Reduced cabinet bingo: hake with Spanish rice

[el_staplador]

It took me three attempts to find a shop that actually had anything in its reduced cabinet. Yesterday big Tesco obliged, however. There were a lot of chickens marked down from £3 something to £3 something else. There were some ready meals. And there was an interesting selection of fish.

In the other reduced cabinet there were various deli items. I came away with some hake fillets (reduced from £7.50 to £5.25*) and an end of salami (reduced to 66p from I know not what). Also some chocolate eclairs, so I got them for pudding. (Not pictured, because I didn't cook them!)

( Picture under cut )

Hake to me is a Spanish fish, associated with San Miguel and olives and storks on church roofs, so I got some paella rice as well.

I cut the salami up into little chunks and cooked it gently in a wok to melt the fat out, then I added a chopped onion, three chopped garlic cloves (two of them were very small) and a red pepper. Also some cabbage, which I later fished out when I realised that cabbage cooks faster than rice. Threw in 150g rice and turned it in the fat. Added a slug of sherry and then a pint of vegetable stock. Shook in a lot of paprika to cover the fact that I was using salami, not chorizo. Brought to the boil and simmered.

After about ten minutes of simmering I fried the hake fillets in butter in a separate pan, five minutes on each side. (And five minutes before the end I put the cabbage back in with the rice.) Served the one next the other.

It wasn't bad at all.

( Picture: the result )

*I don't usually pay more than a fiver for protein for one meal unless it's a special occasion, but I do like hake, and it'll be today's lunch as well.

Reduced Cabinet Bingo Part 1: Bread & Butter Pudding

[miss_s_b]

The deli counter reduced cabinet was a bit of a bust, but the bread counter one was an embarrassment of riches (even got some Pokemon mini rolls for the daughter). So you're going to get a couple of posts, I'm afraid...

Firstly, Bread and Butter Pudding. Normal Bread and Butter Pudding, not the Extremely Boozy variant.


Equipment Required:

• Deep lasagne dish or similar that holds at least 2 pints.
• Oven.
• Balloon whisk.
• Measuring jug.
• 1 tbsp measuring spoon
• Butter knife

( Rest of recipe and pictures under the cut )

Reduced Cabinet Bingo: Pickled beetroots!

[pseudomonas]

I posted this on my own journal first, but as it happens I was spurred to make it cos a bag of beetroots was 59p in South Harrow and you can't say no to that, can you?

So:

1. Cut your beetroots into chunks. Do not peel or scald them; scrubbing is OK.
2. Put the chunks in a non-airtight jar.
3. Pour a salt solution (35g of salt in a litre of boiled-and-cooled water) over them.
4. Wait for a week or two for the beetroots to become sufficiently delicious.

Yeah, that's it. Hardly worth bothering with, was it?


When it's done you can either just eat the beetroots as they are or simmer them in the brine (which by then will have turned into basically beetroot kvass) and make a borscht out of them.

Variations: you can mix the beetroots with carrots/swedes/turnips; you can add some caraway seeds/dill seeds/peppercorns/garlic.

(being kept company by some cucumbers which are outside the scope of this challenge)

A note on tagging of posts

[miss_s_b]

I've just done a bunch of tidying up of the tags for this comm, because we were/are hoping to keeps tags useful for ingredient searches etc. As you know, only mods can add/edit tags. This is so that we don't get a bunch of tags for the same thing that then have to be merged (such as "bread", "breads", "loaves", "toast", "toasties", etc. All of which are now "bread and bread products"). With all that in mind:

• Please only use the challenge tag during the week of the challenge. For "revisited" posts, tag with the appropriate ingredient/cuisine/course etc.
• If you see a post which doesn't have the appropriate tags feel free to add them, especially if it could be tagged vegetarian, vegan, or gluten free.
• If a new tag is added that you feel might fit one of your old recipe posts, do feel free to go back and add it
• Don't be surprised if your entry suddenly sprouts a bunch of new tags you didn't put on it as new tags get added

Thanks in advance for your help with this xxx (a version of the above has been added to the comm profile).

Also, by request of pseudomonas, new challenges will all be tagged "!modpost". This will make it look like there are a lot of modposts in the tags, but it will also mean that anyone who wants to be notified of challenges (and the very rare important community announcements) can do so easily. Also if you want to be notified of any of the other comm tags, this is easy too, just in case you only want to know about recipes for/including "drinks: alcoholic" (to pick an example totally at random).

ETA: Any suggestions that this has been done for a combination of making myself feel better about the 1141 random and sprawling tags on my own DW, and making you all spell banana like Nanny Ogg are... well, completely accurate, to be honest.