Dirty Page 6
Helen: [00:00:00] All right, let’s be more pro.
Chris: I’m just choking on my tea. I like that,
Helen: I said, let’s be more pro, and Chris immediately starts choking. Welcome to Dirty Page. Hello
Chris: everybody, welcome to episode six of the Dirty Page. My name is Helen. And
my name is Chris, and we are two home cooks who are talking through Life and food through the pages of our, well, the dirty pages of our cookbooks.
Helen: And why the dirty pages? Well, that’s the idea is they’re the most splattered, the most loved recipes and that they often equate to our [00:01:00] favorite recipes. And if you walk into anybody’s home, rifle through their cookbooks, as I may do.
Time to time and find that page with the most splattered ness and you’ve probably got a story there. So that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about.
Chris: But not only that you also have a key memory normally as well, you know there’s often a lovely memory around it and that’s really what we’re about is extracting some of those memories around these dishes.
Helen: Yeah,
Chris: exactly. Yeah. And can I say a welcome to 2019, 2024, that’s going to be edited out, that is
Helen: definitely going to be edited out. Welcome to 2024, indeed Chris.
Chris: How are you? The last five
Helen: years didn’t exist. I, well, I’ve had this conversation with a number of people, you know, it’s 2024, but it, it feels a bit unrealistic.
I feel like, I think a lot of people feel that. with the, with [00:02:00] the challenges and the, the, the weirdness of COVID that, that in a way, those three years sort of almost skipped by. And, um, it is a little bit, so I, I totally get where you’re coming from with welcome. We just got, we
Chris: just got older and fatter.
Suddenly it’s fine. Well, yeah, no, no. Some of us lost weight. Yes. I haven’t lost any weight. I just, I just
Helen: don’t call myself fat anymore. Oh, okay. Fair. I’m rebranding. Rebranding to healthy. I, I, it’s actually one of my new year’s resolutions is not to body shame myself. I’m, I am my worst critic when it comes to that and, uh, and, uh, You know, as long as I’m healthy, which I’m, I’m very lucky to have reasonable, uh, pretty good health, I think is, is the main thing.
So, and move on from there. But,
Chris: um, to answer your original question, Helen, [00:03:00] I’m good. What have you been cooking? I, oh, okay. So last Sunday on my Twitch channel, I made some, okay. We’re going to take you into the behind the scenes of how Chris chooses his. Meals for Twitch.
Helen: I’m intrigued actually. How do you choose your meals for Twitch?
Chris: So, on a Thursday thereabouts, uh, my lovely husband Anton and I have a conversation which goes something like this. Uh, what do you think I should make for, for Sunday? And sometimes he’ll go, uh, whatever you feel like, or maybe something like this. But sometimes he goes, I want a dessert and it’s hot, so it needs to be summery.
Okay, cool. Excellent. Then Chris pulls out his phone, normally looks at [00:04:00] Pinterest and types in something like best summer desserts um, and pull manages to pull up last year’s trend of white chocolate and raspberry tiramisu Um Fancy. Which yeah, yeah, that was fun. That was a lot of fun. Um No, basically it, it, it was what it says on the tin, it was a white chocolate tiramisu.
Well see, I called te. It was a cross between tiramisu and summer pudding.
Helen: Okay. I, I, I suppose it’s the thing that I’ve gotta ask here is the history of tiramisu. ’cause doesn’t it have to be coffee or is Amisu more a relation to the structure? It’s the spu. So cream, this
Chris: is. This is what I don’t know.
Mm-Hmm. . And this is, this is where I don’t know how comfortable I am calling something, something when it [00:05:00] might not be something right. Mm-Hmm. . So people are, I have asked about this, have said, oh, look, you’ve got the savadi layer, you’ve got the, um, they’re the lady, you’ve got the cream layer. You’ve got, yeah, that’s right.
Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got the layers. And that’s what matters the most about this dessert. Mm. And it’s like, Hmm. But is it. Or is it traditionally always coffee? And this is what I don’t know.
Helen: I am just on the Wikipedia page. Yeah,
Chris: I can see your focus face
Helen: on. Yeah, sorry. And it’s interesting actually. I wonder, it looks like tiramisu may be one of those things.
Bit like chicken tikka masala. Yep. Okay, so we think of it as an incredibly Italian and very, you know, traditional recipe. And admittedly, this is on the fly research on Wikipedia. So that comes with caveats. But, and I, to, to read directly from Wikipedia, tiramisu appears to be invented in the [00:06:00] 1960s.
