2022 £1-a-day Food Challenge - Day #2

Breakfast yesterday on Day 2 of my £1-a-day Food Challenge was the same as the previous day, as you can see from the pic. I changed the porridge bowl to a smaller one though so that the portion didn't look quite so meagre!

I discovered the idea of fig-leaf syrup a couple of years ago. It's a traditional South African recipe from The Cape where housewives were very good at being thrifty and creative with what was available. One of their ingenious ideas was using fig leaves to flavour both a straightforward syrup and a gin-based liqueur. I've made both in the past and they're rather good. The leaves give a slightly nutty flavour to the syrup that is not dissimilar to maple syrup. 

We inherited a large, mature fig tree in the garden and in 2020 it produced lots of the most fabulous figs. 

Last year it produced no fruit to speak of at all but whether or not it fruits, there are always plenty of leaves. And at this time of year they are young and fresh and extra good in this syrup.

To make fig-leaf syrup, pick about 12 fresh fig leaves. I don't bother to wash them, especially when they're so new but you can if you want. 

Put 300g granulated sugar in a largish pan and add 300g water. Bring to the boil and add your leaves. Push them under the surface a bit with a wooden spoon. Simmer for about 20 minutes, then leave to cool. Strain the syrup through a muslin lined sieve and with scrupulously clean hands squeeze every last drop of syrup out of the leaves. It has a lovely chartreuse green colour.

Pour into sterilised lidded bottles and pasteurise if you want to keep it for a long time or store in the frigo for immediate consumption. Very good on porridge or pancakes or anything where you want a drizzle of aromatic sweetness.

The cost of the whole batch is just the cost of the sugar - in this case 21p (from a Sainsbury's 5kg bag of granulated sugar). It made 476g of syrup in total ie 4p per 100g. 

Lunch was small but choice, if I can put it like that! 

The sourdough crackers are, dare I say it, better than any self-respecting, dry, old cracker ought to be! I say that as someone who is not normally a great fan of crackers and who would always really prefer bread with cheese, say. But these are unequivocally good. The fact that they work out at only a fraction over a penny a cracker is an added bonus!

Like all the best crackers, they have a proportion of rye in them. The recipe I've devised, after a number of experimentations over the years, is as follows:

200g recently fed and bubbly white sourdough starter (50% flour and 50% water) (Ocado white bread flour 7p)

75g wholemeal flour (milled from Brow Farm wheat grain from a 20kg sack bought last year 9p)

75g rye flour (milled from Gilchester Organics rye grain from Bakerybits 18p)

20g rapeseed oil (Aldi 6p)

10ml whole milk (Ocado 4pt bottle nil)

½tsp salt (Sainsbury's Cooking Salt nil)

2g ground aniseed* (Just Ingredients 4p)

*Aniseed is not that easy to come by in this country. Just Ingredients stock it as do Buy Wholefoods Online. I buy it unground and grind it as needed in a spice grinder but they sell it pre-ground too. I love it and use it in my baking a lot. In this recipe you can't detect the aniseed as a distinct flavour - it just brings out the taste of the rye. If you prefer, you could use ground fennel or caraway seed. 

Total cost 44p.

The dough needs to be made the day before baking in order to give it a rest and make sure that it behaves nicely when you roll it out. Just mix everything well together and form into a ball. Put it in a bowl, cover with a plate and put it in the frigo overnight. The following day, divide the dough into 24 small balls. Roll each ball out as thin as you dare on a floured surface. The dough is actually extremely cooperative. You can cut around a saucer or small plate if you want your crackers to be perfect discs but I leave them ragged as I think they're more characterful like that and it's enough of a faff rolling each one out as it is, without re-rolling all the offcuts.

Prick each thin disc with the tines of a fork or roll over it again with a kruskavel, (one of those knobbly Swedish rolling pins). Traditionally, each disc then had a small hole punched in it before baking so that the crackers could be threaded on a string or pole and hung up out of the reach of mice or other pests. I used a bottle top to cut my holes. Transfer your crackers to lined baking sheets and bake at 180 ℃ for around 12-15 minutes depending on how hot your oven is and how thin you rolled your crackers. They are ready when they are crisp, tinged a darker brown and curling slightly at the edges. 

The centres make little nibbly biscuits you can serve with drinks or just eat them! I'm saving mine for an end of the day freebie nibble with a cup of tea.

Tea  

Supper was pasta with tomato sauce which may be simple but made with an intense, homemade tomato sauce, I think it's one of my favourite dishes and something I make all the time so I was pleased to be able to include it, only marginally adapted from my normal version, in my budget menu. 

The homemade egg pasta is only possible because our bantams have been laying in profusion for which I am very grateful. Using 500g strong white flour (Ocado 35p), 8g salt (Sainsbury's Cooking Salt nil), 5 bantam eggs (nil) and 8g Puglian olive oil (Aldi 6p), this comes out at 41p and makes enough pasta for four people at 10p each.

The sauce is made from the following:

8g Puglian olive oil (Aldi 6p)

250g onions (from a bag of Wonky Onions from Aldi 12p)

1 stick celery (Aldi 2p)

126g carrot (Aldi 6p)

1 red pepper (from a bag of 5 Wonky Peppers from Aldi 19p)

1 tin of chopped tomatoes (Aldi 28p)

a bunch of Greek oregano (from the garden nil)

a pinch of salt and black pepper (Sainsbury's / Aldi nil)

the water from soaking my dried tomatoes at lunchtime (nil)

Total cost 73p. Divided into four portions this works out at 18p per person. 

I cook this in the pressure cooker with a bit of extra water used to rinse out the tomato tin for 12 minutes and then remove the lid and reduce the sauce until it's nice and thick. Sometimes I blitz it to a rough purée consistency with a stick blender and sometimes I don't. Today I did. It's made 636g of sauce in total.

I added some fresh chopped oregano from the garden (nil) and 1 tsp (3g) of Grana Padano cheese grated from a 200g hunk from Aldi (2p)

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