Olde Timey Classic: Beef Wellington

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I based my beef Wellington off Gordon Ramsay's. His major innovation was to use a mushroom duxelle instead of a traditional pate. My innovation was to change the cut of meat from a fillet of beef which can run you up to $50, to a top rump. Incredibly, I picked up a 1.89kg slab of top rump for a measly $8, which was good as I had to feed NINE people in one sitting. I manged to feed everyone comfortably...for $8. This has to be some sort of record.

Making this thing is a little tricky, but is a sure way to please a dinner party. And the satisfaction of cutting into the pastry to reveal a perfectly rare steak inside is like the feeling a kid gets digging into a kinder egg times a thousand.

Go Get:

Top rump of Beef

400g of 'shrooms. I used a mixture of wild and chessnut purchased from the awesome Borough Street Market.

16 slices of prosciutto.

Splash of white wine.

1lb of Puff pastry.

2 Beaten eggs.

English mustard.

Flour for dusting.

The Action:

1. Be sure to trim off the excess fat on the beef using a sharp knife. Season with salt and pepper seal the beef on all sides in a frying pan with a little butter. As this is a large piece of meat, you might want to do this for 15 minutes. Turn your oven on.

2. Put your mushrooms into a blender and blend until in small chunks, not a smoothie.

3. Fry the mushrooms without using any oil or butter. Add some white wine and cook until all the water has been evaporated. This may take up to 15 mins.

4. Lay some clingfilm down on your countertop, and arrange the prosciutto slices into a sheet so each slice is overlapping. Spread your mushrooms evenly on top. Cover the beef all over with a nice coat of mustard. Roll your beef up like a cigarette and secure by twisting the ends of the clingfilm. Refrigerate for 20 mins.

5. Roll out your pastry and connect the different sheets by overlapping and pressing down with the back of a spoon. Unwrap your beef-mushroom-ham ball and place in the middle of your puff pastry. Spread the egg wash on the pastry either side of the beef and cover with pastry.

6. Score the pastry using the back of a knife and glaze using more egg wash. Season with salt and pepper and stick in the oven. It takes around 45 mins for a rare center, and 55 for medium-rare.

7. To serve, cut into inch thick slices. Be sure to use a really sharp knife or you risk making the whole thing collapse into a messy heap.

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A Hearty Soup for a Depressing, Frigid January.

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It's that time of the year again-the dead of winter. Now That I live in Texas, January has become a bearable even pleasant month. This however, was not the case when I was living in Nottingham as a student. Winter jackets had to be worn at all times and it was weird not to see your own breath in the morning. As a response, I came up with a cheap and delicious Lentil and Bacon soup recipe to warm you up and kick those winter woes. It serves 5-6 and costs next to nothing per serving.

Go Get:

4-5 Rashers of bacon.

1/4 pack of Red Lentils.

2 Carrots.

3 Sticks Celery.

1 Large Onion.

1. Can of Dices tomatoes.

Half a Butternut squash.

3 Cloves of Garlic.

800ml of Chicken stock.

The Action:

1. Fry the bacon until cooked through and remove from the pan. Saute the rest of the chopped up vegetables on a high heat in the bacon juices until golden brown, or for around 15 minutes.

2. Add the lentils, can of tomatoes, half of the stock and the cumin to the pot. Simmer for 45 mins.

3. Throw the soup mixture into a blender and blend til smooth. Add more stock to get to the right consistency. Season with salt & pepper to taste and serve garnished with a celery leaf and olive oil. Pair the soup with some crusty bread and you've got yourself a meal.

What I learned from Christmas: Some Non-Turkey Recipes

Posting Christmas recipes so soon after the feast itself would be pointless, as I can imagine that no-one feels the need to eat Turkey in the near future. Plus, Turkey is expensive and I am still sleeping on an air mattress.

This post will center on some simple recipes for entertaining your friends or family. Think less of eating alone in a one bedreem hell hole, and more of a spirited dinner party or as it usually devolves into, a piss-up.

And what embodies party food more than canapes? Here's two I made on Christmas day that cost virtually nothing.

Scotch Quail Eggs

Scotch eggs are the ultimate British picnic food. You know when food is 'ultimately British" when you describe what exactly it is to your American friend and they recoil in disgust.

