Poached Pears

Someone bought a bottle of cheap rosé to your house? You don't like it and don't want to take it to another party? Try this:

You will need:

4 ripe pears

Half a bottle of rosé

Two table spoons of dark brown sugar, preferably muscavado

Pinch of vanilla salt

Blob of butter

Tea spoon of corn-flour

Juice of half a lemon

Squeeze lemon juice into a bowl. Peel, core and quarter the pears adding and mixing to the lemon bowl as you go to prevent browning.

Heat blob of butter with the sugar on a hob until combined then add pears and lemon. Also a pinch of vanilla salt. You could use coarse salt and a drop of vanilla essence I guess but I don't know how it would taste. Stir around a bit then tip in the wine. Simmer for 25 minutes then take out the pears and set aside.

Continue to reduce the wine liquid. Add cornflour and water paste to complete, making sure the flour cooks out and go on until it thickens and reduces to your taste.

Set aside until needed than add the pears back in. Warm up, or serve cold. Greek yoghurt nice accompaniment as well as chilled lounge music. Candles and expectations also optional.

Live Below the Line - Final Thoughts

We finished. 'I woke up this morning and I could eat what I wanted' will never make the blues archive but it sure felt good. Thing is. I woke up hungry, but I didn't mind. I was off for a good cooked breakfast with a load of other guys. I could wait. A huge amount of the craving for food is psychological.

A few concluding thoughts from the week:

1. It would not take much more to make me happy. I didn't really miss alcohol (which was a relief). If I doubled my food budget this week I'd feel it was a luxury.

2. Just because I can afford to save time with pre-prepared food doesn't mean I need to quite so often. My home-made bread was nicer than about 90% of the loaves I could buy.

3. The recycling box is commensurately less full of food packaging than usual.

4. I had rice, pasta and oats left. Every last drop of protein and fresh vegetable had been squeezed out. If I could have found the package size to buy fewer carbs and save money it would have been good to have more carrots, onions and cheese. Low budget shopping is dull and store cupboards cannot be built up. Maybe foodbanks should include some things people never buy on a budget - stock cubes, spices, pestos etc

5. I worked hard to plan how to make the best of the last drops. For what it's worth, on the last night we had a vegetable risotto. Our box still contained:

1 carrot
1 slice of onion
Loads of frozen peas
Half a cauliflower
Rice
Half a packet (about 250mls) of pasata
1 eating apple and one old windfall from 2013
Cheap margarine/spread
Some bread
Four sachets of white sugar and one of brown

Soften a little chopped onion, carrot and cauliflower in a little oil. Set aside. Save the carrot peel, cauli leaves and stalk and onion skin. Make a vegetable stock with water and salt.

Add rice to another lightly oiled pan and mix well. On low heat slowly add strained stock and pasata to make risotto, stirring all the time as with low oil content it will stick easily. Keep adding until rice will absorb no more liquid and is cooked. Then add frozen peas to softened vegetables until all is hot. Finally add vegetables to rice, stir well, and top with fresh herbs from garden.

Serve at once.

I softened the peeled and cored apples in a little spread. I lined two small ramekins with spread and a little sugar then bread. I filled the bread cases with apple and then topped with bread, spread and brown sugar. Cooked in oven for 25 minutes to maker mini charlottes. They were lovely. A bit of cream and spread not butter would have made them dinner-party standard (and come out of the ramekins more easily).

5. A person who had not tried the week told me 'What you should do next week is work out how little you need to spend on food...'

This was infuriating. If you've not been on the battle-field don't tell me how to win the war.

6. I'm really, really glad to have had this challenge and am sending the money saved on food to the Hunger Project.

7. My cooked breakfast in the pub today cost the same as last week's food budget - £5 - but I didn't enjoy it that much.

Sausage Sandwich Game

I have posted before about how 'one with brown and bacon' was a school tuck-shop order. Since then I have to say that a sausage sandwich as a late breakfast, followed by some fruit, has been my comfort food of choice at the start of a day.

I have, over the years, been assembling the ingredients for this meal with diligence, seeking the perfect combination. Here's the current favourite.

1. Go to the Forest of Dean and ask your friend Richard to walk round to the neighbouring pig farm with you and select a beast. Wait a few months and then have the animal butchered and bagged. Select two small sausages. In this recipe 'small' means by comparison with the other sausages, not with any sausages you have previously experienced.

2. Go to Nailsea market of a Tuesday and ask the lovely Colin for a campouille. It is a round loaf with some rye flour in it. Freeze it, if you are not eating your sandwich on that Tuesday.

3. Buy a pack of Waitrose slow-matured sweet back bacon. Select one rasher.

4. Also purchase a bottle of Wilkin and Sons Tiptree brown sauce. After years of tests I have concluded that this is the only one to give HP a run for its money.

5. Collect and defrost ingredients.

6. Cut loaf in half. Then two further swishes of your blade will produce two slices, one from either side of the centre.

7. Grill sausages for 16 minutes giving a quarter-turn every 4. Add bacon after 8 and turn after 4.

8. Cut cooked sausages in half lengthways and lay flat side down on slice of bread. Place bacon on top and dribble with sauce. Cover with other slice of bread and cut whole sandwich in half.

Cost, about £50 including petrol. Preparation time 8-9 months. Available in our restaurant once retired from current day job.