Tim's Bits and Pieces: Recipes

4 for $10 Meal 2: Fried Rice

TimP — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 23:03:53 +0200

I haven't forgotten about my plan to post some budget meal recipes, I was just busy with NaNoWriMo. So here's the next installment of 4 for $10: fried rice.

What I got for $10 this time:

1kg Long Grain Rice -- $2.14
1kg Mixed Frozen Vegetables -- $1.59
6x X-Lrg Free Range Eggs -- $3.25
500g Beef Mince -- $2.40
Total -- $9.38

I should have gone with just frozen peas, or even a handful of fresh beans and a tin of corn (both of which would have stayed within my budget) instead of the frozen vegetables. The Coles' "new mix" of frozen vegetables simply isn't as well suited to this; maybe the old mix was better? Still it worked, and I have a bunch of frozen vegetables left over. The rest is pretty self-explanatory, though I could have got cage eggs for cheaper, and bacon is more common than beef mince, but the mince was on special.

First put a large pot about half full with water on a high heat, and get an electric frypan going (you could use a wok instead), on a medium or medium-high heat.

Throw the mince into the fry pan and, if you want, a bit of butter (which I had left from the last meal) into the fry pan. Stir this every few minutes while you're going through the rest of the steps.

After that put some rice (I went with about two cups or 300-400g) into the pot of water.

Once the rice starts boiling wildly, cover it with it's lid, and then turn the heat right down or entirely off. It will absorb the water over the next little while, though you'll probably want to give it a stir every now and again. Whenever you open the lid to stir it, double-check that it hasn't boiled or evaporated dry (there may be moisture on the bottom, so stir it a bit first before deciding that it's dry), if it has add some more water and turn the heat on for a while again.

After a while, once your mince is entirely or mostly cooked, it's time to add the eggs. Scrape all the mince up to one end of the fry pan, and then crack the eggs into the other end, and start them cooking. Mix the mince occasionally as you go along to keep it from burning on one side, and stir the eggs around occasionally as well. You could obsess at this point about keeping the eggs and mince separate, or you could just remember that you're going to mix the two in together in a little while anyhow, and not worry. I would recommend the second option, but it's up to you.

Once the eggs are cooked hopefully the rice will be too. You can check it by grabbing out a few grains with a fork or spoon and eating them. If they are crunchy it's not ready yet. If so turn the heat down on the fry pan until you're ready for the next step, and put the rice back onto the heat for a while to finish cooking it.

Once the rice is cooked you can just dump it into the fry pan with the eggs and meat. I wouldn't worry about the moisture unless there's a lot of it, you can simmer a bit away in the fry pan. Add a pile of frozen vegetables (about 300-400 grams) and stir it all together and leave it on the heat for a while to simmer away any water, and heat up the frozen veggies. Once that's done it's ready to serve:

This was plenty of food for three adults and a child, with some left over for lunch the next day. And I ended up with about 600-700 grams each of Rice and Frozen Vegetables left over. It's a little bland without soy sauce, so while I don't normally use it, most other people like it, so you'd probably want to have some available for another dollar or two.

4 For $10 Meal 1: Sausages and Mashed Potato

TimP — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 23:03:53 +0200

Some people seem to think that good, home-cooked food is more expensive that it actually is, and more expensive that takeaway like McDonald's or Hungry Jack's and the like. It's not though; for one simple example Cole's has a "feed your family for $10" promotion, which is basically just them listing a bunch of recipes that will feed four people and cost less than $10 (at Cole's), which is about one-half to one-third of the cost of four burgers from a takeaway store, and the food is much, much nicer, but some people have criticised it because the recipes assume that you have a fully stocked pantry, mostly for herbs and spices. (They do include the cost of herbs and spices, but only for the portion of the packet you'll use, so you can end up buying $20-$30 worth of herbs and spices just to get 50c worth that you'll use in this meal)

I think that you'll still be able to feed a "family of four" for under $10 a meal and build up a decently stocked pantry in the process if you save extras from one meal to the next. So the prove my point I'm going to start a semi-regular series of food posts. The rules of the exercises are that I can spend $10 per-meal for four people, I can save ingredients from one meal to use in the next, but unless I purchased it as part of this project I can't use it (I will assume a kitchen with an oven, saucepans, cutting boards, etc). I'm going to go to various different supermarkets (though only one per-meal) to show that it's not just a Cole's thing as well. I'll take advantage of specials when I get the opportunity, but in general I'll just get what I want for the meal in question.

I'm doing this partly just to prove a point, but also I hope that maybe it might convince some poor people (or students, but I repeat myself) that they can afford good food, or failing that it will at least convince some of my wealthier peers to stop whining about how poor people can't afford anything buy junk food.

For my first meal I decided to go to ALDI and make some sausages and mashed potato, which is a pretty traditional Australian/British dish (it would be in my top two choices if I was cooking someone a "traditional Australian meal", the other one would be meat pies), but also it's quite cheap and easy.

