Matt has his Chefs Hatton

Fishy Pies for the freezer and your tum-tum

2012-11-11T04:25:00.001-08:00

Make a huge mahoosive pan of veggie mixture, you can use the cheapest bag of frozen veg, something like 60p, an onion, bit of garlic, chuck in a cheap tin of baked beans, a squirt of ketchup or barbecue sauce, anything goes, just so long as you end up with a big tasty pile of cheap veggie mixture, cook it up and leave it to cool. The next day would be best as it leaves it time to mingle too.

So get your self some foil dishes, the sort with lids, like you get from some take-aways , use the tin foil sort, not plastic as these will going in the oven from the freezer.

Pop to the piscean produce purveyors and purchase a packet of pollock. This works out to about 43p per piece of fish.

Plop the sloppy jalopy & fish in the tin foil dish, make sure the fish is straight out of the freezer and you are putting it in cold veggie mixture as it will all be going back in the freezer any minute now.

Instant mash, this stuff is 20p a bag, tastes great and is just like real spud if you treat it right.

Just use half a bag to start with as it goes cool and difficult to work with quite quickly, half a bag will cover two fish pie dishes.

Add a pinch of dry mustard and a pinch of vegetta or salt if you prefer

After I mixed the mash, I put it back in the bag it came from, snipped off one corner with the scissors and piped the potato on top of the pies. makes life so much easier.

Pop the lids on and freeze immediately. When you want to eat one, cook it from frozen for about 40 minutes at gas 4 or 5 depending on your oven. Put some grated cheese on top for extra yummishness. I reckon one tray/dish will feed a hungry me on its own or two hungry me's with garlic bread or other accompaniment
Frozen veg 60p
Onion 10p
Beans 20p
Potato 20p
Fish £1.75
Round it up to 3 quid for 4 big 2 portion dishes
37 and a half pence per meal.
Shut up!

Vertical pork chop casserole

2012-10-21T08:17:00.002-07:00

6 pork chops found marked down to £2.50 from a fiver. Skewer them through just under the fat and suspend them in a deep enough ovenproof casserole type dish. Season, oil etc and leave to marinade in the fridge while you prepare the veg.

Take the rack from the dish and place enough chunks of frozen spinach to cover the base of the dish.

Add some chopped red onion. and chopped leeks.

Dont over fill it, as you will have to put the chops back in.

Tuck the chops back in, I did this by removing half the veg mix, putting the chops in and tucking the rest of the veg around it and some of the thinner bits in between the chops.

As I haven't actually done this before, due to only having just thought of it, I decided to place the glass lid back on to keep moisture in and stop the tops from going brown too soon.

I'm cooking these quite low in the oven at about gas 4 for an hour to start with and see how it goes, while it is cooking I am uploading these pictures and writing this blog.
I will let you know later if it turned out well or not :-)
Fingers crossed.
Warning, do not, under any circumstances, actually cross your fingers while cooking, not only is this dangerous, by virtue of the fact that it will hinder your dexterity, but there is also no proven causal link between ritualistic culinary gesticulation and the eventual edibleness of the food being prepared.

The Finished pork product, While I was toasting the ciabatta to make garlicy I took the pork out of the dish and stirred a packet of noodles in the the spinach and leek malarkey and blimey Charlie it was tastier than a very tasty thing. Loads of bold flavours, making it quite a rich and filling dinner over all.
Garlic spinach and leek being at the forefront and with carbs in the bread and noodles bringing up the rear, a surprisingly satisfying winter dish, on a scale of forty winks to food induced coma, this was in the region of after dinner snooze in front of the box., waking up in time for Downton and pudding.

Super cheap, after Christmas snack shopping.

2011-12-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Look at these goodies I found in various shops. At this time of year, all the supermarkets and little corner shops are knocking stuff down like Billy-Oh. The pork stuffing is basically the same amount of meat as you would get in a pack of sausages, but for 38p, bargain! 20p for the salad, genius!

The super tasty houmous was found in Waitrose for 10p, usually £1.49p Cheap as chick peas!

and these rolls, it's a good idea to pop into a Waitrose or an M&S Food just before it closes as they always have something reduced as they tend not to keep as much for the next day, these roll were 5p each, usually 3 for a quid. I bought about two quids worth and filled my freezer up.

I cooked the herby pork stuffing as directed, although you could make them into sausage or burger shapes quite easily, on one of them I spread about a tablespoon full of sandwich pickle just to experiment and it worked, made it even more tasty.

