Menu Planning Tips (merged)

Galtizz

Lucie - Can you post your recipie for spicy chicken pasta bake please.

Bogof_babe - you can do jacket spuds in the slow cooker, see the slow cooker thread (on one of the last pages), just put em in wrapped in foil with some sea salt on the skins to crisp them up a bit.

Nickynoo1

For those whose make their own curries,

I heard this tip on t.v. (moneyspinners ithink) to make curries taste like proper take away ones. It was an indian chef giving the tip.

Chop onions, didn't say how many but i would try about 6. Fry until brown. Then when cool whizz them up in the blender until they are like a paste. Add some of this paste to the curry near the end of cooking. Not sure how much. I suppose it depends how much curry your making. I would put in 1 or 2 table spoons at first and see if thats enough. freeze the rest for another day

Sorry it's a bit vague, i saw it and have been meaning to try it for some time but haven't had curry for a while.

Nickynoo

Trow

This isn't a meal idea, but thought it might be of use as you work funny hours - I suppose its sort of similar to the slow cooker idea but for people that don't have a slow cooker - if that makes sense!

I (sometimes) before I go to work get the meal organised - this works with things like soup, spag bol, chilli, thay kind of saucy thing - if I have time I cook it through but if not I bring it to the boil then switch it off and leave it with the lid on. Luckily though I have a apartner who can put it in the fridge after half an hour. Its amazing how much it cooks - I did it one day because a friend came over for half an hour, when she left my lentil soup needed 5 mins more.

A similar idea that a friend uses (she is more organised than me though) - she comes home to an almost ready prepared dinner - just needing things like the potatos or pasta boiled, and the main bit heated through. She has her dinner - then before she washes up she makes the following nights dinner, washing all the dishes in one go (except the pot or bowl she keeps the meal in).

Mustang

I do it slightly differently. I go to the Reductions counter at the supermarket, and pick out what's interesting .. then figure out something to make from it. So my diet is very varied. For example, this week I had:

Sandwiches (home-made bread) with mayo, salad, salmon caviar (reduced from £11 to £1) and pickled/marinated wild Alaskan salmon (home made from bargain wild salmon).

Organic pork loin chops, marinated in coke, with toublah-stuffed roast peppers, and cauliflower/broccoli floret's.

Miso soup (smoked tofu, seaweed, veg (scallions, peas, etc), barley miso etc)

Rice cakes with yeast pate and hummus with watercress.

Squid-ink pasta with pine nuts, basil pesto, parmesan and smoked garlic.

And tonight I had a slow-cooked pheasant stew with Borlotti beans, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, brown rice, carrots, coconut cream, smoked garlic, red onions and some exotic spices, with home-made brown bread.

The vast majority of the ingredients come as 'reduced items'.

Don't use recipe books .. just make it up as I go along as it's more fun. And I have very few disasters. ;-)

Lelly

I also look in the reduced items and make it up as I go along. One of my most successfull was a reduced pack of lamb-shanks (uncooked)with a pack of rosemary gravy. I used my slow cooker and cooked the shanks in plenty of water with celery, carrots, onions and seasoning, I left it to cook for about 6 hours. I then took out the shanks, made up the gravy from the sachet, cut off a little of the lamb and finished them off in the oven as per instructions. I then made a scotch broth for the next day from the little bit of lamb and the now very rich tasty stock..no cubes needed..more veg and a little dried broth mix (lentils, pearl barley peas etc). This was for the next day,and we had a lovely dinner from the rosemary lamb which I served with roast mixed veg ie potatoes, celeriac, squash sweet potato, onions and parsnips. This served three , so did the scotch broth (it would have served four but we were hungry)

filigree_2

I'm a fulltime housewife these days, but I remember one successful midweek meal - put frozen drumsticks in a pan with a bit of oil, cover fully with foil (in case of flies, because they can get into a cold oven) and put in the oven with a couple of jacket potatoes. Set your oven to come on about an hour before you get home from work. The drumsticks will defrost during the day, and an hour is plenty to bake the chicken and potatoes. For me this is the big advantage of modern electric ovens - setting the timer to cook later.