Go Get:

12 Quail eggs
800g Sausage meat
Flour
Breadcrumbs
2 Regular Eggs

The Action:

1. Boil the quail eggs for 3 minutes, drain and place under cold running water. And then Peel.
2. flatten out a chunk of sausage meat with your hands and roll around the quails egg. Roll around in your hands until perfectly round.
3. Dust the ball in seasoned flour, dip in egg wash, and roll it around in the breadcrumbs.
4. Deep fry until golden brown. If You've done it right, the yolk will still be slightly runny.

Egg Bacon Bites

I used the Hairy Biker's recipe for this one. All you need is a sheet of puff pastry, a few rashers of bacon, two eggs, mayonnaise, four cherry tomatoes and four hard boiled quails eggs.

The Action:

1. Place the sheet of puff pastry over your cupcake baking tin and cut into squares and press into each cupcake space. Stab the bottom of each pastry base with a fork. Place in the oven and bake for 20 mins.

2. Hardboil your quails eggs and hen eggs. Make an egg mayonnaise by combining the hen's eggs and a few dollops of mayonnaise. Fill your pastry cases with the egg mayonnaise. Fry the bacon until crispy and cut into pieces.

3. Cut the quail's egg and the cherry tomatoes in half and arrange on your canape. Season with salt and pepper, and finish by sticking the bacon in vertically.

And there you have it. Two really easy ways to impress your guests with small, sophisticated nibbles.

Burger under 30: Tofu Burgers with Guacamole and Spinach

As meat prices keep rising, sometimes you're forced to use ingredients that you wouldn't normally use. Tofu isn't something I would associate with a delicious, moist burger. But as I had a block of tofu in the fridge $6 left in my bank account, I had to improvise.

This one takes less than 30 mins from the cutting board to mouth and contains a lot less fat than your typical beef burger.

Go get:

Packet of firm tofu.

A small onion.

2 Cloves of garlic.

Paprika

Worcestershire Sauce

Dried chili flakes

Soy Sauce.

Spinach.

Guacamole.

The Action:

1. Finely chop your onion and garlic and fry with a bit of oil. Season with a pich of salt and pepper as well as some generous splashes of Worcestershire sauce (that's wuss-ter-sheer to you Americans who can't pronounce all them 'fancy' words like).

2. Mash up the tofu and your cooked onions and garlic. Splash in some soy sauce as well as half a teaspoon or more of paprika and your chili flakes.

3. Combine into patties and fry until cooked through. Top burgers with a handful of spinach and and generously smear the inside of the burger bun with some guac.

Quick, easy, healthy and sophisticated- and for less than a dollar per burger.

"Pink Fish" (As the Ebsworth's Call it): Teriyaki Salmon with Stir Fried Vegetables and Vinegar Rice

I recently watched the documentary Food Matters (You can watch the entire thing here). Despite some dubious claims that huge amounts of vitamin C could cure cancer, it raised some valid points. Apparently, the Western diet is hugely lacking in vitamins and minerals. We walk around every day tired as shit, just waiting to get cancer. So in response, I cooked this dish which contains not one, but TWO *gasp* super-foods - wild salmon and broccoli. This dish is quick and easy, serves two and costs around $4 a head. It would be drastically cheaper if I used farmed salmon, but fuck it. This time I'm doing luxury.

Go Get:

Half a pound of salmon fillet

Soy Sauce

Sake/ white wine.

Mirin (if you don't have any, just use sugar)

3 Cloves of Garlic.

2 Inches of Ginger

---

2 Carrots

Broccoli

3-4 Mushrooms

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175 g (1 Cup) White rice

Red wine/ white wine vinegar

1 tsp of sugar.

The Action

1. We need to create a marinade for the fish. Cut up three cloves of garlic and grate an inch of ginger root. Take the Sake (or white wine) and soy sauce and pour into a ziploc bag in equal amounts with the garlic and ginger. Put your fish in the bag, and leave in your fridge for at least 2 hours.

2. When it gets close to dinner time, put the rice in salted boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, peel the carrots and then strip them using a potato peeler. Chop up your broccoli and crumble your mushrooms. Set Aside.

