Bargainacious Spuds & a Hotpot

Today I went to do my weekly shop at Morrisons and found these, a 12.5kg bag of British grown Estima potatoes on offer at £3.49    £2.00   Well, as they worked out at just 16p per kilo it was a 'no brainer' as they say.  I've used Estima many times and they are a good all-rounder.

I half expected smallish potatoes but they range from a good baking potato size to a decent peeler for roasties or boiling too. So...if you have a Mr M store locally, I would grab yourself a bag pronto.  They keep pretty well if you leave them in the brown sack in a cool dark place (ours goes in the shed) so I feel lots of winter mash coming on!

Tonight I made a veggie hotpot.  I don't eat meat so I use cheese for my protein fix. I just sautéed the onion and leek in a splash of oil to soften, added chopped carrot and broccoli, then a tablespoon of flour to thicken.  1.25pints of veg stock went in next, a bit of ground black pepper & a teaspoon of dried sage.  The whole lot went into the big dish....

I topped it with sliced potato (par-boiled for 10 minutes) and about 100g of cheese and popped it in the oven at 180 degrees for 45 mins.

Sorry about the photo quality but it was getting dark by then :(

 

As you can see there is quite a bit of sauce so we eat ours out of a big pasta-type dish and have a slice of crusty bread for mopping.  It will serve 4 people easily, especially with crusty bread for the hearty appetites.

I did a rough costing:

Splash of oil                              10p
3 onions (from a 50p bag)         20p
1 leek (bendy from fridge)        25p
Head of broccoli                       49p
4 carrots (from a 50p bag)        20p
Veg stock from cubes               5p   (free if you make your own)
Tbsp flour  (guess-timate)         1p   (value range)
Dash of sage                              5p
3 large potatoes (750g)           12p
100g cheddar                           50p
(from bargain pack)                  

TOTAL                              £1.97

This works out at around 50p a portion plus any bread.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can use whatever veg you have in whatever proportions you like.  Swede, cauliflower, sweetcorn etc all work well in it too and if I'm feeling flush I substitute 1/4 pint of dry cider for 1/4 pint of stock.  It just makes for a sweeter sauce :)

I hope someone has found this helpful but if I've made an error in my cost calculations do tell me.  I'm not very good at writing things down!

Thanks for popping in x