Citation needed. Yeah. But, it looks like, it may, um, they’ve not found it in the cookbooks before 1960, and one of the first mentions is in an Australian cookbook. What? The Australian, in fact the Australian Morning Herald restaurant column. So, I’m not going to say anything too much.
That’s kind of hilarious if it is something that is maybe invented in Australia, like, as I say, like Chicken Tikka Masala, which is the classic one of these, which people think of as a classic Indian dish, but apparently came about when a dude asked for Chicken Tikka and asked for his gravy to go with it.
And the cook, I think, in either London or Bradford, I think it’s uh. Yeah, it’s something like that, yeah. And they made the sauce up with like a [00:07:00] can of tomato soup. The dish was invented. So I think that’s kind of nice because there’s a bit of an enduring theme on the pod is that, you know, where we’ve mentioned this a few times, sort of how traditional does one have to be about food.
So I think I’m going to guess from that that I think you’re allowed to call it tiramisu.
Chris: Okay, cool. We will go with that. Um, so yeah, that’s what I’ve been cooking. Um, I’m, I’m waiting for my butcher, a couple of suburbs over to reopen for the new years so that we can start having really decent meat again.
Um, but we did manage to do, uh, for heaters. Which is nice. Always good, always good. What have you been cooking?
Helen: Well, yeah, so it’s been a bit of a strange, I mean, like, the month has been, seems to have flown by since we last chatted, and then of course Christmas. Um, [00:08:00] it’s been, it’s been so humid here. in Sydney.
So humid. Um, so haven’t really wanted to do much actual like putting the oven on or anything. So it’s been a lot of grilled meat and salad, which has been really nice. Um, quite luckily our butchers haven’t had a break for Chris for the summer. So we’ve been going, um, Yeah, being able to get bits and bobs, although our fish dude is on his summer break, so
Chris: Oh, of course he is.
After Boxing Day, he’s just like, yeah, cool, I’m
Helen: done. New Year, we went and actually saw him on New Year’s Eve and he gave us like, you know, we ordered like a bag of prawns and so basically sat up New Year eating tiger prawns. However, I’m slightly less forlorn for my fish because I have just come back from Japan where I, um eight fish non stop, including some incredible sushi just randomly at the airport while I was [00:09:00] waiting for, I was just waiting, um, to get my boarding pass printed and there was like a massive queue at Qantas and I didn’t need to check any baggage because I’d only gone for a little bit and I thought, well I’m not going to sit here in the queue, I’m going to go get some food.
But the reason I just wanted to talk about it is that it was just like a little vendor In the food court in the supermarket. And it was just like a little, we’d sit around and the chef does their thing, but I mean it was absolutely delicious sushi and I’m sorry Chris, you, this is like anti Chris food, but It was really, probably as good high standard of sushi as you could get in Australia.
No problem. And, you know, it’s just the pride that these people took in their work, like it was probably two, like it was two chefs and, and, uh, another guy running this little establishment and You know, it, it just, this is the thing that gets me every time, I haven’t been to Japan for nine years, but it was the thing that I was [00:10:00] reminded of, is the, the pride that every of the food retailers, and there are so many, so many little businesses where they will make something, and they’ll tend to have a specialism.
It’s just, um, it’s something very wonderful to see, actually. Yeah, I, and I think that’s one of my favourite things about going there. Um, so I had some, that was really, really good food. So my sushi for the road, as it were, before heading on the train home. Very nice. Mm hmm. So yeah, that was, that was a bit of a highlight, I guess.
Excellent. So, do we want to talk about the theme for
Chris: this? I think we should talk about I think we should talk about this thing. So last, our last thing was obviously Christmas and we did allude in that, that The main thing about Christmas is, [00:11:00] of course, Boxing Day and what you’re going to do with all your leftovers.
And that feeds really well into this theme, which is all about frugal food. And I think, you know, right now is a great time to be talking about this with cost of living pressures and all that sort of thing. And, you know, how can people be using and reusing the food? that they make because let’s face it as cost of living bites we’re going to try and find ways to really be clever with the way we cook and the way we get.
You know, what we get out of our food and it’s a really good time to think about what you can be doing with your food and how you can reuse it.
Helen: Yeah, I mean, it’s, I think it’s interesting. It seems to be. a bit of a global issue at the moment. So not just in Australia, but, um, I know that [00:12:00] in the UK, January can be a really tough month.
