Hugely versatile broad bean and herb salad

I love recipes you rustle up from what you have in the fridge, freezer and storecupboard. It lends a creative edge to cooking that you never get when you've gone out to buy exactly the right ingredients for a recipe.

I bought some tongue from Hobbs House butchery when I was there for a cookery course yesterday and was thinking what would go well with it. Salsa verde would have been a good accompaniment if you were serving it hot so why not, I wondered, use some of those flavours in a salad?

Broad beans are in season but you know what? They're expensive to buy and incredibly labour-intensive to prepare with larger beans needing to be skinned so I used a pack of frozen broad beans I had in the freezer. I added a couple of spring onions, sweated off in a little olive oil, some chopped gherkins and juice from the pickle jar and some chopped parsley and mint (very important the mint) and bingo!

I can think of a few good variations (see below) but in the meantime try this as your base:

Serves 2-3

250g frozen (or fresh podded broad beans if you grow them yourself)
3 tbsp olive oil
half a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and sliced
about 5-6 gherkins, finely chopped + some juice from the pickle jar
2 heaped tbsp freshly chopped parsley
1 heaped tbsp freshly chopped mint
Salt and pepper, preferably white

Bring a pan of water to the boil, salt and cook the broad beans for about 3 minutes until tender. Drain and rinse in cold water. Heat the oil and cook the onions gently until soft. Tip in the broad beans, finely chopped gherkins and herbs, season with salt and white pepper. Either eat as a veg (it would be great with roast lamb) or a warm salad with cold meats or cheeses (see below)

What else you could add. (Here's where it gets interesting):

*Some roughly crumbled goats or young sheeps cheese and a little grated lemon rind

* Give it a Spanish twist by adding some chopped chorizo when you fry off the onion - or add some shreds or serrano ham. I'd probably be inclined to leave out the mint in this case

* Add some steamed or boiled new potatoes, dice them and add them to turn it into a ritzed-up potato salad.

There are probably other possibilities. Any thoughts?

Frugal blogs and turkey legs

I just had an email from an American cookery school blog from the Culinary School Guide which has drawn up a list of the top 100 blogs for the frugal gourmet. It's certainly a sign of the times that there are as many as that. Frugal Cook comes in at no 61 in the leftovers section which I don't really know whether to take as a slight or a compliment ;-)

I was amused though at the description of my student site Beyond Baked Beans which comes in at no. 45 in the student eating section. "This blog offers some great, cheap alternatives to crappy, pre-packaged foods common with college students." I like that use of 'crappy'

The site that heads the list is the excellent Irish blog cheapeats.ie which you should take a look at. There was a great post yesterday on what to do with turkey legs, something which I confess has always eluded me.

The credit crunch bandwagon

A lot of people are jumping onto the budget eating bandwagon who obviously haven’t checked a supermarket price tag in their life

A press release from What Consumer? passed on by a food writer friend draws up a list of Ten Top Money Saving Tips for Food Shopping. "You will see how much the inclusion of meat in any dish drives up the price" reads tip no. 4 "Experiment with cheaper substitutes such as oyster mushrooms instead of chicken and pancetta instead of bacon." Hello! Quite apart from the fact that pancetta isn’t a non-meat substitute for bacon it’s more expensive. As are oyster mushrooms, weight for weight, than cheaper chicken cuts.

At the same time Ocado co-founder Jason Gissing is apparently telling us that sales of mince are "rocketing" as people cook more at home while little treats such as doughnuts and smoothies are “plunging”. I’m sorry, Jason, I just don’t buy that either. Most people who shop frugally include mince regularly in their repertoire already and are unlikely to double or treble their consumption. And if the economic climate is getting you down I would have thought that you were MORE likely not less, to buy a doughnut.

What planet are these people living on?

