With the cost of food and energy going through the roof, everyone started to act differently in the way that they shop and feed themselves and their family. And I really wanted to be as useful as possible to you in this time. So for me, it's about thinking about those basic cooking skills that can look after you.
I've had to study hundreds and hundreds of ingredients across four big supermarkets. Really go back to basics, principles, hacks, tips. Come on.
We might be cooking on a budget, but this is delicious food. Every single ingredient has been costed to offer recipes that are incredible value. Clever cooking to keep costs down. Have a look at that. Maximum flavor, minimum cost.
This time I want to share some simple skills that will get you delicious food without the fuss. This is not about getting a ruler out. This is about dinner. An epic Yorkshire pudding that takes everyday veg to new heights.
Look at that. I've got a couple of cracking dishes that are quick to cook on budget. That's making me smile. The old endorphins are going. And I've asked my mate Chetna to share her time, money, and energy saving tips with a beautiful batch recipe.
When cooking on a budget, it's really good to have those basic skills of making bread, pasta, noodles to really help drive cost down. And this recipe is a classic that everyone should have a go at.
So, I want to share a super easy gnocchi made from scratch with just potato and flour, served with bacon and peas in a creamy cheesy sauce. What's not to love?
I realize people don't have time to cook from scratch every single day of the week, but when you do, there's certain recipes that really help you save loads of cash, and this one absolutely does that. I'm going to make homemade gnocchi. I've got a kilo of beautiful potatoes in the microwave, but I've given a little prick with a knife and put in there for like 25 minutes until soft. Split them in half like that. Let them steam a little bit. And then I'll take a little spoon and I'll scoop out the fluffy cooked potato. So what is gnocchi? It's a beautiful potato dumpling like pasta. It's a fantastic carrier of flavors. So you can toss gnocchi with pesto. You can have it with tomato sauces. If you actually make it, it's going to be more delicious. You'll be more proud of yourself. And it's cheaper, right? So it's a really good little skill to learn.
I was lucky enough to make gnocchi with a wonderful nonna, a grandmother, in a famous little trattoria in Rome, and it was very interesting because her recipe was different to what I'd been taught at college. You're taught to use egg yolks and flour. She didn't use any eggs, just minimal flour, which is much more relevant to when you cook them at home. These skins, by the way, I'm going to keep. They are fantastic for stuffing with spring onions, cheddar cheese, red Leicester. Put them in the oven till crispy. Little dips. The kids go mad for it. So, we're going to waste nothing. Okay. What I'm going to do is season the potato generously with salt.
I'm going to get a little flour, about 80 g, but I'll try and use as little as possible. I'm going to add about 40 g. And then I'm going to mash up the potato to make it nice and smooth. This is an incredibly simple recipe to do. People get really nervous about it. So, I want to break those nerves and that fear because it's really very easy to do. So, once you've given it a nice mash so it's smooth, start using your hands, almost treating it like bread dough. Really work with it while it's still warm. And I'm feeling with my fingers like, how is it? Is it pliable? Is it just breaking?
The more flour you use, the heavier they get. So, our battle as the cook is to use the least amount of flour as possible. And I'm just feeling now that I can roll it out to a little sausage. And what I'm doing is just putting pressure in the middle and gently pushing out like that. If any of it breaks, it doesn't matter. Roll this out. Ideally, it's about 2 cm across. Don't worry if it's a little bit kind of, you know, uneven, right? This is a rustic dish, right? This is not about getting a ruler out. This is about dinner. This is about feeding yourself and the family or friends. I'll add a bit more flour here on top. But I'm very, very happy with that.
Rack up these lovely gnocchi sausages like that. Then we're going to go about an inch across. And it's very, very simple.
So once you've cut them about an inch, we're going to give them a little pinch with our thumb and forefinger. Just like that. And that's it.
So I've got a pan on here. I'm going to put that on a medium, medium-high heat. And we're going to make the most delicious sauce. So grab a board. That's smoked back bacon. And I'm going to use this because it's going to add a depth of flavor and a smokiness. Four rashers is more than enough. So, in the pan we go with some olive oil. We want to drag out the natural fats in the bacon. It won't take long.
Smells amazing. We're going to go in with plenty of black pepper. We want a little heat from that. Two cloves of garlic. So, we love that garlic. Bacon. Just going to slice and then chop up the garlic. And you see how the color is really nice. Just gentle golden color on the bacon the minute that garlic hits the pan. Different level.
Right. Let's get some veg into the story. We're going to use a reliable, very reliable friend, frozen peas. So 200 g. This is an amazing way to serve peas as a side dish as well. Look at that. Now, use the back of the spoon to break up the peas. I want the sweetness to come out of the peas. So, subtle things like breaking it up make a radical difference to the flavor of this dish.