I grilled the inside of the rolls, dolloped a big dollop of tasty houmous in, a handful of salad, a chunk of sausage and a drizzle of sauce. SCOFF!

So, rolls, fillings and everything 20 pence a pop or there abouts.
ENJOY!

Cheap FAT FREE Christmas flavoured muffins 8p each.

2011-12-23T06:08:00.000-08:00

LOOK! A cats paw print inside an orange. Is the creator a cat? Could this explain string theory?

anyhoo on to less philosophical matters, food. To start off with I took two tablespoons of mincemeat from a jar, put it in a wee bowl with juice from a norange and and some booze., left it to mingle

100gs Self raising flour, you can get SR flour from any of the major shops for about 50p for a 1.5 kilo bag. I tried to work out how much 100gs would cost from that, less than five pence, if anyone can get a closer answer, please let me know.For reason of clarity I shall round it up to 5p to add it all up later.

a well buttered muffin tin

100gs caster sugar. about ten pence worth I reckon. so 15p so far

see? 100gs

smoosh three eggs and sugar and get plenty of air in there, I used a leccy whisk for that. Eggs are about £1,25 for 15 at Asda etc so 25p for the eggs. 40pence so far

pop a bit of unsweetened coco powder in with the flour, I have no idea how to work out the cost of a tablespoon of coco so lets say five pence, it cant be more than that surely. 45pence all in so far

and sieve into the eggy sugar mix, fold it in with a spatch, you need to fold not whip at this stage or you will kick the air out of your intended sponge mix, while you are doing this bit also fold in the mincemeat and booze you mixed together earlier.

I used a medium sized ladle to make sure each cup was equal

licky bowl a clock

15 to twenty minutes in a gas 5 oven and they should be all yumpshous and scofapig. SIX muffins for under 50 pence. NOM

leave them to cool, or not, its entirely up to you

for my next batch I cut out wee circle of grease proof paper to stop them from having sticky bottoms

start again with the 100gs sugar and three eggs, remember, lots of air at this stage.

this time I put half the sponge mix in the tins but without coco powder, dropped in a tangerine/satsuma segment in each one

quickly mixed in a tablespoon of coco into the remaining mix and dolloped it evenly in. so when they cook, they become marbled.

gas 5 15-20 mins again

and viola, a heap of Christmasy muffins

and this is what the marbled ones look like inside, mmmmmmm 12 muffins for a quid.
Oh and they are lovely fresh our of the oven with cream.

Birds love my fat balls.

2011-12-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

Something a little different for this blog,
keeping our feathered friends happy and fed during the cold weather.

When you spend a lot of time cooking and kitchening, you realise that there are some things that you just cant save for human consumption even if you are an avid believer in never throwing anything away.
If you have a big enough freezer, you can save fat and stock from meats for stews/dripping etc but you never get to use it all. No wukkas me old China-plate, just save it 'till winter.
Get a big mixing container like the one in the picture and lob your nuts in it, with the renderings of the various animals you have consumed throughout the year. For binding, I also throw in bits of bread, crackers, bacon rind, bird seed mix, pretty much anything apart from Mars Bars and chocolate etc because despite what you may have heard, birds aren't that keen on chocolate.

I covered a 12 hole fairy cake tin in foil and pressed each fat ball in to the dip. I have experimented with setting looped string into them for hanging the fat balls from the tree, but don't bother, it really is pointless, because five minutes of even the daintiest of birds pulling your nuts out will have your balls all over the shop.

Squish all the mix together good and tight, so the bread and fat bind and help the nuts and seeds stay in place. You can put these in the fridge or freezer and take them out when needed, just leave them on the grass or bird table but they work very well in the round hanging cages you can buy for putting nuts in.

So go on, feed the birds from your left overs, Don't throw anything away.

Home made mincemeat for home made Christmas pies

2011-12-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

My mincemeat was made from a bag of Tesco's VALUE mixed fruit with a few tots of Cointreau and a mulled wine bag

warmed it up in a pan for a while turned the heat off and left it to mingle for a couple of hours

chucked it in a filo sheet with some apples that came off trees for free, trees are good like that.

some with just mincemeat, some with apple and mincemeat and some with roast chop nuts in

oh look , a bit fell off. who had that then?

fat ones with apple and mincemeat, thin ones just mincemeat.

an aerial view

oh and with cream on for some reason makes them better. odd that

£6.16 pence, 30 portions of food from marked down stuff.

