Wings For The Win

Southern Fried Chicken is a bit of a hot food item in Melbourne right now and we pay through the teeth for it. Chicken is cheap and fried chicken is a pretty simple thing to make that will please most people.

I'm a budget conscious shopping person, we all know that by now. And I live in an inner-city suburb, so ingredients are cheap and readily available. Especially if you are ready to dig. I have found some incredible places in Melbourne for super-bargains that have saved me in the days before pay day when I have had $9 in the bank to get me through. Whatever your reason for being poor, NO JUDGEMENT, there are ways to make the smallest amount of cash go a long way. There is a butcher (YES, A BUTCHER, not a shitty supermarket meat dept) near me that regularly sells chicken wings for $2 kg. You get about 8 or 9 large wings for that much, which is a lot. You should probably only eat about 3 or 4 of these in one sitting and if you have a family (2-3 kids), 2kg is probably enough. Couple that with fresh veg and maybe some rice and you have a great dinner for fuck-all money. At home, I knew I had flour (either way its 79c) and various herbs and stuff, so I didn't need much more than the wings.

In the US they eat fried chicken with what they call "biscuits", which are pretty similar to savoury scones. They go well together with the chicken and the gravy they serve with it. HEALTH. So, knowing I had the ingredients, I decided to make parsley scones. The biscuit is, after all, a filler. Scones are easy and your nana will have a good recipe, so I wont bother explaining it here (Unless you want me to? Leave a comment). Maybe try something like spring onion and cheese savoury scones? I also had all the required ingredients for the coating I wanted for the chook.

TRY THIS for a cheap awesome dinner.
2kg chicken wings
8 garlic cloves, crushed (or cheat and get the minced garlic for $4)
1 tbs oil (olive/vegetable/NOT engine)
(put the garlic and oil in the bag with the wings, mix it up thoroughly, leave while you prep the herb coating)

*Herb Coating*
1/2 cup of flour
2 chicken stock cubes, crushed
whatever herbs you have in the cupboard
   eg a shake of whatever shit your housemates have handy and wont miss. (I used a few shakes of vegeta, cajun seasoning, paprika, salt, oregano and dried thyme)
2 eggs, whisked in a bowl (although you may need another one or two, see how you go)

Mix all the stock cubes, herbs, spices and flour together thoroughly in a wide bowl. When it looks less like flour than before, its ready.

Heat up enough vegetable oil in a saucepan to cover a chicken wing (3cm depth). Make sure the oil is VERY FUCKING HOT. Now place a few chicken wings into the flour mix, pressing the mixture onto the skin so it stays there. Now coat the chicken in egg, then put it back in the flour mix and really press the mix onto the wing firmly.

Shake off the excess flour mix and place the chicken wings into the oil and they should bubble away nicely. As the coating turns golden brown, turn the wing over to ensure all of the chicken gets cooked (3-4 mins altogether).

Then remove from the oil, drain on absorbent paper and put into the oven to keep warm while you cook the rest of the wings. Its a bit of a process but well worth it considering you will cook all this for about $8 and its enough to feed 6 people really well. If its just for one or two, half the quantity of chook.

When you have cooked all the wings, prep some chicken gravy, warm up and butter the scones and smash it all down your face hole with extreme glee.

TIP! Don't overcrowd the oil or the wings wont cook properly.Only cook two or three at once (depending on the size of your saucepan)
ALSO, if you cant get wings or you prefer drumsticks or another larger cut, you will need to cook the chook for slightly longer.

Recipes on the back of packets #1

Next time you go to the supermarket to do a bit of shopping, have a look at the back of every packet you are buying. A lot of ingredients packets have recipes on them. Does anybody use these recipes? Are the recipes actually any good? I have a bit of a theory that they probably aren't very good at all. So I'm going to test a few as I come across them to see if they're any good.

