Cooking on a budget

If you are on a budget, try to cook dishes with ingredients that you commonly have in your kitchen.  Following are the most common stocked ingredients in any household whether Western or Asian dishes are often cook: 

-eggs
-salt
-pepper
-butter
-cheese
-bread

So let us work on making egg sandwiches without adding any fish or meat in it to make it budget friendly.

1st variation:

-Boil 2 eggs

-Mashed it up with the seasonings to taste.

-Spread butter on 2 slices of bread.

-Top 1 slice of bread with the mashed eggs.

-Place second slice of bread over it to eat.

2nd variation:

-Beat 2 eggs with seasonings.

-Heat butter in pan till it melts.

-Pour eggs in to scramble and cook it to your liking, ie, still runny or well cooked.

-Spread butter on 2 slices of bread.

-Top 1 slice of bread with the scramble eggs.

-Place second slice of bread over it to eat.

3rd variation:

-Heat butter in pan till it melts.

-Break an egg in to fry with seasonings.

-Cook it to your liking, ie, well cooked with crispy edges or sunny side up.

-Spread butter on a slice of bread.

-Top it with the egg.

-Fold to eat.

4th variation:

-cook based on variation 1 or 2 or 3.

-toast bread before adding eggs.

-add a slice of cheese.

5th variation:

You can change the flavour of your sandwich by adding what you have in your kitchen. If you often cook, the most common ingredients you are likely to stock is cucumber and tomato. Other greens you can add to your sandwiches without first cooking them are:

-Lettuce

-Onions (I prefer them fried till soft)

-Peppers

-Sprouts

You can also add fruits like these:

-Bananas

-Apples

-Pears

-Strawberries

-Peaches

-Avocado

-Pickles like olives

Check out this link to Fruits and Veggies to see if there are any fruits or vegetables that you can experiment with to make your sandwiches creatively.  

I shared a very good example in an earlier posting of a deep fried sandwich creatively made with commonly used ingredients in Asian and Western dishes:

-Mashed potato

-Mashed eggs

-Mixed veggies (carrots, corn, green peas)

-Minced onion

-Relish

It is actually a popular Korean street food. If I make it on a budget, I will not include sasame seeds and relish since they are not common ingredients in my kitchen. The sausage or other meat of my choice can be added as an option. Since cornstarch and flour are used in making the batter, it will turn out crispy even without coating the sandwich with panko bread crumbs to deep fry.

Also check out the kind of condiments that you can add to your sandwiches to make them tastier too.  Some of them may already be in your kitchen:

-Yellow mustard

-Relish

-Vinegar

-Wasabi

-Hot sauce

-Dijon mustard

-Mayonnaise

-Ketchup

-Barbecue sauce

-Soy sauce

You can watch this video for ideas on how some of the above condiments can be used to make your egg sandwiches more flavourful.

These are the ingredients and steps used for making them:

1st variation:

2 Boiled Eggs (mashed with fork)

Season eggs with:

2 Tbsp Mayonnaise

Pinch of Salt

1/4 Tsp Pepper

1 Tsp White Vinegar

To serve:

Spread mashed eggs on 1 slice of white bread before topping with the other.

2nd variation:

2 Eggs (Scrambled with 1 1/2 Tsp butter)

Season eggs with:

Pinch of Salt

1 Tsp Butter

To serve:

Toast 2 slices of bread.

Spread mayonnaise on both slices of bread before adding scrambled eggs on 1 slice.

Add Pepper to scrambled eggs.

Top that with a few slices of cucumber.

Spread hot sauce on second slice of bread before topping it over first slice of bread.

3rd variation:

2 Eggs (boiled and mashed)

Season eggs with:

2 Tbsp Mayonnaise

1 Tbsp Onion (chopped)

2 Tbsp Coriander (minced)

1/4 Tsp Pepper

1 Tsp Lemon Juice

1/4 Tsp Garlic

To serve:

Spread butter on 2 slices of bread and top 1 slice with eggs.

Sprinkle chili flakes over eggs.

Top with second slice of bread.

Toast one side of bread on pan and spread butter on the other side.

Turn over to toast buttered side.

When you have a budget to meet, always find ways to make use of ingredients before they reach their expiry date.  This bread and eggs topped with cheese breakfast should be an easy meal to cook if you have bread that you have kept in the fridge because it is going stale.  It is also a great way to get rid of overripe tomatoes.

Simple Egg Kimbap (Seaweed Rice Rolls)

I often see kimbap made and eaten on Korean dramas.  I found the recipe for it at Breakfast for One.  There is a video to show how it is made.

It is a great way to clear leftover rice that you have cooked with too much water in it.  If your rice is too dry, you can add water to it and microwave it for a minute or 2.  The total number of ingredients required to make it is 12.

You can also fold the seaweed sheet up if you do not have a mat to roll it up.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

I have been on a look out for recipes for scrambled eggs cooked with tomatoes eversince my son told me that he likes eating his eggs that way.  I think he will like the way this Chinese Eggs & Tomato Stir Fry is done in the video by Thai chef, Pailin "Pai" Chongchitnant.  

This is how it is cooked at a glance.

I have shared many recipes for scrambled eggs as my family loves eating them.

Here is another soup that I discovered I love drinking during a trip to China for a holiday.  It is Hot and Sour Soup.  This is how Chef Lau, who used to run a successful Chinese restaurant in New York made it.

Chef Lau used 21 ingredients to cook his Hot and Sour Soup.  If you are new to Chinese cooking, preparing so many ingredients for a soup can be intimidating.  However, if you break down the steps to parepare and cook it, you will realise that it is not such an arduous task after all.

I am happy to discover that Lotus, where I often buy my groceries from, do supply mix mushrooms.  This pack weighs 400g.

You do not have to use all the types of mushroom mentioned in Chef Lau's recipe.   Here is another version from Dana with no mushrooms.  Her recipe included two secret ingredients that her uncle used in his Chinese restaurant.  They are dried mandarin peel and lily flower.

Check out this article if you do not have Sriracha Hot Sauce in your pantry:

Best Sriracha Substitute: 10 Alternatives Ranked

Pickled Vegetables

Have you tried the acar served with Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan's.  I like it so much that I have an urge to make my own.

I found this video instruction from The Meatmen Channel.

These are the ingredients required to make it:

2 cucumbers
2 carrots
1/2 chinese cabbage
1/2 cauliflower
5 Long Beans
4 chillies
1L water
650ml white vinegar
10 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp salt
120g shallots
4 cloves garlic
15g tumeric
4 candlenuts
1 stalk lemongrass
100g fresh chillies
50g soaked dried chillies
20g belacan
4 tbsp oil
250g ground peaunts
50g fried shallots
40g toasted white sesame seeds

After checking out the amount of ingredients I will have to prepare to make it, I have decided to go for the simpler Japanese version.  I found the recipes at Japanese Cooking Channel. 

These are recipes I picked out from the video that do not require mirin to make since I do not stock it in my pantry:

The good news is that I can replace mirin with rice vinegar on a 1:1 ratio as substitute.  According to All Recipes, since mirin is much sweeter than rice vinegar, I will have to add about a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of rice vinegar. 

Here is another recipe I found on Daily Cooking Quest that I would like to try making:

I am glad to read from a comment posted by Anita, the cook, that though kombu will give the pickle a bit of umami, it will still be delicious without it.