Day three of my budget cooking plan (seven dinners for two people from £20 at Aldi!) was where my portion control went out of the window and I started to cheat… just a little… when I realised the only vegetable I had for this meal was onions. Two types of onions, but still, just onions… So, I’ll hold my hand up, I grabbed a small number of peas from my freezer. Like, maybe a dozen. Or maybe more. Don’t judge me…
Following on from my first budget week post, where I’m aiming to cook a week of dinners for two adults from £20 spent at Aldi, I’ve already posted a recipe for spinach, bacon and onion pizza here, and now I’m onto my second dish – a spatchcocked chicken with wedges and sweetcorn!
I can’t resist bringing out my tried and tested leftover recipes this time of year – whether you’re using up Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey or a simple Sunday roast, try out my recipes for some top notch ways to enjoy the meat all over again!
On Saturday, some of my friends and I went to The Fat Fig, a Greek restaurant in Southampton. I’d noticed it during a walk to check out a new ice cream parlour called Tooti’s and after researching it online, I found mostly glowing reviews. They offer an option on their menu called the ‘Fat Fig Meze Banquet’, which is decribed as ‘a feast, comprising of all dips, starters, a seafood course, finished with a meat platter’, priced at £18.95 per person. That seemed pretty good to me, so I booked the table and along we went! Inside, the restaurant’s decor is minimal, and the chairs and tables are canteen style – but the food, I assure you, is fantastic. Here’s what we had!
We started with some amazing houmous, tzatziki with fat chunks of cucumber and laced with mint, taramasalata, skorthalia – cold mashed potato with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, olives, and tabouleh – a zesty, juicy salad made of bulgar wheat, tomatoes and parsley, all accompanied by fluffy hot pitta bread.
Following that was haloumi and lounza, a grilled, supersalty cheese with a rubbery texture (actually, incredibly delicious despite it sounding like polystyrene) and griddled pork loin that tasted like smoked ham.
Then we had falafels – these, as I assume, most of the dishes, were homemade – piping hot and crispy with a spicy parsley and onion studded chickpea mash inside, accompanied by what I think was a tahini dip.
Following that came dolmathes and melinzanes together:
The dolmathes were vine leaves stuffed with rice, pork, herbs and spices, and topped with a fresh tomato sauce.
The melinzanes were possibly my favourite part of the meal, fried, smokey aubergine medallions topped with tomatoes, with a soft, rich interior surrounded by a crispy outer skin. I have a weakness for aubergine dishes!
Then came the chicken liver – cooked in onions with lemon and parsley. I did try this, and it was tasty, but unfortunately the smell reminded me too much of the food we gave our dogs when I was a kid, so I squeamishly skipped this one!
That was the starters dealt with, so then we moved onto the fish course. First up was a plate of hot calamari:
Then some fat king prawns covered with garlic butter, olive oil and parsley:
And finally maritha, breaded, deep fried white bait:
I’d never had white bait before, so I tried it out – it was incredibly delicious, although I do admit I removed the heads and scraped out the insides, which is not really proper white bait etiquette!
The second to last course was called Greek Village Salad – a classic Greek salad with the inclusion of iceberg lettuce. I’d never had it with lettuce before, and it had been wilted in the dressing which actually gave it an amazing texture and bags of flavour:
The chunks of Feta were generous, flaky and delicious, as was the dressing and the oregano sprinkled on the top.
The final course was souvlakia, meat skewers:
We had pork, chicken and sheftalies, homemade pork sausage. Honestly, the pork was slightly overcooked, but by this point we were pretty full and past caring!
The entire meal took around an hour and a half to eat, and we enjoyed everything with the exception of the chicken liver. Considering the price of most main courses at the restaurant is £10, our feast was very reasonably priced and I would love to go again some day! I highly recommend this for a special occasion if you’re on a budget and don’t want to go to a super fancy place – it has a sense of celebration and will certainly get you talking over the table!
