Chocolate Chip Cookies

I remembered when I was with the inter-varsity Overseas Christian Fellowship, and the Friday meetings we had in London. Before each meeting began we were free to catch up with one another over nibbles compliments of the fellowship organisers. However, as they were not funded by any university, they appeared to be very conservative with their budget, since they relied on donations from fellowship members. As a result, most of the refreshments were from the Basics range found at the nearby Sainsbury's.

One of the items that appeared regularly were Sainsbury's Basics Cookies with Chocolate Chips. I've been wanting to do a review of this for some time, and now, given a lull in my creativity for Basics recipe ideas and a general lack of enthusiasm for life caused by frustrations with work, I've decided that this will be the perfect opportunity to review this.

I only wish I could say that this was the perfect cookie though. Biscuit tends to be rather dry, and chocolate chip content is appalling. The cookie is rather sweet though, perhaps a little on the cloying side. This would probably make them very suitable for dunking with hot drinks to provide some contrast, such as tea or coffee. They might also be useful for use as a biscuit base for cheesecake.

A few might be wondering why the label does not simply describe the contents as Chocolate Chip Cookies, and I suspect it might be related to Food Standards Agency regulations relevant to its very low chocolate chip content.

Sad to say, the university Christian Union has better taste, opting for the regular and much better Sainsbury's Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Cookies with Chocolate Chips	£0.40	250g	+£0.03 for 200g	More and higher-quality chocolate chips, better biscuit base. Recommended.

Cider-battered Sweet and Sour Pork

In the aftermath of the cider yoghurt cake, I now have about 1.5 litres of unwanted cider sitting in my kitchen, along with other odds and ends that I have used in previous installments of this blog. We also happen to have too many Basics eggs in our kitchen, that we have to rid ourselves of by the 25th of November. It occurred to me however that we have most of the ingredients to actually make sweet and sour pork. What was missing was the pork itself.

You might hence be happy to know that £2 would buy you about half a kilogramme of pork, 445g to be precise, the kind ideal for making bite-sized deep-fried pork cutlets. The closest that Sainsbury's has to a regular product would be the pork shoulder steaks, but you would have to cut those up yourself. The diced pork shoulder however should suffice for most purposes. It did not get tough too easily, and tasted pretty alright. At only £2 it's only slightly more expensive per unit weight compared to the Basics lamb breast - itself the cheapest red meat - but is a lot less fatty.


Since here in the UK roast pork is usually served with apple sauce, and we get beer-battered fish and chips, I thought it might be interesting to come up with a cider batter for the pork in homage to my current state of residence. I would then combine this with a sweet and sour sauce made from what's left of my pasta sauce, honey, vinegar and mixed vegetables.

Start by heating oil in a saucepan at medium-high heat. Meanwhile, combine self-raising flour with an egg.

Season with pepper, and then add the cider. Care should be taken not to add too much cider to the mix, you still want to have a relatively thick batter that has the consistency of double cream.

Once batter has been thoroughly whisked, open up the packet of pork, and dust the pork pieces with flour. You might have to further cut up some of them to facilitate more thorough cooking.

Dip each piece in batter, and begin frying.


Put cooked pieces on a paper-lined plate to drain of excess oil.

The sauce is a relatively simple affair of combining some honey, vinegar and tomato pasta sauce. Frozen mixed vegetables are added in the absence of the more traditional fresh sliced pineapple, peppers, onions and tomatoes.

After saving the deep-frying oil for future cooking, scrape the pan clean of any leftover bits. Deglaze the pan by adding the vinegar and heating.

Meanwhile, add the honey to the pasta sauce, and add that into the pan.

At this point add the mixed vegetables. It might be tempting to use some of the excess batter to thicken the sauce. Don't be fooled, you will end up with the result below:



The cider was weak to begin with, so it never really shone through the resulting dinner. The sauce was more or less palatable. Overall, dinner was rather enjoyable, and at the very least, I've gained some useful experience with deep-frying that would probably serve me well when making tempura.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Diced pork shoulder	£2.00	445g	N/A	N/A; No other alternative

Cider Yoghurt Cake

Yoghurt cake is apparently a very British thing, with some web sites noting that they are quite prevalent amongst British-run chalets. Essentially it substitutes yoghurt and oil for milk and butter in a cake, with the other main components of flour, sugar and eggs kept. The recipes available on the Internet are all very simple to follow, and effectively give ingredient quantities in ratios.

I was first introduced to it a few years ago by a friend of mine, who made it for our Bible fellowship group. More recently I've had grown tired of eating yoghurt and mixed fruit for breakfast, and considered this to be a quick way to rid myself of those things. Today's post however is a complete failure, largely because I have forgotten to include eggs, the most basic of ingredients in a cake. What I wound up with instead seemed to resemble some sort of hard scone. Either way, this is not going to stop me from blogging about the experience.

The point of this blog after all is more to introduce you to the Basics food range than it is for me to display my cooking proficiency after all. So we start off with the self-raising flour, which would be needed in most cake recipes. I did not notice too much problems with the self-raising flour, although the resulting cake did not rise as much as I thought it would. This may either be due to my accidental exclusion of eggs (refer to further comment at the end of the blog), or the possibility that the flour does not contain enough yeast.


I had wanted to add a bit of an interesting twist to the cake, so I decided to use cider. Not too long ago Sainsbury's was mired in a bit of controversy involving their Basics cider. In addition to being sold in 2 litre bottles, they were also sold in cans, with each can costing 34p. Naturally, they were a cheap source of alcohol, and took a lot of heat for aggravating the UK's problem with drink. The cans were hence taken off, and as a result, I would have to work out how to dispose of the rest of the cider. Do not bother buying this, it is almost indistinguishable from water.

