A new look at Lunch

Our visit to the delicatessen in Ystad, described in last week’s post provided the inspiration for a sea-change in our lunch habits once back home. Unlike the French, we don’t eat our main meal at 12 noon. In fact, anything too substantial puts me into a soporific state that hampers my afternoon in front of the computer. French ‘sandwich’ food is pretty uninspiring –­ I usually alternate between avocado and boiled eggs, either with bread or crackers. OH’s lunch ranges between hummus, guacamole, tzatziki, tabbouleh, carrot rape and celery remoulade, or a mixture of all, topped with a generous dose of the hottest chilli sauce he can find. All of these ingredients are pre-prepared, in plastic pots and bought in the local supermarkets at a weekly cost of somewhere in the region of €12.15. Of course, the cost, financial and environmental, is not in the food alone, but in the petrol to buy fresh every couple of days, and all the other stuff that inevitably finds its way into the trolley during the trip.

After three weeks in Scandinavia I was really looking to keep a strict rein on the budget, so was once again trying to use all the stuff in the store cupboard. I’d not been very successful with this mission during Frugal February though. In both Sweden and Germany we had been able to buy both pasta salad and potato salad, two things which we can’t get locally here. But the recipes are actually so simple that I wondered why I hadn’t tried making them. In fact, if I was organised it would just be a question of boiling a few extra handfuls of pasta or a few more potatoes when cooking an evening meal. It was time to take the lunch menu in hand.

So far, I’ve made potato salad, pasta salad and tabbouleh, with the only extra ingredients being a tub of fresh mayonnaise (€2.17 – whoa! I’ll have to find a vegan recipe for that), a jar of Sakalis feta and herbs in oil (€1.90), a tub of cherry tomatoes (€0.99) and a cucumber (€0.89  ), plus half a bag of pasta, couscous, and some potatoes that were in the store. Total cost, I reckon, for two weeks was €6.91 which is half the cost of one week on the old regime. The recipes were really simple, just a matter of mixing up the ingredients on the list, or whizzing them in the food processor:

Potato salad

250-400g new potatoes, cubed
Three-four tbsp. mayonnaise
Chopped fresh or frozen herbs
Salt and pepper

Simply boil the potatoes until cooked, drain and chill by running under cold water and allow to dry. Pour into airtight tub, add three or four tablespoons of mayo, two or three teaspoons of chopped herbs, salt and pepper to taste, mix well until all potatoes are covered in light layer of mayo, and chill.

Pasta salad

Two or three handfuls of pasta (cook extra at dinnertime)
Jar of feta cheese in oil with herbs

Boil pasta until al dente, drain and chill by running under cold water until cold. Pour into airtight tub. Add a couple of tablespoons of the oil from the feta jar and stir well until all pasta is coated. This stops it going ‘rubbery’. Add as much feta cheese and herby oil as required, mix and chill. You can also add chopped tomatoes, cucumber, anything you fancy.

Tabbouleh

One cup of quick-cook couscous
Cherry tomatoes, chopped finely
Cucumber, diced finely
Salt and pepper

Put dry couscous directly into the airtight tub. Boil kettle and add same quantity of boiled water. Put the lid over the tub, but do not snap it shut. Set aside for five minutes or so. Fluff up the couscous with a fork and add a little olive oil, or some oil from the feta jar is nice, too. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, cucumber and whatever else you fancy, or is left over – black olives, onion, a few spoons of the feta mix is nice too.

Once I’d got the salads sorted it was time to think about the ‘protein’ element: hummus. Luckily I’d got a couple of jars of tahini from a Holland & Barrett order, as it can be tricky to find locally, and both the freezer and the cupboard seemed to be overflowing with tins and bags of chickpeas. My first experiment to find a good basic hummus recipe turned out a little overpowering on the garlic front. (I do like to ‘jack up’ the seasonings). However, the next batch was far more palatable and so simple. Just bung the following into the food processor, whizz up, scrape into an airtight box and chill:

Good basic hummus

One 400g tin of cooked chickpeas, drained and washed (keep the aquafaba)
Two tbsp. lemon juice (bottled is OK)
Two cloves of garlic (better if crushed before it goes in the processor bowl)
One tsp ground cumin
One tsp smoked paprika (or plain)
One tbsp. tahini
Two tbsp. vegetable or olive oil
Add a tbsp. or so of water for a runnier consistency

The next time I came to make the lunch batch I decided to have a go at making the mayonnaise. Fresh mayonnaise is made of egg yolk, vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil, but as I’m keen to develop our vegan repertoire I was looking for a good vegan alternative. This is where the aquafaba comes in. I just measured all these ingredients into the blender, gave them a good whizz and hey presto! Vegan Mayo. For the potato salad I then added a couple of sprigs of parsley, pulsed the blender a few times to chop up and poured over the cooked potatoes in their storage box.

Vegan Mayo

3 tbsp aquafaba plus 12 chickpeas
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
60–100 ml Olive or vegetable oil (depending on consistency)
Salt and pepper

OK. Going well and some more money saved. In fact, compared to €2.17 for tub of fresh mayo, this was virtually free. In the past, I’ve always thrown away brine from tins of beans, but now I collect it without fail, and freeze if there is no immediate need to use it. To keep OH’s interest in the project I next needed to find some alternative hummus flavours. There was a wilting pot of basil on the kitchen windowsill, so I decided to use the last of its edible leaves by making a Sun-dried tomato and basil hummus. No garlic this time, for a change. And, the basil plant hasn’t gone to waste (yet!). I’ve planted it outside in the herb trough, so we’ll see if a little fresh air, proper soil and water will give it a second lease of life.

 Sun-dried tomato and basil hummus

One 400g tin of cooked chickpeas, drained and washed (keep the aquafaba)

Eight sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained
Two tbsp. lemon juice (bottled is OK)
One tbsp. tahini
½ tsp smoked paprika (or plain)
½ tsp chilli salt
Two–four tbsp. vegetable or olive oil or use oil from the tomato jar for even more depth of flavour

Next week, I’m going to try out a salad vegetable we rarely eat – radish.