Shortbread Fingers instead. Other than being similar in shape, they also are richer than most biscuits, and hence share cake-like characteristics with the thing that they replaced.

I was planning to get Basics dark rum in place of Marsala wine, since fermented molasses sounded like a good substitute for sweet wine. However, it appears that Sainsbury's has discontinued both dark and white versions of the Basic rums. An empty shelf with a tag saying "Sale: While stocks last" stands where the white rum used to be. The only other spirit that I know is used in desserts is Brandy, so I grabbed a plastic bottle of the Basics version. Just as well, since in my opinion it is closer in refinement to Marsala wine than rum.

In making this Tiramisu I followed a recipe from the BBC by Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi from the programme Return to Tuscany, with the ingredient substitutions made above, along with Basics soft cheese in place of mascarpone. I also merged it with information from Cooking for Engineers, specifically the part involving making Zabaglione, to avoid food poisoning from consuming raw eggs.

So I started by beating three egg yolks, saving the whites for later. I then added 100g of sugar and about 85ml of the Basics French Brandy.

The mixture was then heated on a hot water bath until thick and smooth. 125g of cream cheese was then  beaten and added in.

About 125ml (use less if you're attempting this) of double cream was then whipped and added. The mixture was constantly kept warm and whisked frequently until thickened. If the mixture starts becoming lumpy it's being overdone, the result of which you can see in the final photo.

Prepare a cup of coffee using 3 teaspoons of Sainsbury's Basics Instant Coffee, and another 85ml of Brandy. Dip one packet of Basics Shortbread Fingers, biscuit by biscuit, and make them form the first layer. Cover that layer with the cheese/eggs/cream mixture, and repeat for one more layer.

Store in the fridge overnight.

I have very high hopes for this and will write back tomorrow on the outcome. Initial sampling of the cream cheese mixture has been very positive, and the substitution of the ladyfingers and mascarpone has turned out much better than expected. If this works well, this would be a very cheap way to make a very impressive dessert, especially with the soft cheese now costing 75p for a large 300g tub.

(Back to Sainsbury's Basics accepts no responsibility for any adverse effect this recipe or blog post might have on your marriage, engagement or relationship. Use at your own risk.)

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Shortbread Fingers	£0.37	160g	+£0.31 for 200g	Not known but probably not much
Instant Coffee Granules	£1.64	100g	+£0.30	Stronger coffee
Brandy	£9.29	700ml	+£1.20	Not known

Bacon Jam

The Internet is obsessed with bacon. From a Wikipedia project to improve the quality of articles regarding bacon, to YouTube sensation EpicMealTime's permanent feature of bacon in every show they make, it is difficult to deny its pervasiveness in the culture that has built up from a decade or so of the Information Superhighway. About a year or so ago, a colleague of mine mentioned in passing about trying home-made Bacon Jam. Further enquiries revealed that the recipe was taken off the Internet (where else?).

As it turns out, Bacon Jam was created a couple of years ago by Skillet Street Food, a Seattle-based company burger chain which caters to consumers via burger vans. Needless to say, it captured the imagination of the Internet, and the foodie blogger community made various attempts to recreate it from their own kitchens. A Google search places Not Quite Nigella's recipe as its first result, which took inspiration from an earlier recipe by Homesick Texan. Months of procrastination prevented me from following in their footsteps, until two things happened - I acquired a food processor, and Sainsbury's dropped the price of their Basics cooking bacon to £1 for 670g.

There are two problems with buying and using the cooking bacon. One is the packs containing either rashers, or whole hunks of bacon which have not been sliced into rashers. This is easily avoidable by inspecting the packs before buying. The other is that the rashers are clumped together rather than nicely packed like the other bacon products that Sainsbury's has, making them finicky when teasing the rashers apart to put in sandwiches. We can solve this latter problem by making the whole pack into bacon jam.

The process is relatively straightforward and rather fun, and lists amongst its ingredients maple syrup, vinegar, coffee and of course, bacon. People who have completed the recipe have lauded it for its potpourri of flavours, the sweet, sour, bitter, and salty flavours all melding together and boosted by a chilli kick. Excited, I got together the ingredients, including the coffee.