My current method is mostly improvisation because home life is a bit complicated right now, but I'll share my method from the days when I was a menu nerd.

Each week we would have seven types of meal (some of you do something similar). We would have:

Real Meat - usually a roast chicken, braised steak etc
Cheaper Meat - eg sausages, corned beef hash, spag bol
Hardly Any Meat - using up scraps and leftovers ie in soup or pasta bake
Eggs - this was omelette for a light meal on my evening out
Cheese - macaroni cheese, homemade pizza
Fish - cheap white fish in fish pie, special offer salmon (not that cheap but v. healthy)
Veggie - chickpea curry, veggie chilli

If possible I'd cook double portions so that I'd have easy meals from the freezer at least some of the time. If I spotted really cheap convenience foods like Chicken Kievs I'd buy them for evenings when husband had to cook.

With this in mind I would create a spreadsheet (how nerdy is that?) with the dates down the side, and columns for meat, veg and stodge. Reading across the row told me what ingredients I needed to shop for, which could be compiled into a weekly shopping list. In reality I shopped about 5 times a week because I only have a wally trolley, and our titchy kitchen doesn't allow me to stockpile too much.

Inevitably a few irresistible BOGOFs would creep in and the four week plan would extend to five or six weeks, the charm of a spreadsheet is that you can plan for this. It also helps to plan economical cooking sessions where you shove a few casseroles in the oven at once.

This must sound really lame but I find a visual aid really helps to plan meals and shopping trips.

pickle

These are some recipes i use:

Chilli Con Carne

-Fry 1 large onion and 2 teasp. garlic
-Fry mince (approx 1/2 kilo - 1.25 pounds?) - if making vegetarian add an extra tin of kidney beans instead of meat.
-Add 1 can drained kidney beans (slightly mashed), 1 can tinned chopped tomatoes and 2 lge tablesp. tomato paste.
- Add 2 stock cubes (beef, chick. or veg.), salt & pepper to taste, 2 teasp. cumin, chilli powder (to taste) and tobasco (optional), juice of 1/2 a lemon, 2 teasp. paprika, 1/2 green pepper (finely chopped), a bay leaf (not essential)
- cook slowly for about 30-40 mins and serve with rice or jacket potato

Tuna Patties

4 lge potatos - well cooked and mashed (no butter or milk)
400g tin of drained tuna (in brine)
Add 1 dessertsp. whisked egg
1 teasp. chilli
1 teasp. coriander (in jar)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 sml pureed onion
1/3 cup bread crumbs (keep adding if mixture too wet)
- cook mixture in fridge until chilled
- form into balls and cover in flour
- chill balls again in fridge
-when ready to cook take out and flatten a bit into pattie shape, coat in egg and breadcrumbs
-fry in mixture of 2 dessertsp. marg. and 2 dessertsp. oil on mod. heat
- serve with lemon (optional)

Irish Stew

1 kg lamb neck chops (or chopped up lamb of any kind)
1/2 kg onions
500ml water
2 bay leaves
1.5 kg potatos
salt and pepper to taste
assorted herbs (a small sprinkle of oregano or basil or thyme)
-trim fat off chops, peel and slice a few potatos and halve the rest. Peel and slice the onions thickly.
- in a deep saucepan put sliced potatos, then meat, then halved potatos and remaining ingredients. Cover tightly and simmer gently for 2 - 2.5 hours. Stir from time to time to prevent sticking.

Janeryan

Never thought to freeze jacket spuds!!!

likabu_2

Don't know if I am posting in the right place!

Can anyone help with a recipie idea please?

We are having Roast beef for dinner tonight, any ideas for what I can do with the leftovers to freeze (there will be quite a bit left, so might be able to get 2 meals for 2 and a half ppl out of it)? Am just starting to cook things from scratch so any help would be great.

Thanks

Lisa

Galtizz

Pizza topping with some chopped onion or whatever you like.
Curry
In taco shells or wraps mexican style with plenty of chilli or salsa
Sandwiches
In a pie with whatever frozen veg you've got in the bottom of the freezer

errrm.. can't think of any more for the min, but they should keep you going for a day or two.