Frugal Gourmet - Cooking Delicious, Cheap and Easy Food.

Frugal Gourmet - a Day in the Kitchen

Here in Frugaldom, I've been making and trading lemon curd for quite a few years, but am ashamed to say that I hadn't made any this year, until today. The ducks, hens and quail are all laying well, so I always have a heap of eggs ready to use.

 

This morning, we had our porridge (the cat included) and then I baked two small loves - these cost pennies each if you bake them in the breadmaker on 'Express' setting and use the cheapest of the cheap, bulk bought flour. Today's loaves are made from a 50:50 mix of gluten free bread flour with sunflower and sesame seeds and white soft bap mix. Here's the recipe I used, just in case you, too, are a bargain bulk-buying, batch cooker.

FRUGAL DAILY BREAD

300ml warm water
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons veg oil
225g soft bap mix
225g sesame & sunflower seed gluten free bread mix
1 teaspoon dried yeast

 

Baked in the breadmaker on 'express' setting, which takes 45 minutes. I'd to split the above in half and make two small loves, as it's the hand-me-down twin pan breadmaker I'm using for this.

 



 

Next up - beef and tomato stew  I cooked the diced beef with some of the past week's tomato pickings and spring onions in a little salted water then added a sprig of fresh herbs - rosemary, sage and basil picked from the garden. A few cheap gravy granules and hey presto - a dish fit for kings. As is, this big pan of stew would probably serve 4 people, depending on what it's being served with at the time, but frugal gourmet suggestions include the addition of beans, lentils, chick peas or other similar protein-rich foodstuff to turn it into a batch cooked meal for 10 to 12.

 

At lunchtime, I made soufflé omelette but decided to make the meringue version - 5 egg whites whisked into peaks, stir in one egg yolk, then salt and pepper to season - higher protein and lower fat that your 'normal' omelette, except that we had grated cheese melted over the top. :) Anyhow, it conveniently left me with 4 egg yokes, which is perfect for lemon curd!

 

LUXURY LEMON CURD RECIPE
4 egg yolks (I use our own hens' eggs)
150g sugar
100mls lemon juice (or lime or orange or a mixture)
70g butter (or margarine)
 

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together whilst gently warming the butter and lemon juice. Add the egg yolk/sugar mix to the pan and whisk together with the lemon and butter. (Today I am using 50:50 lemon and lime juice.) Keep this on a low heat and whisk regularly until the mixture thickens to resemble custard. If you are cooking on a log burner, it's easier to take the pan off the heat to whisk it, otherwise cook slowly over a low heat. Do not allow the mix to boil.

 

Pour into a sterilised, pre-heated jar and leave to cool. Once set, keep it refrigerated.

 

This quantity is sufficient for one full jar and is classed as an absolute luxury, gourmet food when it's made with fresh eggs and butter. Check the ingredients in a supermarket bought 'bargain' jar and see the difference for yourself. This here is the real McCoy, nothing beats it in taste.

This is today's lemon and lime curd, I'm using a 500ml clip-top jar. The jars were on special offer in a big name supermarket when I first got them - an amazing 3 for £2 - so I got £10 worth of them a few years ago and they have been great for all sorts of jellies, preserves, pickles and curds.

Enjoy!

Eggs, Blackcurrants and Purple Cookies!

What to do with the surplus

Today turned out to be a kitchen day in Frugaldom. The kitchen hasn't been renovated yet, so fancy cooking and baking days are slightly restricted, to say the least. Garden produce, however, still needs to be prepared and stored. There's been plety of blanching and freezing done, so the freezer is full of vegetables and berries. But then I ended up with all those blackcurrants and hadn't a space left for all of them. Cue an ingenious idea... and some multitasking that resulted in my burning the fishcakes!

First of all, the hens have been laying quite well recently and son has been using extra egg whites in his scrambled eggs - he's into bodybuilding, so likes his protein. This means, there were two dozen spare egg yolks needing used up as soon as possible and, as most of you will already know, that means lemon curd making.

I normally make small batches of 4 egg yolks at a time but today was different - I had to use the big stock pot to batch cook 24 yolks' worth at the one time. That took a great deal of whisking to keep it all from boiling! At the same time, I was trying to bake some oat and muesli biscuits, while wondering what to do with the last couple of tablespoons of blackcurrants that hadn't fitted into my ice cream tub when freezing them last night. Have you guessed yet?

Correct! I added them into the cookie dough! :)

It looked rather strange as it all mixed together and I'd to add some extra flour in order to soak up the juices. Perhaps I shouldn't have microwaved the berries for a few minutes, as this was what caused all that extra juice.

Anyhow, I kept whisking the lemon curd while donning my disposable latex gloves to knead the cookie dough. The mixture makes 24 biscuits, so two trays were greased when I was measuring out the margarine (remember it's frugal cooking here). The oven was already warmed for sterilising the jars, so no problems there.

Once kneaded, rolled and shaped, my berry, oat and muesli cookies looked VERY novel and interesting! Who needs artificial colouring and flavouring when you can get this from 2 tablespoonfuls of fresh, garden grown blackcurrants? I could hardly wait to see how they turned out and, diet or no diet, I had to taste them to see what they were like.

Before I could bake them, I had to get the jars out the oven and pour the lemon curd. There was a huge quantity of it! I normally use small jars but had to use the 500ml size to fit all of this into them. I got 4 clip top jars, one 400ml curry jar and a Nutella jar filled, and there was still enough left as a sample pot! I'll probably share this with a couple of neighbours who have been kind enough to share their surpluses with us of late.

15 minutes later, the timer rang to say 'cookies are ready', though if truth be told, it would have been better ringing to say cookies are 'purpley'!

Here's how they turned out - almost as purple as when they went into the oven! All I need now is to write 'eBid' on them in white icing and they could become big merchandising hits in the online auctions! :)

(For anyone interested in buying hatching eggs, I'll be listing them in my eBid store once it's back up and running. I'll be offering eggs from the Silkies, Pekins and quail. I don't think I'd be allowed to offer the cookies for sale.)

I passed round a sample of my novelty biscuits and got some very strange looks, indeed. Having tasted these, I can assure you that they are delicious, despite their colour, and have a very distictive flavour, almost a cross between an oat biscuit and a blueberry muffin. Brain was already wondering if I could achieve similar results using raspberries for a pink version and blueberries for their blue counterparts. Would rosehips or strawberries turn them red, I wonder?

If anyone is interested in trying these, the recipes can be found in the 'Frugal Food' section of the Frugaldom Forums and please feel free to post your own results and/or variations.

An Eggs-cellent Frugal Business

January Sale Now On



I'd like one of these, please!

 2011, year three in Frugaldom and we're still pursuing the debt free, frugal living, frugal business, frugal blogging plan but now incorporating a frugal business plan for the future. Afterall, we still need to earn a living in order to pay all the bills.

There's no such thing as cash free living, no matter how much we want to believe it exists. In a nutshell, it doesn't!


Not wanting to carry all my eggs in one basket, making Frugaldom self-sufficient in all things, including cash, means diversification from ground level. There are no employees, there are no doors to be opened to allow the public access and there are no lengthy meetings or negotiations to fit into my day. What I do have is a small poultry flock that needs caring for from dawn until dusk, literally.

If you have any plans for keeping and rearing poultry or deriving part of your income from them, you'd probably be safest registering via Defra from the outset, get your flock onto the GB Poultry Register. At the moment, registration is voluntary for small keepers, but it is compulsory as soon as you reach 50 birds, including quail. Registration is completely free and it can be done online, so there's no excuse for not meeting minimum legal requirements once your flock is built up to a productive level. You'll also need to complete an annual questionnaire to confirm and/or update the numbers. This can also be done online.



Freerange eggs

Being of a frugal nature, keeping hens means that eggs become part of the staple diet. It's not just hen eggs we eat, there are also the duck and quail eggs, so there are always plenty on the go, especially once the better weather gets here. Birds usually need around 14 hours of daylight to produce eggs, but there are always a few appear through the winter. We've been really lucky in that we've managed to have an average of half a dozen per day right throughout the worst of the winter weather. The main problem was collecting quail eggs before they froze solid - something for which the cat was extremely grateful, as she got all the defrosted eggs.



Homemade Lemon Curd

 Spring will soon be creeping in and then egg production will soar. If the household can consume 40+ eggs per week then what happens when we're getting 100+ duck and hen eggs and another 100+ quail eggs?

