CUS wrote:
chopped dried apricots are an awesome and under-used ingredient for adding flavour and juiciness. Work well in curries, but work particularly well with bolognese, or at least in the beef bolognese that I make.
Hmm, interesting. I like fruit in curries (sultanas being the classic example), hadn't considered it in bolognese. Mind you, I hardly ever make bolognese because halfway through I decide it's boring, start adding spices, and suddenly I have chilli con carne.
Speaking of which, chilli con carne should have both sugar and chocolate in it. Trufax.
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Also - a small tin of cocktail fruit works excellently in stir fries (and also with mince things like bolognese again). A small pot of yoghurt similarly can be used as a base for a curry or stir fry with often surprisingly excellent results (no use to you of cours, Myo).
I can't see the cocktail fruit thing working but I may try it one day to see. Stranger things have happend. The yogurt-in-curry-sauce thing is excellent of course, I base massalla sauces of yogurt to make them somewhat less rich and a bit sharper tasting than the heavy cream-based ones you get from restuarants.
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Marmite + tuna works. I don't know why, but it really does. (Er, on toast, for example. Not mixed together like tuna + mayo!
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That's very odd. A guy I was in Uni with once used to do this all the time, just mix together anything he had. I saw him once eating tomato soup, baked beans, and shredded wheat. The only thing he said he'd made and not finished was a sandwich of Philadelphia soft cheese, ham, and chocolate spread.
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If you have gas hobs, use them (carefully, with a skewer) to roast red peppers, for cheap gorgeousness.
I keep meaning to do this. Last night I oven-roasted a coarsely chopped red pepper and an onion (white but red would be better) with some garlic-infused olive oil and a generous amount of pepper, oregano, basil, onion salt, garlic powder, and (secret ingredient) cumin. I got the cumin idea from... somewhere, and I was slighly dubious but it was really good. Roasted for about half an hour at 180degC then another 20min or so at 220degC, so it had some nice black edges on the peppers and the smaller bits of onion had gone crunchy.