Simple Beef Casserole

Simple Beef Casserole – for 3

450g of slow cook beef (Approx. 150g per person)

1 large carrot or a handful of chantenay carrots

1 parsnip

250g of cup mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons tomato puree

1 – 1 ½ pints of gravy (Bisto?)

2 teaspoons ‘herbs de Provence’

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon of oil

  Method:

1.    Pre-heat oven to 140 degrees centigrade
2.     Peel and chop the carrot and parsnip into rough, equal sized pieces.
3.  Also peel the onion and finely chop – crush the garlic cloves.
4.  Roughly chop the mushrooms (remember they shrink when cooking).
5. Heat the oil in a large pan at a medium heat.
6. Add the onion and garlic to the pan, fry until soft and translucent – not brown!
7. Add the mushrooms and stir together for 2 mins until they start to shrink.
8.  Add the beef and fry evenly for 6 mins, it does not need to be cooked through. Meanwhile - make up the gravy and stir in tomato puree and herbs.
9. Generously season the food in the pan with salt and pepper.
10. Add the carrots and parsnips to the casserole dish, gently tip the contents of the pan on top and stir in to combine.
11. Pour over the gravy; make sure that everything is submerged.
12. Put the lid on the casserole dish and put in the oven. Leave for 3 – 4 hours to cook slowly.
13. Prepare accompaniment and enjoy                                                                                   

 To serve:

Potatoes for roasting or mash

Peas/beans/broccoli to boil or steam

 

 NB. Look at cheaper forgotten cuts like bone-in-shin, ox tail, sliced leg or chuck steak. Cooked slowly the meat will simply melt away and become gorgeously tender while any bones add richness to the gravy.

 

Leftovers? Enjoy re-heated with crusty bread or on its own.

 

The perils of takeaways and ready meals

Heed the warnings from this student advice site! Learn to protect your budget and your waistline. 

http://www.studentdebtinfo.co.uk/take_away_food_for_students.php

'The Only Way is Local'

These websites all deliver fresh and local produce to your door, primarily fruit and veg but some also provide dairy, bakery and free-range eggs. 

Some are a little more expensive than others but browse and see what they can offer – get together and plan your meals for the next couple of days, utilising everything that you order and cook delicious, healthy and home cooked meals. 

You might be surprised ;) 

Ps. Don’t forget to take photos of the meals you make… even if it’s a little wonky, burnt or not quite ‘glamorous’ enough for the celeb chef cook book!  

http://www.localfarmbox.co.uk/boxes.php - this one worked out cheaper than Tesco’s (good for wallet and veg morality)

http://www.milkandmore.co.uk/home

http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/fruit-veg?gclid=CPDa8fOI9qwCFcMMtAodshcGSQ  

http://www.riverford.co.uk/veg_fruit_meat_boxes/

FareShare - one of Britains most admired charities

Take a look:  http://www.fareshare.org.uk/

FareShare is a national UK charity supporting communities to relieve food poverty. FareShare is at the centre of two of the most urgent issues that face the UK: food poverty and food waste.

The charity addresses these issues in three ways:

Providing quality food - surplus ‘fit for purpose’ product from the food and drink industry – to organisations working with disadvantaged people in the community

Providing training and education around the essential life skills of safe food preparation and nutrition, and warehouse employability training through FareShare’s Eat Well Live Well programme

Promoting the message that ‘No Good Food Should Be Wasted’

Hope for the 'wonky carrot' abandoned by our supermarket giants...

18th November 2011

BBC News

Waste food feeds 5,000 for lunch at Trafalgar Square

Wonky carrots, misshapen potatoes and tonnes of food rejected by supermarkets have been used to give 5,000 people a free curry lunch in Trafalgar Square.

The event organised by charities and farmers aimed to show that a lot of food binned in the UK could be eaten.Official figures released this week suggest the average British family wastes £680 worth of food a year.

Organisers want people to sign a pledge promising to reduce their food waste and are asking firms to do the same.

"Feeding the 5000" is a partnership between farmers and a group of environmental charities that campaign for better use of surplus food - FareShare, FoodCycle, Love Food Hate Waste and Friends of the Earth.

It was organised by writer Tristram Stuart, who has described the amount of food thrown away in the West as a "global scandal".

"Delicious food"

Mayor of London Boris Johnson was on hand to dish up the first bowl of food. He said it was for politicians to take a lead and help change people's opinions.

He said the public had become prejudiced against misshapen veg.

"Mutant food, this stuff is great to eat. It's completely crackers that good healthy stuff like this is being sent to landfill," he said.

"Feeding the 5000 brings to life the idea that all food is good food, and every morsel of it is too good to waste."

As well as asking the public to pledge to change their ways, businesses are being asked to sign up to use the "Feeding the 5000 pyramid". 

Take note:

It is made up of promise to reduce as much waste as possible, redistribute surpluses to charity, use what is left as animal feed if possible, recycle through composting and anaerobic digestion and only put food waste in landfill if there is no other option.

Full story at  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15772773

Love Food Hate Waste

Did you know that we throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food from our homes every year in the UK?

And would you have guessed that if we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road?

Think about it – how much fresh food do you throw away? 

With the introduction of food waste bins we are now embarrassingly aware of the sheer quantity of food we throw away that has simply gone past its sell by date, never mind if it actually looks ‘off’. 

We all get tempted by the ‘buy one get one free’ offers in the supermarkets and “buy 2 for £3” but realistically are we actually going to eat 18 clementines’ before the suspiciously short use by date?  Surely a better deal for all is ‘half price’ instead of “here, have much too many clementines”?

www.lovefoodhatewaste.com is campaign to help all of us to waste less food. Have a look around at the handy tips and recipes designed to encourage and educate all of us to reduce our food waste and be more sensible about the food we buy and what we do with it once we’ve spent our precious £’s on it.

Tempura Prawns with Lorraine Pascale's Asian Chilli Jam

Lorraine Pascale’s Saturday morning show ‘Home Cooking Made Easy’ provided us with the chilli jam recipe and we thought some crispy tempura prawns would go perfectly with the dip.

Oyinda's recipe

For the prawns:

Packet of prawns
170grams corn flour
170grams of plain flour
1 ½ cups of cold water
Pinch of salt
1 eggFor the jam:

450grams tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
2 red chillis
1cm chunk fresh ginger
250grams granulated sugar
60grams balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Prawns:
1. Sieve the corn flour and the plain flour in a bowl and add a pinch of salt.
2. Make a well in the mixture and crack an egg into the well, beat roughly.
3. Then add water and beat until smooth, don’t be alarmed by any lumps.
4.  Heat vegetable oil in a pan.
5. Cover the prawns in plain flour then dip individually into the mixture, then drop straight into the hot oil.
6. Fry each prawn for about 4 minutes turning regularly then serve with the chilli jam.

Chilli Jam:

1. To start this recipe, prepare the main ingredients. Measures out the tomatoes (don't worry if the weight is a little over or under), and chop them into quarters.
2. Then chop the two garlic cloves roughly, the two chillies finely, and grate the fresh ginger.
3. Next place the chopped ingredients into a food processor and add the balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt and a good twist of black pepper.
4.Spin up the ingredients in the food processor for a few seconds until the big lumps have gone.
5. Then pour the mixture into a pan and boil for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until is turns syrupy.
6. After 25 - 30 minutes take the jam off the heat and leave to cool for 20 minutes.