So this seems like something so basic you don’t need a recipe, but it’s surprisingly easy to get wrong, as I know from experience. The key is not to overdo the potato, or you will end up with something stodgy and dull. Stick to equal weights of fish and potato; the rest is a matter of taste..
Tag: frugal food
Swedish oven pancake
I came across this recipe on a Swedish blog while googling Jansson’s Temptation. It immediately caught my attention because one of my favourite breakfast fry-ups used to be diced bacon, apple and onions, with a fried or poached egg on the side. I haven’t made that for ages, and here was the same tasty combination as a quick and filling supper dish. I had to try it and the results were excellent. A new default dinner!
I have tweaked the proportions a bit from the original because I found it a bit floury (though cooking it for a bit longer might have solved that problem). Though Swedish, it’s recognisable as a savoury clafouti.
This makes four very generous servings; we had it with smoked chilli jelly on the side, which was delicious. A salad or simply steamed green vegetable would be good too.
Jansson’s Temptation
Seattle-based blogger Janelle has a category on her Talk of Tomatoes blog called Default Dinners, for those old standbys that you make over and over again when you are short of ideas, ingredients, time, or money (or all of them of course!). Immediately I read this, I thought, “Why have I never posted the recipe for Jansson’s Temptation?” Probably because I’ve cooked it for 25 years and don’t need a recipe. And surely everyone knows how to cook it, don’t they?
Well, OK, a quick Google shows that there are loads of recipes for it on the web, and even a whole Wikipedia page. But this is how I do it. I don’t like anchovies much, but they are essential (even if Wikipedia says they should be sprats), and the flavour is subtle, so don’t leave them out. I have been known to distribute them carefully so that most of them are in Steve’s half.
In short, I love potatoes, and this is one of my favourite ways of cooking them.
Ribollita
I love real Italian cooking and don’t do nearly enough of it. Many traditional Italian recipes not only taste good but have the benefit of being vegetarian or nearly so, and not too fattening.
I expect there are as many versions of the Tuscan soup ribollita (reheated soup) as there are cooks. This is based on Ursula Ferrigno’s recipe in Bringing Italy Home, and I like it because it’s vegetarian. If you are a confirmed carnivore, you could easily add a ham hock or some bacon. As the name suggests, it’s best reheated the day after you make it.
Vegetables can be varied according to taste and availability. I’m sure in Tuscany it always has cavolo nero in it, but you can’t get that here, so I always use dark green Savoy cabbage.
Oil: you must use the best you can get for drizzling over the top; you can get away with slightly less good for the cooking, but it should be extra-virgin.
Potato scones
A traditional Scottish dish; I love them slathered with plenty of butter and honey, but you could eat them with bacon and egg for breakfast too.
Pasta e fagioli
This classic Italian pasta dish is a good one for the pressure cooker, and substantial enough to serve as a balanced one-pot meal.
Tip: if you want to make a large quantity and freeze/reheat some, extract the part you are going to keep before you add the pasta. If you don’t, it will soak up too much liquid and go all stodgy.
Caramelized apples
A quick dessert, based on a medieval recipe.
Peperonata
A versatile dish that’s a good way of using up a glut of tomatoes.
Tarte provençale
What I like about marmiton.org isn’t just the fact that among its thousands of recipes there are bound to be at least half a dozen using the ingredients you have to hand. It’s also the comments from visitors improving or adapting the recipe. The original recipe for this tart (which I chose because I had a surfeit of mozzarella to use up) would have turned out a soggy mess — it involved boiling the courgettes and then putting them in a raw pastry case! But by acting on several suggestions from other people I turned out a tasty tart that makes a pleasant change from our usual cheese, tomato and mustard tart.
It’s important to do all the vegetable preparation in order to eliminate as much water as possible, otherwise you will end up with a watery filling and soggy pastry.
Tarte à la moutarde
Ever since I discovered it in one of those 50p recipe books from Sainsbury’s, this has been one of my favourite recipes. It features fairly often in our repertoire — great for days when you are short of ideas or time for shopping, because most of the ingredients are generally hanging around in the storecupboard or fridge. And we never get tired of it. Extra bonus: it’s vegetarian.