3. Heat up a saucepan until very hot. Put 3 tbsp of oil in the pan (I used sesame seed oil) . Place the fish skin side down and cook for approx 3 minutes. At the same time heat a second pan and throw in your vegetables. Add a spash of soy sauce and a pinch of sugar to the veggies as you cook 'em.

4. Flip your fish and cook for a further 3 minutes and remove from pan.

5. Combine 5 tbsp of vinegar (you can use white or rice) with a tbsp of sugar in a small bowl. Microwave, and add to your fully cooked rice.

Plate up and enjoy!

Chef Boyardee it Aint: Squash, Spinach & Bacon Ravioli

Hello Cheapskates,

It's been a while since my last update. No, I haven't given up on the project and no, I certainly haven't stopped cooking. This week I bring you something that I haven't tried before- a Ravioli made entirely from scratch.

What's great about this recipe is that what you put inside of the ravioli is entirely up to you. I came up with this one through rustling through the vegetable crisper, and pulling some unused bacon stuck to the back of the fridge (let's be honest, we've all been there).

If you can't find Yellow Squash, you could just as easily use butternut squash. This recipe takes roughly 30 mins to make, serves 3, and costs around $2 a head.

It Took me 10 minutes to take this photo. This is not a joke.

Go Get:

1 Yellow Squash

1 Bag of Spinach

2-3 Rashers of Bacon (The ball of cheap cooking bacon available at most UK supermarkets works just fine)

2 Handfuls of grated cheese, preferably Parmesan.

4 White Mushrooms

3 Cloves of Garlic

3 Eggs

300-400g Flour

Olive Oil,

Salt & Pepper

The Action:

1. Put some water on to boil. Shred the squash using a cheese grater, finely cut the garlic and combine in a bowl. Crumble the mushrooms with your hands into rough piece mix with the squash and garlic.

2. Roughly chop the bacon and fry using a small amount of oil. After the bacon bits have started to turn crispy, throw in the garlic squash & mushroom. Fry for a further few minutes, drain the excess fat & water and put back into the bowl.

3. Roughly chop your spinach and combine with the bacon, mushroom and squash. Throw in the cheese and season the mixture with a large pinch of salt and pepper. It should look something like this:

4. Time to make the pasta sheets. If you have a blender, crack three eggs and combine with the flour in the mixing bowl. Add 3/4th tsp of salt and 1tsp of olive oil. Blend until mixed. Keep adding flour until the mixture has lost it's stickiness. If you don't have a blender, pour the flour onto a counter-top, create a well in the middle and crack your eggs into it. Get your hands dirty and mix.

5. Kneed the dough for around 8 minutes. Cut the dough-ball in half and either run it through a pasta maker (I don't have one), or roll it out using a rolling pin covered in flour.

6. Place your fillings on one of the pasta sheets 2 inches apart from each other. Take the yolk of one egg, beat it, and spread around the fillings. This will be the glue that holds the ravioli together.

7. Cover with the second sheet of pasta, and cut out the individual ravioli pieces. Press down to get out all of the air inside the ravioli and make sure to seal the sides and edges. Boil for 15 minutes and serve with a dash of olive oil and pepper.

Super Quick and Fresh Burmese Fish Curry

Whilst my fish fillets sat defrosting on my counter top I pondered what to do with them. As much as I liked how my beer battered fish tacos came out last time round (recipe will follow at a later date), I had already eaten fried food TWICE that very day -damn you America!- so I wanted something slightly less greasy.

I wanted to do some sort of curry but couldn't be bothered to go and buy curry paste and coconut milk (which is both terrible for you and expensive - fuck coconuts). Luckily, I managed to find this awesome video in which you make your own curry paste from scratch out of readily available ingredients- onions, garlic, coriander and dried chili. Unlike the video I used chili flakes and didn't bother soaking them in water to save time. I also lacked tumeric, so I combined 3/4ths of a tsp of paprika with 4/ths of cumin and a dash of cinnamon to coat the fish.

This dish took 20 minutes to prepare and cook, serves three and is probably the freshest tasting curry recipe I've used. And at around $2 a serving, you can continue to use what little money you have on getting hammered. This is how it turned out: