Beef Stroganoff

After buying a huge 2.5 kg joint of rump roast from Asda for £4 per kg I knew we'd have PLENTY of leftovers from this. As there's only 2 of us, I actually cut it in half and roasted half for a dinner on Monday. This left of with enough beef for the stroganoff and another (approx) 300 g for a pie that I'm planning of making tomorrow.

This recipe happened to pop up when I was searching for one and it looked pretty simple and straight forward so I decided to give it a go. I can tell you now that I wasn't disappointed and felt like I was slaving over a hot stove for too long after work.

You can find the recipe on the Ocado website here. I do urge you to give this a go, as it's so simple and straight forward and is a great way to enjoy leftover beef! This is definitely going on the list of things to make again.

As I've got another joint in the freezer, I'll be looking for different ways to use up the meat. I have a few ideas but if you have any, please feel free to share.

Meal Plan 01/12/13 - 07/12/13

We've stocked up on food a bit this week, so we'll have plenty of leftovers for next week. Beef Rump Roast was on offer this week for £4 per kg this week, so we took advantage of this offer while we could. It'll give the 2 of us plenty of food to get on with.

We're eating out twice this week, so there will be 2 less meals than usual.

Roast Beef Dinner

Leftover Beef Recipe (Maybe Roast Beef Pie)

Beef Stroganoff

Egg, Bacon & Cheese Omelette

Lamb Curry & Bombay Potatoes

Breakfast: Cereal, Eggs, Bacon, Toast, Fruit, Sausages

Lunch: Tuna & Sweetcorn / Chicken Sandwiches, Leftovers

Snacks: Apples, Bananas, Clementines, Chicken Wings, 

Leftovers:  Tuna, Sweetcorn

Shopping List

Milk £1.00

Bananas (10) £1.27

Clementines £1.80

Apples £1.00

Little Big Loaf £0.75

GF Bread £1.75

Sliced Chicken £3.00

Chicken Wings £3.00

2.5 kg beef joint £10.06

Savoy £0.80

2 * Carrots £0.24

Frozen Green Beans £1.05

Dried Mushrooms £1.98

Onions £1.00

Double Cream £1.10

Curry Paste £1.68

2 X Diced Lamb (300 g) £7.00

Chopped Tomatoes £0.62

Baby Potatoes £0.69

Yoghurts £1.00

Bacon £1.69

GF Sausages £1.98

Salt £0.29

Total £44.75

Garlic Cheese, Herb and Gammon Spaghetti

We often cook a smoked gammon joint in the slow cooker then use this for sandwiches or lunches to take to work. We'll often find ourselves with some left though, so we decided we'd use some up in some pasta. 

I don't know about you, but sometimes when I get home from work, all I want to do is relax and have some time to myself or with the other half before we have to go back to work again. Don't get me wrong, I do like cooking but I don't always feel like it. This recipe is great for those days and the good thing is you can change the flavour easily to your taste.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

250 g Spaghetti (I used gluten free)

200 g Pack Garlic and Herb Cream Cheese

100 - 150 g leftover Smoked Gammon

1 handful of Parmesan / Pecorino Cheese

Salt & Pepper

Method:

1. Cook the spaghetti according to the instructions on the packet.
2. Drain the pasta, but reserve some of the cooking liquid.
3. Add the spaghetti back to the pan, add the cream cheese, ham and stir through. Keep on the heat and add the reserved cooking water until you get the spaghetti to the required consistency.
4. Add half the remaining cheese to the spaghetti, then sprinkle the rest on top when you serve it up.

I know this is a very simple recipe, but with the different flavours of cream cheese you can get it's very

Meal Plan 24/11/13 - 30/11/13

In this weeks meals, I've tried to make sure that most of the meals don't take too long to prepare / cook. I've noticed since a lot of the colder and darker days and nights have come in that all I seem to want to do when I get home is hibernate. 

We've also stocked up on a few bits such as pork, which will give us enough for 4 meals for the both of us. We'll also probably have some gammon leftover from sandwiches, so I'll either freeze the leftovers or I'll make a quiche again. 

Meal Plan 24/11/13 - 30/11/13

Butter Chicken

Pork Stir Fry

Polish Sausage Soup

Roast Vegetables with Cheese

Cheese, garlic and herbs & Gammon Spaghetti

Buffalo Chicken Pitta & Wedges

Goats Cheese and Spinach ravioli

Shopping List

Milk £1.00

Bananas (0.81 kg) £0.55

Clementines £1.80

Gala Apples £1.00

Bread £1.00

GF Bread £1.75

Chicken Breasts ( 4 breasts) £4.50

Single Cream £0.55

Pork Loin Steak £5.00

Stir Fry Vegetables & Rice Noodles £3.00

2 * Oyster Sauce £1.00

Garlic £0.30

Carrots * 4 (0.42 kg) £0.37

Kale £0.95

Kabanos £2.40

Butter £1.00

Peppers £1.00

Courgettes £0.49

Gammon £5.34

Garlic and Herb Cheese £0.80

Smoked Bacon £1.69

Eggs £1.41

Goats Cheese £1.28

Buffalo Wings Sauce £1.48

Southern Fried Potato Wedges £1.00

Free From flour £1.65

Pesto £1.10

Cheese £2.00

Total £45.41

Quiche with Home Made Baked Beans with Bacon

I like to buy gammon every now and again, I love it as part of a roast dinner and also for sandwiches. There's so many ways you can use it. one of my favourite ways is in a quiche, so I went back to this cheese, onion and gammon quiche here.

