Bulk handling

CJBS wanted cottage pie. Mainly because I put the idea into his head. £1.32 doesn't get you much beef mince, even the fatty cheap stuff. I bought the expensive lean mince, so my money got me about 8oz - 200g. That's for the entire week, remember, and wasn't even enough for one cottage pie of any size. But wartime rationing involved a lot of bulking out and the tricks become second nature after a while.

The cottage pie got three forms of bulking. First, cook off the mince with some onion until it has browned. Soak up the fat with gravy browning and dilute with stock until there's a useful amount of gravy. To that, add porridge oats, about the same amount as the beef. This swells up with the gravy and has the same texture as the mince - instant doubling of the meat content.

Next, finely dice some mushrooms - about the same amount as of the original mince. Add that and it'll take on the gravy flavour, whilst the texture won't be all that different either. So now the mince has been tripled, and, as a by-product, has got much heathier, with the oats removing much of the cholesterol.

Finally, add a chopped onion, a chopped carrot and a chopped parsnip. These don't turn into anything else, but they add bulk and taste very nice in and of themselves (except the parsnip, obviously). From 8oz of mince to start with, there's now 2lbs or so of the stuff. It'll reduce down somewhat, so perhaps a pound will be left. Mashed potato on top, into the oven and enough food to last three days for one person is ready. I did exactly the same with my vegetarian soya mince, to the same results.

The only flaw is that this all needs slow cooking, both on the stove and in the oven, and much too much stirring as bloody usual. Doesn't half save money, mind. Also, whilst CJBS doesn't mind having the same thing three days running, I start to find it dull. So some vegetable side dishes are recommended.

Enough of my boasting: I'm off to make a cauliflower cheese from a week's worth of cheese ration. Now that will need some bulking...

Savoury meat roll

As previously mentioned I'm trying a variation of the savoury meat roll recommended by La Patten, re-reusing the bubble and squeak. And it's looking good.

I'm using faux sausages, which I tried - and failed - to pass through the potato ricer. So I mashed them with a fork. I used sage rather than thyme, on the basis that I like sage, and that I didn't have any thyme. I also made up my own mustard using mustard powder.

Since this is just for me, and despite my blood pressure, I added the outrageous amounts of salt and pepper Patten requires. The result, formed into a loaf, covered with foil, is now in the oven gently steaming itself.

The breadcrumbs - also homemade - bit follows in about half an hour. In the meantime, CJBS has had his bubble and squeak (his first go), his cottage pie (his third go) and two cumberland sausages bought today from the local butcher.

Please excuse his trousers. If the savoury faux-meat roll works, I'll cook CJBS an actual meat version, using the internals of the remaining sausages tonight.

Edit: Whilst it doesn't look all that appetising, here's the savoury faux-meat roll straight out of the oven but before it gets the breadcrumbs:

Bubble and Squeak

As a dish made of leftovers, this is best if the cabbage was cooked a day or so before. It also doesn't harm if the mashed potato is from the day before or even if it is scraped from the top of a cottage pie or somewhere else. I'd imagine you could mash pre-cooked chips or croquettes or the like, but haven't tried it.

If you don't have leftover potato, peel and cut into roughly equal portions some potatoes: the better the potatoes, the better the mash, so something named rather than "baking potatoes" or "white potatoes" will work best. Put into a pan of lightly salted water and boil until you can pass a knife through one without pushing. Drain the water off.

Mash (or better still rice) the potatoes with some butter or olive oil.

If you don't have leftover cabbage, roughly chop your cabbage. If you have a stove-top steamer, steam for a minimum amount of time. If not, boil a pan of water and drop the cabbage in. It really doesn't take long either way. Minutes. The less the better.

Chop an onion. Put a bit of butter in a pan, melt it and add the onion. Wait for the onion to go translucent (see-through). Medium heat is best (too hot it'll caramelise, too cold it'll just sit there). When the onion is done, chuck in the cabbage and stir up. Now chuck in the potato mash. Add some pepper (and salt if your blood pressure is normal) and mix up.

The mixture can now be set aside until you're ready to use the oven for something else. When you are, place the mixture in a shallow baking pan and smooth over, or divide into balls, or put into Yorkshire Pudding trays, or whatever suits you best. Oven cook for as long as possible, until you see signs of browning on the top.

Note that it doesn't matter if any part goes cold during the making of this, so it's perfectly possible to do all of this using just one pan, a colander and a baking tray.

Positively green

The two previous posts here have, accidentally, emphasised the negative aspects to the rationing plan - how it doesn't actually replicate 1940 reality and how I'm effectively skipping three days of the month for my own convenience.

So I should be positive: today, I wished I was already doing the plan, because I've got some great leftovers.

To people born in the 1950s and 1960s, leftovers rarely sound positive. I was born in the 1970s, and my school friends talked disparagingly about leftovers (usually to be had of a Monday night). But I don't have this experience: my mum was (and still is) a chef of the first order and has catered to parties of 1000 and of 2. She knows exactly how much to cook and her leftovers, if she chooses to have any, are re-presented later as brand-new meals that nobody would know were recycled. (This is now in fashion, with at least one serious and one post-modern-lets-take-the-piss-of-a-subject-we-actually-want-to-make-money-from book on the market). Thanks to my mum's very patient teaching and lack of a gag reflex - I'm not a natural in the kitchen in the way she is - I can also spin leftovers into other meals.

On Monday, I made two cottage pie meals; one with real mince, one with faux veggie mince. Both with the same riced potato topping (via Kate and Jon's part-wedding present of a potato ricer, be still my beating heart: Best. Present. Ever). There's no way of making that meal for one sitting, especially in two mutually-exclusive varieties. The leftover pie is then re-served the next day, but is less alluring a second time, so needs something new adding.

This time it was steamed cabbage. Yes, you remember it from childhood and cringe. I don't. My memories of it from childhood is it being cooked barely and briefly until it was bright green, crunchy and tasty but not bitter. I told you my mum was good. A perfect supplement to cottage pie. But a whole cabbage leads to more cabbage than two people can eat.

No matter. The leftover cabbage will be tomorrow's bubble and squeak. But that's not my point here. My point is that I was left with the water the cabbage steamed in: salty water that was bright green. And some gravy that I made from granules that I didn't finish. These will go down the sink.

Except they shouldn't. I paid good money for that gravy. And the cabbage water contains much of the nutrients and almost all of the vitamins of the cabbage itself. I'm not doing it now - and I'm feeling guilty because of it - but when the rationing plan kicks in, leftover steaming water plus leftover gravy plus a few root vegetables... doesn't that just scream "the perfect soup"?