This week the focus is on ingredients that are cost effective without compromising on flavour. As with most of my home cooking, the creativity emerges when I am faced with a random assortment of ingredients later in any given week. With my chef hat on, I’m always looking to extract every last cent out of our weekly shop, much the same as you would at work. Not to sound too clinical, but this is where family meals really begin to resemble staff meals. It’s all about getting people fed while preserving your gross profit percentage, before the next food order hits the bank account.
Our weekly shop will always contain a range of go-to “long-term ingredients”, which form the base of this week’s recipes. I’m talking frozen puff pastry sheets, cooking chorizo, tinned anchovies and a well-stocked store cupboard complete with spices and dried seasonings. These can sit in the fridge or freezer for longer and are a handy tool for dropping some flavour into your weekly meals, or even bulking them up in the case of the pastry sheets.
The first recipe this week is the trusty sausage roll. I am a demon for these, and can rarely help myself at a petrol station counter. A good sausage roll should have crisp puff pastry, high fat content in the filling, coarse meat versus paste and a perfect balance of seasoning. In my opinion, salt should be weighed out and be about 2 per cent of the overall mix to guarantee perfect seasoning.
For the record, Bread41 does the best sausage roll I have tried in Ireland (to date). This recipe uses sausage meat, pork mince and is seasoned with some leftover cooking chorizo. It is seasoned and tucked into a blanket of butter puff pastry before glazing and baking. It can be served straight away, but is also handy chilled in a lunch box or eaten on the go with a green salad. A dash of mustard is a super sidekick.
The second recipe uses the unloved and underrated chicken thigh. This is cooked with the skin on for a beautiful golden brown flavour and then left to slowly caramelise in a butter mix seasoned with garlic, anchovy and chilli. Once the chicken is cooked, it’s removed, with the butter turning to a glaze for a spinach and kale mix finished with lemon juice and more chilli flakes.
This isn’t fancy restaurant food – it’s wholesome and nutritious, using cheaper ingredients without compromising. It’s exactly the type of food you will find in many restaurant kitchens around the country. Fuelling the brigades cooking top-quality cuisine. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for anyone, and your bank account will thank you too.