meal suggestions?

homealone_2

i am one of the lurkers you read about, but have contributed the odd thing. thing is i have been watching with much admiration how some families are able to really cut back their grocery shop. my first attempt was to have a roast chicken and then to freeze carcass that still had plenty of meat on, i then defrosted a week later picked all the meat off and turned that into a chicken pasta bake. i then put carcass and mixed root veg in slow cooker to make a stock, thats when things started going wrong, i used the stock to make a chicken stew thing in the slo cooker but it was yuck. so i obviously need to study a bit more. i then stupidly bought some philadelphia soft cheese in the dtd thing at tesco which backfired as they had increased the price so now dont have a clue what to do with it. i also have a bag of salmon pieces in the freezer that i usually put in foil with wine and mixed herbs but bored with that. dont necessarily want to use the two things together but does anyone have anything easy and cheap to do with the salmon? i have also found a pack of 4 cod in butter sauce and cod in parcel sauce? any ideas gratefully accepted

EstherH

You could probably make a fish pie with the salmon and philly. Top with mash potatoes. That way you would probably get more portions out of it than pieces of salmon. Make an onion sauce and mix the philly in. Serve with peas.

Pink.

Hi homealone,

Salmon and cream cheese go very well togther to make a delicious pasta sauce. Gently heat the philadelphia (add a little milk if it begins to catch) then add the salmon (assuming it's raw rather than smoked) about five minutes before you plan to serve the meal (depending on the size of your salmon pieces). Season with black pepper and mix with spaghetti or pasta for a lovely meal.

These threads may give you more ideas:

What can you do with Cream Cheese ?

Herb and garlic cream Cheese-Philladelphia, any ideas for food/cooking??

Salmon Fillets

Salmon Trimmings

what to have with salmon???

I too bought the cod in butter and the cod in parsley sauce on dtd. They were ok because they were free, but the portion sizes are pathetic to say the least...at least that was what all the boys in my house thought! I padded out the fish by adding some prawns I found in the freezer and served them with brocolli, sugar snap peas and cheesy baked potatoes (baked potatoes split in two, insides scooped out and mixed with cheese and black pepper and put back into the potato skins and oven baked for another 20 minutes or so).

Pink

firstinflight

If you're using the philly in a fish pie or pasta sauce, you can make it go further by incorporating it into a quick and easy white sauce:

Use 1/4 pint of skimmed milk and 1 tbsp of flour per person.

Put all the milk and half the flour into a microwavable bowl, mix briskly with a fork (doesn't matter if there are a few small lumps at this stage) and microwave for 1 min on full power.

Add remaining flour, stir briskly again and microwave again for 1 min.

Keep alternating the 1 min microwaving and stirring until all lumps are eliminated and the sauce starts to thicken. Keep an eye on it as it has a tendency to expand and boil over suddenly.

Once thickened, season with black pepper and add philly (stirring in briskly as always) until desired creaminess is reached. If the philly is staying in lumps and not combining with the sauce, give it another 30-60 secs in the microwave.

Add to the cooked salmon and combine with the pasta/potato/whatever.

If you want a cheese sauce, you can add grated cheese instead of/as well as the philly.

Pretty much any type of flour will work, i've done it with plain, wholemeal, self raising and cornflour before. Just whatever is around.

firstinflight

On the chicken stock, it is probably better to pick the meat off and make your stock first, before you freeze anything. Otherwise by the time you make the stew, the chicken stock has been cooked once, frozen, thawed, cooked again, cooled and cooked a third time, which might have food safety implications

I'm not too good with slow cookers, and I don't know if they get hot enough to render the stock properly from the bones. I've always just simmered mine in a covered pan on the hob

homealone_2

thanks everyone plenty of ideas there to keep me going