Dinner this evening - ideas please?

JEEC

We do eat a lot of meat. Probably too much, and I think a lot of the high weekly shop bill can be attributed to portion sizes - what would feed a family of 4 we can easily eat between us. It's rare we'd have a meal without meat in it. And our son tends to have his own seperate meal as he eats earlier than us, so it's usually just the 2 of us eating.

My rack of ribs looks slightly smaller than your picture, I'd call what we've got mini ribs, so just the right size for a starter. It's not a butcher's size rack, it was only £1.20 in the supermarket.

I do love my food though, I know some people only eat because they have to in order to stay alive, but for me eating is a pleasure, and I'm always thinking what I'm going to have for my next meal!

PasturesNew

Well, in that case, you either accept your food bill's going to be high, or, cut down on how much meat you eat each time, or, alternate veggie meals with meat ones, or, cut down on the accompaniments and courses.

I've scoffed my heart out today.... and spent under £1 so far.... no meat.

Tabatha_Kitten

I hear you JEEC. I could quite happily eat out a couple of times a week if I could.
What hubby and I do instead is we get up the menu for the local Gastro pub on the internet and we decide what we would have chosen if we had gone out.
We then recreate it ourselves.
My current favourite at our local wine bar are the "sharing platters" which are incredibly easy to recreate Aldi style.
Lots of little tasters of cold meats, cheeses, seafood, olives, dips etc. Lay it out on a bread board in the centre of the table, big chunk of homemade bread, glass of wine, light a couple of candles and put some background music on.
Who needs to go out !

JEEC

Whenever we go to Frankie and Benny's we always have their Bruschetta to start. OH said he could make it at home, and every now and again does - and it actually tastes better than the original! It's quite simple too, just a garlic ciabatta, with panfried red onions and tomatoes on top, finished off with balsamic glaze.

I like your suggestion of bringing up the menu from the gastro pub then making it yourself at home. I think I may do this more often as tonights meal was inspired by something we had a few weeks ago but at 4 times the price!

cutestkids

Your meal tonight sounds lovely I have often looked at the breast of lamb joints and wondered but OH does not like his meat very fatty so I am unsure.

Perhaps you can come back and let us know how it was.

JEEC

PasturesNew wrote: »

Well, in that case, you either accept your food bill's going to be high, or, cut down on how much meat you eat each time, or, alternate veggie meals with meat ones, or, cut down on the accompaniments and courses.

I've scoffed my heart out today.... and spent under £1 so far.... no meat.

I think I might start making larger portions when we do a casserole and bulking it out with more potatoes, but then freeze half rather than eating it all. So the meat has made 2 nights meals rather than one.

I go through fits and starts of trying to econmise, and for the chicken chasseur this week I used thighs and drumsticks (still on the bone) rather than our usual chicken fillets, so it was much cheaper but every bit as tasty.

I'm just hoping these lamb breasts are as tasty as the rolled lamb shoulders we had in the gastro pub!

JEEC

cutestkids wrote: »

Your meal tonight sounds lovely I have often looked at the breast of lamb joints and wondered but OH does not like his meat very fatty so I am unsure.

Perhaps you can come back and let us know how it was.

I will report back, it's the least I can do after everybody has made their helpful suggestions!

I've not tried breast of lamb before either, OH isn't usually one for fatty meat but he was prepared to give this a go as he loves lamb. We were looking at the fresh leg cuts but at £15 it would have worked out as expensive as takeaway so we decided against it.

Personally, I'd love nothing more than marinating some belly pork and having that, but OH point plank refuses to eat belly pork - he tried it once and said never again.

We've had the ribs now (I cooked them whilst preparing the potato dauphinoise). They were very nice - more bone than meat but can't complain for £2.20 (£1.20 plus £1 for the own brand bbq marinade). To be honest I could have eaten the full rack to myself but at least I've got lots of room left for my main.

joedenise

This'll be too late for tonight but if you roast the lamb breasts on a rack rather than in a tin, a lot of the fat will drip through into the tin and the joint will be less fatty and crisper.

Denise

JEEC

As promised I have returned to give an update on how dinner tasted!

I really enjoyed it, the rolled lamb breasts were fatty on the outside (mostly skin) but they were nice and tender on the inside, a bit paler than leg lamb is, probably due to the higher fat content, but the inside wasn't really that chewy and it tasted delicious when combined with the gravy and mint sauce.

The potato dauphinoise were lovely and creamy (I put some onion in as an extra touch) and the green beans complemented everything else very well. We also had some roast potatoes as I peeled too many to fit in the glass dish I cooked the dauphinoise in.
So, we have half a dish of the dauphinoise left over to go with lunch or dinner tomorrow
Usually I'd just dish it all out and we'd eat it, but there wouldn't have been enough room on the plates.

OH gave the meal 9/10, and he's fussy with fatty meat.

So, the verdict is we will definitely have this meal again

Lily_The_Legend

I know you said you wouldn't try making Chinese food, but we've been making fried rice recently and I found it really tasty and less greasy than from the takeaway.

I just fry some garlic and onion in a little bit of oil in a frying pan or wok, add some cooked rice and some peas and sweetcorn, crack an egg into it and stir until cooked. I add sliced, cooked chicken into DH's.

We have that as a main meal, but you could have it as a side dish and make something else for your main dish and I've seen a recipe for prawn toast somewhere on this forum too which sounded lovely!