It’s a very, most people in the UK only get paid once a month and usually at the end of the month. And often there’ll be a paid early because of Christmas. And so the slog through to the end of January can feel forever. Um, that problem’s alleviated a bit in Australia, um, because a lot of people here, you get paid weekly or two weekly, um, so I think that’s really good actually.
So that sort of alleviates that to some extent and why January isn’t necessarily as bad as other months, but Australia is in an interesting situation. There’s only two main supermarkets. And, um, it’s become very obvious that they have been using the need, the, uh, the inflation to, you know, just creep up prices a little bit.
Um, and, uh, you know, they’re posting record profits at the moment, [00:13:00] which is quite concerning, I think. And I know that there is now beginning to be some political scrutiny on this, which I think is unfortunately quite late. Um. It was interesting, I was
Chris: Anything on
Helen: this usually is. Yeah, I, I do feel that, you know, it’s something that, I mean, that politicians or activists can, you know, it’s something that it’s um, it’s not a hard issue to go out and measure.
To some extent. I mean, it is in some ways, but, um, And it isn’t
Chris: at the same time.
Helen: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, for instance, I don’t feel I was looking at this. I don’t think we in Australia have equivalent to, um, Jack Monroe, the bootstrap cook, who is, um, an activist against food poverty in the UK. And, uh, they, they’ve done some incredible work and put a lot of political pressure.
on various supermarkets and things. And I [00:14:00] think, um, we don’t seem to have anybody doing that sort of work here in Australia. There’s a few, um, I was trying to find, I remember there was a guy based in Western Sydney and I can’t think of his name, but no one to that prominence. And it’s, I feel like that’s, we need, we do need, we need that superhero to, to, to point out.
You know, where to keep that real weather eye on the food prices and You know, things will fluctuate, you know, uh, here a lot of the produce is quite seasonal, um, more so than, than other places I’ve lived. But, um, yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s, it’s been a bit worrying, actually, how much things have, have gone up.
And, um, and I, I just don’t understand. I mean, you know, not only food is one thing, but then of course, shelter is, that’s a whole nother issue, especially, [00:15:00] um, with rents, just absolutely, it’s just, it’s just been tough.
Chris: And the cost of everything going up all at the same time. You know, we were looking at our gas bill the other day and admittedly we only have gas in one part of our home, which is our bathroom and we used less gas than we did last year and somehow we’re paying more.
Yeah,
Helen: yeah, uh, well that, yeah, because the wholesale price has gone up by quite a bit. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a real, it’s tough and we’ve all got to sit there and scrutinise. Well not, we don’t have to scrutinise, but one of the things. A lot of us are. Yeah, exactly. That’s, I mean, that’s the point is should we have to scrutinize these basic living costs?
This is the point. Um, but then also January can also be that time where we’ve all been celebrating a bit with our food. And so having a little bit of [00:16:00] simpler, um, food. It can sometimes be quite a, a, um, a refreshing thing. I certainly am not missing the fact that I basically gorged on ham for most of Christmas.
So, I have not eaten any ham or pork products for about a month and, you know, I’m not missing them yet. So Yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting topic, so.
Chris: Yeah, I, I ate those lemony potatoes for three days straight. You can’t go that way. No, no, it’s so good. It’s so good!
Helen: But, before we go too far, I wonder if either of us have, like, a best frugal fruit before we pick our recipe.
Okay. I, I have one while you’re thinking, Chris. Yeah. So, this was something that I only discovered. Maybe three or four years ago. I have a slow cooker. And I’m not a [00:17:00] big, I’m not a big appliance person. But, one thing I’ve always you know, wanted to eat more beans and pulses, but I find the whole dry thing incredibly faffy.
Like having to remember to soak them the day before I need to use them. Dried beans in the slow cooker. So, this was a recipe, and it’s a thing, it isn’t just one recipe. Um, that, um, and I think I’ll probably feature one of her recipes later on. But there’s a book called Slow Cooked by a woman called Miss South, who’s a British based cook.
And, um, She has a number of pulse recipes. They’re all dry pulses, and if you put them with the required dry pulses in with the required amount of liquid, either from a can of tomatoes or some stock or something, um, essentially you don’t need to pre soak them. And then you put it on for [00:18:00] like, 8 or 9 hours.
And again, this is a top tip in Australia if you have solar panels. And you put on your slow cooker during the day, you are essentially are cooking for free because you’re just using your slow cooker. So that for me is the ultimate, um, and very Australian based frugal food to dried, dried pulses which cost much less than their canned equivalents generally.
per weight, um, and put them in the slow cooker. So
Chris: I think for me, I think And it’s a cliche one, but if you’re doing things like anything with a boned meat, right? So anything with, you know, your steaks, maybe a tomahawk steak that you’re breaking down into bits or that sort of thing. And, and. Side note, during this time you’ll find the prices of those big cuts of steak [00:19:00] sometimes fluctuate and you can get them at a cheap price.
