Favourite cooking tips from Daily Kitchen Live
Over the last two weeks we’ve seen the Saturday Kitchen Live studio get a lot more action than usual. That’s because, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the food we’ve been able to cook, the weekend TV team decided to make a daily show focusing on simple meals using easy-to-source ingredients.
At the helm have been Saturday Kitchen’s Matt Tebbutt and Bootstrap Cook Jack Monroe. On Facebook and Twitter, we asked you if you had any questions for them, and you certainly did. Now here’s the advice Matt has responded with, along with some of our favourite tips from the show…
When the meat, fish or cheese in your fridge is different from usual...
“What can you do with chicken/mince/meatballs that doesn’t require chopped tomatoes?”
Matt’s advice: “I would use a tin of coconut milk and then add any sort of curry paste. A good one is green curry paste, as you can make a Thai sauce and all you have to do is chuck in a load of chopped spring onions, spinach or any other greens you can get your hands on!”
“What’s a substitute for bacon?”
Matt’s advice: “Smoked sausages! They’ll give a similar taste. Or, of course, you could try and get gammon.”
“What should I do with frozen mackerel fillets?”
Matt’s advice: “The obvious thing would be rillettes, which is like a paté. So, you take your mackerel and mix it with a bit of salted butter, a squeeze of lemon and finely grated lemon zest. Then, if you can, add some herbs – if have any dill, parsley or tarragon those would work well. Then mix through about a spoonful of cream cheese, or a little bit of crème fraiche. And there you’ve got your mackerel rillettes.”
“Can you use cottage cheese in a pasta sauce?”
Matt’s advice: “Yeah, you could. You need to use it in the same way you would ricotta.”
Daily Kitchen Live’s top fresh food tips:
Make the most of your freezer. Why not batch-cook mince all at once, then freeze it in portion sizes, so it’s less likely to go unused and you can just take it out of the freezer when you need it? Want inspiration? Shivi Ramoutar makes these great tacos using batch-cooked mince on the show.
If you’re struggling to get hold of fresh fish, tinned or frozen fish is usually easy to come by. Tinned fish is brilliantly cheap and versatile, as Matt shows us with his potato bread with salmon and tuna and green bean salad.
Tinned meat is handy standby ingredient. Jack uses corned beef in place of mince in her chilli con carne.
Finally, use your leftovers! Matt turns Sunday roast leftovers into a lamb and rice broth.
When the store cupboard is almost bare...
Image source, BBC“What can you make with bulgur wheat other than tabbouleh?”
Matt’s advice: “Try toasting it and then sprinkling it through salads – it will give it a bit of crunch. In fact, whatever way you cook bulgur, it’s preferable to toast it first to get a nutty taste. To do this, dry-fry it to make it a little charred and smoky, then cook it in a bit of water or stock.”
“What to use instead of wine?”
Matt’s advice: “This week, Jack Monroe – who is king of tin-can cooking – showed us how to substitute wine in dishes. Instead she uses black tea, which gives a similar taste. So she has a recipe that makes a sauce using a cup of tomato sauce and a cup of black tea. That, slowly cooked, will give you an Italian-style taste.”
“What can you do with marrowfat peas that isn’t just mushy peas?”
Matt’s advice: “If you’ve got flour and a couple of eggs, I’d make fritters. Drain the peas until they’re pretty dry and then mix them with a dried herb or a bit of spice to give a lift and kick. Mix in an egg or two and add flour to bring it all together, then make little fritters with them in the same way we do with sweetcorn. You could also make a risotto-style dish with the marrowfat peas and long-grain rice: fry the rice and peas and then add the stock gradually.” Jack makes versatile fritters on the show.
What vegan dishes can you make without rice or pasta?”
Matt’s advice: “Pulses like chickpeas, lentils and cannellini beans are great. I’d be slow cooking any of these with tomatoes and then I’d finish it with chopped nuts that you might have left over from Christmas. Then if you can get a jar of vegan pesto and stir in a spoonful of that, it’ll really add to the taste. You could make your own pesto of course, but just leave out the cheese.”
”What would you do with this selection: tins of tuna, tomatoes, potatoes and mixed beans, plus dried pasta?”
Matt’s advice: “I would cook the pasta and then let it go cold. Make the tinned tomatoes tastier by reducing them in a saucepan by about half and adding what herbs and spices you have to hand. Mix in the tuna and stir it all together with the pasta. Then stick it in a frying pan and fry it so it ends up being like a pasta bake as it all sticks together. Turn it over, cook it through, and then you can slice it up. With the tinned potatoes I’d make a potato salad either with sour cream or mayonnaise, or you could just add a little olive oil and garlic. I use tinned mixed beans all the time and they make excellent patties! Just blitz them up in a food processor, add some spices, then fry them up.”
Daily Kitchen Live’s top store-cupboard tips:
Having a few tins of lentils on standby means you’ll always have a healthy, nutritious – and cheap – meal at the ready. Jack Monroe’s dal makhani packs a taste-punch, but with no overnight soaking of lentils is surprisingly quick to prepare.
Jack turns tinned carrots into these carrot cake overnight oats. She also says you can use butter beans (or lots of other tinned beans) instead of chickpeas in her beetroot hummus.
Use your store-cupboard ingredients to make batches of sauces and then freeze, so they’re at the ready when you need them. This coconut curry sauce from Shivi Ramoutar will go down a treat!
For an inexpensive thickener for curries or stews, try adding torn up pieces of bread to the sauce as it cooks. Jack uses this technique for her spinach and chickpeas with bread.
For a sweet treat, if you have any kind of tinned fruit and chocolate in the house, you can make a twist on Jack’s white chocolate and peach cake. For instance, try dark chocolate with tinned cherries or pears.
How to cook with different types of flour
Image source, BBC“How do you use coconut flour, can you substitute it for normal flour?”
Matt’s advice: “Hmm, no I’m afraid not. I talked to Jack about it the other day and she said it’s actually pretty difficult to work with as it behaves quite peculiarly, so you’ll really need to use recipes that specify coconut flour.”
What can I use as a substitute for flour?
Matt’s advice: “Ground almonds are good, but you’ll need to use a pinch of baking powder with them. Alternatively, if you have a spice grinder, you could blitz up some porridge oats, but again you’ll need a pinch of baking powder.”
“Can you make pizza using wholemeal very strong bread flour?
Matt’s advice: “Yes. And if you do end up finding some lighter flour over the next few weeks, you can still use the wholemeal bread flour but mix it 50/50 with the plain flour. The reason being wholemeal flour is very dense! If you don’t have any yeast, I would make it more like a flatbread – which you could then top with ingredients like a pizza. To make the flatbreads you mix yoghurt with the flour and a pinch of baking powder.”
”Can you make a good pizza dough if you’ve only got self-raising flour?”
Matt’s advice: “Yeah, why not? Bear in mind it’s not going to be the sort of pizza you know and love, but you’ll get a dough out of it – it’ll just puff up a bit more than normal. Again, you could make a flatbread out of it, using the yoghurt method I mention above. That works a treat, it’s just nice and light!"
Daily Kitchen Live’s top flour tips
There are versatile alternatives to regular flour out there. Gram flour, which is made with chickpeas, makes a great base in this frying pan pizza. You can also make yeast-free dough for pizza, as in the calzone made on the show.
Add mashed potato to pastry to reduce the amount of flour and butter needed, as in this simple pie
