A humble bowl of food

I’ve decided to do a food post. Not because anyone should listen to my opinions about food, but because my cooking and eating habits are one aspect of my lifestyle, and therefore a suitable topic for this blog. The meal I’ll be describing tonight is one that I prepare regularly, and belongs in the same order of sheer highclassness as, say, instant porridge. While describing this meal, I will make some parenthetical remarks about some of the ingredients, and I will also display some photographs.

(I originally got the idea for this meal, incidentally, from money-saving at a university refectory. Its evolutionary ancestor is baked potato covered in beef sauce, cheese and lettuce, but one day I realised it was cheaper to ask for potato chips instead of baked potato. I made other changes - such as changing the greens from lettuce to watercress - after I started cooking it for myself.)

One of the ingredients is beef sauce, made from minced beef and your favourite Italian sauce. These ingredients (including 500g of mince, which is enough for three serves) are photographed below.

Incidentally, I don’t buy minced meat from my regular supermarket - not because of any differences in the meat, but because at the supermarket it comes in less convenient packaging (layers of cling film and polystyrene to unravel and squashed too flat to conveniently fit in the saucepan after being stored frozen). The packaging as shown above is much easier to work with.

Having prepared the beef sauce, I keep it in the fridge until I am ready to prepare the rest of the meal (because there is enough meat for three serves, even if I decide to prepare the meal straight away I’ll only use 1/3 of it).

The first ingredient to actually go in the bowl are some potato wedges. I buy the wedges from the supermarket’s frozen foods section and cook about half a bowlful on Low Mix for fifteen minutes. Here is what they look like when they’ve been cooked and placed in the bowl.

I then pour the beef sauce (or rather, a third of it) over the wedges, sprinkle about forty grams of mature cheddar cheese over the top of that, and then cook it in the microwave on high for ninety seconds to melt the cheese and warm the meat.

Finally, I spread some greens over the top - to be specific, watercress.

Incidentally, below is an illustration of how I keep my vegetables fresh: by keeping them in a plastic container with some paper towels both underneath and above the vegetables (and, of course, the container as a whole goes in the fridge). In the photograph, you can see cauliflower on the left, tomato in the middle, and dimly some watercress on the right.

The meal goes nicely with a glass of apple, mango and banana juice; here is what it looks like.