The Ration Challenge - One Final Play with My Food

Well it's just one day before the Ration Challenge 2020 kicks off and yesterday I decided to have a final 'play with my food'.

This year as well as the ability to use the spices that my teammates have chosen I have gained 210ml of a milk of my choice, and I didn't know how I would use it.  To be honest apart from on cereal or a dash added to sauces I just don't use milk at all in my normal life .... ooh is my life normal in any sense of the word ... I do hope not 🤣🤣  

My coffees are drunk black and have been for the last few years and I don't like to drink any of the milks I have tried.   NB. I don't use dairy milk AT ALL.

So I decided to try making some rice pudding.

I weighed out the milk and then added 70g of uncooked rice and left it to putter away on the stove top for ages, while I caught up on a couple of episodes of Harlots ... brilliant series once again  😃

When it was ready ... I didn't like it, but I didn't want to waste it so I decided to turn it into the rice cakes I mentioned on yesterdays post.

They went together well and held their shape.

And looked quite good after ten minutes cooking on each side.

But I just wasn't that keen really, and I don't want to be going to lots of effort next week to make something that isn't that nice for me.  Anyone that likes the creamy taste of milk and the texture of a soft rice cake would no doubt love them ... but not me.

So that is my last play with food.

The Ration Challenge 2020 starts from when I wake up on Sunday 13th September and ends when I go to sleep on Saturday 19th.  I will do a post showing all the foods I have for the week on the 13th and then so that I can show you each days meals I will post the day after I have eaten them throughout the Challenge.

I'd say 'Wish me Luck' but you all already have and you have all been amazing with your support and sponsorship ... THANK YOU so much 💖

Sue xx

A Ration Challenge Recipe

A little film of a refugee called Maya cooking the Lentil Soup recipe that is in the Ration Challenge Pack recipe book.

I am now just 33p short of being able to supply nine refugees with enough ration packs to last them a year.  Thank you so much to everyone who has sponsored me up to now, as well as feeding so many people and helping such a good cause you have also enabled me to climb the rewards ladder and add little extras to my rations pack foods.  Things that you see Maya using in this short clip.

My Fundraising Page

Sue xx

The Ration Challenge - Playing with Ingredients - Flour

So, I know for Ration Challenge week my 400g flour ration will mostly be used to make me flatbreads as they are just so easy to do and great for accompanying meals or just dipping in hummus for a snack.  But I wanted to try a couple of other things to try to vary what I can make with my limited ingredients and, well just to make it feel like I'm cooking and eating different things.

I have already tried pastry and that was quite successful, well maybe it wasn't the prettiest to look at it but boy was it tasty.  Then I read on the Facebook group page about Parathas.

On the BBC Food website it says:

A paratha is a deliciously flaky flatbread, made by brushing ghee on the dough and folding it over itself before re-rolling and frying in a dry frying pan.

My basic recipe copied from someone's post on the Facebook group is this, so I thought I would give it a go yesterday while the rain poured down outside.

I decided to make one large paratha for my lunch, so I used 50g of flour ... well as you can see just a smidge over!  I added a pinch of salt and enough water to bring it together to a nice workable dough.  

After a good kneading I left it to rest for a just over half an hour.

Then I rolled it out nice and thin, brushed it with oil and then sprinkled it with some garlic powder and a pinch of salt and started to roll it up.

The next stage is to coil it up, then cover and leave to rest again for another 30 minutes.

Then roll it out thinly again into a large circle ... and once again brush with oil and roll up.

This time you can roll it out straight away, the slight squelching noise as the oil is pushed into dough is brilliant. 

Then after brushing both sides of the paratha with oil you fry it in a very hot dry pan until both sides are slightly browned.

I cut mine into quarters and had two of them spread with hummus and the other two just as they were so I could really understand the flavour and texture of them.

They taste like an amazing cross between a flatbread and a slice of lightly cooked flaky pastry, and with mine having garlic powder added mine were very reminiscent of a delightfully light and crisp garlic bread.

