So how keen ARE you on fish?

Interesting, the feedback - or rather lack of it - on the two recent posts I've done on fish, both of which have excited (if that's the right word) much less response than the ones I've done recently on meat and veg.

I'm intrigued to know why this is. It's possible, of course, you didn't like the sound of either recipe (well, I did say the skate smelt of ammonia which is hardly a come on) But the chowder was actually pretty nice.

Does this mean you're not really that keen on fish? And is that because you don't like the bones or the smell or don't really know what to do with it?

Trout, for example, is a really thrifty buy (see the newspaper-wrapped trout recipe in the Frugal Cook book which is easy, delicious and fun). Tinned sardines, mackerel and tuna are still cheap despite the recent price rises. Healthy as well. Frozen prawns are great value, especially the little North Atlantic ones, as are frozen white fish fillets - great for a fish pie. And you can actually make quite a tasty fish stew or chowder with those compacted frozen fish 'steaks' which have the advantage of no skin or bones.

So do tell - I'd love to know.

Smoked cod, leek and watercress chowder

If you're a) not a haggis-lover, b) haven't decided what to cook tonight but feel like something vaguely Scottish and are c) reasonably near the shops, here's an idea. It was prompted by a reduction on a pack of smoked cod in Somerfield yesterday which made me think of making Cullen Skink. Not that I could remember exactly what went into Cullen Skink but I bought a couple of leeks, a potato and a carton of soy milk (my husband is dairy-intolerant) and hoped for the best.

I was just bemoaning the lack of parsley to finish it off when I remembered I had the tail end of a pack of watercress which proved a very good addition. As did a few shavings of parmesan. The result: more of a chowder rather than a Scottish fish soup but none the worse for that.

Serves 2-4 depending whether you're eating anything else.

1 medium to large potato (about 250g)
2 medium leeks
1 tbsp olive or sunflower oil
15g butter
200g smoked cod or haddock fillets
450-500ml whole milk or soy milk
A handful of roughly chopped watercress or some finely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Grated parmesan to serve (optional)

Peel the potato and cut into smallish cubes. Cover with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes until the potato is just tender. Meanwhile trim, wash and finely slice the leeks then give them another rinse. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan or casserole, add the butter then tip in the leeks and stir. Put a lid on the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes until the leeks start to soften. Add the cod or haddock fillets, pour over enough milk to cover, bring up to simmering point then leave over a low heat for about 4-5 minutes until the fish is cooked. Remove the fish with a fish slice and set aside. Tip the potatoes and about 100ml of their water into the leeks and add the watercress or parsley. Leave over a low heat while you remove the skin and any bones from the fish then return it to the pan and warm through. Check seasoning adding salt (it should only need a little, if any) and pepper to taste. Serve in warm bowls with a little shaved or coarsely grated parmesan if you have some and fancy it.

What to do with an oxtail

Have you ever cooked an oxtail? I hadn't until a couple of years ago. It just looked too alien and scary, too fatty, too much as if it would never cook through. But I had eaten it and enjoyed it so gave it a try and it was fab.

Basically you treat it exactly as you would a beef stew except for three things. You need to soak it for a couple of hours in salted water (to be honest I don't know why, presumably to remove any impurities). You need to cook it for longer (stands to reason, it's dense) and you need to skim off the fat (easiest if you leave it overnight)

What you then get is a stew of incredible richness and intensity, possibly the best beef stew you've ever eaten. Here's how I made it the other day:

Braised oxtail with red wine
Serves 4-6

1 large oxtail, as lean as possible
2 tbsp plain flour
4-5 rashers streaky bacon or bacon bits (or you could use chorizo and leave out the pimenton)
2-4 tbsp olive oil or other cooking oil
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
Stick of celery, trimmed and sliced (optional)
1 large clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 tsp sweet pimenton/paprika
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 bottle red wine or a bottle of porter
A small glass of port (optional but good if you're using wine)
350ml beef or vegetable stock
A few sprigs of thyme, parsley stalks and a bayleaf
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cover the oxtail in water, season well with salt and leave to soak for 2-4 hours. Drain off the water, pat the meat dry, and dust each piece in seasoned flour. Cut up the bacon into small pieces, heat 2 tbsp of the oil and fry the bacon until beginning to brown then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Brown the meat well on all sides and remove that too then add more oil if necessary and cook the onions until beginning to soften, adding the sliced carrots and celery after 3-4 minutes. Stir in the finely chopped garlic, paprika, allspice and tomato paste then add the wine, port, if using and stock or water (or stock and beer, if using porter). Add the herbs tied together with a piece of string or cotton and the meat and bacon, ensuring the liquid covers the meat (if not, add a bit more wine or stock) and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down as low as you can and simmer on the hob or in a very low oven for about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. If serving straight away skim off as much fat as possible and add a little more red wine (don't top it up if you've used beer - it'll taste bitter) and reheat. Or leave overnight and the fat will be easier to spoon off. You can take the meat off the bone if you like. Check the seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste then serve with creamy mash (or baked potatoes) and carrots.