2011-12-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

Yep, that's right. A whole shed load of nommy foodstuffs for much cheapness.
My brother went to Waitrose on the way home from work, at about half seven in the evening and followed the lady with the big trolley who goes around reducing stuff before they close, and it paid off, check this out, over a Kilo of mince, WAITROSE MINCE, I hasten to add, for £1.28p

the veal mince I made into Koftas, long thin burgers, or skinless sausages for those of you having difficulty with the concept of long burgers :-) The beef mince I made into burgers and as I was going to make some more spanakopita (see other recipes) I would do one big cook and then freeze.

So I had the meat ready, got some filo £1.38 from Asda, with the meat that comes to £2.66p

Onions for the chopping and the cooking and a tad of garlic. It is always tricky to work out the price of one onion or a clove of garlic so in the interests of fairness I shall say a quid for them all, the shallots, as they are usually a smidge more expensive,

2 red onions and 2 white onions, put the chopped shallots in the pan ,one red onion, one white onion and chop what's left, finely, into a mixing bowl.

Get the shallots and onions over a bit of heat with some olive oil in them. While that is warming up.....

.....chuck your raw beef mince into the bowl with the onion, a good sprinkle of garlic powder and black pepper.

This is a brilliant way to pad out meatball etc dishes and so cheap, 15p, would you Adam & Eve it? It can increase the amount you get out by half as much again.

So chuck that in and mix it all up good and proper, a healthy splodge of ketchup and olive oil for binding, another big stir then bung it in the fridge while you get on with other stuff.

One bag of spinach from Asda, a quid...

Lob the frozen spinach in the pan where the onions and garlic are cooking and leave that to cook down while you turn the veal mince into.....

...Kofta shapes, I didn't add any onion to the veal mince because it's quite light and delicate in flavour, I just added bread crumbs, Vegeta (see other recipes), black pepper, oregano and olive oil. Pop them in the oven, gas 5 for about half an hour.

When the spinach has cooked down make sure it is mixed well and then drain of the excess water, try and save the green spinachy water as it's great for stocks and soups. While that is draining.....

Get the beef mince, onion mix out of the fridge and squish into 12 burger/ball shapes and put them into a muffin tin, this is the easiest way to make sure they are roughly the same size and cook properly without falling apart.
When you put these in the oven, move the veal koftas dowwn one shelf and put these in where the kofta originally were.

Chop the feta and add to the spinach, I shant go through all of that as you can find the details in other recipes on here.

ooh some cheeky so and so has gone and half inched one of the blighter's.
This is how the burgers should come out, this way you can freeze them as is or add them to a sauce, or just use them in a bun with cheese and stuff, I freeze them two to a box in them plastic containers from the curry house.

oh and I eat some too.

I also rolled some of the cooked kofta into the spinach/feta/filo pie.

and the rest I left as normal vegetarian filo pies.

See? Loads of food for not much money, £6.16p for over 30 pieces of food.
Sling most of it in the freezer, scoff some now, happy bellys.

Two home made loafs/loaves (whatever) of bread for a quid.

2011-11-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

OK, start off with a bread mix, Tesco's have a deal on at the moment which makes a bag of this stuff 65p, if you follow these simple guides, you will end up with two tasty loav..loafs ...whatever, of bread, the only other things you will need is a nonion, if you haven't go a nonion, an onion will do., and some cheese for the grating, I used cheddar this time, but parmesan is good as well. Prepare the bread as it says on the pack.
While it is doing its first proving, cut up an onion into tiny pieces, sauté until they start to soften, turn off the heat and leave to cool, grate enough cheese for about 3 slices of cheese on toast....ish.

After the first rising, divide the dough into two halves, roll the first half out flat and decorate with half of the grated cheese and cooked onion.

From the longest side, start rolling it up like a Swiss roll and place it in a large flat roasting tin, the kind you would roast spuds in.

and you should end up with something looking like a ..a er....loaf of bread. Drizzle olive oil on the top and I also drizzled a bit of yeast extract because around this time I heard that it makes your bread like Tiger Bread and produces nom nom noises when eaten

The other half of the dough should be rolled out the same as the first, but rather than rolling it up, sprinkle half of the leftover onion and cheese mixture around just the edge of the dough and fold it over like a stuff crust pizza. When you put it in the roasting tin, flip it over so the cheesy onion fold over, is underneath and put the last of the cheese and onion on the top, again use a roasting tin so as to get maximum raising during the second and last proving/raising stage.

raise the dough, covered in cling film, for 40 minutes in a top oven or grill area above the oven so its nice and warm, then bake for 30 minutes or, as they say, until Gorden Brown...no sorry, I mean golden brown, like that record by The Stranglers.