#1. Choc Chip Cookies from the back of the Nestle Choc Bits Packet.
225g butter, softened
1/2 cup of castor sugar
1/4 cup Sweetened Condensed Milk (I used the Nestle 99% Fat-Free version)
2 cups Plain Flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup Choc Bits (I used Milk but Dark would be great)

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.
Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk. Cream until the mixture is light and fluffy. (Use your Mixmaster)
Sift the flour and baking powder together and then add to the mixture, beating it together slowly. Add the choc chips (and extras if you are adding any)
The mixture will come together like a soft, buttery pastry with choc chips in it. Because that's what it is.
Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a ping-pong ball and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper or tin-foil. Flatten them a little. Leave space between each cookie as they will flatten out.

The recipe says to bake them for 15 minutes in 190C. I found this to be too long for too high. I cooked them  at 150C and set the timer for 15 mins but I kept a close eye on them. When the bases were brown, I took them out of the oven. (My oven is slightly dodgy)

RESULT: Very good! But I would recommend trying some variations in this recipe as the choc chips alone aren't that exciting. I added mini-marshmallows but some salty caramel or fudge would be great too. These cookies are as good as or better than those ones from Subway.

There is also something odd about the choc-chips. On the front of the packet there is a "benefit" that claims that the choc chips hold their shape when baked. Does that seem odd to you? I'm pretty sure I would prefer chocolate that melts when it's baked.

TIP! Salted caramel is and will always be awesome. If you don't like it, feel free to not tell me about it.

NOTE! None of the companies mentioned in this recipe have paid me, asked me to mention them or try this.

Bloody Manly egg and bacon pie

I don't know why, but somewhere along the timeline of stupid man-stuff, "quiche" got a bad name. But the joke is that if you call it "Egg & Bacon Pie" it makes it ok. Maybe it's that the word "quiche" sounds a little poncy? Maybe some dumb-arse was emasculated by the fact that he couldn't spell it? Whatever the deal is, I'm over it. It's stupid and we've moved on since the 70's, so catch the fuck up.

I love quiche. Its EASY. Its about the easiest thing you can make, give or take a cheese toastie. And I will get to cheese toasties eventually too, as I have some brilliant variations that would hair on an alopecia sufferer's chest, which is something that science should look into.

Quiche is a brilliant way to use left-over stuff in your food storage areas. You can go with tradition if you want and just make it egg and bacon and cheese. Or you can use up the rest of the good stuff you don't want to waste and make it a "gourmet" mess, which can hardly ever go wrong, sort of.

Any recipe book worth a pinch of salt will have a basic quiche recipe in it which is basically a blank recipe that you can feel free to add your leftovers to. So here is a very, very basic quiche "blank" to start with and then you can go to town with whatever muck in your fridge is a couple of days past its use-by.

Blank Quiche
4 Eggs
1 cup of milk (warmed)
Pepper
Enough pastry to cover the base of a quiche dish (frozen shortcrust is awesome, puff will work too)
Grated cheese

Whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk and two or three grinds of pepper.

Line a fairly shallow dish with the pastry.

Now find some stuff to ensure your quiche is more than just cooked egg pie. For mine, I pan-fried some small cubes of pumpkin, then I did the same with some onion and bacon. Chuck it on top of the pastry in the dish and spread it about evenly. I added some spring onions at this point and then I poured the egg mix evenly over the lot. Then I quartered up some cherry tomatoes and spread them over the top. Then spread
some grated cheese over the top and chuck it into a preheated oven at 200C for about 15 minutes.

Remember that a quiche is basically open to putting whatever you want in it. It's receptive, so try a bunch of stuff. Mushroom is good. Roast chicken wins. Bacon rocks. Sweetcorn is awesome. Capsicum, yes. Potato, probably not. A cheeseburger, don't.

TIP: Spring onion makes any quiche more awesome, especially if you use a lot of cheese and don't have much else.

Bert's Awesome Pizza, No Shit, Good Job

Let's sort one thing out right away. If you don't love pizza, fuck off right now and don't ever come back. 

Pizza is the ultimate food. It should be cheap and provide a sample of every section of the good food pyramid in one hit. Especially the goodness of life-giving cheese. Also, its useful for getting rid of the food bits in your fridge that probably wont get used.

There are basically two parts to making pizza, the dough and the toppings. Frozen or pre-made pizza bases suck farts. There should be a service at supermarkets where you can hire someone to follow you around and every time you pick up something shitty they slap it out of your hand and say "DON'T!". Pizza bases would be a slappable offence. 

Make the dough first because it needs to rise and it can do that while everything else is being prepared. The best way to make pizza at home is to make your own dough - don't let that put you off. It's seriously easy and fucking cheap. It takes no time to throw it together, you just need to leave it for a little bit of time to rise. So do this bit either the day before or in the afternoon and then when you get home its ready to use. And this recipe is the best I've ever found. Don't be afraid. It's very simple even if you've never made dough before.


The Dough
The dough recipe mentions a couple of things that you don't HAVE to use, like the Semolina flour, but if you do it just makes it a little better. Also, you don't need to use demerara sugar, you can switch it for whatever sugar you have in the cupboard. So like, teaspoon sachets from McDonald's are fine.

Assemble these ingredients. You can buy the cheapest, supermarket-brand flour for like 89c. It doesn't need to be too special. It's FLOUR. Just make sure you don't use Self-Raising Flour or the dough wont work. This recipe will make about 4 medium sized bases. If you want more, double the quantities on everything.

• 1/2 kg white bread flour (plus 100g finely ground semolina flour if you can)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 7 g dried yeast sachet
• 1/2 tbs sugar (demerara if you have it)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 300 ml lukewarm water

In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes. TIP! Make sure the water is not HOT - that will kill the yeast and the dough wont rise. While that's doing its thing, sift the flour and salt into a big bowl. Then pour the yeast/water mix into the flour. Using a fork, mix the ingredients all together until it comes together in a ball.

Once it has some integrity start to knead it with your hands. Then take it out of the bowl and knead it on the bench, using flour to make sure it doesn't stick. Knead it until its smooth and springs back when you stretch it. Now you can leave it in a bowl in a warm room covered with a teatowel for about an hour until it is double its original size. You can leave it for longer if you're out or busy doing something else.

Lance Armstrong

Magic! But seriously if your ball swells like that in the space of an hour, see a doctor

You now have to knead it again to get the air out if it (this is called "Knocking back the flour") but after you knead it for a minute or two, its pretty much ready to go. I usually like to split it into four ball* (*HAHA BALLS) just so I know its all even and I wont have one giant pizza and one inadequate pizza. The worst thing on earth is an inadequate pizza.

I have four balls

The Toppings
What have you got in the fridge or the cupboard?  You can put a lot of things on it to suit your own tastes, which rocks. I generally stick to two or three toppings at most because imo, simple flavours are what pizza is all about. If you have pasta sauce, use it as the base for your toppings.

You can throw whatever you want on it but in case you need some wanky inspiration, try these:
Caramelised pumpkin with goats cheese and toasted pine-nuts
Potato and Rosemary with gruyere cheese (even better with a little truffle oil)
Margarita - put whole or half cherry tomatoes on top with just herbs and cheese
Char-grilled capsicum, pancetta and olives.
 

Caramelised pumpkin, goats cheese and pine-nuts on one end
Potato, Rosemary and parmesan on the other! AWESWANK!

Use whatever shape flat pan you have. I have a rectangle medium sized flat pan that works a treat. Round pizzas are for squares. Flatten out the dough to a roughly even thickness all over, smear some pasta sauce or tomato paste across it and then throw your chosen toppings across it as evenly as you can. I like to put a little cheese on top of the tomato paste first, then the toppings, then more cheese. It just helps to hold the ingredients to the base.