It might seem like a lot of work for a simple snack or meal, but I can assure you the end result is more than worth it.  They actually taste the nicest when they are still warm, fresh from the pan as like anything made with oil they do tend to get a bit stodgier as they cool.  

You can also incorporate other things into the parathas, such a tomato or curry paste, or some dahl or herbs.  Really it's something I intend to play with a lot in the future as I already have at the back of my mind a future Challenge using minimal ingredients and very little money. 

Sue xx

Playing with Flatbreads

There's no recipe as such needed for Flatbreads when you're doing the Ration Challenge, it's just flour and water with a dash of oil if you fancy ... and maybe a pinch of spice.  But I thought I'd have a go at cooking them a couple of different ways to see if it made any difference, it did.  So here's what I found.

I used a 100g of my flour, which during Ration Week will be a quarter of my flour ration, so I needed to remind myself how many flatbreads this would make.

With a little oil and the water it weighed in at a 163g ball of dough.

I rolled it into four smaller balls of dough, losing 1g of my mix in the process ... believe me I looked for this missing gram on the worktop and on my hands, but it was gone 😦

I rolled them out using as little flour on the worktop and rolling pin as I could get away with.

Then I fried them in slightly different ways, the first one was in a lightly oiled pan, the second in the same pan with no more oil added and obviously by now the pan was much hotter.

The third one was in a little more oil with garlic powder added.

And the final one was cooked in the most oil of all, only a tablespoon, but it sizzled away nicely and absorbed virtually all the oil.

As one cooked I ate the previous one, I was supposed to be saving them for a group photo ... but they were tasty and soon gone!!

And then I made notes while it was fresh in my mind.

So the conclusion of my little and very tasty experiment is that 50g of flour would be enough to make two good sized flatbreads to have to accompany a meal or make a wrap.  The garlicky way of cooking delivers the most flavour if the rest of the meal is going to be quite bland or the flatbread is going to be a snack on its own ... and the way to make them the most satisfying is to use more oil in the pan.

Needless to say I didn't need any lunch the day I did this little try out!!

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me up to now, it is very appreciated.  This mornings donation came courtesy of my jeans pocket, when I found £5 along with sundry poo bags when I was putting them into the washing basket.  I didn't know I had it and I think this cause needs it more than I do.

My Fundraising Page

Sue xx

Ration Challenge - Trials

Over the course of the next two weeks, every couple of days I am going to have a go at recipes that I could potentially make with my ration Challenge ingredients when I start this challenge on 13th September.  It's a real luxury to have this time ahead of me, as last year I signed up right at the last minute and pretty much winged it.  This year I should be able to make a good menu plan and know that barring any mishaps everything on it should work out!!

One thing I was keen to try first after not being able to make it last year ... due to me running out of flour after going mad making flatbreads when I finally got the recipe just right ... was pastry.

Blogging buddy Lesley Negus perfected a technique a couple of years ago and posted about it on her blog HERE.  Now I didn't have the recipe in front of me when I set to with my 100g of flour, 50g of oil and a jug of water.  But I thought if I treat the oil as though it were a solid fat, use the same ratio of half fat to flour and then gradually add the water it should work out.

And it did, but I think I added a touch too much water as it was a very soft dough.  I rested it in the fridge for a while wrapped in flour sprinkled clingfilm to help it firm up enough to use.

And using two sheets of floured clingfilm to help me roll it I then dropped the filling on top of it ... this was some leftover potato, onion and spinach mixture, also a bit sloppy ... I wasn't helping myself much here was I!!  I managed to pull the sides of the pastry up and around the filling and plop it unceremoniously over and into a non-stick pie dish.

It came out of the oven after 25 minutes at Gas 6 looking like this, now my only choice was eat it out of the tin or try and get it out of the pie dish.

You can see which option I chose 😄

Now it might not look brilliant, but the taste of that pastry is amazing.  The shortest, crumbliest and yet still shortcrust pastry that I have had in a long time.  Whether it will appear on the Ration Challenge menu is still to be decided, as I have just learnt of another method of making something that is short and delicious out of exactly the same ingredients.