Any leftovers make a fabulous base for a cottage pie, topped with mash or mashed root veg such as swede and carrot or you could even make the whole thing into a pie. (If you do this you may find you have some liquid left over. Strain it and freeze it to add to a gravy or another stew.)

An incredibly annoying restaurant practice

One of the most irritating things about eating out - apart from being endlessly pressed to order mineral water - is the habit of leaving a gap on the bill for a tip when you've already been charged for service. (Usually 12 1/2% these days)

In the case of Sofra restaurants they don't even go through the pretence of saying the service is 'optional', they charge it and then charge service on the service charge.

There was a lot of adverse publicity a while ago about this and restaurants stopped doing it for a while but in these credit-crunched times they're obviously up to their old tricks again.

So look out for it, don't pay it and let's name and shame the restaurants who do it!

A year of The Frugal Cook

Twelve months ago today I started blogging as The Frugal Cook. I can't claim credit for the idea - it was my publisher's who thought it would be interesting to chart my efforts to cut back and eat more thriftily.

I remember wondering if I'd have anything to say (hah!) and whether I was mad taking on the extra workload. (I was!) But it's been nothing but fun, so much so that I now have two other blogs on subjects that interest me - The Cheeselover and Credit Crunch Drinking.

The reason it's worked so well is thanks to all of you. All blogs need an audience, preferably a vocal one and the recent response to such topics as frozen veg and food for flu have shown that there's a wealth of expertise to share.

The book is now out, as you know, and has had some great reviews, most recently on Henrietta Green's FoodLovers' Britain (you need to scroll down the page to find it). There have been one or two complaints that there weren't enough recipes using cheaper cuts of meat but that was deliberate. My feeling was - still is - that people by and large want to eat the kind of food they were enjoying before the credit crunch, just to pay less for it and that they don't want to go back to the sort of dishes we had in the '50s. (The irony is that many so-called 'cheap cuts' are now dearer than some of the more expensive ones)

The most important thing I've learnt is that you have to shop and cook in a way that suits your own time and temperament. Some people manage to plan a week - or even a month - ahead but I find that I always end up wasting food when I do. Plans change, we go out to friends, they come round to us. I spend less when I plan two to three days ahead but I'm lucky enough to work from home.

You also have to keep your wits about you far more than you did even a year ago. The incredible offers on some products mean that prices may suddenly soar on others. The received wisdom that produce that food that is in season is cheaper than food that is not and that loose produce is cheaper than pre-packed isn't always the case these days. Offers of 50% off are not always as good as they seem. So it seems well worth while carrying on.

If you have a moment let me know what you think of the blog - publically or privately (to fibeckettATliveDOTcom) Is it useful to you? Could it be more so? Are there any subjects you think I should tackle (I've had a couple of good suggestions recently). Just let me know.

And thank you all again for making the blog and the book a success

Skate knobs with capers

Prior to The Great Lurgy (from which I am fully recovered, thankyou) I'd picked up a couple of interesting buys I was going to cook up and report on. They got transferred to the freezer but I thought I'd have a crack at them this weekend to alleviate the tedium of tackling my tax return.

The first was what are peculiarly called 'skate knobs' (don't snigger) the sweet little nuggets of fish you find by the bone of skate wings. They're a real delicacy which you never find in supermarkets, rarely in fishmongers and just occasionally on a market stall and they're amazingly cheap. I paid £3.82 for 700g, easily enough for three.

Offputtingly they smelt of ammonia when I opened the bag and I was just about to consign them to the bin when my husband, who has the memory of an elephant, remembered this was a common feature of skate. I checked with Jane Grigson's Fish Cookery and he was right (of course) so our meal went ahead as planned. (The smell dissipates on cooking.)

