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Tasty Fish Dish in £1 – ready in 10 minutes – Raising awareness about extreme poverty and hunger

September 23, 2013 by manjirichitnis 6 Comments

Hearty home-made fish dinner on a tight budget? Yes, it is possible!

Recently, I read about living below a line challenge. The challenge is to feed your family by spending not more than £1 a day for 5 days. Why? To help put conservation around poverty into perspective. How the world views hunger, extreme poverty and issues related to poverty is an important conversation to have. For example, reading a hard-hitting fact like this one helped me understand how bad the issue of global hunger really is – ‘Hunger kills more than aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined’.

Please do visit The Hunger Project website to read about the challenge in detail. You can also donate, help fundraiser and do your bit to help end world hunger. World Hunger Day is on the 28th of May.

This recipe is basically to support some blogger friends who along with their families which includes their young children took up this tough challenge. But honestly, if someone told me I could make a fish main in £1 I would laugh aloud and make them a cup of tea to help them feel normal again. But trust me on this one you really can make a very delicious side dish and serve it with a spicy rice main for 2 adults for 2 main meals. Yes, it is possible to be thrifty and yet feed your family for less without compromising on taste.

When my friend S told me the easy-peasy recipe I just had to buy myself a pack from my new fav supermarket. This is probably the easiest recipe for a side dish ever.

Total prep time: Under 10 minutes Serves:2 adults as a side for 2 main meals

Ingredients:

  • Sprat Fish pack – contains about 20-25 fishes and costs around 90p to 95p
  • Turmeric powder 1 tsp
  • Red Chilli Powder -1.5tsp
  • 2 small hot green chillies sliced in a slant
  • Salt to taste
  • a pinch of Asafoetida
  • Oil – 2 tsp
  • 4 tsp Colmans Mustard
  • 1 tsp hot BBQ Mustard – don’t worry if you don’t have this just add half a teaspoon of paprika to 1 tsp of any mustard that you have lying around and mix half tsp of  BBQ sauce into this for a smoky flavour.

IMG_4734 with text

Recipe:

  • Wash the fish well under tap water and handle gently as it’s a small delicate creature and needs some fawning over but hey not much fuss I tell ya! But its all worth it because even my hubby apprehension that this fish has loads of tiny bones were all gone as he clicked his fingers after the meal 🙂
  • Heat a saucepan and  add 1sp oil, add asafoetida and the turmeric powder and salt and then the washed Sprat fish
  • Gently sautee them for about 1 minute or until you see the skin start to come off, don’t overdo it as they need to cook with the mustard in the next step.

Sprat has been sauteed

  • Remove the fish into a clean bowl and in the same sauce on a very low flame add another tsp oil, both the mustards pastes, chopped green chillies, red chilli powder and then the fish.
  • As it is a delicate fish it will cook quickly and as it does the big bone that runs lengthwise inside this tiny fish will be easy to remove and so you can get the head off to, I am not squeamish but my husband is and he refuses to eat the eyes but they are supposed to be packed with iron and fish itself is high on Omega 3 fatty acids, the good stuff your body needs. Mothers who breastfeed and consume fish are said to help give the baby better eyesight which is due to the high content Omega 3 fatty acids. Not only that as this recipe contains turmeric it has a heap of health benefits especially the fact that it helps people struggling to cope with psoriasis. If anyone has seen that episode of The Food Hospital on Channel 4 where a young mother and her son struggled with psoriasis, one of the big changes that they did to their diet was adding turmeric to even stuff like scrambled eggs.
  • A word here about the Le Range Mesurier BBQ Mustard, it’s one of the few things I purchased at the Cake & Bake Show 2013 apart from the sweet stuff. I also got a jar of zesty lime mayo from the same brand, they had a super offer of 4 jars at a great price!
  • I slant the green chillies slanted just because it looks posh 🙂
  • Ok, so I managed to remove most of the big middle bone with the heads and the fish cooks very easily in under 3 minutes.
  • Add a small helping of very finely chopped coriander for garnish.
  • Serve hot with steaming hot rice or khichadi, click here for a posh khichadi recipe from one of my older posts.
  • Do leave comments below and let me know what you thought of this recipe!