I feel a comparison bake off coming on.

Here is my Ration Challenge Fundraising Page

And as you can see if you nip over for a quick peek or to make a donation, we are doing so well.  Already we have raised enough to feed FOUR refugees for an entire year and we are on our way to being able to feed FIVE.   How fantastic is that. 

Thank you so much for all your donations and encouragement up to now 💓

Sue xx

Ration Challenge - Day Four

Yay ... I'm over the halfway mark  😀

I won't lie this is hard.   It's hard to remember what your next meal is going to be unless you have a meal plan written down.  I've already had to alter mine once as I didn't make everything I should have made at the start, then I didn't have enough chickpeas or onions to make the chickpea curry I had promised myself.

Now the meal plan looks like this, not hugely dissimilar ...  how could it be with such limited ingredients ... but there's a couple of omissions and an addition, a spoonful of dhal added to the morning rice.  It's amazing the difference just a little bit of dhal stirred through the rice makes, and of course it adds a smidge more protein. 

I rinsed the chickpeas I'd remembered to soak overnight, and then brought them to the boil before leaving them to simmer away for an hour.  Next to them enough rice for three meals cooked away nicely while I went and had a shower. 

Once the rice was ready I added a spoonful of yesterday's prepared Dhal to my breakfast bowl and left the other two bowls of rice to cool down while I ate it.

Once I had walked Suky along the river and through the village I came back home and got stuck into preparing my 'ready meals'.

Falafels 

85g Chickpeas

20g finely chopped Onion

1 dessertspoon of Plain Flour

Whizz everything together.  I used my Nutribullet.   There was just enough water left on the Chickpeas to make it a relatively damp mix ... 

... which I then rolled into 6 little Falafels.

These will be cooked in a little oil.  Three falafels to be added to each of two evening meals of Rice and Dhal.

Using the remaining cooked chickpeas I quickly whizzed up some hummus.

Hummus

85g Cooked Chickpeas

1 large tbs Peanut Butter 

Water

Pinch of Salt

Oil

Cumin

Simply whizz them altogether, adding as much water as you need to get to the texture you like.  Scrape down the sides of the processor at least once to make sure everything is incorporated. 

Put into a fridge tub and pour over a drizzle of oil and add a sprinkle of Cumin.

  I won't lie this really needs a bit of garlic as do the falafels ... but of course I don't have any.   I'm finding out that the only way to get any real flavour into the foods I'm making and eating this week is to use quite a bit of salt.  No wonder I'm drinking so much water!!

Sue xx

Ration Challenge - Day Three

It's day three of the Ration Challenge and as you can see from this top photograph  my fridge  is looking a bit healthier now  In fact you could almost call what's on the shelf 'ready meals'.

Breakfast yesterday was plain rice and a cup of hot water.

Lunch was two little flatbreads spread with peanut butter ... one of my earned rewards ... with a glass of water.  It should have been twice as big as this but I burnt my first large flatbread.  So I split the dough that was left and cooked two smaller ones instead.

Recipe for Two Large or Four Small Flatbreads

50g Plain Flour

Pinch of Salt

Water

Mix everything together.  Knead until no longer sticky, rest dough for ten minutes and then cook on both sides in a hot lightly oiled frying pan until ready.

After lunch I made Dhal ready for my tea.

Dhal

190g Red Lentils

2tsp Cumin

50g Chopped Onion

Saute onion in a good glug of oil until soft, stir in the cumin.  Cook for a couple of minutes then add the washed red lentils.  Stir well and top up with lots of water.  Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook with the pan lid on for about an hour.   Remove lid and leave to cool in the pan.  It will thicken as it cools.

I split the mix between four tubs, leaving enough in the pan to have for my tea.

It was really tasty once I added salt.

Today I am busy making Falafels and Hummus, because YES I remembered to soak my chickpeas last night 😃

Sue xx