Showing posts with label bloke food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloke food. Show all posts

Monday, May 5, 2014

Pea & Ham Soup is better than you

It's May, so it's starting to get cold again here in Melbsy, which is my annoying way of saying Melbs, which is everybody else's annoying way of saying Melbourne. So obviously my mind turns to warmth, because my mind is a frickin genius. And within warmth lies our biological need for soup. And within my biological need for soup lies my pathological need to not spend any money, because I don't have any money.
Luckily, soup is cheap! And satisfying. Well, it can be when you don't fuck it up. And even luckier is that it is very hard to fuck it up. Unless YOU are a fuck up. But then a fuck up fucking up the unfuckupable would be pretty much par for the course, so lets not count unhatched eggs as anything but eggs.

If you're looking for cheap, hearty and soupy, Pea & Ham Soup is all of those things. It is my absolute favourite soup in the world ever. It has all the things I need from a soup. It's thick, it's aromatic, it's meaty, it's pea-y and it reminds me of my childhood. It's a lot to ask from a soup. But there is more. It's cheap, there are only a few ingredients, some of which can be left out altogether if you want, and it will still turn a great result, and blokes will love it.

I was in ALDI. Because who doesn't love a bargain product with a similar name and font to a big name product but with a better price tag? Seriously, the doors to ALDI are a portal to a world very similar to ours but with no recognisable brands. The other day I bought some "Chazoo's" Cheesy Bacon Balls. Not Cheeto's. Chazoo's. Like the name, they were almost the same but not quite as good . Anyway, I saw Ham Hocks in ALDI so I grabbed a big one for the very good price of $3.61. Then I looked around for split peas but they didn't have any. Laptops, weights and Chazoo's Burger Hoops, sure, but no split peas. Makes sense.

In Woolies, the split peas were $1.66. (The Ham Hocks were WAAAAAY more expensive than ALDI bee tee dubs) Awesome. And as a bonus, the recipe for Pea & Ham Soup is on the back of the pea packet. It includes a bunch of other stuff like onion, carrots, celery and bay leaves which are ALL negotiable. Especially as the recipe says to do some stuff that I disagree with, like puree-ing the soup at the end. FUCK OFF.

You can cook this in a big pot or a slow cooker if you like (I went the slow cooker option because it requires less attention). Chuck the ham hock and split peas in the pot with 12 cups of water. Add a bay leaf, a chicken stock cube, a chopped onion and IF YOU WANT, I DIDNT BOTHER, 2 or 3 chopped up carrots and celery sticks. The reason I didn't bother is because I don't want to have to puree the soup at the end. It should be ready just from cooking it, fuck making more mess and delaying the eating process.

Then you can just leave it on a low heat (Low setting on the Slow Cooker) for ages and then come back and stir it every once in a while. Like, seriously 8 hours. BUT if you are cooking it in a big stove-top pot, be very careful not to leave it for too long without stirring it because the peas can burn to the bottom of the pan and then, yes, that will have fucked it up.

Then, after ages, when it resembles primordial sludge, it's ready.
It's ready.

Just remove all the ham bones and the skin, toast up some old bread, butter the shit out of it and go to fucking town.

This is a lot of soup. It freezes well but I don't recommend doing that. Just leave it in the pot and reheat as required. If you find it gets too thick and congeals, just add a cup or two of water in the reheating process and its good as gold. Good onya.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

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.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Sweet Ass Slow Cooked Meaty Stuff

Americans. It's either super-fast, like a shitty burger from a drive-thru (or a gun that can rip out 1200 rounds per second) or it's super-slow, like the intelligence of whoever runs the NRA (or delicious meats of the slow-cooked variety). And when it comes to guns and meat, they seem to love both with a zeal that would suggest they could do a Gun buy-back scheme if they offered slow-cooked BBQ ribs or perhaps pulled pork. IDEAS, they're free.

The other week I was in Coles Broadmeadows (Broady) and I saw one of those boxed dinner sets in the meat dept that includes almost a Kilogram of pork shoulder and a sachet of spiced BBQ sauce on special ($9 down from $12) as it had an expiry date of the next day (who would have guessed that in Broady, which is heavily populated by Muslims, pork wouldn't be a big seller?). So I rolled the dice and bought it, cooked it as suggested on the box and five hours later had one of the most delicious things I have ever cooked. Praise Allah. It was tender, it was moist, it was sweet and bbqy and there was too much of it. ALL GOOD THINGS. The next day I made a pizza with the leftover meat HOLY PORK BALLS it was brilliant.
Pulled Pork. CHORTLE.
But seriously, when I finally go on a murderous rampage,
I want this as my last meal before I am put to death

So since then, I have been buying a variety of different meats and trying a few different things. Unfortunately, I forgot that I also write a food blog, so I haven't been documenting any of this. What an total fucking IDIOT.