The last time we did a review on the Basics Ground Coffee we went with a rather poor attempt of making a cold brew, so since we had another opportunity to try it, we brewed ourselves a cup. The coffee was pretty smooth and had a nice amount of kick to it, being made from Robusta beans, which have a higher caffeine content compared to the Arabica beans found in most blends. Surprisingly, it was not bitter, which would have been characteristic of Robusta, so Sainsbury's must have adjusted the roasting process to compensate, which kind of shows the amount of detail they put into even Basics products.

The recipe for bacon jam that I used can be found at Not Quite Nigella through the link I have above, so I shall restrict my commentary to the tweaks and other little things I did while making this. For adaptability reasons I have substituted Basics vinegar and honey for cider vinegar and maple syrup respectively. I also added a dried chilli from a pack my flatmate bought in Chinatown to add an extra kick.

The packet of Basics cooking bacon will have to be fried in two stages. If you want to you can also trim the fat off some of the rashers to form a starter batch, which would be rendered of fat in the pan for easier frying of the main bacon batches.

If you do use the starter batch, have it at the side of the pan while frying the bacon so that they can continue to render and become nice and crispy in the process. It is a lot of effort to tease out the bacon rashers before chopping them up, but if you are not planning on using a food processor to grind up the resulting jam later on, you might want to consider doing this if you want a finer-textured jam.

1 hour later, it turns out that I had the heat on too low, so I decided not to add any water at all and crank up the heat to mid so that I can simmer the water away more quickly. Unfortunately, 2 hours from the time I started simmering,  I am nowhere near the nice dark colour that Not Quite Nigella managed to get.

On the 3rd hour however...

Satisfied with progress, I turned off the heat on the stove to let it cool slowly. After that, a brief spin in the food processor, and the bacon jam was ready to be spread on Sainsbury's Basics Baguette.

This was a resounding success. The bacon jam, effectively a pate, tastes great, if perhaps a little too sweet and oily, and will go well with anything that usually calls for bacon. Already I'm thinking of not just spreading this on my bread, but taking up the suggestions floating around on the Net and putting it into pastas, serving it with poached eggs, and perhaps even with asparagus, if it happens to be cheap. I might have to work out a way to not make it feel so oily, perhaps by leaving out some of the liquid from the cooking, or patting the bacon dry with kitchen towels before transferring to the pot. This recipe will nonetheless be a godsend to anybody in university who might love bacon, but want to have it cheaply, and without the fuss of carefully peeling apart randomly mashed rashers at 8.30 in the morning, half an hour before the first lecture of the day.

Cold Brew Coffee

In between endless sessions of playing Alien Swarm, my outsourcee has been asking me for more products to sample and review. I have come across the Sainsbury's Basics Ground Coffee a few months ago and have thought of trying to do Tiramisu with it, as my former roommate made it on a regular basis and I wanted to have a go. Having been unable to find Basics alternatives to the other ingredients that made it up though, a number of my friends have suggested that the outsourcee could try his hand at making cold brew coffee.

The premise is simple - put a tablespoon of coffee and a cup of water together, and leave in the fridge for at least 8 hours. What you should have as the end result is a cold and refreshing alternative to one of the most common forms of caffeine intake. In practice, the outsourcee found that the drink did not even remotely resemble coffee (which I suppose was kind of the point, it's not meant to be coffee). It did however taste somewhat like coffee, and did keep him quite awake through the day, perhaps even more so than his usual order from the coffee shops.

And this is perhaps why: the Basics coffee is made from 100% Robusta beans. Those who are more familiar with their coffee would know that this has higher caffeine content than Arabica beans, which are more commonly found in most blends of coffee. They also happen to be cheaper, which makes it even more attractive as a cost-effective solution if one needed regular caffeine intake over a given period of time, like preparing for examinations or meeting a project deadline.

The outsourcee has yet to try this in a regular cup of coffee, as the effect of the caffeine currently coursing through his veins has yet to wear off, but he is happy to let you know how it is like, perhaps in a pre-Christmas footnote. I anticipate however that this is probably not so much for the coffee connoisseurs as it is for the caffeine junkies.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Ground Coffee	£1.29	227g	+£variable	Better tasting coffee, maybe