The Brexit Cupboard: Recipe Edition

[PerverseConverse]

Hi everyone,

I'm really pleased that so many of us are forward planning/purchasing as a buffer in the event of No Deal and thought it would be good to share recipes we can make with our store cupboard essentials. Recipes that are based on long life or shelf stable items that can have fresh or frozen ingredients added as available.

Here's my basic pasta sauce recipe:

I tin chopped tomatoes or carton/jar passata
1 tablespoon tomato purée
1 teaspoon garlic purée (or to taste)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sugar

You can add chilli flakes or paste to spice it up and red wine to make it richer.

For extra nutrition roast some peppers and courgettes and onions and add at the end. Simply blend together with a hand blender. It's the only way I can get my children to eat veg with pasta.

I use alone or add quorn mince (we are veggie) and too with plenty of grated cheddar. It's a cheap, quick and easy meal.

PMK

Garlic puree! Good idea to get some of that in, I was wondering what to buy in place of fresh. Thanks Perverse.

Jack Monroe recipe for fishcakes using tinned sardines and tinned potatoes:

cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/09/12/tinned-spud-fishcake-recipe/

Includes frozen spinach or fresh parsley, but as I don't expect to have either, I would substitute dried parsley.

Corned beef hash can also be made with tinned potatoes:

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/corned-beef-hash

Spicy tomato and red lentil soup:

Olive oil
Garlic puree
Onion (frozen if no fresh)
Cumin
Curry powder
Tin of tomatoes
Red lentils
Chicken or vegetable stock cube

Fry the onion, garlic paste, and spices, add the lentils and tomatoes. Top up with water and a stock cube. Use as much water as you like according to how thick you like your soup. Blend and serve.

Tuna pasta bake

1 tin of tuna (oil or brine, I prefer brine), drained well.
1 tin condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 tin or either peas or sweetcorn
Pasta shapes to serve 3 large or 4 smaller appetites
Dried breadcrumbs
Cheese to top - optional
Fresh mushrooms if available - about 6-10 mushrooms, and a little oil or butter to fry in
Any other green veg if available - broccoli is good with this

Heat oven to about 200°c
Cook pasta.
Fry mushrooms if using, in a large overproof pan.
Add mushroom soup to the mushrooms, add a can of water. Stir to mix.
Add tinned veg, stir in.
Add cooked pasta, stir in.
Add tuna, stir gently so it doesn't get too broken up.

Transfer to overproof dish (if your saucepan isn't ovenproof)
Top with mixed grated cheese & breadcrumbs.

Oven bake (or grill) until bubbly & crispy.
Meanwhile cook the side veg in the pan you cooked the pasta in.

Only 2 pans to wash if you have an ovenproof saucepan.

What a great idea for a thread Perverse!

I can't think of any specific store cupboard-based recipes as such, I just tend to substitute tinned/jarred for fresh in whatever standard recipes I make.

As for herbs, there are several brands that do chopped, flash-frozen herbs. I always have several packs of various types in the freezer, it's less wasteful than buying a pack of fresh, and lasts longer than potted herbs (I'm not good at keeping them alive).

Miso soup - miso needs keeping in the fridge, but the unpasteurised stuff will last ages once opened. It does develop a bloom on top (apparently) but it's harmless, you can just scrape it off if it bothers you. I make mine a bit more substantial, it's probably a bit more of a British style miso soup!

www.chopstickchronicles.com/japanese-miso-soup-basics/

Jar of miso
Seaweed flakes, if possible - I substitute these for the dashi stock which you have to make fresh each time.
Select several from the following:
Rice or noodles
Dried mushrooms, chopped & soaked in a mug of boiling water
Dried spinach, spring onions, peppers (if you can get or home dry them)
Any other dried vegetables suitable for soup - I like daikon shreds
Small piece of carrot - an inch would be enough
Fresh vegetables of your choice - spinach, spring onions would work & can easily be grown on a windowsill
Other veg as available
Any protein - mung beans as above, a boiled egg, any raw plain meat or fish, prawns, tofu.

I've cleared my freezer today and had some frozen mango, pineapple and raspberries that I wanted to use up to give more room. I've decorated them, put them in the oven for about 10 mins, drained off the liquid, then chucked some crumble mix on top. It's currently in the oven and will let you know how it turns out.

Defrosted not decorated!

Anchovies, garlic paste, dried chilli flakes, saute in olive oil. Cook pasta, toss in sauce, add cheese (if available)

Enough Pasta, tuna, half jar of black olives, passata or tin chopped tomatoes reduced a bit with balsamic vinegar, garlic paste and dried basil (or just buy lloyd grossman jars when on sale for £1). Delicious mess.

Evening all. I've made the below recipe for the first time tonight. It was a hit with DD1 and I liked it too. Fusspots did not.
I didn't add much chilli as mine don't like spicy stuff and I used 5 blocks of frozen spinach rather than fresh. Ive frozen 3 portions and am going to add potatoes and some pineapple juice to it when we have it next (and extra chilli for me) to see if that gives it the "something" that I felt it needed.