When its ready to be cooked, throw it into a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 10-12 minutes or until the toppings look visibly cooked and the cheese is melty and maybe even browning. You should be able to lift the base to check its ready, it should be light brown on the underside.

TIP! Don't go overboard on the toppings. Enjoy the simple flavours of two or three toppings and see how well they go together.

Ham and Mushroom for breakfast the next day.

TIP! If you don't use it all, just wrap each bit in cling film and freeze it.

Coconut Curry Chicken with extras

Hello. Yes, its been a while, I know. Ive been busy living my life. But now things have stabilised and I'm cooking again. Which is great. As you might remember, I like to do simple but hearty stuff when I cook. I'm not averse to using simmer sauces and pre-made marinades because they are often quite good and will save you a stack of time.

I think it would be a fun experiment to buy things in packets and then to make the recipes on the back of them strictly to the recipe to see how good or bad they are. Hmm... nah. I've already got too many blogs.

A few weeks ago, as part of a promotion for something else, I was sent some Nando's marinades and sauces and other cool stuff. And Ive been dying to try the Coconut Curry Chicken cooking sauce the most. Just so you know, Nando's didnt ask me to cook this and write a blog to promote their stuff, I just wanted to. And just so you know, the rest of their product has been really good, so I have high hopes for the curry.

So the directions sound easy enough. Brown 500g chicken, add capsicum (recipe says to use Red but I've only got green) and green beans. But as I like to "enhance" a recipe, I am also adding some pumpkin because it goes brilliantly in curry and I've also got a little leftover broccoli, so that's going in too. First off, I cubed the pumpkin into dice-sized bits and fried it in some oil (and salt) until it was brown and a little softer.

Yes, its awesome to eat like this.

Then after browning off the chook (which I cut into strips instead of cubes like the menu says) I put everything in a deepish frypan (deeper than a frypan, not quite a wok. I should work in advertising) and turned down the temp (not the Tempo, that's different) to allow the whole lot to simmer for the required 12 minutes. Good timing because microwave rice takes 11 minutes. Considering the prep took about 10 minutes, this is a quick and easy dinner.

End result - BOOYA!

I've cooked with all the different sauces and marinades from Nando's (that I was given) and this was the best result so far. This was delicious! In terms of curry-typing, this was closer to a sweet Thai style curry than an Indian curry, and the chili was only Medium. For a pre-made "jar of sauce" product this was an excellent dish. Nando's Perinaise is also awesome and not just on chips. I used it in a salad instead of caesar sauce and it was fantastic.

Lamb Stew with Parsley Dumplings

I'm unemployed at the moment and I don't have much cash. So when I go to the supermarket, I only have a general plan. I tend to look for the things that are on special or that are close to their use-by dates so that they are a little cheaper. I can freeze them when I get home if I need to.
Which is what I did yesterday. I was at Woolworth's and I saw a cut of meat called "Lamb Offcuts". They were really cheap - one packet was 96 cents, another $1.45 and the most expensive one $1.95. I picked them up and knew I would make a Lamb Stew straight away. I grabbed some other basics - potatoes, carrots and took off home to bust out the Slow-Cooker.

As a general rule, I'm not a fan of food gadgets like rice cookers or popcorn machines.We've got by without them til now, haven't we? But I do have a slow cooker and I'm not averse to using it.
I wanted a big, hearty lamb stew with melt in the mouth lamb and a rich sauce. And here's how I got it.

I started by browning the lamb in a frypan. It just gives it a good colour and gets some of the fat off. Then I cut any excess fat away and put the lamb in the slow cooker . Cooking it with the bones in gives it an even heartier flavour.I added two potatoes and a carrot that I had cut into chunks as well as a tin of chopped tomatoes (I'm an advocate of fresh, but right now the tomatoes are looking a bit off and they're expensive AND I had this in the cupboard). I covered it with passata (about half a jar)and threw in some dried herbs like Rosemary and "Mixed Herbs". Then I added a teaspoon of minced garlic and a cup of chicken stock and gave it a bit of a mix around in the pot. You can muck around a little bit here with different root vegetables, herbs, that kind of thing, depending on your personal tastes. Salt and Pepper are vital though, so make sure you throw in a bit of both.