The reason for this is that your bigger cuts are things that the butcher doesn’t have to break down so he can do those at a cheaper rate if he’s got a Big influx of these big cuts. So look out for those and those meats that you can break down yourself. On top of that, you can make your own stock. Okay.
I know that it’s. a big task, but at the same time, you’re saving yourself money in the long, long run by making this stock yourself and freezing it. Cause if you’ve got the freezer space, you can store this for months on end because it’s. Basically water and bone broth, essentially, um, same thing with vegetables.
So any leftover vegetables you’ve got, like the ends off [00:20:00] celery and the ends off your carrot, you don’t have to throw these away. You can put all these in your stock pot and just fill it up with with water and just go. Just boil it off.
Helen: A top tip I got recently about the vegetable stock thing actually.
Because I often have like odds and ends a bit. And have a tub in the freezer and put them in the freezer. And then use that to collate until you’ve got enough. And then you put it in or when you have a bit of bone or something. To go in with it as well. And that, I mean some people would even put all peelings and stuff in there.
I’ve not done that so much because I find them, especially carrot peelings can be a bit bitter, but definitely ends of celery, the extra bits of leeks and stuff like that have been. The
Chris: tops of capsicum. Gorgeous.
Helen: Yeah. Oh, good plan. Awesome. All right. So, two good frugal hints to start you off there, but [00:21:00] we are, of course, a pod that talks about recipes and cookbooks.
And so, um, I think we’ve both picked two recipes today to chat about. And, uh, Oh, I’ve picked one. Oh, so we’ve picked one each.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. I get it.
Helen: We’ve picked a recipe each to talk about today. So we’ll get Chris to talk about his first. What is your recipe that you’ve picked and where has it come from and why?
Chris: Okay, so this is from a book that I got A few years ago now, um, from a gentleman who you may or may not know called Matt Preston. So Matt Preston, for those of you who don’t know, was one of the judges on the Australian version of Master Chef. And he started as a, uh, restaurant critic. And then as he was [00:22:00] You know, doing all this stuff on MasterChef, he slowly started doing his own cookbooks and that sort of thing.
And he’s been in a couple of the, uh, food magazines over here in Australia. And over the years he’s got quite the following and, um, quite the way around his recipes. And this is Singapore noodles. Now this dish is quite close to my heart, but not necessarily. The, uh, recipe. Um, when I found a recipe of this that I liked, I stuck to it because this is a dish that my dad would bring out two or three times a year and would, it basically for me brings memories that I don’t have.
[00:23:00] Um, this is one of those. dishes that dad learnt while he was based in Malaysia, uh, which was where I was born. And I have very little memory of Malaysia. Um, I do love the food, and I do love the smells of the food, and it’s just, I’m getting emotional about it. Um, it’s, it’s one of the, because due to certain, uh, political reasons, I won’t really ever get to go to Malaysia.
Um, I. I do love this dish and I do love that it came out and dad, dad brought these dishes out to show my brother and I, Hey, this is where you’re from. This is, this is a significant part of your life. Even though it was only six months that we were there and it’s, it’s just a [00:24:00] flavor I’ve always adored.
And on top of that, what mum would do is she would use The leftovers of this for spring rolls. So if there was leftovers, you know, she’d go, okay, cool. I’ve got the spring roll wrappers. I can use this and that, you know, that’s something that can be once again, frozen and stored and put away. And you can keep eating that.
You know, there’s no waste with this because you can just keep going. And that’s something I really do love about this cuisine. Um, that, you know, uh, Southeast Asian cuisine is that it does lend itself so well to, like with your curries, you can use your leftover curry for samosas. You can, um, any fried rice dish.
You can use for spring rolls as well. Mum’s done that plenty of times [00:25:00] and but certainly this dish is one that you can. It’s, I see it as an in between dish. So this version is a vegetarian Singaporean noodle. Um, and you start out with your rice vermicelli noodle. Um, or vermicelli noodle, depending on how you say it.
Uh, so you’ve got your vermicelli, vermicelli noodle, your peanut oil, uh, which you fry in some onion, capsicum, green beans, I use snow peas, oh he uses snow peas too. Um, I often throw some mushroom and stuff in. It’s basically whatever vegetables you want,
Helen: really. I think that’s a really good tenant of good frugal food is that rather than, you know, is a, is a good dish that uses what you have in already, rather than.
