I rather enjoyed my chicken livers last time I had them and, since they were so cheap, I was on a mission to do a proper budget meal with them. One recipe that caught my eye on the internet was for livers with caramelised onions and Madeira. That sounded good to me but the Madeira would seriously increase the cost of the meal.

This meal happened totally by accident. Sir Millar was coming around to dinner and I was on a big shopping trip. I had no idea what I wanted to make that night so I was pretty much buying out everything in the shop.

With hindsight, I see this  was a bit stupid as on the 24^th I get kicked out of halls. I can't actually eat everything in my freezer before then. In my trolley were chicken livers, sirloin steak, a lamb leg steak, poussin, sardines, pork spare ribs, a pack of beef mince and a large selection of vegetables and other bits and pieces. I thought that should give Sir Millar a good choice for what to have. But, as always, Andy wasn't being very decisive and just stared blankly at the meat selection I was packing into the fridge. It seems he really had no idea what he wanted. “Well,” I said, “I could always make macaroni cheese to get rid of some of my pasta.” It was supposed to be a joke. But Sir Millar thought it was a great idea. Apparently he's never had proper macaroni cheese before.I assume by “proper” he means “not from a can”. It's true, tinned macaroni cheese is the stuff of nightmares. However it comes a poor second to the school dinner version. I remember being subjected to this horror as a small child in my first primary school and nearly being sick as I was forced to eat the plastic cheese sauce. It took a long while to get over my fear of macaroni cheese. Not as long as it took for me deal with my fear of Yorkshire pudding, but that's a story for another time. When I was a teenager I was made a nice version by a friend's mother and, since then, macaroni cheese has not been an issue.

I'll never understand why I bother trying things this hard. Even when they work, they just stress me out!

When I say cheap I mean really, really cheap. It cost me £3.80 and made enough for three hungry people with leftovers. In fact, it would easily feed four people with normal appetites.

Pastitsio is another thing I hadn't heard of until I read the book ‘Home Cooking'. The dish is made of a layer of macaroni, or other tubular pasta, a layer of moussaka style meat sauce and topped with béchamel . It looked something like this.

I bought some cheap kidneys from Tesco (40p for 250g! ) planning on making a Rinones al Jerez (or Kidneys with sherry ). It was all going to plan until I got home and realised that my paprika had all gone. My flatmate had borrowed it the previous night. This irked me slightly as she will quite happily admit she doesn't actually know what paprika is, let alone what to do with it.

Apparently her friend had asked for some so she went through my rather extensive spice cupboard until she found it. It was taken off to her mate's house where she'd finished it off making paella. So the Kidneys weren't as great as I wanted and I got a bit stressed so I forgot to take pictures. This might have been for the best as the colour wasn't quite right without the paprika.Flatmates are now under strict instructions to leave a note if they finish my stuff in future. Grrrr! Apparently she nearly refilled the bottle too,  from the large pot of red powder  in my cupboard. Bloody good thing she didn't because it was, in fact, my extra hot chilli powder!  And finally here is the recipe for Rinones al Jerez (Spanish Lamb Kidneys with Sherry).

Since I had recently got a better idea of how crocodile tasted, I thought it was time to experiment. crocodilehas a subtle (even bland to some people)  flavour, I thought I'd better do something really interesting for the sauce, so I stole an idea from the menu of a Thai Restaurant. 

Despite my better judgement, I decided that I wanted to try making deep fried crispy crocodile ‘goujons.' I live on the fourth floor of some student halls. If I set a pan on fire, I couldn't rush out into the back garden. I couldn't even throw it out the window because the windows don't open!  No, it's ok, I'm joking, I wouldn't ever throw a burning pan out the window. Not unless someone I really hated was standing below, anyway.

Nevertheless, I gave the deep frying a try. This time my batter worked! I used the recipe from a lady on the BBC food boards of 2 medium egg whites + 1 tablespoon cornflour. I should have chilled it for longer to get it properly crispy but I was a bit short on time. It still looked and tasted good, especially since I threw in a bit of five spice.

I made the sauce from a mango (obviously), honey, cinnamon, dark soy and a little ginger. It was delicious, although it got a bit cold when I was taking the picture. To keep in with a Thai theme, I cooked some noodles in coconut milk infused with lemon grass and lime, then tossed in some freshly chopped coriander. I'd have liked some suitable oriental vegetable but the shops were being crap I couldn't find one. So I had sugar snap peas instead. 

Here is the Crispy Crocodile with Mango Sauce Recipe.

I like crocodile. I wish I could afford to buy it more often!

Every now and again, when work is slow, I'll read some of the web pages devoted to food photography to see what I can learn. I've been making some progress. Compare my first photos to the ones on this page and you'll see what I mean. Most of these sites talk about colour, lighting, beackground, depth of focus and so on. What most of them don't mention is that there are some foods that really are not photogenic. Nothing will make them look pretty.

The worst culprits for this are large pieces of stewed meat, like the oxtail I had for dinner last night. First I tried some close ups.

That didn't really help since oxtail isn't the prettiest meat to look at. Then I tried a some distance shots. This was the best one.

But no matter how many bits of greenery I threw at it, the oxtail just wouldn't look pretty. At least in this one you can see how rich and winey the sauce was.

Originally the oxtail was supposed to be served with a pearl barley “risotto” with just carrots and leeks. But after inspecting the 300g of tail, I noticed there wasn't very much meat  so I decided to add some red lentils and bacon to the barley mixture.

I stewed the oxtail in some red wine (Hardy's cab-shiraz which is on a half price offer at Tesco at the time of writing) along with carrot, celeriac, mushrooms onion and parsnip. I added a fair bit of rosemary too. The sauce was really rich and tasty and all the vegetables had taken on the flavours of the wine. The meat needed long slow cooking so I left the hob on its minimum setting and just had the stew steaming ( but not simmering) for a little over 3 hours.  

It was an interesting meal to eat. Oxtail is very fatty, which is probably why it is so nice. I could feel my arteries clogging up with every mouthful. At the same time, the pearl barley and lentil combination was loaded with protein and fibre. It actually tasted like it was really good for you but, unlike bran based food, it tasted good too!

I'm not sure if I'll get oxtail again soon. It was very nice, but you pay a lot for a small amount of meat, even if it is on special offer. I really loved the barley and lentils. I think it would make a fantastic vegetarian meal if the bacon was left out. I'll definitely be using it to accompany other stews.