Live Below the Line - £1 a day challenge: Coffee & breakfast

Today I began the "Live Below the Line" challenge, where I will live on £1 a day for five days. A few of us at work are doing it together, and I have slightly enjoyed the research and meal planning, and finally the shopping. The weighing and calculating I have enjoyed slightly less (headache). However I think I have just about got my 5 day menu together, and I am going to post it all here, with the recipes and everything!

Coffee - a serious bloody consideration. I got Tesco value coffee granules which cost 50p for 100g. I measured out two exact 5ml teaspoons, and the coffee weighed 3 grams. The cost of my cup of black coffee is 1½p. With coffee, I can cope with anything ...

Breakfast:

This is porridge with lemon curd. Tesco value oats cost 75p for a kilo. I used 50g (which is pretty much half a measuring cup) and this comes in at 3¾p. Just made with water of course and it is actually lovely, I won't make it with milk again. (It is nice to drizzle a bit of cold milk or cream on top .. but not this week).

The lemon curd cost 22p a jar and was slightly cheaper than the cheapest jam. I weighed out 15g  which costs ¾p.

My breakfast therefore costs (including the coffee) 6 pence.

No-Knead Bread

This beautiful loaf is the easiest bread I have ever made, perhaps the tastiest too. Definitely a revelation, as it took the equivalent of what - 5 minutes, 10 minutes effort? And it turned out like the sort of bread labelled "artisan" or "rustic". A very, very crisp crust. And big holes. Proper.

By all means stick "no knead bread" or "5 minute bread" in google, and loads of links and people's recipes will come up. I looked at how Cuts777inthehizzy, did his, and you can watch him here if you want.

BASICALLY anyway, all you need are four ingredients. Mix them in a bowl. Just mix. Don't knead. Save yourself.

3 cups bread flour
1.5 cups water
1 tsp salt
quarter tsp dried yeast

You will also need a heavy casserole pot with a lid, and an oven which can reach 230c.

Cover the dough and leave it in a warm or warm-ish place (the kitchen worktop should be fine) for anything from 12-20 hours. The dough should appear rather sloppy. Apparently it is the sloppiness, the high water content, which makes the crust crispier.

After the long proving, turn (or plop) the dough out on a floured surface. Again, no need to knead. Shape it into a round, which will fit neatly into your pot.

Now comes a second proving, which, based on everything I have read online, you can leave out if you really cannot wait any longer, and you will still get a lovely loaf. But if you want to go all the way, give it another 2 hours to prove again.

Preheat the oven (230c) AND preheat the cooking pot too. Put the dough in the pot and put the lid on. Bake for a total of 45 mins, and remove the lid for the final 15-20 minutes.

I am sure there are possibilities here for amazing pizza dough, rolls or mini ciabattas. Or just toasted doorsteps smothered in butter with poached eggs on top (drool) .. enjoy!

Slow Cooker Beans for Weekend Brunch

Everyone is a bit skint in January. Plus, you have just spent the last couple of weeks eating extravagantly. And if that wasn't enough to make you feel a bit depressed, its still cold, damp and grey outside. So its time for a big pot of homemade BEANS I think.

I used a 500g packet of dried cannellini beans for this, but you could use any kind. Can I leave it to you to be responsible for choosing how long you soak and boil them? The instructions on my packet pointed their finger right in my face and said sternly, "don't put them in a slow cooker unless you have soaked them for a minimum of 8 hours, and boiled them for at least ten minutes". So I put mine on to soak on Thursday evening, before I went to bed. They must have soaked for maybe 20 hours by the time I dealt with them on Friday teatime. I boiled mine for 30 minutes, before cooking them in my slow cooker on "high" all night. My slow cooker is very gentle. I could have boiled them for 90 minutes (as per instructions) THEN cooked them on "low" all night. But I wanted to get them in the pot and on the go as soon as possible so I could lounge around.

In another pan, I fried and softened a chopped onion, chopped garlic, and some sliced carrot. Later, I added a jar of tomato pasta sauce (marinara sauce?) and a tin of tomatoes, a good sprinkle of herbs, a couple of bay leaves and a big grind of pepper. I think this formula is pretty similar to Greek-style big beans. NO salt at this stage, apparently it can prevent your beans cooking properly. Salt goes in right at the end. When I mixed the sauce and beans together in the slow cooker pot, I added a dash more water, just to make sure all the beans were submerged in liquid.

So it must have had more than 12 hours, simmering and bubbling gently all night. My slow cooker is very good at not allowing steam to escape, but if yours does, maybe put more water in.

And, in the morning, I had this lovely pot of hot, tomatoey, thick, slightly sticky big fat soft beans. I tasted, and added salt and a couple of pinches of sugar. Personally I have to have an egg with mine, and I had it all on a chapati, because they were what I had.

This'll warm your cockles on an Autumn mornin - Tinned Toms on Toast

Have you eaten this at any time, since the 70s?

Traditional English Breakfast, on a Winter Holiday

A dozen raw eggs, in a pan, prior to the addition of salt, pepper, a dash of milk and a nob of butter, waiting to be slowly and softly scrambled. However, if I told you this was alien giant yellow frog spawn, you could believe it, couldn't you.
We also had bits of toast with it, but fried bread is a great possibility. Then we had coffee, croissants and jam for afters. Please note that as my holiday activities centred around walking, cycling and swimming, this level of Famous Five style calorie intake was simply a nourishing, necessary evil.