Having to shop specially, specifically,
Chris: it’s [00:26:00] basically whatever you’ve got in the crisper and just go for it. You know, you, you don’t have to be hard and fast to the rules of the recipe with this because any, well, the only thing I would say is personally, I always want onion. I always want capsicum in there because, and snow peas, but you can use what.
ever you have, because this is essentially a stir fry dish and you can stir fry anything. So, um, but what you add to this is a tablespoon of curry powder. Now everyone, everyone that whose house I’ve been to, and I’ve been doing research on this over the last month, any house I’ve been to over the last month, I’ve been secretly checking.
Whether you have a, um, a can of, or a tin of curry powder. Six out of six houses had a tin of curry powder. It’s one [00:27:00] of those things that people go, Oh yeah, I’ll use that. And maybe you won’t. It’s always there. I don’t know about you, Helen, but I
Helen: I’m just like thinking, Gosh, have I been checked?
Chris: Well, I haven’t been to your house in the last month.
No, I was thinking
Helen: that. Um, I don’t know, actually, I don’t, I mean, I have Garam Masala, does that count?
Chris: I would say it does count
Helen: because,
Chris: you know, it’s, it is. It’s not traditional curry powder, but at the same time, it’s a curry spice and, you know, it will have the key parts, which will be, um,
I think I’m trying to think coriander, cumin, turmeric are the main three. Um, there’s usually, depending on where [00:28:00] you go from there. There’s things like mustard seed is
Chris trying to think with his brain. Um, oh, cumin. Cumin’s a big one. Um, yeah. And. You know, it’s just one of those things. Um, so yeah, I’ve been checking and yes, a lot of people have that, that curry powder in their fridge and it’s well in their cupboard and it’s something you can use. Um, moving through the ingredients a little bit more.
There’s garlic, there’s a little bit of sugar, there’s bean sprouts. Once again, if you don’t have it, you don’t necessarily have to use it, but this is one of the things about this is. I’ve even done this where I’ve had, because this is a vegetarian version, if I’ve got leftover chicken or I’ve got leftover pork, even beef, it’s quite an agnostic dish because you can throw [00:29:00] any bit of meat with it.
And just go, yeah, cool, awesome. It’s stir fried through and good to go.
Helen: I think the other nice thing about, I found as a student and things like this, that when it came to eating cheaply, it’s often that you need to like, bulk yourself up with some carbs and cheap carbs and stuff is never a bad thing. Um, so like, you know, the noodles, like you can bulk it out with a few more noodles and things like that and make it a really nice filling meal.
So,
Chris: and vermicelli noodle is actually quite cheap for, for quite a big packet. Do you, it is quite cheap and you can get them bulk as well. So you can, you know, save a bit more money by buying in bulk and Hey, you’ve got heaps of noodles to sort yourself out for. A few weeks, right? It’s great. But yeah, that’s, uh, that’s my dish.[00:30:00]
Helen: Yeah, that does sound delicious. I’m pretty hungry right now. Do you add egg to it? Cause I know some people add egg to the Singapore noodles. So,
Chris: so, so, so this, this is a dad thing and dad learnt this technique over in Malaysia. And when he does it at home, he always does an omelette on the side and he, what he will do is he will roll it out.
Right. He’ll make his omelette, then he’ll put it out on the bench, and he’ll roll it into like a Swiss roll style, and then he’ll slice
Helen: it. Ah, and then put the slices in the Put the
Chris: slice, he’ll, he’ll, if he’s feeling really brave, he’ll stir fry it through, but normally he’ll have it on the side and you just put it on top.
Yeah, okay. And it’s I
Helen: quite like the idea of preparing it a little separately, because I find like, you know, when I add egg to noodles or to egg fried rice, it all gets lost a bit, so. [00:31:00] Yeah. It’s a really nice idea.
Chris: Yeah, and it’s, it’s just gorgeous. It’s like I said, this is a key memory for me and I’ve had this many times and I love it.
I absolutely love this dish. Sorry. In terms of dirtiness, I will say that this page has a very big curry powder stain. Right in the middle
Helen: of the page. This is the point where we start dissecting how dirty the dirty pages are.
Chris: Well, you, you, you, you have, you have texted me a couple of times about, um, Your pages are too clean.
The lack of dirtiness sometimes. So yeah.
Helen: Fair enough.