Another silly story designed to grab the headlines is Norwich Union's assertion that by 2018, we could be paying £5.35 for a pint of milk. Well, I guess it’s hypothetically possible, but it’s not very likely and if Norwich Union genuinely thinks we’re all going to rush off to stuff our savings in their low-paying accounts simply to be able to pay the milkman in 10 years time they’ve got another think coming. As the author of the piece on the MSN Money Channel points out, the amount we spend on food has actually fallen in the last 50 years. We spend just 15% of our earnings on it compared to a third just after the war.

PRs seem to have got it into their heads that any story with the words ‘frugal’ or ‘credit crunch’ in it will automatically hit the headlines. Which I suppose is good for the book and this blog so I shouldn’t complain but it does seem mildly ridiculous.

Can you be frugal and ethical?

Heated discussion over the lunchtable yesterday as to whether you can be frugal and ethical? I.e. if you're on the breadline you're not going to be fussy about whether your food comes from. It's been raised in connection with the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall/Jamie Oliver chicken debate and I can see it applies here too.

Most people who are on a truly frugal lifestyle have a budget to stick to and don't go buying organic shoulders of lamb, even if they use every bit of it. Point taken. If I'm serious about this book - and this blog - we'll have to spend a week on a genuinely tight budget. No eating out (see yesterday's post) obviously.

In the meantime I have to admit the lamb was great. I studded it with garlic, smothered it with dried rosemary and oregano, crushed with salt, pepper and a little cumin and roasted it for 4 1/2 hours, giving it an initial blast at 180°C/Gas 4 then turning the heat right down to 130°C/Gas 1. You have to keep pouring off the fat after a hour or so but the low temperature is great as it means the pan juices don't burn (so long as you chuck in some wine or stock once the fat has gone) and you get a brilliant tasty sauce at the end. I say sauce rather than gravy because I don't think gravy goes with this style of roast.

I also found a use for the unloved spelt bread. Bases for the smoked haddock paté. Sliced it, cut it into bite-sized squares, sprayed them with olive oil and baked them. Problem was the oven temperature was so low it took them about 45 minutes to crisp up by which time they were the consistency of a ship's biscuit. Everyone gamely crunched through them hoping they wouldn't break their teeth on one. But I think it would work with a higher cooking temperature and shorter cooking time. Not that I'm going to buy that bread again.

What - and who - is The Frugal Cook?

Welcome to The Frugal Cook! I guess there's a lot of us out there but the reason I'm blogging is to create a day-to-day (well, more or less) record of a book I've been commissioned to write by my publisher, Absolute Press (to be published in hardback in September 2008 at the amazingly frugal price of £12.99. More details to follow.)

Frugal cooking may mean different things to you than it does to me. It's not just about cheap meals and ingredients, it's about making the maximum use of everything you buy. Not - for those of us who are meat-eaters - insisting solely on using the most expensive cuts of meat but every edible bit of the animal. Buying fresh produce in season when it's cheap and tasty rather than having it flown half way round the world. Making use of what's left over from meals rather than leaving it to fester in the fridge then having to chuck it out. 

It was an idea that was popular in the '70's but things have changed a lot since then. For a start we all have a lot less time - or are less prepared to spend hours in the kitchen. Ingredients - and tastes - have changed. We're familiar with exotic dishes and cuisines we couldn't have imagined then. But the downside is that we've got into the habit of stacking our storecupboards with new ingredients every time we try a new recipe. We've lost the habit of thrift. 

Over the next few months I'm going to try and curb my own desire to go food shopping and instead find inventive ways to use the ingredients I already have. When I cook I'll cook with a view to creating leftovers for the next day - and even the day after that.

Hopefully it won't be too tough. I've already written three student cookery books called Beyond Baked Beans, the most recent of which, Beyond Baked Beans Budget was very much focussed on economical eating. I've got my own website www.beyondbakedbeans.com which carries recipes and tips for students, singles and others on a budget.

Like every other book I've written, The Frugal Cook will be a voyage of discovery. Come and join me on the ride . . .