Cauliflower Rogan Josh/ Vindaloo
This is another one of those staple kitchen products mainly kind of things. It can be made cheaply if you already have most of it in your kitchen, and certainly tastes awesome. If you’re not someone who routinely likes legumes, let this be an opportunity to try some. It’s non offensive to vegetarians, and pretty darn filling.
Plus, sometimes it's just too expensive to go buy meat.
Ingredients
1 Onion ($1.00)
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
2 Cloves Garlic ($0.50)
1 ½ cups of Vegetable stock
2 Tablespoons of Rogan Josh or Vindaloo paste ($4.45 for a 4-serve jar)
½ Head of Cauliflower ($2.65)
¾ cup of Frozen Peas / Peas and Corn ($2.54/500gm)
1 400gm can of Chickpeas, drained. ($0.99)
½ cup of rice per person
SERVES 6-8
COST: $9.69
METHOD
1. Dice up your onion and garlic nice and small, prepare your stock and cut your cauliflower into florettes. Start your rice straight away.
2. Heat oil in base of large casserole dish or saucepan. Add onion and garlic, stir until fragrant. Add Your choice of Curry paste, stir.
3. Add Stock and frozen peas and corn, as well as chickpeas. Bring to the boil.
4. Reduce temperature to simmer, add cauliflower and stir until well covered. Simmer covered for 5 minutes, any longer and you’ll get soggy curry. If you like a bit more heat, some chilli flakes can provide it if added now.
5. Remove from heat and serve with rice.
NOTE!!!!
If you have friends/housemates/fellow eaters with reflux or GORD!!!
If you have mates who get really crook from spicy food, there’s a couple of things you can do. One is omit the chilli, which is no fun for anyone.
2. IT costs extra, but with some natural yoghurt, spoon about 50gm per person into a bowl and dice up about 1/3 of a large cucumber. Stir this through yoghurt and serve with curry. People add as they wish, and take a bit with every mouthful.
Thai Chicken Curry
Overall, this isn’t necessarily the cheapest recipe, it is however a delicious one that will feed you over a couple of days, and again freezes and reheats very well.
Get your thai fever on and get going with a chicken Curry!
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
1 Onion ($1.00)
4 Cloves Garlic (50c)
1 “Thumb Length” of Ginger ($1.00)
2 x 50gm packs Red Curry Paste. (89c each) (1.78)
500gm Chicken (Thigh or breast. Thighs are cheaper) ($6.50)
1200ml Coconut cream. (Woolies is $1.18 per can) ($3.54)
1 Zuchinni ($0.80)
Half a Cauliflower ($1.99)
1 can of baby corn ($0.99)
1 Red capsicum ($1.10)
1 medium White potato (50c)
Splash of Oyster or fish sauce
2 Birds Eye Chillis ($1.00)
½ cup of rice per person (about 50C each)
MAKES ABOUT 8 SERVES
TOTAL: $19.50
The secret to this curry is not having soggy – ass vegetables. It works well for veggie lovers and haters alike! This freezes and reheats well, placing it in a container with leftover rice is delicious for lunches the day after!
1. Cut up ALL your veges, dice the onion small, crush garlic. Other vege sizes are up to personal choice. Grate ENTIRE ginger chunk into a bowl.
2. Put Olive Oil and Garlic, Onion, Ginger and curry paste in Pan. Stir until fragrant.
3. Dice chicken and add to mix. Stir until it looks cooked, and is WELL coated in curry paste.
4. Add coconut cream, you may need to scrape it out of the can if it is home brand.
5. Allow the coconut cream to combine with ingredients, bring to the boil. Add potatos
6. Put on rice, if you have a rice cooker, start NOW.
7. After around 25 minutes, add capsicum, Zuchinni, baby corn, Cauliflower, Fish sauce and Chilli. Stir until well coated. Simmer for about 10 minutes.
8. If you really like soggy veggies, you can leave it cooking for a while after this, but I prefer some crunch to the veggies so this works well.
9. Serve on top of rice.
*If *If you are feeling adventurous, financial or Both, you can always add some fresh peppercorns and use less crap coconut milk...
Hopping on the food train again, whilst I promised some other saving ideas. Frankly, if you did it properly, you've already stuffed yourself with a couple of days worth of risotto goodness, and are craving something else. if not, you have a stomach with a much larger attention span than mine tends to have.
The recipe below yields a reasonable amount of really, really cheap fried rice. about 4 "dinner" serves or about 6ish "I'll have this with something else" side sized portions.
Recipe – Poor Man’s Fried Rice
½ Cup Frozen Peas $ 2.24 / 500gm
2 Carrots $ 0.65
Corn (frozen or fresh) $ Depending – frozen about 2.70
2 Rashers of Bacon $2.80 / 250 gm
1 Tsp Ginger $24.95/kg (10 gm is adequate)
Small amount of Oyster Sauce $3.91
3 Shallots / 1 small onion $0.25
3 Cups Rice (Dried, see note below.) $1.79/kg
1 Egg $3.91 / dozen
5 Tbsp Soy Sauce $ see post (Getting Started)
Splash of Canola Oil
1 Clove Garlic
Note – YOUR RICE MUST BE DRY!!!
Now, there’s a couple of options for the rice here. If you use fresh, moist cooked rice, you will have really soggy, gross fried rice. If you are fortunate enough to have a rice cooker, this is pretty easy. Simply cook your 2 cups of rice, and leave it on the keep warm setting for about half an hour. This will dry it out almost enough for it not to be gluggy.