So, now I go in with 150 ml of single cream. This is going to be indulgent. It's going to be gorgeous. Let that boil up. So, because we bashed up the peas, you're going to get an amazing pastel green color, which is really, really beautiful. I'm going to grate 75 grams of cheddar cheese. It melts beautifully. The flavor is really, really good. As soon as that's come to the boil, the sauce is done. So, I'm going to switch it off and the residual heat will just melt the cheese really nicely. Right, let's cook the gnocchi.
Like pasta, you want to be cooking it in seasoned water. Because they're fresh, they're only going to take like 3 or 4 minutes to cook. And they're cooked when they float. So that's how easy it is. Put the lid on just as it comes up to the boil. Again, let's do a bit of cleaning. While that's cooking, it's good to have the lid. The lid speeds up the cooking, but it also saves energy. So, a bit of a win-win. Can you see the bubbles coming up? Lid off now. So you can see the gnocchi floating. They're cooked. All you need to do now is get your gnocchi. Look how delicate they are. And pop them into your sauce. Beautiful. The sauce is still hot. The cheese has melted. And you can use a spoon or a spatula to stir it up. Personally, I just like to sort of gently toss it in the sauce.
Look at that. Come on. Beautiful. Gorgeous sauce. Can you see how shiny that sauce is? Cheese galore. A little black pepper over the top. And there you go. Homemade gnocchi with that gorgeous smoky bacon, sweet pea cream sauce.
What a gorgeous dish. Come on, let's have a little plate up.
Massive, massive flavor. The gnocchi is so soft and so pillowy. They're like little clouds surrounded in this gorgeous oozy cheesy cream sauce. Utterly delicious.
Making your gnocchi will save you money and give you a lot of pleasure. So, why don't you have a go? You won't regret it.
Yorkshire pudding is incredibly cheap to make. Everyone loves it. And I want you to take this brilliant principal recipe and roll with it.
My giant veggie Yorkshire pudding is a tray bake of epic proportions. Packed with roasted veg, crispy stuffing balls, and served with a delicious onion gravy. It's a twist on the classic that you're going to want to stick with.
I'm going to give you the ultimate Yorkshire pudding recipe that you're going to love. It's going to look after you and work time and time again. So, I've got four large eggs. We want to use a whisk. We'll have a pinch of salt. We're going to take 150 gram of plain flour. And then 150 ml of whole milk goes in. And then 50 ml of water. And it's the water in the batter that gives you the shock reaction from the heat of the oven and the oil in the tray to give you the most incredibly big Yorkshire pudding. You can use the same batter in normal little muffin tins and have your classic Yorkshire pudding molds. So, whisk this batter until nice and smooth. Look at this texture. It's not too thick. Okay, so let's put this aside. The batter is really, really good.
Now, I'm cooking the veggies separately so they get maximum heat, but also don't affect how big the Yorkshire pudding gets. That will save me cooking time, about 10 minutes. What I'm going to do is take 800 g of carrots. I've given them a wash. By leaving the skin of the carrot on and roasting it, it's a different kind of cooked carrot. They feel much more substantial. And cut them into three.
Now I'm going to put two onions into halves. We'll add salt and pepper. A little drizzle of olive oil. We get it mixed up like that. And then that goes into an oven for 20 minutes at 200° C, which is 400 Fahrenheit. So, I'm going to pop those at the top.
Now, I want to show you a little trick to making really beautiful, simple stuffing balls. It's a really nice recipe. Four slices of white bread. If you've got brown bread, that's absolutely fine as well. I'm going to put a pan on a medium-high heat. And I've got two onions over here. I have 10 grams of fresh sage. I'll trim the end off the stalks and lose that. But the little fine stalks I'll keep. I'll keep a few little sage leaves back for when I finish the dish. And then the sage here I'll just slice up.
I'm actually going to use these onions in two ways. I'm going to use half in these stuffing balls and half in my gravy. There's something about sage and onion in the world of stuffing that is just beautiful. So, a little oil in a pan like that. In with our onions here and our sage. A little salt and pepper. I'm using the red onions here, which are really nice, but you can use white onions. We're going to let that sort of fry off. Just get them sweet and gorgeous. What we're going to do is use water to hydrate the bread. And I'm going to scrunch this up.
Now, the onions have had enough time to soften up. I'm going to put half straight in here. So, I've got half in here, half in the pan. This will make a beautiful gravy a little bit later. So, I'll put that back on the heat on low to get sweet and delicious.