I used bottled lemon lemon juice, frozen spinach, garlic purée, and ground ginger as alternatives to fresh. I cooked it for around 40 minutes as wanted the lentil softer.

Copied and pasted from veggiedesserts.co.uk

Red Lentil Dahl:

Ingredients
• 1 tsp olive oil or coconut oil
• 2 onions diced
• 3 garlic cloves finely chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger peeled and grated
• ½ finely chopped red chilli (or 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes)
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• ½ tsp coriander seeds
• ½ tsp mustard seeds
• 2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 200 g (1 cup) dried red lentils, uncooked (rinsed and drained)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1 can coconut milk
• 500 ml (2 cups) vegetable stock
• Salt and pepper
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 handfuls fresh spinach washed
Instructions
• Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook gently for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and red chilli and cook for a few minutes.
• Grind the cumin, coriander and mustard seeds lightly in a pestle and mortar, then add to the pan, along with the turmeric and garam masala and cook for 1 minute.
• Add the lentils, tomatoes, coconut milk and stock, then stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper and cook on a medium/low heat for 15-20 minutes until reduced and thick.Taste and add more chilli if desired.
• Stir in the lemon juice and spinach until it wilts.
• Serve warm with rice, naan bread or poppadoms.

Oh, the crumble I made? Don't use pineapple as it's weird in crumble but the mango and raspberries were nice. Not as good as apple or rhubarb but used up my freezer supplies nicely.

There are websites like www.supercook.com/#/recipes that you can type in what you have in your cupboards and it will find recipes for you, could be helpful too.

Not really a recipe, but white sauce for pasta bakes and lasagne comes out fine made with olive oil or sunflower oil instead of butter, and water instead of milk. As long as there's plenty of flavour for the rest of the pasta, you wouldn't even notice.

You can make almost any soup with one large onion, one medium carrot and a vegetable stock cube as a base. Chop onion and carrot, sweat in a little oil until soft.
Tomato soup: add tin of chopped tomatoes and some tomato paste.
Mushroom: add 250 g chopped mushrooms to the mix and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.
Tomato and red pepper: add a chopped red pepper to the mix and a tin of chopped tomatoes
Leek and potato: add a chopped up leek, a diced med sized potato
Parsnip and apple: add a large diced parsnip and a small chopped apple
Or whatever you like.
Cover with water, add stock cube and herbs if you like (the plain veg flavours work well on their own though), simmer until soft, blend and thin down with a little milk. Serves 4.
I mostly fed my kids on these soups along with bread/cheese/ham/eggs when they were little and I was a student and short of money.

Here's my risotto recipe

1 large onion, finely chopped
Fry in 50g butter until softened
Add 300g risotto rice
(add a glug of white wine if required)
Slowly add 1.2litres chicken stock (I use 2 knorr stock cubes for this) and cook until rice is tender
I usually add a hefty amount of frozen peas and 4-6 rashers of grilled bacon, chopped into pieces but you can add whatever you have lying around. Leftover roast chicken and mushrooms is also good.

You can use pearl barley instead of risotto rice which gives it a lovely nutty flavour. It might take a little longer to cook and need a little more liquid though.

a very quick one is floored cous cous from a packet (my DC like the Ainsley spice sensation one) with sweetcorn and sunflower seeds mixed through. To that you can add whatever else you have, we generally mix through some chicken or pork left over from sunday lunch but if we're talking store cupboard items you could use tinned chicken or ham.

flavoured cous cous

Tuna:
Tinned tomatoes
Tinned sweetcorn
Tinned peas
Tin of tuna.

Flavour with salt and ground white pepper.

Mix together, serve with basmati rice

Houmous.

Sesame seeds and water blitzed up in food processor.

Add Tinned chick peas, drained. ( Keep some back if doing morrocan style)
About 15-30 ml oil.
Lemon juice. Equivalent of one lemon.

I add onion and garlic normally but adding morrocan style spices of turmeric etc and some whole chick peas saved from the tin.

Here's what I use for pasta:

Anchovies
Chopped garlic (in a jar)
Dried chilli flakes
Dollop of pesto (optional)
Olive oil

All the above stirred together in a large pan until the anchovies have broken up. Add:

Olives
Semi dried tomatoes
Dried pasta that has been cooked a few minutes before (I like using De Cecco taglierini all'uovo)

Tinned tomatoes,
Tinned chick peas
Tinned peas
Turmeric, cumin (I read the ingredients on top of morrocan houmous to find the flavourings and have forgotten some)
Chopped up dried apricots handful sultanas.

Serve with rice or pitta or falafel.

An easy one is cous cous and the tinned mackerel in tomato sauce. You can add frozen peas if you have them and cheese.

Pasta with garlic puree and cheese is nice too.

Pasta with marmite was a surprise find on here and bearable.

When I was doing my A'levels and learning to cook, pasta with tuna and beans was a regular feature too.

I'm not sure how we are going to cope without cheese so have 2 large slabs in the freezer

Just back to suggest buying a basil plant - you can make your own pesto with most nuts. I've also got tubs of the yeast flakes to add instead of cheese. Needs more oil and salt and tastes a bit sweeter somehow, but does a similar job. My basil plant has lasted 3 years!