Tuesday

Cor, this week is already dragging. Tuesday’s sustenance consisted of:

banana

porridge

leftover ragu with bulgur wheat from last night (minus the broccoli)

2 petits

curried cauliflower steak with dal and potato curry.

and a reduced chocolate choux bun!! 22p!

I’d wanted to do a curry, because I cook a lot of vegetable curries anyway, so it felt comforting to have Live Below the Line curry recipes which weren’t far from what we’d usually eat on a week night.

Live Below the Line Curry recipes: Curried cauliflower steak with yellow split pea dal and spicy potato curry

The dal and potato are curries I do regularly anyway, but I’d wanted to try this cauliflower steak idea for a while.

Ingredients:

potato curry:

2 potatoes – 10p

potato spice – 1p

1 tbsp oil – 1p

dal:

1/2 onion – 3p

dal (1/5 bag) – 10p

turmeric – 1p

1tbsp oil – 1p

spiced cauliflower steaks:

cauli steak slices cut from the centre of a cauli – 13p

garam masala, turmeric & ginger powder – 3p

1 tbsp oil – 1p

 

Method:

For the potato curry:

I literally cut 2 potatoes into cubes and put in a pan with 1tbsp oil, and about 1 1/2 tsp potato spice (yes, sorry, what is this? Answer is, I don’t know. I bought a bag of it in Rajasthan. It’s sublime. Go for 1/2 tsp garam marsala, 1/4 tsp strong chilli powder and 1/2 tsp turmeric – might do a similar-ish job). I fry this potato and spice mix in the oil until it really begins sticking to the pan, then whoosh some water in there. Cover up the potatoes, and let the water bubble away again (you might have to do this a couple of times, until the potatoes are softened with crozzley edges). You want to end up with well cooked, dry potatoes.

For the dal:

chop your onion (I would usually use garlic and ginger too, but hey not this week). Fry it in oil until translucent, then add a tsp of turmeric powder. This could do with a deeper spice profile, but you know what, it is totally doing the job this week with the limited options I have! Cook until the water evaporates (again, you may have to add more) and the split peas are cooked to your liking. I like them softened, but still with a nutty texture, which probably takes about 30 mins.

For the spiced cauliflower steak:

I drizzled the slices of cauli with the oil and rubbed in ginger powder and garam masala (looking forward to trying this again with a less limited spice profile!) and put into a hot frying pan. I left to sizzle for probably a minute, until golden as you can see, then flipped. Your cooking time will depend on the thickness of your slice – try not to slice TOO thickly.

And phew, what a relief, I had some pennies left over! A brief nostalgic wander down the aisles of M&S and I was confronted with 2 reduced choux buns – for 45p. Excellent! We were full.

 

Wednesday

On Wednesday I went in for the usual porridge for breakfast. I went soup for lunch, and actually ended up quite full – blessings be to the 10p reduced white loaf I found!

Wednesday dinner was a dream. I cooked chips. AMAZING. Just oil and potatoes, and I gave myself 5p for condiments too – a squeeze of ketchup and a blob of BBQ! Then we had the vegetable ragu from earlier on in the week on some pasta. What a carb fest! But for once, we went to bed full.

At least this challenge has done wonders for my maths – my brain has had to divide all sorts of figures through the week. All these workings, for just a day or so! I’ve got a book full!