We don't wish to have all that cider sloshing around in our cake mix, so start by bringing 300-500 ml of cider to the boil, aiming to reduce it by two-thirds.

Meanwhile, put your yoghurt into a bowl.

Add 3 parts flour....

... 1 part oil...
... and 2 parts sugar, or in my case, 1 part honey. At this point, remember to add 2 eggs. Once that is done, proceed with the rest of the recipe and add your dried mixed fruit.


Given that the Basics cider tasted horrible, I hedged my bets and divided my cake mixture into two separate tins. Remember to grease them before pouring in the mix. The one on the right contains the reduced cider.

Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 10-15 minutes, checking that it has turned a golden brown during the specified window.



The end result was palatable. It would probably have risen up much more had I added the eggs; they're necessary to store trapped air within its protein structure for the yeast in the self-raising flour to work on, and as the oven heats up, the cake rises.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Self-raising flour	£0.43	1.5kg	+£0.32	Flour that rises better?
Cider	£1.21	2L	+£1.57 for 3L	Better tasting cider. Recommended

Salami Pasta with Spinach

The Sainsbury's Basics Young Leaf Salad was a very recent introduction to the line, having being first spotted only in summer this year. For only 17p more, you have a much better alternative to the Basics Crunchy Salad, which consists mainly of unpalatable cabbage. The composition of the young leaf salad is mainly various kinds of lettuce and spinach. It is the latter that we will be using for our dish today.

Young leaf spinach is usually very cheap, but they come in large bags costing £1.50 each. If you have the time to pick through the leaves for spinach, this could be a cheaper alternative.

Alright. Once the spinach leaves have been extracted from the salad, prepare the salami, slicing into strips.
Start cooking the pasta. I recommend the use of the penne, since spaghetti does not have a solid structure and would hence not be suitable for use since this dish lacks a strong hearty sauce.

Meanwhile, start pan-frying the salami.

Once the salami is slightly crisp and the fat is more or less rendered from it, add the cooked pasta, and mix well, thoroughly coating the pasta with the salami fat.

Season with herb mix and pepper.

Take out of pan, and garnish with spinach leaves.

End result is very palatable, with the salami permeating the dish. The refreshing and crunchy spinach serves as a good contrast against the saltiness and the crispness of the salami. This recipe is probably a keeper - in addition to being easy to prepare, there is also little washing to do: I did not even have to use a spatula, relying instead on tossing to mix the pasta.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Young Leaf Salad	£1.17	1	+£0.33	More salad variety

Cornflakes with Yoghurt

I knew somebody in my residential hall during my first year who like everybody else coming to the UK for the first time, was taken aback by the foreign currency exchange rate. During her first term, she had almost the same thing for breakfast every day, having bought a large bag of Sainsbury's Low Price Cornflakes (yes, they did not really come in boxes) and supplementing it with milk and the dried fruit I had covered in an earlier article. I had originally wanted to try making something else today, but it turns out that it would involve buying two litres of cider and later working out what to do with the cider I do not want, so this time, I will just be revisiting this experience from times gone by.

As you can see, the bag is gone, replaced by the standard box-and-bag packaging. The cornflakes are similar to the last time I sampled them, when the friend I mentioned bought them. The flakes appear to be somewhat thinner, but otherwise everything else remains the same.


Instead of milk however, I have opted to use yoghurt. I've had a look at the ingredient breakdown between this and the regular yoghurt, and find no difference whatsoever; the Basics yoghurt does not have any additional ingredients or additives other than milk.

For some reason however, the consistency seems to be a bit thinner. Ironically, that would probably suit my purpose of mixing into cereal.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Cornflakes	£0.46	500g	+£0.49	Slightly thicker flakes
Natural Yoghurt	£0.46	500g	+£0.32	Slightly thicker yoghurt, cap to ensure freshness

And now, some bonus content. I stumbled across a review of the Basics instant noodles by i-ramen.net, who reviews packets of instant noodles from around the world.



A friend of mine helped me to translate what the review was saying, and the clincher was the last line, as follows: "While at first I thought it tasted kind of crap, as you keep on eating you're eventually able to accept the taste as kind of ordinary"

Toasted Salami Sandwiches

As a result of my earlier post for Bread and Butter Pudding, I have added an additional loaf of bread to our existing stash, and our kitchen is thus now overflowing with sliced bread. Some of my flatmates have expressed their annoyance at my escapade, and so to appease them, I've decided to have sandwiches for some of my meals. Dinner for tonight was two sandwiches.

I opted to toast the bread, since as it is, the bread slices are too dry for use. Toasting would make the slices more durable, and make them dry and crisp, rather than dry and soft, which would be less pleasant.

So on to the sandwich filling for today. This is the first time I've encountered both the Salami and Lettuce. The Salami comes in relatively thin slices, but still has full-bodied flavour which makes it suitable for use in sandwiches. That said, the regular version does not cost much more, and has higher meat content.

On the other hand, I heartily recommend the Basics lettuce. The exact variety of lettuce varies, but the quality is good. And if you are lucky like I was on the occasion I bought this, you would get Romaine lettuce, which would make it perfect for use in a poor man's Caesar salad.




I was actually so happy with the sandwiches that I made a couple more to bring to work tomorrow for lunch. This allows me to avoid having to spend at the canteen at work, and helps me deal with the excess bread problem we currently have.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Lettuce	£0.49	1 head	+£0.29	Not much, especially if Basics lettuce is of premium variety
Salami	£1.09	150g	+£0.14	Slightly thicker slices, 136g vs 122g of pork per 100g of salami. Recommended.