Cheese Scones

Amidst a month of wedding-related logistics, running out of ideas, busy work hours and a two week holiday spent at home, I have not been updating this blog. Now that most of that is out of the way I can get around to publishing again, with a fresh batch of ideas.

So we start with something that is quintessentially British. Scones are something that I encountered when I was younger and travelling with my family. I think I was in Somerset when I had it with clotted cream and tea. In more recent times I've found myself in places like the Muffin Man in London and the famous Orchard Tea Gardens in Cambridge, enjoying this simple pleasure.

The recipe on BBC's food website lists just five ingredients: self-raising flour, salt, milk, caster sugar and butter. It turns out though that the Sainsbury's Basics pancake batter mix contains the first three ingredients in one convenient packet, so I cannot resist the temptation to use this as a shortcut. Since I'm hungry and have nothing in the fridge for dinner since I've just returned, I'll add cheese to the scones.

I really should have spotted the Sainsbury's Basics Grated Hard Cheese when starting this blog, as the unit cost price of this is lower than even the Sainsbury's Basics Mild Cheddar blocks. It's in pretty convenient form too where an even layer of cheese is required.

Because some of our ingredients are already premixed, I'm going to have to adapt some bits of the BBC recipe to suit our ends. Which makes things straightforward. Simply put, rub 25g of Basics butter into one packet the batter mix, add 3 teaspoons of sugar, then pour in 75ml water and work into a soft dough.


Proceed to customise to taste.


Bake at 220 degrees C for 15 minutes, and dinner will be ready.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Grated Hard Cheese	£1.96	500g	+£2.53	Better tasting cheese

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

English Breakfast Omurice

A recent spate of outings and days spent dining out had a significant impact on my expenses, forcing me to be a bit more creative when preparing meals for myself. The photo below illustrates what I was down to when preparing dinner.
Research has shown that eating protein-rich eggs for breakfast reduces hunger and decreases calorie consumption at lunch and throughout the day. Unfortunately, I had this in mind when I ate breakfast at work every day last week, and so was unable to make myself an omelette for dinner, since that would be too many eggs consumed in one day. This week however, I have managed to stay off eggs for a long enough period of time to bring you today's recipe.

I first encountered Omurice when I went back home for a visit. A Japanese idea, it involves some form of fried rice wrapped in egg, hence the name. Apparently, rice fried with ketchup is quite common, although anything else is possible. The idea of having tomato-based rice wrapped in egg led to thoughts of the full English breakfast, and so, with a tin of Basics mushrooms and one Basics sausage, we proceed to create the dish featured today.

Start by washing 0.5-0.75 cup of rice, enough for one person, and then pour the chopped tomatoes and juice into the rice cooker. Meanwhile start cooking the sausage in the oven.

A word of caution: you might end up with burning at the bottom of the rice cooker pot. Under these circumstances, hope that the person who owns the rice cooker would not mind your misadventures in the kitchen and that his future spouse would not yell at you for the same.
Take sausage out of oven and cut into pieces. Heat oil in pan.
Saute mushrooms and sausage together. I found the Basics tinned sliced mushrooms to be relatively alright, though not anything of particular interest. I suppose it would be good for those who like me, love their mushrooms but cannot buy fresh ones because they don't cook regularly enough.
Add in the tomato rice, and season with herb mix. Drain the liquid from the tinned mushrooms, and slowly add bit by bit to the pan, ensuring that the liquid gets boiled away before adding the next bit. Set aside.
Now beat the eggs. You might want to add the mushroom liquid to thin it out and hence make a slightly bigger omelette, but this will come with a bigger risk of the omelette falling apart when folding it. Season with pepper if desired.
Add the eggs to the pan.
Now, add the fried rice to the centre of the eggs when it is partially set, and try to fold it to make an omelette.
If you fail, tell yourself there will always be next time.
At the very least, the large quantity of food more than made up for anything. The tomatoes tasted a bit sharp and overpowering, but overall the meal was still enjoyable. Omurice may actually be a good meal idea to rapidly use up unwanted eggs and leftover rice.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Sliced Mushrooms in Water	£0.49	290g	+£0.38	Not known

Sausage and Bacon Pasta

I bought a packet of Basics Smoked Back Bacon for my regular cooking about a week ago. Before Sainsbury's introduced their Cooking Bacon, this was the cheapest form of pork rashers that was available, and it saw me through the better part of my university life. Everybody loves bacon for its taste, and some also for its relative longevity in the fridge, and so Sainsbury's Basics Smoked Back Bacon was a source of comfort despite my austere lifestyle as a student.

This would originally have been a post about Penne Amatriciana, except that I lacked chilli and cheese, the former not available on the Basics line, and wanted to add a sausage to my meal to run down my inventory. Thinking about it, if Sainsbury's were to really introduce Basics chillies, they might be able to get the attention of students from cultures where the vegetable is regularly used.
In an effort to minimise the amount of fat I would consume in this meal, I trimmed the fat from the bacon, and grilled both sausage and bacon to let out more fat.