Now, add some vegetable oil to a tray. Just enough to coat the bottom. Funny enough, everyone always thinks Yorkshire puddings absorb a lot of oil or grease or fat, whatever you want to call it. They actually don't. When you take it out, there's normally a whole load left at the bottom, but you do need the oil coverage to make these things grow. So, look, I've just covered the bottom like that. I'm going to go into the bottom of the oven for 4 minutes, okay? Okay. To get it nice and hot.
So, look here. Mix those up. And then I just want to roll these into 12 little balls. If you just have a little bowl of water, having wet hands helps you make a nice smooth ball.
I've got our beautiful sage and onion balls here. So, let me just quickly get in and out of the oven because the temperature is going to go down. This is 20 minutes. You can see colors starting to happen to the carrots and the onions. Give them a little shake. Just add a little oil and plop these in and around the tray. By putting them on the top, they're going to get access to more heat. Just nestle them in and then we'll get lovely crispy sage and onion balls. So, the veg goes back in.
And then I'm going to get the batter and the hot oil. And I'm going to pour this in straight back in. Close the door. Do not open it for at least 20 minutes. And that will just grow, grow, grow up the sides. It's going to be bonkers. The veggies are going to be golden and gorgeous.
Now, in the time that that cooks, I'm going to make a beautiful gravy. So, a sage and onion gravy with a few little tricks and hacks to make it delicious.
I've got the onions sizzling away. We're going to put in a veg stock cube, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and that's really essential for having that sweet and sour sort of subtlety that is so good in a classic onion gravy. Cook the vinegar away so it won't be harsh in any way at all. I've got two other little cheats. One is unusual. Take some jam. It doesn't really matter what jam, right? This is a strawberry jam. We're going to go in with a heaped teaspoon. Red currant jam would be the classic. Then get a nice teaspoon of yeast extract. Fantastic. It's got depth of flavor. It's got color. And all of these together in harmony really help with the onion and the sage to give you a really good, simple gravy. So, look at that. You can already see it's starting to look shiny. That already looks the business. So, a nice heaped tablespoon of flour goes in like that.
So, now we go over to the tap with 500 ml of water. Just stir that in. If you like it smooth, push it through a sieve or liquidize it. I think I'm going to leave it chunky, right? It's less work and I like that kind of attitude. I'm going to put the gravy into a little pot. Okay.
And I want to use that to cook this great savoy cabbage. The finer you can slice it, the quicker it will cook and the more delicate it will look and feel to eat. I need 80 g per person, just over a half. We'll finely slice the stalks. There's actually nothing wrong with the stalks. Put them in. And then the dark green part. And then the lovely fresh white parts I will put on the top. And I'll give it a little swig of water. Two tablespoons is all you need. So lid on. Let that cook for about 4 minutes or until it's tender.
So 20 minutes is up. That is a really nice way to roast veggies. Very simple.
Then it comes to the mega recipe that is the Yorkshire pudding. I can't even get it out. You see, it's literally grown into the top tray. You have to take out the top tray to get this Yorkie out. Okay. Look at that. Come on. That, my friend, is a Yorkshire pudding.
Now, what I'm going to do is load this Yorkie with all this gorgeous veg. So, the lovely sage and onion balls. Just pop them on the top.
So, one last thing I've got is the last little bit of sage leaves here. And a way to make these utterly delicious is just a little oil like that. That goes back in the oven just for five minutes until the sage is crispy because we want to get these greens finished.
And then what I'm going to do is get some peas out. So I've got 200 g here. Sprinkles on top. So couple of minutes and you're done. You just want to cook them so they're sweet and gorgeous.
Have a look at that. Come on. Completely bonkers. Right, oven off.
Got the greens here, nice and steamed and fresh. We've got the lovely gravy, which is going to be amazing with this. Loads of rich, dark gravy. Let's plate one up. Right, get in there with a knife and basically cut your Yorkie.
Look at the size of this. There's a stray ball that's just plopped out. Peas and cabbage. Then it's time for our delicious gravy. Come on.
That's a fun dish. Let's just swap this around. Let's try the beautiful little sage and onion balls.
You'd never think that kind of using up leftover bread could be so delicious.
Those greens were so simple and so quick to cook. Really good. If you look at the onions, sweet and caramelized, just gorgeous. The skin on those carrots, they're just so delicious. When they roast like that, they're like more meaty, robust and delicious. The Yorkshire is like the biggest and best edible sponge ever, just soaking up all of that gravy.
What I love about this recipe is I'm a meat eater and if I was given this for a lunch or dinner, I'd be really pleased. There's no compromise on flavor here.
I want to make sure you've got loads of inspiration to keep costs down in the kitchen. So, I've called upon some friends who are going to deliver great flavor on a budget.
When it comes to cooking on a budget, my mate Chetna Makan, a celebrated baker, cook, author, and mom of two, has a guaranteed way to maximize your meals.