When you slice through it, this is what it should look like, swirls of cheese and onion. I'm going to have to stop typing for a minute and pop to the kitchen to see if the bread is still there and not been eaten...by mice....really big mice.

Raise and cook the other half in the same way and you should end up with a bread that looks like this and taste even better. the one thing about this type of bread though is to eat it quick before it goes off or something....that's what I said at the time anyway.

Catering for a Bonfire Night/Halloween party 40 quid

2011-11-16T03:06:00.000-08:00

This is how the food table ended up looking on the night, it was for a combined Halloween and Bonfire night type party for grown ups with booze, so the remit was, easy to eat with one hand while trying to stay upright and look cool ...oh and cater for veggies, always odd, cooking for vegetarian vampire party guests.
As well as the usual sandwiches, all veggie by the way, chicken nuggets, sausage, crisps, carrot sticks and dips, I also made a huge veggie chilli, pumpkin soup and spinach and feta filo rolls, instead of sausage rolls.

So I started off with three huge pans and a selection of onions which I mandolined up

with my mandolin

into various sizes of cut-ness, as I wanted some shredded, some diced and some chunky

Two bags of veggie mince for the start of the chill, I always dry cook my veggie mince in the pan for a while. I find this helps the texture of the whole thing when it is finished, during this stage I will add some flavourings too, in this case some tex-mex mix with extra garlic and chilli and a very large dob of yeast extract, never leave home without it.

Dividing up the onion, diced and small bits into the pan that will end up with spinach, rings and bigger bits in the veggie mince/chilli pan and the odds and sods in what will be the soup pan, that doesn't matter as it will be blitzed later when the soup has cooked down, the larger cut onions take longer to cook and give off more sweetness

start the 1 kilo bag of frozen spinach cooking down in the onions

veggie mince, seasoning and onions simmering in olive oil, the smells are starting to release now. It's amazing just how much cooking you can do by nose, you can smell the different stage so you know when to do the next part of the preparation. like getting sauce ready etc

as this was party food on a budget I did of course use only 'smart price' or 'basics' and as I was cooking all the wet dishes the day before the party, there was plenty of time for things like kidney beans to soften and flavours to mingle, if you can, always try to do these sorts of food the day before, curries, stews, soups etc all benefit from a good sitting around doing bugger all,

so the kidney beans and passata (smooshed up tomatoes) are in the chilli

as you can see it is starting to get that nice glossy look to it. We can leave that to do its own thing over a very low heat to let it all cook through and meldge. Meldge is a word I made up to to explain this process

Poke and stir, agitate and cajole the sspinach just to make ssure it is paying attention.

Pumpkin soup time, this is my first pumpkin soup ever, usually I roast these kinds of things

so I hollowed out a pumpkin, fortunately it wasn't a sleepy hollowed out pumpkin. you see what I did there? I

I savd the outer shell of the pumpkin for decorating later and shoving a candle in it for the party, in the meantime, just cook down the pumpkin flesh with some finely chopped potato, that will help give it some body later

veggie stock cubes, two of, in a pint of hot water, chuck this in the pan and leave to simmer for about an hour on a low heat.

back to the spinach, after having drained the excess water off, chuck in a whole packet of feta, usually a 200g pack is the size they come in, this is enough for the 1 kilo bag of spinach, in this amount you want to add THE SECRET INGREDIENT and I shall tell you what that is.... NUTMEG, yes that's right, nutmeg makes this the dish that it is, the flavour it imparts is out of this world, I use about half to three quarters of a freshly grated nutmeg.

at this point I turned around in the kitchen from photographing my cooking, only to see the hound of hell on my heels , note the dinner bowl to right is untouched but she is hounding me for what I'm cooking.

next I turn my attention to the parsely, freh from the stalk, cut up in a tea mug with scissors , so much easier than on a chopping board.

lob the parsley in the feta-spinach mix, check the flavour, see it it needs a pinch of anything, you should be able to taste the parsley, feta, spinach, nutmeg equally