While waiting for the meat to cook, a thought occurred to me that I could attempt to cook the Basics pasta in the sauce. The motivation is two-fold: I could skip on having to cook the pasta separately, and at the same time, get it to absorb the excess liquid and hence, some flavour, from the peeled tomatoes. The only problem is that adding the pasta directly would result in the excess starch getting into the sauce, an unwanted effect. To get around this, I borrowed an idea from the Chinese, who would wash their rice with water several times before cooking. I treated the pasta in a similar manner, stopping when the water was no longer cloudy as it was the first time.
In a heated wok, add the meat hot off the grill, and the garlic, and fry until garlic is fragrant.
Add 1 tablespoon of Basics vinegar and pepper and Basics herb mix to taste.
Add in the pasta and Basics peeled tomatoes. Add a bit of water as well, such that the pasta is covered. Leave to cook until pasta is done, or a little longer if you want more of the liquid to evaporate.
The experiment with the pasta was a success. The sauce was definitely worth doing again, and even the sausage was pleasant. A comment made on the MoneySavingExpert forums that the latter can be a bit sagey is accurate. However, I'm not sure my friends would be warm to the idea of me cooking pasta in this manner, so this would be a cooking technique I would only subject myself to.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Smoked Back Bacon	£1.20	300g	+£1.04	More regular shapes, fewer but thicker slices

Chocolate Dessert Mix

In my halls of residence when I was in university, each room had a small personal fridge, which was suitable for storing perishables like milk, sandwich fillers and beer, essentials for any student life. However, the unit had no freezer compartment. Instead, a large freezer found in the kitchen was shared between several rooms. As you can imagine, thefts can happen, particularly if it involved expensive ice-cream, like Ben & Jerry's.

An alternative to risking your money buying pint-tubs of ice-cream and storing it in a contentious area would be to find a dessert similar to ice-cream, but does not require freezing. One such product would be Angel Delight, a dessert that seems to be a cross between mousse and melted ice-cream, and is simple to prepare, requiring only milk and lots of whisking. Sainsbury's Basics carries products of this type, which are insanely cheap, at £0.09 per packet.


Start with a glass of milk for preparation.
Add the packet contents, and whisk.

About midway into this little exercise I realised that whisking with a spoon is a nightmare. After very careful consideration I resorted to using my flatmate's whisk, knowing that might be retribution for doing so. Your end product should look smooth and partially set.

If you think about it, this might actually be a fun way to consume your milk, if you don't mind the extra time invested in whisking. This would be useful to those whose parents still nag to drink milk.

Also available in strawberry.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chocolate Dessert Mix	£0.09	5 (or 1 large)	+£0.21	More flavours

Hot Dog Hotpot

Since today's post involves sausages, you might like to take a look at the previous post that I have done if you have not done so already. As mentioned there, the meat content of the Basics sausages was highly similar to that found in hot dogs, and since I had the necessary ingredients available, I thought I should attempt to parody Allegra McEvedy's Hot Dog Hotpot, as shown on the first episode of BBC's Economy Gastronomy.

Meanwhile however, some major things have happened with Sainsbury's Basics line since the last time I cooked something for this blog. Notable among them are the absence of Basics cooking onions (at least at my nearest branch), and the change in packaging for the chopped tomatoes to cartons, as shown below.
Just a couple of words about the cabbage: Sizing is highly inconsistent. This might actually play out to your advantage if you can get a head of cabbage bigger than what you might get if you spent a bit more. I decided however to get a smaller head since I know I wouldn't be able to finish this on my own.

I'm going to take a few liberties with the recipe linked above, and will document these here. For a start, I decided to chop up the sausages to speed up cooking time, and also to ensure that they are thoroughly cooked. If possible, grill the sausage slices as well, to remove excess fat.

Start frying slices of onion, minced garlic, and the sausage slices until the onions are caramelised and sausages are browned.

Add mustard and vinegar and mix until combined.

Tear off a few cabbage leaves, wash and chop roughly. Add this to the pan and continue cooking until softened.

Since Sainsbury's Basics range does not include egg noodles, prepare Basics spaghetti, but halve the required cooking time. Add this to the pan, along with half a Sainsbury's Basics chicken stock cube, before adding the chopped tomatoes.

End result was acceptable. It does not help that the sausages tend to be rather bland, and all the ingredients required for the recipe are rather lacking in substance, eg. the lack of intensity in mustard.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Sausages	£0.48	8 links	+£0.49	Almost twice the meat content. Skip both and go for the more premium brands for health and culinary reasons.
Cabbage	£0.69	Variable	+£0.13	More consistent sizing
Chicken Stock Cubes	£0.10	10 x 10g	+£0.86	No palm oil