Patatas bravas with chorizo

Last night I made the patatas bravas with chorizo from the May 2010 issue of the Good food magazine.  According to the recipe it serves 6 as an appetiser, but I made it for dinner instead, adjusting the volume of ingredients so that I made enough for two adults, one child and a baby.

The recipe was easy to follow and make, but I had to steam the potatoes for longer than the suggested 10 minutes as they were still rock hard after the 10 minutes had passed.  Next time I will cut the potatoes smaller in the hope that they steam quicker.  Another thing that I will change for next time is the type of potatoes that I use.  We had roosters in the house, so I used these but they were too floury and feel apart in the pan a bit.  I think that waxy potatoes might have held together a bit better.

To save time when I make this recipe in the future I will probably steam the potatoes the day before and keep them in the fridge until I am ready to use them.

For the baby I mashed some of the potatoes and stirred in some of the tomato sauce and onion.  He loved it.

Alterations
Instead of using 250g of small cooking chorizo I used three large cooking chorizo from Marks and Spencers and cut them into chunks.  I substituted the red chilli in the recipe for some dried crushed chillis instead and as there was no cayenne pepper in the house I didn't add it to the dish.  As the recipe was only for two adults and one child I used less potatoes than the suggested 1kg.

Cost
The chorizo sausages that I used cost €1.25.  I have estimated that the potatoes I used were €1.50, the onion was 20 cent, the can of chopped tomatoes was 67 cent and I have allowed 30 cent for the garlic, olive oil and spices.  That makes the total cost €3.92 which is quite reasonable for dinner for the family.

If I used potatoes from the garden the cost of the meal would be reduced further, making it an even cheaper recipe to make.

Sunblush tomatoes and spinach tagliatelle

Tonight I made sunblush tomatoes and spinach tagliatelle for dinner.  This is one of my favourite quick vegetarian meals and is a handy recipe to have up your sleeve for a busy midweek night. 

I chopped some of the tomatoes, spinach and pasta up into the chunks and feed it to the baby who devoured it!  I added a little cooled boiled water to it before giving it to him to help keep up his water intake.  He was not impressed when his was all gone and we ended up giving him some tagliatelle to feed himself while we were finished ours as he was looking at us with puppy dog eyes!

I paused long enough to take this photo of my tagliatelle before eating it!

Tip
I make my own sunblush tomatoes by roasting them in the oven.  Making your own will save a bit of money as shop bought ones can be quite expensive.  I also find that shop bought ones can be extremely oily.  If you are using shop bought ones in the recipe, put a spoonful of the oil into the pan before adding the tomatoes and frying.  Do not pour the whole lot into the pan straight from the tub!  My husband did this one night as I wasn't very direct in my instructions with regards to dealing with the tomatoes and the dinner was really greasy and not as pleasant to eat as it normally is.

When I make my own, I add a bit of extra flavour by adding some crushed garlic, dried basil and oregano, as well as olive oil to the tomatoes before putting them into the oven to roast.  As I had the oven on for dinner last night to cook the oven chips we had with the dinner last night I put the tomatoes into the oven at the same time so that the oven was on once.  After lifting out the chips, I put the oven up to gas mark 9 for five minutes and then turned it off, but left the tomatoes in the oven to continue roasting.  Once the oven was cooled I removed the tomatoes and put them into the into a tub and put them in the oven ready to use in the dinner tonight.

Ingredients - enough of each to serve the number of people you are cooking for.
Sunblush tomatoes - (I made my own with 1.5 punnets of cherry tomatoes)
Spinach, stalks removed (I used one small bag of baby spinach)
Tagliatelle (I used 6 nests of Dunnes tagliatelle)


Method

1. Put on the tagliatelle to cook according to instructions.  Before rinsing, remove a mug of water from the pasta pot.  Rinse the starch off with hot water from the kettle.
2. Heat the tomatoes in a frying pan and add the spinach.  Cook until the spinach has wilted.
3. Add tagliatelle to the frying pan and stir into the tomatoes and spinach.  Add a little of the water from the mug at a time to coat the pasta.  Serve.

Cost
I've estimated that the tagliatelle cost me €1, the tomatoes were €1.50 and the spinach was €1.49, making the total cost less €4 exactly.  In the past I have used spinach that I've grown myself to make this meal, meaning that it can cost me as little as €2.50.