Prep your sheets of filo like this, add olive oil with a brush when needed

roll carefully and not too tight. brush with a butter olive oil mixture before baking, medium heat 20 minutes to half an hour turning once if you can

and they should come out all golden brown like that, you MUST cool these on a wire rack so they don't get soggy bottoms, nothing worse. that was it for day one of cooking. time for a glass or three and to let all that lot settle

so, on to day two, in the afternoon before the party, I cooked up a bunch of cheap sausages in mustard and brown sugar, I also did another lot in balsamic vinegar

I cooked up a dozen eggs, some for egg mayo in the sarnies and some like this hard boiled , with egg mayo centres, half a black olive and a dob of ketchup to make them look like eyes, Halloween stylee

I put them on a platter with ripped up hot dogs to make it look like fingers, ha ha finger food, get it? finger foo...oh never mind.

That's the pumpkin in the corner from yesterday, all carved up, the pumpkin soup was blended in the pan with a hand blender and I didn't get a picture of it as I was too busy, the sandwiches were brown bread, egg mayo with rocket, egg mayo with spicy tomato chutney and grated cheese with the same chutney. a tray full of spinach/feta filo rolls, chicken nuggets flavoured with texmex seasoning, mustard sausages, dips, bread rolls, veggie chilli, carrot sticks, stuffed vine leaves, monster munch and a couple of packets of dark chocolate fingers in case anyone had a sweet tooth.

My Jack Skellington pumpkin with sand witches and skull candle

Waiting to be eaten.

just enough time to have a kip and put my make up on. I was meant to a zombie but I ended up looking Kung-Fu Panda. Oh well.

Cheap and very tasty roast dinners, 50p each.

2011-11-14T01:46:00.000-08:00

Start off the potatoes roasting, today I flavoured them with fresh ground black pepper. vegeta seasoning, which you will see me banging on about in my other recipes that I've blogged, and I also used a small sprinkling of sage, this goes really well with potato, about a teaspoon full of sage for a roasting pan full of spuds, enough for four grown up piggies.

Next, I decided to try making a cheap veggie roast loaf, using a stuffing mix that I found in the back of the cupboard, when I saw it was roast vegetable, I decided to drag a piece of feta type cheese from the fridge

I seasoned the stuffing, very lightly, no salt or vegeta at all because most shop bought things have enough salt in them to kill a slug factory, so a pinch of pepper, a bit of oregano, a tiny bit of garlic powder, and a small spoonful of yeast extract, in an attempt to impart some kind of meaty flavour to the end result.

Normally I would crumble up cheese like this but I had a last minute flash of inspiration and decided to slice it instead.....and......

slice it to fit the stuffing squished onto a silicon baking sheet, I used the silicon so it wouldnt stick. I then sploshed a good drizzle of olive oil all over the shop.

Time to check the spuds, they are about halfway through, so I can get the stuffing ready to go in the oven too.

So I rolled the stuffing up like a Swiss roll, hoping that the look off the thing would be nice when sliced and on the plate, I've never done this before with stuffing so fingers crossed.

now this picture may look like a scene from the latest CSI but it is in fact the sausage pan, a cheap, bog standard pack of sausages, these cheap jobbies are not usually very flavoursome so I decided to put put some bang in my bangers by dowsing them liberally with balsamic glaze

That's the stuff, it's a lot thicker than usual balsamic vinigar , which you can also so use but this caramelises easier in a hot oven and gives you a very tasty sausage. which is always nice.

OH NOOOOOOOO. My genius idea fell flat on its bottom. You know what I did? I unwrapped it too soon after getting it out of the oven. I was impatient to see what I had created and paid the price, but, it was flipping tasty though.

So I dolloped it all on a plate with Yorkshire puds, 45p for a bag of 15 from Sainsburys or 35p for a bag of twelve from Asda, cheaper than chips! Three leeks which I found yellow stickered down to 20p, a splash ov veggie gravy granules which I zinged up using garlic granules and a dob of yeast extract,

4 dinners of nom nom nominess,
potatoes 30p,
stuffing 80p
leeks 20p
sausages 50p
yorkies 45p (puds, not chocolate bars favoured by lorry drivers)
other bits and pieces probably another 20p ish, so each roast dinner was a bout 50 pence each.