On a previous visit to B&M, I'd bought some haricot beans at 29 p for a tin and they'd been sitting in my cupboard for a while now. I decided that now would be the perfect time to use these up. I do like to have baked beans every now and again, but as we know the sauce is not all that great for us (even though the beans are pretty good!). I loved the idea of making my own baked beans, so thought we'd give it a try.

Ingredients:

1 tin of haricot beans, drained

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

100 g smoked bacon, chopped

1 tsp Mixed Herbs
1 tsp of sugar
tablespoon of vinegar (make sure it is gluten free)

Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Fry the bacon in a medium sized pan.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Lower the heat and cook for about 30 minutes, or until the sauce has started to thicken and reduce.

Meal Plan 17/11/13 - 23/11/13

This weeks meal plan is a mixture of trying to use some of the store cupboard ingredients up, but also the cost of this weeks shopping is slightly higher than it would have been as I have stocked up on cereal for the other half. If I see some good offers on cereals he likes, I do try and stock up on them as he tends to eat a lot of it. 

We're making more of an effort to cook something on a Friday that's kind of like a takeaway. What tends to happen sometimes on a Friday is that we'll have a nice meal planned, but we'll end up ordering instead as we feel like "treating ourselves" as it's Friday. Last weekend worked pretty well as we had home made prawn fried rice with crispy fried chicken.

Meal Plan 17/11/13 - 23/11/13

Jacket Potato with Prawns

Lentil & Bacon Soup

Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry

Gammon Quiche with home made baked beans & bacon

Italian Beef Stew

Lamb Koftas with Pitta Bread & Raita

Chicken & Leek Potato Pie

Shopping List:

Milk £1.00

Bananas ( 5 - 0.84 kg) £0.57

Gala Apples £1.00

Satsumas £1.00

Mayonnaise (750 ml) £1.18

Red Potatoes £2.25

Tinned Tomatoes x 2 £0.62

Frosted Shredded Wheats £1.00

Wheatabix 36 £2.00

Chickpeas £0.60

Ginger (5g) £0.10

Eggs £1.41

Parsnips £1.00

Chicken Thighs £3.58

Leeks £1.00

Low Fat Crème Fraiche £1.10

Jiff Lemon Juice £0.55

Whole Grain Mustard £0.58

Mature Cheese £2.00

Stewing Beef - 450 g £7.00

Lamb Mince £0.00

Butternut Squash (0.605 kg) £0.57

Mint £0.70

Garlic £0.30

Pitta Bread £0.50

Free From Pitta £2.00

Raita £1.20

Free From Bread £1.75

Bread £1.50

Tuna 2 X 3 sandwich tuna £4.00

Sweetcorn £1.20

Total £43.26

The above was bought from Asda on 16/11/13

Breakfast: Cereal, Eggs, Fruit, Bacon

Lunch: Tuna & Sweetcorn Sandwiches, Leftovers

Snacks: Apples, Bananas Satsumas, 

Leftovers:  Peppers in jar, Sweet Potato, Lentils, Bacon, Haricot Beans, Cooked Gammon

Smoked Fish Cakes

I've been a little busy with a few things lately, such as the other half's birthday earlier this week, so I've not had as much time as I would have liked to blog so I decided to take a little break.

I have to apologise for the lack of picture below, in fact I've had this recipe done for a little while but didn't have a picture for it (guess I was too keen!), but I've decided to blog this recipe for you anyway.

I made smoked fish cakes fairly recently and we both really liked them, so when I saw some smoked fish in the marked down section in Asda I put them I thought I'd buy them. I put them straight in the freezer and defrosted them in the fridge when I needed them.

I bought 2 pieces of smoked fish, 1 was haddock and the other was river cobbler (I've read online that this is actually Catfish). To me this was fairly similar to the haddock and lends itself well to fish cakes. 

Ingredients:

400 - 450 g smoked fish (see above for more details)

450 g potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 tsp chopped mixed herbs

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup gluten free flour (I used Asda Free From Plain flour)

1/4 cup polenta

Salt and Pepper

Method

1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are cooked through.
2. Meanwhile put the fish in a pan and cover with enough milk to just cover the fish, put on a medium heat and cook for approximately 10 - 15 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Drain the potatoes and leave to steam for a couple of minutes. Add some of the poaching milk and mash the potatoes.
4. Add the fish to the potato mixture, season and leave to cool.
5. When the mixture is cool enough to handle, split into 4 - 6 portions. 
6. Put the flour and polenta onto separate plates, then put the beaten egg into a bowl. 
7. Make the mixture into patties, then cover in flour, dip in the egg and then the polenta.
8. Heat a large frying pan with a little oil, then cook the fish cakes for about 3 - 4 minutes on each side.

I served mine with some home made pea puree (made out of frozen peas).