THEN, the other night when I was stumbling around Safeway Brunswick with $12 left in my bank account looking for the cheapest things ever when I noticed a cheap little semi-offcut product called "Lamb Ribs". They were also on sale, down from $2.07 to $1.89. I grabbed two packs of these and also a bottle of this fantastic stuff called "BBQ Rib Sauce" by Three Threes (also on sale at $1.84). I repeated the recipe with the lamb and cooked them for 3 hours this time (they were a lot smaller than the pork shoulder and with the bones in, cooked quicker), turning them twice at regular intervals and re-saucing. UH-MAZING. The bones literally fell clean out of the meat. Massively recommend.
Three Threes brand did not pay me to promote their product, but they can if they want. I'll accept more of their awesome sauce. btw, this is the only context I will accept the term "awesome sauce" without going into a murderous rampage.

THEN I found some very cheap Pork Ribs ($5.63) and repeated the process as I think I am addicted to meaty, BBQy, heroiny awesomness. Check this shit out. So easy.

Do this.
Pre-heat your oven to just 150C.
Put your chosen meat on a tray.
Spread your chosen sauce all over it, but dont use all the sauce as you will need some for re-saucing as it cooks.
Chuck it in the oven.
Go watch one of those movies on your hard-drive that you've been meaning to get around to, (I recommend Cowboys & Aliens), make sweet sweet love to your life-partner, wash the sheets and voila its time to turn the meat over and re-sauce (that's what she said).
With some of the Chosen Meats, cooking time will vary because of the thickness of it, the bones in it, the quality of your oven and other contributing factors, so keep an eye on it as it may cook quicker than it takes to make sweet sweet love to your chosen life-partner, especially if you're into that tantric lovin'. I'm not, I tend to be a 6-7 minute kind of guy but that's not important right now, so forget I said anything about it. Certainly don't go telling all your buddies about it at the urinal or wherever men tell each other stuff. Please, it would ruin my otherwise impeccable sexual reputation. Oh, wait, actually, I don't care if you tell dudes. Just keep it a secret from the ladies.
Here is another pic of the ribs, after I cut them up. HOLY FUCK THEY WERE SO GREAT, I don't even mind that this picture ruins the formatting. THAT SHOULD GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW GREAT

Friday, March 15, 2013

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.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

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.

    Sunday, November 18, 2012

    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.


    Saturday, July 7, 2012

    Baked Sweet Potatoes.

    Winter. As a season, I like it. And as a season, it presents opportunities. Such as Sweet Potatoes being in season. Sweet potatoes, as the name suggests, are sweet. And although the name also suggests they are potatoes they are actually a very distant cousin to the Potato. In some ways they're BETTER. Maybe they're not as versatile over-all but they do have some different properties that make them more attractive for using in old ways.
    My favourite of these old ways is as a Baked Potato. Baked potatoes are a winter favourite comfort food that are cheap and easy and a total crowd pleaser. Normal Baked Potatoes rely on the toppings you throw on them but Sweet Potatoes have a flavour of their own and have an awesome caramelisation quality if you cook them well enough (almost burn/burn, whatever).
    So, baked potatoes. Bay Po's. BPs. Beeps. Everyone likes something different on theirs and I'm the same. But when I make BPs, what it usually means is - I have potatoes and a bunch of stuff in the fridge that needs to be used.
    Whatever's left over in the fridge + pantry basics = Good Tucker

    The prep is important here - chuck the oven on first to get it ready. The potatoes will take about an hour to cook if you only use the oven but they're worth waiting for. You can cheat and pre-cook them for a couple of minutes in the microwave if you want, it'll save you half an hour. The important thing with any baked potato is the outer crust - you cant cheat this bit, it just wont work any other way than oven-baking.
    With normal potatoes, I just wash them, stick a fork in them a few times and put them in the oven. But with Sweet Potatoes, I prefer to peel them because sometimes the skin is hit & miss and blemishes can be bigger than they seem. No-one likes to eat a blemish. Also remember that because of their shape (longer and thinner than potatoes) and a slightly different texture, they will cook more quickly.

    Method - Put it in the oven til you reckon its ready.