There's a limit to what we can sell, especially as the law dictates eggs can only be sold directly to the consumer. There's all sorts of legislation governing eggs and egg sales, so best stick to selling directly to friends, neighbours, family and colleagues. Quail eggs, on the other hand, are a delicacy that can be traded retail or wholesale, to the consumer or hotels, restaurants and wholesalers.

Here in Frugaldom, I breed and rear Japanese Coturnix Quail mainly for eggs but it's the surplus eggs from the hens that get channelled into my small scale lemon curd production. I'm still tweaking the recipe to give it that 'something different' but feedback, so far, has been very positive for both the lemon and lime curds. I even make meringues and coconut macaroons in order to use up all the extra egg whites left over from using the bright yellow yokes.

But before you jump for joy and rush out to start making and plying your wares, one word of caution: In order to make and sell food, it is mandatory that you have a valid and current Food Hygiene Certificate. Your certificate needs renewing every 3 years. On the plus side, it costs only £25 and you can do the short course and sit the exam online within a few hours. As long as you are only making small quantities when you have surplus eggs, this project shouldn't need further certification for the premises. This is a handy publication (downloads as a .pdf) about starting a food-based business.

In the long run, I'd love to be able to build a Log Cabin and live the good life, but let's not try to run before we walk. In the meantime, if anyone has a scrap of land available for sale, please get in contact.

-11C, ice inside the windows and more frozen quail eggs

CHILLY, OR WHAT?

It's -11C this morning, or thereabouts: I had to defrost the thermometer to get the photo, so I haven't a clue how low it was before bringing it indoors and scraping the ice off it. But it's still a novelty going out and reading it every morning because it probably isn't all that much colder than previous years, I just never checked back then. Time was better spent battling our way to school in Shotts - notorious for being the worst hit town in Lanarkshire when the snow arrived in winter. At least, that's what we always though...

Anyway, I'm just thawing the ice from the inside of the windows. The bedroom curtains were actually frozen to the windowsill, but there's a lovely clear sky, so I think we might get some sunshine very soon. Doubt if it will be enough to dry any washing on the line, more likely freeze it solid.

I am so glad that we invested in the multifuel stove for this year but that was mainly as a result of last year's proponged winter. We pulled out all the stops to get the job done to avoid a repeat performance and it's incredible the difference it makes! OK, so I can't leave 'George' burning overnight - he's too small - and we've no central heating, but this time last year meant having the three storage heaters plus the coal fire, a fan heater and an oil-filled radiator plugged in just to keep warm. The costs were phenomenal, hitting £53 for a single week's electricity. Unsustainable! We had to invest in some way of protecting the finances against the cancerous electricity charges. The new roof is also coming into play, too, as there's no leaky skylight window and no water running in that can freeze and split any wood. I can only imagine how much electricity we'd be going through and that's without the latest near 10% price increase that's been announced.

Coal is costing £11.50 per 50kg bag at the moment, but I'm able to make a bag last about 10 days. Then there are split logs to be paid for; these are between £40 and £50 per trailer load delivered. We have little space for storage, so no choice in this matter. We haven't anywhere to bulk store wood for the year, so no chance of being able to season it ourselves for the following year. The cost of heating a rural property without central heating is quite staggering when compared to bills grumbled about by towns' people with the luxury and economy of mains gas. To date, in 2010, I have spent £1,190 on electricity, £110 on coal and £210 on logs. The electricity is on a prepayment meter, which is about £70 in credit, so this lot will need to see me through the new year - the budget for each of these categories has gone. With the help of the new stove, I'm hoping to reduce the overall annual expenditure on heat, hot water and power from £1,510 to £1,140, a drop of almost 25% before the price increases.

One of the biggest plus sides to having the stove is that while it heats the back of the house, it also heats innumerable kettles of hot water and doubles up for cooking. I can keep it ticking over on a good enough heat to roast a chicken or, as I'll be doing today, boil a clootie dumpling.

More marzipan fruit and truffles to be made today, along with the lemon curd and the clootie dumpling. That should keep the kitchen warm! I've a friend visiting later, so organisational skills must be honed so I'm ahead of the game by the time she arrives.

Hope the weather isn't too bad wherever you are.

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