Twenty turkey meatballs/burgers for three quid

2011-10-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Two Packets of turkey mince, I'm forever seeing Turkey mince in the supermarket, marked down for quick sale. Maybe no one else is buying it but that's fine, all the more for me at much cheapness. These two packs were about 90 pence each from Asda, throw it in a bowl and jig it around a bit to get it all loosened up.

Season with pepper and vegeta, bit of garlic powder, oregano and I also found some cous-cous in the cupboard, so I used half a packet of that thrown in for padding and to help absorb the excess moisture, you can use stuffing mix as well, sage and onion or whatever, this helps hold ones balls together later on.

If you haven't got a mandolin then get one, it's the poor mans Moulinex. Chop up four large onions half rings and half finely cut, throw the fine cut onion into the bowl with the mince and start the rings sautéing gently in olive oil ...

...while you start forming the mince mixture in to balls.

Before you go any further, form a bit of the mixture into a small burger shape, about the size of a Baby-Bell, and cook this in a teaspoon of olive oil in a non-stick pan, make sure it is completely cooked and scoff it, see what the flavour is like and if you need to add anything.

Roll in seasoned flour, I seasoned my flour with black pepper and Vegeta ...

I first found vegeta years ago in Greece, it's used all over mainland Europe and it is just starting to show up on UK supermeerkat shelves. It is like a salt, savoury food flavouring and I use it now in pretty much every savoury dish I make, in place of salt. Get some and try it.

So once you are happy with your balls, start gently frying them, this should help then stay together in the tomato sauce.

The tomato sauce was just a plain tin off chopped tomatoes. nothing fancy. They were tipped into the sautéed onions from earlier and I added another tin full of water from washing the sauce from the bottom of the tin. Most of this will cook off as steam during the simmering of the meatballs. If I'm in the mood for making my sauce fancy, I add vinegar, brown sugar and cinnamon but this time I couldn't be bothered with the faff, so I just put a big squirt of squeezy ketchup instead, because I'm common like that.

So simmer your balls gently, on a low heat, so your balls don't stick, and agitate them from time to time, just to make sure they are OK.

During the simmering, I stir in a good teaspooney sized dollop of yeast extract and let it mingle and melt through the tomato sauce, it gives it a bit more of a meaty beefy flavour and makes me do NOM NOM NOM noises.

Out of the two packs of turkey mince I made 12 meetballs in tomato sauce to go in the freezer...

...and 8 or so burgers.

After I had taken the 12 meatballs and put them in the sauce, I left the remaining meatballs in the frying pan and squished them with the spatula so they looked more burgery and fit in to a roll better than a meatball does.

I make them this size rather than big burger size for the same reason, because most of the general supermarket rolls aren't that huge and of course this make it go further NOM NOM NOM etc.

I ended up eating my burgers with fresh tomatoes in balsamic glaze and garlic bread cut into burger sized slices and caramelised onion chutney. I then lay on the floor in a food coma.

20 plus dinners for 25 pence each.

2011-10-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Two bags of Asda smart price frozen veg

67p each plus a carton of Pasata 25p

£1.59 so far

1/3 of a bag of veggie mince 55p and an onion 10p.
£2.24 so far

splash of balsamic glaze on the veggie mince to caramelise it

beef mince £1, 1 onion 10p.

£3.34 so far.

free potatoes, thanks Paul and Phil.

(Some are home grown, therefore FREE and some were about to be thrown away so also FREE)

soaking the sliced potato in hot, salted water

2 pints of milk 50p, flour nutmeg cheese etc £1.

£4.84p so far

some leftover mushrooms, they were on the wonk, so it was either cook ‘em or chuck ‘em.

CHUCK ‘EM???! WE DON’T THROW FOOD AWAY!!

two oven dishes being filled up with about a fivers worth of ingredients, one veggie dish and one meaty dish. This is the veg in passata layer.

a layer of sliced potato in one dish and leftover lasagne sheets in the other dish,

followed by mushrooms and cheese sauce in the veg dish and beef/onion in the meat dish

another layer of potato

and/or lasagne...

The smaller of the two dishes is the vegetarian one.

last layer of cheese sauce and a sprinkle of smoked pimento powder for the veggie dish….

grated cheese and saucy sauce on the meaty dish...

...and viola!

Two huge dishes of food for a fiver.

Approximately 22 portions of food. Less than 25p per portion. You do the maths.

I will post some pictures of it sliced up at some future stage, when it doesn't get eaten immediately… probably