The other option is to use leftover rice from the night before that has been in the fridge, or rice you’ve prepared about 2 hours before, pressed into reasonably flat trays and left uncovered in the fridge. In terms of effort, I’m a BIG fan of option 1.
Instructions
1. Prepare your egg – I like lightly beat the raw egg with a fork, and make sort of a pancake by putting it in a lightly oiled frying pan, and flipping over as it appears to ‘dry’. Wait to cool slightly, perhaps during step 2.
2. You’ll need a moderately sized Frying pan for this one. Add a splash of Canola oil and heat. Add crushed Garlic, grated Ginger and finely chopped Onion or Shallots and cook on a low temperature until fragrant.
3. Move those aromatics to the side of pan, slice bacon into small pieces. Place in fry pan and cook until slightly crispy (or however you like the bacon in your fried rice. If you want saggy bacon, that’s up to you). Slice egg into bite-size pieces, add to the mess in the pan.
4. Slice carrots into small circles, add with corn and peas to pan. Fry until almost cooked. (If your peas and corn are frozen, or you have frozen vege mix, about 3 mins in the microwave covered with water will soften them significantly, or about 8 minutes being cooked)
5. Add Soy Sauce, a SMALL (about a capful) amount of oyster sauce, and your rice. Stir like crazy, so that sauce has spread equally over everything. If your kitchen does not smell like awesome, you have done something incredibly wrong.
6. Serve! Fried rice el poor man is ready. This makes about 3 “Main” sized serves, or about 6 entrée sized serves.
NOTE: If you’re feeling a bit more gourmet about things, there’s always room for experimentation. I’m trying to provide the best possible price food which will still make you feel like you’ve eaten a meal rather than a bowl of noodles or a cheeseburger. We find Broccoli makes an awesome addition for bulking it out.
This is incredibly hearty and filling stuff, and should make around 6 large serves. Honestly, a small bowl is usually enough, and lasts us about 3 days in a household of big eaters. The boys in our house aren't big vege eaters, but apparently this disguises the taste pretty well, and i'm quite keen on it for the filling / good taste value.
I will include costs for ingredients where I am fairly certain of costs, but not so much for quantities of things I'd assume you would have in the cupboard or fridge. (See post Starting your Poor Man's Kitchen).
Ingredients
800 gm Whole Peeled Tomatoes $2.80
2 Cups Arborio Rice $3.99
400gm Tuna in Brine (Coles Smartbuy) $2.03
1 Small Onion $0.25
1 Red Capsicum $3.98/kg
1 Zuchinni $2.48/kg
A couple of Small mushrooms (If you have them growing and they aren't the type that kill you. We regularly add the garden's liberal supply, and none of us have died or ended up attempting to climb through keyholes)
Chicken Stock - Will end up being about 8 Cups
Liberal Splash of Olive Oil
2 Cloves of Garlic or equivalent
Cheese. Parmesan best but whatever you have
Tobasco Sauce for a bit of Flavouring
TOTAL
$9.07
1. Chop your veges, if you do this now, it's way easier later. Open your cans of Tomato and Tuna, Be ready, cause this needs to be stirred CONSTANTLY if you don't want to be spending the next week attempting to scrape the world's thickest goo out of the bottom of your large saucepan / pot.
2. Heat olive oil in LARGE pot. I say large because it will expand in a big, chunky way. Add onions and garlic, cook until onions start to go clear.
3. Add rice, stir until coated lightly with the olive oil. This has a fancy name I forget, but as a guide I usually wait until the rice looks nice and greasy. Cook on Low/ Medium
4. One cup at a time, begin adding stock. The guide for when to add the next is when the cup you have added seems to have been absorbed by the greedy arborio. 8 cups is a guide, if it needs more, the rice will still be kind of hard. Don't Panic though, we're not quite done. Stir whilst this is happening.
5. Add your can of tomatoes. Use a spoon or knife to cut them into more manageable segments. Add the entire can, juice and all, this all adds to the flavour. This will help to add moisture to the rice too, and should be absorbed in the same fashion the stock was. CONTINUE STIRRING
6. Add your veges. Capsicum, Zuchinni, Mushrooms if you have them, and Tuna. Continue Stirring.
7. Test your goo. If the rice is reasonably tender, as are your veges, you're almost there. If not, persist, add a small amount more stock and keep stirring. If everything is nice and tender, add your cheese and stir quickly.
8. To serve, spoon your goop into a bowl, top with some tobasco for a bit of extra flavour, and more parmesan (the fresh stuff, i haven't tried the powdery dandruff stuff on it, but I can't imagine it tasting good) Put the rest into a refrigerator safe container whilst it's still reasonably able to be scraped out. I would advice you chuck your saucepan straight in the sink to soak, don't let it dry or you'll have a heck of a time getting it back out. Keeps for about 4 days I would imagine.
Warning for Students: Rice is one of those things it is quite easy to give yourself food poisoning with. From what I've learnt in uni (Yes! a reputable place for learning) it's almost easier than chicken. Make sure your rice is soft, and make sure you're reheating things properly, give it a stir and chuck it back in your heating source for another few seconds. Make it hot enough to scald off your taste buds, I would rather not encourage anyone to get anything nasty.
