We are spending a couple of days with MOH, and this evening has been spent watching TV cookery programmes.
I love to cook, and recently I’ve been sharing my efforts in my blog. I hope if you’ve tried any, they’ve worked out for you and tasted OK!
One programme was a series selecting a head chef for a top hotel, so although it was interesting, they weren’t cooking the sort of thing that we would like, afford, or find in the local co-op (squid, octopus, and a variety of other fish), and although their more basic ingredients prices may have been more in line with our budget, the ‘price in the restaurant’ had mark ups as much as 400 % !
The Hairy Bikers were doing their top ten favourites, and a lot of the dishes being presented were favourites: chilli con carne, shepherds pie*, curry, roast dinner, apple crumble (I am QUEEN of the crumbles), pizza, fish and chips, steak, pork and spaghetti bolognese.
Steak and pork are not in our budget, fish and chips and pizza are takeaways, but the rest I’ll cook from scratch, though not exactly the way their recipes indicated. I agreed that with cookery, we all adapt our favourites to suit our own palette.
My chilli, cottage pie (*shepherds pie is with lamb, cottage pie is with minced beef) and spag bol is basically the same recipe with different spices accordingly.
I’m doing roast chicken fillets tomorrow with all the trimmings and know a few tricks for the perfect roast potatoes.
Then we have Celebrity Master Chef, and the challenge of making a meal with the provided ingredients (use all or some), a stint in a restaurant kitchen, and the finale of preparing 2 courses of their choice. One celebrity will be eliminated at the end of the programme, so as we are only here for one episode, we won’t know who wins until the end of the series, by which time we may have forgotten all about it anyway!
Tonight I did one of the men’s favourites, cauliflower cheese with ham and tomatoes.
Simple, cheap and filling.
99p for the cauli, about £1 worth of cheese, 2 tomatoes 30p, sliced ham about 50p, plus half a pint of milk 20p, and some flour.
Bear in mind this was enough for the three of us.
They were happy anyway!
pensitivity101 
Love watching cooking shows too! I’ll try that cauliflower recipe! It sounds yumm!
It’s just your basic recipe with stripped ham thrown in, topped with grated cheese and tomatoes, then finished off in the oven for about half an hour. Clean plates all round here (and two disappointed dogs!)
hahaha…
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