Chris: What is your
Helen: dish, Helen? All right, so my dish is, I actually just realized that it is like It’s quite telling, this dish, because I’m just looking at through some of the other pages in this cookbook and they are pristine, um, but this cook, this [00:32:00] page is not.
This page is far from pristine. So, um, so I’ve picked a recipe. It was like when we talked about frugal food and I, and I was thinking, gosh, you know, how would I feed like six people for under 20? That’s essentially what I was trying to think, you know, something that is good.
And one of the things I used to do for almost for dinner parties, and I actually did a bit of research in this and realized that that was okay, um, was a dish called caldo verde, which is a Portuguese, um, sort of chowdery soupy dish. Um, some people call it. the national dish of Portugal to some extent. Now, um, the version I cooked from is, and where I discovered it from, is from the Hairy Bikers Cookbook, which, um, if you’ve not heard of these two, um, they were two I don’t think they’re actually chefs.
One of them was a cameraman [00:33:00] and I think one of them was a sound
Chris: technician. They were both, um, TV
Helen: crew. Yeah, um, yeah, Si, Si is a location manager and Dave was a makeup person. Yep, yep. Yeah, so they worked behind the scenes in TV for a long time and they, um, like their They, they like their motorbikes and stuff like this.
Anyway, so this is actually their first cookbook, which was a, accompanied the TV show. And it actually has them visiting a number of countries, including Vietnam, Namibia, Ireland, Transylvania. I mean, in terms of bizarreness of culinary locations, I would think. I think this book really took the biscuit, actually, it was quite cool.
But the first location they go to is Portugal. Now, I looked into the traditional caldo verde, which doesn’t have chorizo in [00:34:00] it. And they’ve probably caused minor, um Diplomatic relations. Diplomatic relationships between Britain and Portugal tend to go quite well. If you don’t believe me, watch Eurovision.
Portugal almost always get UK. Either 10 or due to a porn, so, I can’t work out why, and my dad thinks it’s because of Napoleonic Wars, and I’m a bit like, that’s a bit far fetched dad, so, I don’t know, but
Chris: either way. If anyone knows, please let us know, we are interested in this. Yeah, I just,
Helen: it’s one of those things, you know, you watch Eurovision and you know, oh yeah, Portugal, we’ll get those, and even though it sounds terrible, they’re like the one country that would give the UK a reasonable round of points.
And I was always, anyway, so yeah, so this probably damaged diplomatic relationships because they put, um, chorizo in it, which of course is not necessarily a [00:35:00] Spanish thing. Now
Chris: I really want to look up. Like what happened after this cookbook came out and
Helen: whether that caused it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So, but as a traditional dish, Caldo Verde is a dish that they often serve at weddings and things like this.
So it’s, it’s sort of a known as a big celebration, hearty, nice food. And. I also loved their recipe. The Hairy Bikers, um, at least one half of them is Geordie, so from Newcastle. Maybe both of them, but they’re both from North. And, um, they, you, when you, when they write, you can sort of tell a lot about them from the way they write.
They’re like, this is the people who draw me in with their food writing of people who do that. Um, now the ingredients list, they do have a small glass of port, but you can omit this. And I tell you why, because if you read the first [00:36:00] line of the, the ingredient of the methods is first drink the port, it will get you in the mood.
Let’s assume you can get in the mood without having to buy the port. And then in your pan, you heat some oil and you sweat the onions and some garlic until transparent. You then add the sausage. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be chorizo sausages. Um, um, any sort of nice flavored sausage has worked really well like this.
And it’s usually only one or two, even for six people. Because the good thing about chorizo is it gives it lots and lots of flavor. But I like this. Add the sausage and carry on sweating like a Geordie in a spelling test. I mean, this just says everything you need to know about this. And then once you’ve sweated together the meat, the onions and the garlic, then you then add the potatoes and you let them get a little bit of the flavor.
with the oil. And then you add some stock. Now, if you’ve done what Chris suggested earlier on, and you’ve had a chicken or a, [00:37:00] or a piece of pork or something, and you’ve got a nice stock, any stock goes really well from this. And eat vegetable through, uh, usually a bit whiter stock. I don’t think lamb stock would work so well, but would work.
And so essentially you, you put all of the stock in with the bay leaf and then you cook until the potatoes are soft. And then, I love this, you chop. So usually it’s kale, but to be honest with you, any seasonal greens work really well. The darker the green, the better. If they are really dark green, greens like kale, it works really well to, um, To rinse them with boiling water first just to wilt them a little bit and they say to chop them And I love this, finer than a hummingbird’s toenail clippings.