Visit the Fat Fig’s website here, or call them on 02380 21 21 11. They are located at 5 Bedford Place, Southampton, SO15 2DB.
This is a flashback post that some of you might have already seen at Thanksgiving – but I thought it was worth a repeat for all the UK-based readers who will be up to their eyeballs in turkey this Christmas! Here are some great recipes using leftover turkey that taste so delicious you’ll want to cook extra next year!
Leftovers at Thanksgiving can be so much more than a simple rehash of that Turkey Day meal (although, let’s face it, that’d be pretty darn delicious anyway!). Try these recipes for delicious leftovers – I promise you, none of them will feel like second-best meals! In fact, you might be tempted to roast another turkey (or chicken) just to make some more!
Eating turkey soup might seem like a chore, but with a few simple steps, you can create a dish with beautiful presentation that anyone would be thrilled to eat after some Black Friday shopping!
Simply make your turkey or chicken soup using a carcass, covered with cold water. Add in extras like peppercorns, herbs (woody or hardy herbs like sage, rosemary and thyme are best), onions and carrots, and allow the stock for simmer for as long as you can – all day if possible. Top up as needed. When you’re ready, drain away everything except the stock, then add to a clean pan and bring to a boil. Simmer until the stock is a tasty soup – you may need to reduce down to a half of the original volume.
To give this dish pretty presentation, fill a bowl with shredded turkey or chicken, and thin cut, cooked vegetables (you can cook them in the broth while its reducing) cut into shapes. Add a sprig of rosemary – this will scent the broth as well as being a pretty garnish. If you really want to impress, serve the bowls as pictured above, then pour the turkey stock from a beautiful presentation jug right at the dinner table!
Egg fu young is a very westernised dish; basically a Chinese take on an omelette. The name is said to derive from ‘fu young’, which is a kind of hibiscus with beautiful flowers. The dish consists of eggs cooked like an omelette, with a variety of fillings, served with a savoury brown sauce. You can adapt this recipe to use a huge variety of different fillings – I’ve used prawns, ham and chicken/turkey – but use any filling you like!
INGREDIENTS
Sauce
METHOD
Variations
Egg fu young is easy to adapt and you can use plenty of different fillings to vary the taste. If you’re a vegetarian, you can replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock and leave out the meat. You can try bamboo shoots, peas, carrots, onion, peppers, mushrooms, celery, cucumber or water chestnuts. Just make sure that anything canned in water is drained thoroughly, and tougher vegetables like carrots and peppers are cooked through before you make your omelette. Left over roast meat is brilliant here – or try char siu or leftover duck. You can even play around with the sauce – some recipes call for chilli sauce, garlic, spring onions, vinegar, Chinese rice wine and sugar as added ingredients.
Risotto isn’t one of those quick and easy, on the table in 20 minutes kind of dinners. You have to stand there and cook and stir and add stock for a looong time. But you know, when it’s dark and wet outside and you’re kind of fed up with everything, that’s okay. Sometimes you just want to stand there and stir something.
This roast chicken risotto recipe used to be my number one method of disposing of a dead body. There’s nothing like it to get rid of the evidence you had a chicken for your dinner than using it up in this delicious, simple risotto. But now I’m cooking a chicken every week, it would get a bit samey. If you try this, though, you’ll see why it’s my number one chicken disposal plan.
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METHOD
Serves four adults.
One recipe I turn to quite often for leftover chicken or turkey is Nigella Lawson’s recipe for bang bang turkey salad. You can find it online here.
It’s delicious and spicy, and refreshing thanks to the spring onions and cucumber. You can serve it as part of a large party spread, using up other left overs like pie or quiche, and people will think you’ve gone to a lot of effort to create a brand new dish, when, really, you’re just sneakily feeding them your left overs. HO HO HO!
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METHOD
Delicious, spicy, and satisfying!
Food, Fashion and Fitness 