Sprat fish side is ready to serve!

I am entering this dish into a wonderful linky challenge called £1 or less recipe challenge started by Michelle Rice who blogs at Utterly Scrummy , with so much fresh and yummy fish made into a delicious dish and served with plain steamed rice its a thrifty budget dream dish full of flavour and ready without too much of labouring in the kitchen. Do link up and help spread the good cheer around in times of gloom when many families are struggling to make ends meet and feeding families with healthy food on a shoestring budget is a very real challenge for many.

one pound or less logo

Tasty Fish Dish in £1 – ready in 10 minutes !

Filed Under: Food, Recipe Index, seafood Tagged With: breast feeding mothers, Brit Mums, Channel 4, child safe food, easy, easy-peasy, eat well for less money, England, fish, food that is good for you, green chilly, health benefits of turmeric, healthy recipe, improve eyesight, kitchen karma, london, low oil recipes, non oily, non spicy, oil, omega-3 fatty acids, one pound fish, one pound fish dish, PSORIASIS, psoriasis treatments, quick, ready in under 20 minutes, recession proof cooking, salt, save moeny, side dish under £1, sprat, The Food Hospital, turmeric, U.K, wiki, wikipedia

Peach Melba with Vanilla Ice Cream

July 20, 2013 by manjirichitnis Leave a Comment

This recipe of Peach Melba is a favourite with my mum in law.On one of the days when I wasn’t feeling too bright she decided to set the mood right with one of her sweet fixes.She disappeared into the kitchen and 20 minutes later appeared with a tray with this gorgeous dessert topped with vanilla ice cream begging to be devoured!

A bit of history about how this dessert came into being should be shared here I guess as it makes me appreciate the recipe so much more.This is a brainchild of French Chef Auguste Escoffier who created this in honour of Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, known as the ”first Australian Diva” to quote from the website of a museum dedicated to her. When she was performing in London, The Duke of Ore’lans hosted a dinner party to celebrate Dame Nellie Melba‘s triumph and  Chef Auguste Escoffier gave the world what we now know as the Peach Melba – peaches served on a bed of ice cream, he later created various versions of which the one topped with raspberry sauce is most popular now.

Serves:4 Prep Time :20 minutes + cooling for few hour in the refrigerator

Ingredients:

  • 4 fresh juicy peaches
  • Plain everyday white sugar
  • The best vanilla ice cream you can lay your hands on
  • Toasted blanched almonds to garnish

Method:

  • Heat water in a pan,when it has boiled,gently lower the washed peaches into it  and blanch them.When you remove them the skin should readily come off. Test for how ripe your fruits are before you blanch ,over ripe fruits will not take well to being dunked in hot water!
  • Remove the skin and remove the seed and halve, if you are unable to do that just get of as much of the fleshy bit from around the seed as you can.
  • In another saucepan add enough water to hold these peaches in a pool of sugary syrup approx 250ml .
  • Add 4 heaped tablespoons of sugar and stir continuously on a low flame til the sugar is totally dissolved and you have a proper sugar syrup,nice and thick and of course sweet!
  • Dunk the peaches into this syrup and on a very low flame let them soften , do not allow the sugar syrup to turn dark in colour and a maximum of 5-7 minutes should do the trick as the peaches will ”cook” quickly”
  • Thoroughly cool the fruit+syrup mix and decant into a bowl and place in the refrigerator.
  • Serve on a bed of your best vanilla ice cream and top off with the toasted almonds.
  • Smile when your guests praise you and regale them with the story of how this lovely dessert was created or how much you enjoyed reading this blog and creating the dessert, ok all right all right, won’t show off 😉

This dessert was something I had drafted quite some time back and thankfully as I made this yum dessert to finish off my Caribbean themed summer party menu, it will now finally appear on my blog!That’s why you must make the most of the summer days and have as many parties and barbecues and picnics as you can!Wooohooo!

Peach Melba with Vanilla Ice Cream

Filed Under: Desserts, Food, Recipe Index Tagged With: dessert recipe, easy, fruit dessert, fruity, gorgeous, Peach Melba, peaches, ready in under 20 minutes, ripe, summer dessert recipe, toasted blanched almonds

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