Chris: Wow Okay. Yeah, I do. I do love the Metaphors and similes Yeah, and
Helen: I actually went reading about this that in in in Portugal in the supermarkets They will [00:38:00] have packets of greens already shredded Two hummingbird toenails clippings specifically for you then to go home and make chowder verde with. That’s awesome.
I know, I love, like, so it’s very much a national dish part of their culture. And so your potatoes are soft now, you mash the potatoes in the stock, so you make a sort of chowder and then you pile in all the greens and you end up with something that’s like. big and hearty and soupy and, and, and really, and as I say, if you, you don’t have to spend much on the chorizo to make, you know, make it go really, really far.
And the last thing is if you have a little bit of smoked paprika, add it to an oil and then you make a little like red Dressing, which you then wiggle on top of it and that just, just goes really, really far. Now, if you can go as far as making homemade bread to go with it, it will just be marvellous or, or, or, or anything.
So this is a way of making, I [00:39:00] costed out that I reckon our butcher did have chorizos for 3. 50 the other day. So I was like, Whoa, and I think with that. I reckon that for six people, that could be 15. And so that leaves you with 5 left to buy some nice bread or to make some sourdough for 20. So I thought that that would be a really great frugal food.
Of course, again, the traditional Portuguese one doesn’t have the chorizo in. And I think with that spiced, um, smoked paprika, you could probably make it really delicious. Without the chorizo, um, as well, but that’s, that’s what I love about chorizo and bacon and all those products is that you don’t usually very much to really put some flavor through, um, and, and to, to make it go far.
So it’s a, it’s a good dish from that point of view.
Chris: 100 percent and I think you’re right, your cured meats, [00:40:00] they, they are often, can be quite cheap as well and yeah, they, they are a great way to add heaps of flavour. But even what you were saying about the green leafy bits, like there’s so many things you can use.
There’s chard, there’s silverbeet, there’s kale, there’s spinach, it’s so easy.
Helen: If you’ve got like broccoli, broccoli tops. Um, we just got some kohlrabi today in our veg box. Um, so, you know, like, so essentially anything that’s green and leafy, you could probably use. Um, and it’s actually nice to have a bit of a variety of tops and things like this.
So that’s why it’s, it’s a great dish from that point of view. And as I say, if they are a bit bitter, then just rinse them with the, or wilt them down with the boiling water. But you. Kind of nice and fine. We always have some sorrel in the garden actually and that works really well for this as well, [00:41:00] so Yeah, I think um, I think that’s why I like it as a dish to get get through and to to have a slightly more frugal food, but I also like taking like the leftovers for my lunch because when i’ve not cooked for six people, but um It’s a very favoured leftover
Chris: food.
And this is the other thing, right? With frugal food, it can be just a matter of making enough that you can have lunch the next day. So you’re maybe not buying lunch for that day, right?
Helen: I always think that’s the simplest way that 60 percent of people, perhaps the people who don’t already take lunch, um, can save money on food is, is to, is to take a pat lunch, um, to work.
I think, um, and
Chris: leftovers are a great way for that, right?
Helen: Exactly. So the investment of like a tub to put things in can really [00:42:00] pay forward. Yeah, it could be it could be quite delicious actually having leftovers there are definitely some leftovers like actually you mentioned the heaters earlier on and Yeah in this house leftover for heaters.
We usually have to play a board game after we’ve had dinner For heaters to decide who’s going to have the leftovers for lunch the next day, because they’re premium. So,
Chris: yeah. With us, there’s generally no leftovers because I’m a guts. Um, uh, well. Actually, it was Anton last time.
Helen: Not that you’re telling any tales.
Chris: Hello, hello husband, when you eventually You’ve
Helen: ate all the
Chris: things.
Helen: I love how that old El Paso packet is meant to be for like, does it say for six people? It at least says for four people and I’m like no. Four people I
Chris: think. Yeah, [00:43:00] three maybe. Yeah, yeah. Two very hungry people. Two very hungry
Helen: people,
Chris: yeah, for sure, for sure.
Helen: So yeah, so I think, I think hopefully we’ve given some people some nice ideas for some frugal food and I think the other thing is frugal food doesn’t necessarily equal
Chris: No, I, I completely agree with you. I think frugal food can be very exciting. And for me, part of the fun is what can I do with this as a leftover?
