Catch up, Eggs Shakshuka & Baguette Pizza

Here’s a quick round up of the last three days of the storecupboard challenge.

Eggs shakshuka: believe it or not the culinary highlight of the last 3 days.

Day 4

This was an easy one – staple breakfast of porridge with a chopped banana, grabbed a super quick lunch and we were all invited round to a barbecue in the evening.

Sardine and soft cheese lunch on the run

 The quick lunch consisted of a couple of brown finger rolls left over from the children’s hot dogs, topped with half a tin of sardines in tomato sauce, the remains of some yogurt cream cheese (details here) and a few slices of cucumber and tomato.

 Day 5

 Breakfast was again porridge and chopped banana, followed by a lunch using the other half of the tin of sardines in tomato sauce.

Saladtastic, cunningly disguising a sandwich

 I mashed the sardines up with the last of the yogurt cream cheese, and used it to top a toasted sandwich thin. I had a bit more time today, so chopped up an array of lettuce, carrot, pear, cucumber and tomato.

 My dieting downfall was the flapjack I made in the morning as a thank you present. I only gave part of the tray to the intended recipient, and wasn’t entirely successful at diverting the remainder to my husband and children…

Pasta, cheese sauce, bacon and peas. Tastes great, looks dodgy.

 My daughter headed out tonight for the social extravaganza that was the Brownies’ Sheep Disco at the local church, so my son got the sole benefit of cheesy bacon and pea pasta. The meal was designed to use up the extra cheese sauce from making fish pie at the weekend, by adding plenty of pasta, frozen peas and some bacon from the Morrisons pack of cooking bacon.

Evidence of my son eating so enthusiatically it made his hair stand on end

Despite looking distinctly unconvinced when it was first put in front of him, the pasta did disappear pretty fast afterwards, followed by mango and a bit of flapjack.

 In the evening I cooked egg shashuka, which I tried for the first time relatively recently. I believe the combination of eggs, tomatoes and peppers is meant to be a breakfast dish in some countries, but we prefer it in the evening accompanied by cous cous, crunchy bread or tonight’s yellow-stickered jacket potatoes.

 It would be a good recipe to try this week, if you are a fan of the mixed peppers included as part of Aldi’s Super Six vegetables.

 Eggs Shakshuka

Eggs shakshuka with jacket potato and salad. You’ll just have to imagine the chopped parsley on top.

 Serves 2 if you want two eggs each, with extra sauce left over.

 Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

Couple of peppers, thinly sliced. (I used half a red pepper, half a yellow pepper and one green pepper, as that’s what was hanging around.)

1 x red onion, peeled and chopped

2 x garlic cloves, chopped]

1/2 red chilli pepper, chopped

1/2 tsp oregano

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsps paprika

2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

Chopped parsley to decorate

I cooked the peppers and onion in a frying pan with the oil for about 10 minutes, until softened.

Then I added the garlic, chilli, oregano, cumin and paprika and cooked for another minute.

Stir in the tins of tomatoes, and simmer for 15 minutes or so until the mix thickens. If it gets too thick, add some water.

Then use a spoon to make 4 hollows in the tomatoey sauce, crack an egg into each hollow, pop on the lid and allow the eggs to bake for 8 minutes or so (less if you like the yolks runny).

 I served up two eggs on each plate, and a decent amount of sauce, but then decanted the remaining 300g or so into a plastic box for a future meal.

 Day 6

 As it was a Saturday, my husband and children like to start withcroissants, and finished a pack of mini croissants stashed away in the freezer.

 I attempted to remain virtuous, while eating a couple of the Sainsbury’s Basics version of Weetabix with milk and a chopped banana. If you haven’t tried them, give them a whirl, as I think the Basic Breakfast Biscuits are virtually indistinguishable from Weetabix apart from having square corners and costing 95p for 24 rather than £2.40.

 The rest of my family all headed into Ipswich at lunchtime, where my son had a great time at a Soccer Stars party, while my husband took my daughter for a father/daughter meal at Pizza Express round the corner.

 The meal out was actually a version of using up leftovers, as we had £20 Pizza Express voucher that was due to expire, after exchanging £5
worth of Tesco Clubcard points ages ago on a boost offer.

 As my husband said after using the voucher: “There’s something deeply satisfying about eating a three course meal and finding the bill is
£7.35”.

 Meanwhile I got the chance for a peaceful potter round the Hidden Gardens of Hadleigh, returning for a very late lunch of egg fried rice.

Storecupboard challenge egg-fried rice

Amazing how soy sauce boosts egg fried rice

I’ve made egg fried rice a few times on Live Below the Line, when I fed myself on £1 a day for £5, raising funds for Unicef and awareness of
global poverty. I was even asked to include the recipe (such as it is) in this article for the Mirror Online.

Now it was wonderful to get the chance to make egg fried rice but with the benefit of left over veg and store cupboard ingredients like
soy sauce that can’t be crowbarred onto a £5 shopping list.

 I started by boiling up 75g of frozen mixed veg left over from trying out Live Below the Line recipes.

Meanwhile I used up the last pak choi from an exotic yellow-stickered pack bought before the challenge, wilted in a frying pan with a
good slug of soy sauce, some chopped garlic and grated root ginger.

I chucked in the remaining 100g cooked white rice left from Day 1, and the last 100g cooked brown rice from making Mumma Jack’s Best Ever Chilli on Day 2, and added the drained mixed veg to heat them through.

Lastly I pushed the rice and veg to one side, melted a teaspoon of butter and scrambled a beaten egg that was then chopped up and
mixed with the rest of the fried rice.

Baguette Pizza for Pizza and Movie Night

 We do pizza and a movie night once a week, with the children’s choice of DVD from the local library. It’s normally a Friday night special, but we moved it to Saturday due to my daughter’s Brownie Sheep Disco.

 I’ve tried out assorted frozen and fresh pizzas, but while my husband is happy with Sainsbury’s Thin & Crispy pepperoni, the children prefer a more labour intensive version using baguettes.

Pizza for four with salad and celery sticks

 I cook part bake baguettes, top with a half and half mix of tomato puree and red pesto, and the chuck on whichever toppings are in favour at the time. Tonight it was some Morrisons Savers Mozzarella, black olives from Aldi, a few slices of German salami and some grated cheddar. I tend to put slightly different combinations on different baguettes.

 I served the pizza up with a crunchy salad, some celery sticks and the Matilda DVD. Miss Trunchball remains terrifying.