I did very little to them. I simply fried them for a couple of minutes in a mixture of olive oil and butter, add a small splosh of dry white wine, let it bubble up and reduce then added a couple of tablespoons each of chopped capers and parsley and heated the whole thing through. Total cooking time, 5 minutes. We had them with a few new potatoes and the first of the season's purple sprouting broccoli. A real feast.

They would also have been nice deep fried*, I think or in an upmarket fish pie with prawns. They have something of the taste of scampi or scallops but not quite the same firm texture. Do look out for them or see if your local fishmonger can get them for you.

(*Mark Hix of the Independent has a nice recipe here)

A rant about Ryanair

Now this is off-topic but you'll have to indulge me as I'm still not doing much food-buying or cooking. But I have been trying to book a trip to France online and need to have a moan about Ryanair.

If you look at their site a flashing sign will tell you they're offering 1 million seats for £1 one way (until Sunday night). "That sounds a good deal" you might think (although you are probably already sceptical if you've endured the pain of booking with Ryanair before). So it's going to cost £4 for the two of us, right?

Er, not quite. The key phrase is 'one way'. That seems to mean whatever flight you chose one leg will cost £1 and the other will include taxes and fees. Which amounts, in the case of our flight from Bristol to Beziers, to a princely £64.06 - £52.08 unspecified taxes and £11.98 insurance, wheelchair levy and aviation insurance. This is new. Normally the total taxes are about £30 to £40 on this flight so how come it's more than this one way? And I would have thought Ryanair would cover its own insurance costs. Most businesses do.

On top of that if you want to check in a suitcase Ryanair will now charge you £30 a person, an additional £8 if you want priority boarding and £11.57 for more insurance (yours rather than Ryanair's this time). Fortunately we can opt out of all these but still need to pay the outrageous £10 per person they charge for using your credit or debit card (we haven't got the one card that exempts you from the charges, a Visa Electron). Total bill £88.04

I don't so much object that Ryanair is charging us £44 each to take us to France which is after all cheaper than going from Bristol to London but their disingenuousness in pretending that it will cost a couple of quid. And for penalising not people like us who are lucky enough to have family over there but families who are spending their hard earned cash on a holiday and having to pay all these extra charges.

The problem is the 'extras' are always changing. Subtly the fares creep up without any fanfare yet still these incredible offers are splashed all over the papers. Does Trading Standards have anything to say about this? Apparently not.

Food for flu

Having hoped I might get through the winter without succumbling to one of the many unpleasant lurgies that seem to have been afflicting my friends we've both just been poleaxed by a weird bug that involves coughing, aching, nausea and an upset stomach. Is it flu? Who knows? Everything is referred to as The Flu these days, even when it's a common cold. But I know this is serious because I don't feel like eating. (Unheard-of, obviously)

The few things that have appealed have been plain boiled rice (yes, it's that bad), Marigold Vegetable Bouillon (drunk as a soup), hot apple juice spiked with cinnamon and cloves and fish fingers and mayo (strangely soothing when you're feeling rough). I might even go so far today (I did. See right) as to make us my favourite childhood food when I was ill: eggs-in-a-cup which consists of soft boiled eggs mushed up with fresh white bread and a little bit of soft butter*. And, if I feel strong enough (pause for a quick coughing fit) a bowl of vegetable soup made with the turkey stock I virtuously froze after Christmas,

The plus side - apart from the opportunity to re-watch bad films and old episodes of 'Allo, Allo - is that this is an impeccably frugal and healthy start to 2009. But I certainly look forward to getting my appetite back.

What do you like to eat when you're feeling fragile? (Apart from Marmite, of course. Think we've probably had enough of that lately ;-)

PS Eggophobes may feel a bit queasy at the idea of this dish but for those of you to whom it appeals and whose mother did not give it to them when they were ailing, this is how to do it:

For each person you need 2 good fresh eggs and a thick slice of traditional white English bread (a tin loaf, preferably a day old) Cut the crusts off the bread and break it by hand into rough crumbs. (See above. You don't want fine breadcumbs) Soft boil the eggs for about three minutes if you keep them at room temperature, four, if you've taken them straight from the fridge. Put the crumbs in a large cup or a small bowl, scoop the eggs out of their shells, add a chunk of soft butter - on top of the egg so it melts - then chop the whole thing together with a teaspoon. Season with salt and white pepper if you have it. If not black will do but that's not the way my mum made it. And eat as soon as possible. Oh, and don't expect too much. It's slightly soggy, very bland but immensely comforting . . .