Lid on, I put it on High for about an hour. Then I gave it a stir and switched it to Low and left it overnight. When I got up this morning, it looked like this

It was pretty much ready to eat - the lamb was falling apart and the sauce was delicious and rich. But there was still something I wanted to add. I plucked out the bones and left it on Low.

I love the traditional foods that I grew up with, so I added Parsley Dumplings to the mix. This is the simplest way to make your food reach a little further - especially if you have a family. Dumplings cost next to nothing and are made with stuff you should already have in the cupboard - Milk, Butter, SR Flour, an egg and salt. And parsley, of course. I have a parsley plant in the backyard so I used that but you can use dried if that's what you have. This is my mum's recipe.

Parsley Dumplings
120grams Self Raising Flour
25 grams Butter
1 egg
125mls milk (Soy milk works just as well)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tbs chopped parsley

How To
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
Rub in the butter using your finger tips (HINT - If the butter is cold, melt it over a low heat first, it will rub in in no time.)
In a small bowl, beat the egg into the milk and then add the parsley.
Pour the egg milk mixture into the flour and mix (I use a long-pronged fork) into a smooth batter.
Scoop it spoonfuls of the batter and place on top of the stew. Start in the centre and drop around it. It will look like this.

Put the slow-cooker back on High, put the lid back on and give it about half an hour and the Dumplings will be ready to serve with the stew.

Bam! 

This meal (although it took time) took very little effort at all and it is magnificent. Its hearty, its rich, it is perfect on a cold winters night and the family will love it!
It was cheap too - looking at the receipt, I can tell you that I spent $1.45 on carrots (and I only used one, so lets say 20c), $2.30 on four potatoes (I used two, so $1.15) and because I used offcuts, the meat was $4 all up. Everything else was in the pantry and I would bet your place is much the same. This would easily feed a family of 5 and the total outlay of $5.35 makes this a thrifty one! As a bloke living alone, I will be eating this for the next three days.
The ingredients for the dumplings would hardly make a dint in the stocks either, but lets guess that it was about $3 worth of ingredients. Cheap!

I hope you enjoy the recipes, let me know how you go!

COMING UP - More Cheap, Hearty Winter Fare with Pea & Ham Soup

Simple Food! My Ethic.

I love food. Its pretty simple. My food ethic is one of simple ingredients put together well. That's it. Food is amazing. It is something that we do every day because we have to. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't excite us - in fact, its for that very reason that we should look forward to it. Food is an experience that can involve all five of our senses. We love the look of food, the smell, the texture, the taste and even the way it sounds on the plate and in our mouths. Its brilliant!

It really annoys me when I hear people saying they "CAN'T" cook. A recipe is a set of instructions in a simple order. If you cant follow simple instructions, I wonder how you do the more complicated things that you need to do in life. Cooking a skill like any other skill - you need to learn it. But its not a hard skill to pick up and anybody can do it. You'll be surprised at some of the amazing foods you can make right now with only four ingredients in them!

And I know that its a daily necessity (or we would die) but I don't think there is any excuse to eat crap (aside from occasionally as the necessity arises). I know a lot of people who think that cooking is a hassle. Or they don't have time. Or they hate doing dishes. Or they think that cooking comes from a packet. But good quality home cooking is much simpler than people seem to remember. And cheaper.

We get sold ideas sometimes that pre-packaged food is cheaper than what we can make at home ourselves. That's almost never the case. Its certainly never going to taste better than what you can make with a little know-how. And that's what I'm here for. I'm going to try to show you how to cook simple, beautiful food that isn't expensive and that will excite your senses!

Come along, I want your feedback on the things I do as I am here to learn too!