Sunday 12 February 2012

Stretchiiiiiiing the budget!

Having found 4 rashers of streaky bacon lurking towards the back of the fridge – still good, I thought about what to do with it. It would be too easy to have eggs and bacon and be done with it, just one meal. I could have made a quiche – 2 meals at least but as it was still cold, decided to try and devise a new soup.

I couldn't get the leeks out of the still frozen and snow covered ground so they were out. After hunting about, found some ingredients so here goes:

Pea, bacon and tarragon soup

Dice and fry 1 large onion until softened. Remove from the pan and add the diced 4 rashers of streaky and cook until brown and almost crispy then remove and keep separate. Put the onion back in the pan and add 2 1/2 pints of water, 2oz of pot/pearl barley, stir and simmer for 30 minutes. Check back and stir half way through.

Then add 3 stock cubes (I used chicken) plus 1 medium diced potato (about 6-8 oz) and simmer for another 10-15 minutes until both the potato and barley are cooked.

Add 1lb frozen peas, 1 -2 teaspoons dried tarragon and most of the fried bacon. Simmer for 10 minutes. Whizz up with a stick blender (or in a liquidizer) then thicken if needed with a little cornflour in water. Taste and add salt and pepper as required or leave alone and put these on top of each serving. Top each bowl of soup with the leftover crispy bacon.

Serve with toast or bread or scones. If out of those use crackers or poppadams!

Hope you like it if you make it - (forgot to save some bacon to sprinkle on top!).

Tea tonight was going to be my pork and tomatillo stew plus pasta. In the end, to make it stretch further, I decided to make potatoes and vegetables and stretched it to four meals. I am currently steaming 6 mini chocolate puddings today so we will have 2 of those with custard or chocolate sauce and freeze the other 4. Will try and remember to post photographs.



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