Making a hash of it

Thanks to popular cookery programmes in recent years and famous names in the Chef department, the humble tin of corned beef has increased in price from just under a pound  to nearer four.
Corned beef hash is a cheap and filling meal, and the beauty of it is you can throw in all your leftovers or whatever odds you find in the fridge.
Our basic recipe has always been a tin of corned beef, a small tin of new potatoes, a chopped onion and tin of baked beans plus a stock cube.

These days, I use practically anything and today’s hash ingredients were:
10 small new potatoes
3 large carrots
1 red onion
1 white onion
6 mushrooms
2 cloves of garlic
half a red pepper
2 beef stock cubes
1 tin corned beef

I cut the unpeeled potatoes into quarters, and cut the carrots into pieces rather than slices, cooking both together in advance until soft.
I then sliced the onions and pepper putting them in a wok and added the chopped garlic and stock cubes with a little water.
I drained the potatoes and carrots and added them too, then brought it all up to heat, turning it down to cook for about 15 minutes.
The last things I added were the mushrooms (quartered) and corned beef which had been cut into 1″ cubes. These ingredients tend to go mushy if cooked too long.
Dinner was served five minutes or so later.

For dessert, I did an apple muesli crumble.
I missed the apples from our tree especially as the bought bramleys were only a third of the size. I used 3 plus four eating apples MOH wanted used up.
I added a little water and two dessert spoons of sugar to the pot and brought them up to heat. I didn’t want them to go too sloppy and so drained off the liquid before putting them in the bottom of the pie dish.

My crumble topping was made using flour and margarine rubbed together to resemble fine bread crumbs, 3 dessert spoons of sugar and a cup of muesli (oats, nuts, sultanas and other dried fruit as sold for breakfast).
I sprinkled this over the apples and then added an additional spoonful of brown sugar over the top before putting it in the oven for half an hour at 200º C.

We had this with custard (out of a tin as a mouse had got into the packet we’d left on our last visit and MOH wondered whatever all the yellow powder was).

Tip:
Using eating apples means not so much juice and the apples were a little dry so I should have retained some of the liquid I drained off before adding the crumble mix.

Three full tummies anyway.

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