What or how can I use a leftover in this as well? And. It’s a lot of fun because you learn as you go, you go, Oh, okay. I really shouldn’t use that with this. The other really good one that I just remembered off the, off the back of my head is, um, mum used to do Sanchoi Bao. So Sanchoi Bao is [00:44:00] lettuce cups stuffed with a a mince essentially, um, and she usually put carrot, other stuff through it as well.
Um, but she would also use that in your spring rolls as well. So she was, she was very much, I can reuse this. And I think that is a great way to think is how can I reuse this in the future? And particularly when you come down to things that you can easily freeze and use over the next month or two. Um, yeah, really do think about that sort of line cause it’s really easy and really, really cool.
Helen: Yeah. I guess we’re at the point of finding out, is there anything in our mail bag?
Chris: Well, not from me. Have you heard
Helen: anything? I don’t know, I thought, my mum said she sent an email to the mailbag, so maybe it [00:45:00] didn’t come through. Hmm,
Chris: maybe it didn’t come through, let me check, was it recent?
Helen: I don’t know, hang on, but she’s, she, my mum being my mum, she sent the email and then she, uh, texted me about it as well, so I can find out what she texted.
Let’s see, here we go, um, uh, she was happy that the cheesy rolls got in there. As I mentioned at Christmas last time, it’s a big family recipe. She, uh, she particularly loved the whole bit about the hand measurement. Oh yes. From your friend, Lauren? Leigh, sorry Leigh. Um, yeah, she thought that was a particularly nice story.
The Cheesy Whirls, she actually said that she doesn’t think that my grandmother invented it. So, just to contradict the story, that, um, it may have come, the original recipe may have come from a [00:46:00] magazine or paper somewhere. So, um Um, yeah, so I think I’ll have to see if I can track down where
Chris: so I might be allowed to have this
Helen: recipe then?
Yes, it means if it’s already published, I’m probably alright to distribute
Chris: it. And not kill me for knowing the recipe. Yeah,
Helen: exactly. But yeah, no, so that was, uh, that was the main mailbag. Um, trying to think if anyone sent me any pictures recently. I’m not on the toppest of form right now. So, um, if you have sent me a picture, I do apologize.
Chris: I will say that, um, Christmas onwards has probably been the quietest period we’ve had on the podcast recently. Um, but. You know, we know you’re all busy, we know you’re all getting into the swing of 2024, so we’ll be here when you want us.
Helen: We’re not going anywhere. No. Yeah, [00:47:00] so I guess we’ll probably wrap up the pod for today.
Our original plan was to do six episodes. It was. I think that our strongest episode was when we had guests, so I think what we’ll do is maybe we’ll go away, plan a few more episodes, but with guests. I think that’s our best. That’s where we get the most stories and things. Yeah,
Chris: I think, I think that’s a good idea.
Maybe we go away for a A few months playing the next season and, um, yeah, we’ll, we’ll come back nice and strong with some guests. And yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Helen: Yeah. All right. Well, in the meantime, until, um, we hope that you enjoy eating and finding, making all those page dirties of your cookbook. So you can tell us as to why you’ve made them dirty and what they, how you’ve enjoyed the food as you’ve gone.
You can catch us in the meantime. So, uh, Chris does his weekly stream on a [00:48:00] Sunday. You can catch him at twitch. tv slash ginger Chris 86. You can also reach us at. Hello at thedirtypage. com for all those stories and pictures of your recipe books that are splattered and things like this.
Chris: And you can also reach out to us at our Instagram where we are Dirty Page Pod.
And, you know, Helen loves the Instagram and she’s always putting up something nice. Uh, still trying to convince her to use TikTok, but she’s still saying no. Um, you should see the eyes I’m getting right now. Uh,
Helen: It’s more that it’s a hole that I think I’ve had enough. I spend enough time on the gram as it is.
Yeah. It’s just another hole. You know what? Given that. You know, if, if X stroke Twitter finally falls over, I will have to find somewhere else to go, I
Chris: guess. [00:49:00] Yeah. Yeah. That’s the thought. Um, but thank you everyone for joining us for these six episodes. We will be back as soon as we can. We just need to, you know, plan these next few episodes.
Um, probably plan another six and we will be back very soon. And thank you so much for
Helen: listening. Yeah. Thanks everyone. Take care.
Chris: Bye. Dirty Page is created, written, and produced by Helen Maynard Kaysley and Chris Simms, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Sharer Like 4. 0 International License.
Idea, logo, and social media handled by Helen Maynard Kaysley. Website and editing ever by Chris Simms. If you would like to contact us, you can email us at hello at thedirtypage. com or follow us on Instagram at DirtyPagePod.[00:50:00]