I want to cook a nice in-expensive meal for my Mums birthday

thriftlady_2

morganlefay wrote:

There's a thing I do which the family all love:

Chicken breast per person
Make a slit in it and post in there a little lump of cheapest garlic soft cheese (should be Boursin but really doesn't need to be) or goats cheese. Get a red pepper and grill it until skin burnt all over, seal it in a poly bag to cool a bit then get it out and on a bit of kitchen paper scrape all the burnt off. You should be left with softish, very tasty grilled pepper (you can buy this in jars but they cost, and this is very easy ). Cut strips of the pepper and push one or two into each chicken breast with cheese. Wrap each breast in streaky bacon ( my recipe says use pancetta but much-cheaper streaky is fine) so that the hole containing the cheese and pepper is all sealed in. roast with bacon ends on the underneath for about 30 mins. When you dish up, scrape up any of the cheesy filling if it has leaked as it's very tasty even if it looks a bit messy. Serve with rice, or mash or boiled new potatoes and a bit of broccoli for colour (or a salad but perhaps not in this weather). Make a jelly out of real squeezed orange juice and gelatine for pud - fabulously refreshing and lovely with or without cream. Hope it goes well 1

That sounds gorgeous;)
In a similar vein - try stufffing chicken breasts with garlic cheese and a thin slice of ham. Then dip the whole thing in some flour, then beaten egg, then breadcrumbs and shallow fry in butter/olive oil till cooked.

You could stuff the chicken with garlic butter and make chicken kievs.

Chicken liver pate
For an easy starter cook some chicken livers in butter with some garlic and a splash of sherry/brandy very quickly (so they are still pink inside). Blend with a bit of butter or cream. Pour into little ramekins and serve with thin toast.

angelavdavis

My favourite starter is baked mushrooms with a pepper sauce. Its really easy and can be made in advance. This recipe serves four. Mushrooms and sauce can be made in advance, sauce warmed up in microwave and mushrooms cooked when ready.

You need one large mushroom (giant one) per person - remove centre (keep), peel (discard peeled bits) and slice a tiny piece of the top off so it sits flat on a baking tray (keep). Chop the kept mushroom pieces and add 3/4 of a tub of cheap garlic cream cheese (you can use Boursin or Lidl's do a cheaper option). Mix together and then fill the Mushrooms with the mix.

Top the cheese mix with some breadcrumbs. When ready to cook, drizzle with olive oil and place in medium-hot oven for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Cut two red peppers in half, add two cloves of garlic (whole but peeled) drizzle with olive oil and put in a hot oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Take out of oven and wrap peppers in a clean tea towel. Leave for 15 minutes until cool enough to handle.

Peel peppers, remove stalks and put into food processor with baked garlic - whizz up in food processor to produce a sauce (add a little olive oil if required).

To serve, put a couple of spoonfuls of warmed sauce on a plate and sit cooked mushroom on top.

Delicious!!

samjones39blue

Thank you for all your responses. So many ideas to pick from!! I've decided to go for something which I already have most of the ingredients for (really keeping the cost down!) going to do Lasagna with home made garlic bread.

To really impress my Mum I've also made a meringue roulade with raspberries and cream!! It looks lovely, I already had the eggs and sugar so only had to buy the raspberries and cream total cost about a £1 impressed with that!

Oh and if any of you have any ideas about what to do with 5 egg yolks please let me know!!!