Here's what I got for under $10:

250g Unsalted Butter -- $1.39
500g Sausages -- $2.69
1kg Chat Potatoes -- $1.99
1kg Carrots -- $0.89 (on special from $1.49)
Tube of Mixed, Dried Herbs -- $1.99
400g Tin of Diced Tomatoes -- $0.59
Total -- $9.54

Some notes on what I purchased:

Originally I planned to get beans instead of carrots, but I couldn't find any beans at ALDI, and the carrots where on special so I grabbed them.
Mixed herbs is probably the single most useful herb or spice; most every dish that requires some sort of herbs can have mixed herbs used instead without ruining the dish, though it will often taste better with the "correct" herbs.
I grabbed a tin of diced tomatoes even though I'm not going to use them for this meal because I had a little left over and there's a good chance I'll be able to use them for a future meal (and they last pretty much forever).
A lot of people would probably want tomato sauce, salt, and pepper with a meal like this, but since I personally don't use these, and most people probably have those three already I haven't bothered to buy any; I probably could have got them instead of the mixed herbs and the tinned tomatoes.

To start off put your grill on around medium to preheat, and put a pot, about half full with water, on a hotplate (the temperature doesn't really matter, just so long as it will be hot enough to boil the water: med-high on most hotplates). Cut up about half a KG of potatoes and put them in the pot of water, and optionally add about one or two tablespoons of the mixed herbs, it's fine without, but the herbs add a bit of extra flavour. The smaller you cut the potatoes the faster they'll cook (I went with cutting the small potatoes I had into about quarters or sixth), and I don't bother peeling them because it's faster and a lot of the nutrients are in or close to the skin, though it probably tastes a little better if you do peel them first.

Put the sausages in the grill

Now while you are waiting for the other ingredients to finish cooking cut up about three carrots (~250g), again I don't bother peeling these for the same reasons as the potatoes, but that's up to you. Some people would wait until the potato was nearly done and then throw these into the the pot with the potato and just fish them out with some tongs before mashing the potato, but I think that adds a bit of a funny taste to the carrots, so instead I recommend you put them in a microwave proof bowl with a bit of water and just before everything else is done putting them in the microwave for a couple of minutes (I put mine on for about 3:40 which was too long unfortunately).

After you've done all the above you've basically got to wait for about 20 minutes for the potato and sausages to cook. Grab a book and read it while you wait, or listen to a podcast; make sure to turn the sausages three or four times, and stir the potatoes every now and again.

After the sausages look cooked (if you're not sure how to tell cut one in half and if it doesn't bleed on the inside it's probably OK) turn the grill off, but leave the sausages in so they stay warm.

After that check to see how soft the potato is; hopefully it will be nice and soft (you can break pieces up with a fork), if not cook it until it is. Once it's soft drain it (most of the herbs will drain away but that's OK), and add a bit of butter (I went with about 25-40g) and then mash it with your potato masher or a fork (the masher should cost a couple of bucks and will work much better).

About this time you should put your carrots in the microwave for around two minutes.

Finally dish and serve:

It's a pretty plain meal, but it's simple and cheap (the ingredients I actually used would have been closer $5 for four people), and we'll start getting into more exciting stuff later.

Also for my future meals I have left-over:

~500g Potato
~700g Carrot
~220g Butter
Most of a tube of mixed herbs
A tin of tomatoes

Which by itself would actually be enough to make a fairly simple vegetarian meal. The tomatoes and the herbs will last a long time in the pantry, and the other ingredients should last a month or so in a fridge as well, so we've made some progress on stocking our pantry.

Cous-Cous

TimP — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:03:53 +0200

I thought I'd try my hand at recipe blogging, so here's a quick and easy Cous-Cous recipe that I occasionally eat for lunch (it would probably make a fine side-dish for a main meal as well):

1/2 cup Cous-Cous
30-50g (1-1.5Oz) Feta cheese, finely cubed
1/2 Tomato, finely cubed
A handful of sliced olives, probably around 5-10
Mixed herbs to taste (perhaps some salt as well)
Olive Oil to taste

Combine the Cous-Cous and mixed herbs into a bowl, and boil some water.
While you wait for the water to boil start cutting up the other ingredients.
Add sufficient boiling water to cover the Cous-Cous and mixed herbs, then let sit for a few minutes while you finish cutting up the other ingredients.
The Cous-Cous will clump a bit, so break it up with a fork, and mix in the other ingredients.

An even simpler dish is to skip everything except the Cous-Cous and use a 100g tin of flavoured tuna of your choice (I like the curries) instead. Note for American readers: I don't think you can get flavoured tuna, so you'll have to use plain tuna, but you could add curry powder, mixed herbs or some sort of sauce to give it some more flavour.