    While its cooking, get your toppings ready. You can put almost anything on a baked potato and not go too far wrong. I'm not suggesting caviar or otter snot or anything too El Bulli, but regulation fridge and pantry stuff is spot on. My personal choices usually include sliced bacon, grated cheese, corn, coleslaw, cubed beetroot, warmed baked beans and one or two other bits as appropriate.

    One of my favourite super-easy baked potato varieties is just the potato and one of those tins of Tuna with Sweetcorn & Mayonnaise ("I Love Coles" brand tuna is only 90c right now BARGAIN). Any of the flavoured tuna varieties would probably go alright, just melt some cheese on top and its awesome.

    The BPs are a meal on their own, but they go really well as a side.
    Particularly to a scotch fillet (Pork!)



    I almost always include a bit of butter or garlic butter as a foundation. When the potatoes are ready, cut them open and mash the potato a little bit with a fork. Then put the butter on the potato and it will melt in brilliantly.Then chuck whatever else you have prepared on top, grab a fork and smash it down your face.

    Enjoy!

    Monday, June 11, 2012

    "Country Style" Pea & Ham Soup

    If tinned soup has taught me anything, its that country people are too lazy to chop vegetables into small pieces. I'm OK with lazy (aka energy efficient) and chunky is good when it comes to soup. In Winter there is nothing better than coming in from the cold to the smell of a soup that has been simmering away for hours. And even better is polishing off a big bowl of steaming, chunky, hearty soup with some fresh bread and butter. My particular favourite is Pea & Ham.

    Right now supermarkets are all over the hearty winter ingredients and they are cheaper than chips, which are unusually expensive given they're made of fucking potatoes and that one packet of chips contains roughly one potato which would otherwise cost you fuck-all and a pinch of chicken salt worth 2c. This soup really only has two main ingredients - a bag of Split peas will cost you $1 and Smoked Ham Hock. You can use bacon bones instead and they're about the same price per kg but they don't yield nearly as much meat, so stick with the hock. You only really need one big hock. I bought one medium sized hock for $4.38.

    The split peas will have a recipe for Pea & Ham Soup on the back of the packet because Pea & Ham soup is the only recipe in the world with split peas in it except for plain Split Pea soup which even vegetarians and doomed pigs think is boring. The good news is that the packet recipe is fine. But it's better with a few amendments.

    Just Three Ingredients! If you want.
    For the simplest version, you can literally just use the peas, the hock and about 8 cups of water. But it can be made even more awesome with some simple extras thrown in. Instead of just water, I also like to use a little bit of stock - it adds depth. It also adds "sounding wanky" if you mention it out loud or on a blog. I also put in salt, pepper and a bay leaf. Easy. If you have a family and want to extend it or sneak some vegies into your kids, add a chopped onion and two diced carrots.

    Chop It Up. Here's a photograph I prepared earlier.
    Some people, including the back of the pea packet (wait, that's not people) will tell you to pre-cook the peas but this soup is best slow-simmered over a few hours so there is no way they wont be cooked anyway, so skip it. Chuck all the ingredients into a big pot over high heat on the stove until it boils. Then turn the heat down and simmer it.

    It will look like a pot full of uncooked ingredients. Do not eat it yet.


    Show me simmering, baby!
    Simmer it for a few hours. You'll need to stir it occasionally, but just to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. It will slowly but surely thicken and the meat will come away from the bone.

    When the skin has come away from the meat you can take it out and give it to your dog, who will love you forever.

    Some recipes say to take the meat out and cut it into cubes, put the stick blender in and give it a whiz or some will say to run the soup through a sieve or but I don't bother with any of it. If it has been cooked for long enough, the peas will have broken down and the meat will have fallen clean off the bones. It's extra work that you can just skip if you have time to leave it simmering away for longer. You will occasionally get small bits of bone in the soup but if that really bothers you, maybe you should just take a long hard look at your life. How do you think the pig feels? Toughen up.

    A couple of hours later, when the soup looks like swamp filth, take out the bones and the bay leaves - it's  ready. It will be thick, it will be meaty and it will be awesome.
    Put the win in Winter.
    Hint! This soup gets thicker the longer you cook it. If it gets too sludgy, just add water to bring it back to a consistency you prefer. It also congeals when you put it in the fridge. The best thing to do is just to add a little water before you reheat it and it will come up a treat.

    And was it cheap? My oath! The split peas were $1, the hock was $4.38, one onion was about 20c and two carrots at about 20c each means that my outlay was about $6. The rest of the ingredients came from the pantry (bay leaves, stock, S&P). This should feed a family of five well. Thrift!!

    COMING UP - When life gives you lemons, make lemon curd. And then have it on pancakes.