Helvetia
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 17 de Ago, 2022
thank you to the fella who liked my writeup of the carrot burgers, it reminded me to post my next attempt at a jack recipe.
i ended up doing two in a week, so have included both write-ups under the spoilers.
jack spends the first half sperging about eggs in microwaves and about how hard (boo hoo) her life is from having to answer 999 calls from eggs exploding in microwaves.
ingredients:
as mentioned last time, turns out jack goes to Sainsbury's. i usually shop at lidl, since it's far cheaper, but to give the recipe the best chance of success, i went to Sainsbury's instead. i went in person, and had a few nectar coupons, but still, the sardines were the least expensive thing on the list at 60p each.
she used a whole tin of sardines to one egg, and a whole handful of spinach. it felt a little wasteful to me. my sardines were in spring water, and weigh 90g when drained. she drained the oil in hers into a jar, which i think would become disgusting after a few days, because there's no way you can prevent bits of sardine from getting into the jar.
a fistful of spinach was 17g. my spinach was £1 with my nectar card, £1.20 without. that was for 100g of spinach, which would last 4 breakfasts if i'd followed jack's recipe to the letter. as you'll hear in the review, even that was too much.
jack uses free-range eggs, which are 31p each, or £1.85 for 6.
in total, i brought enough sardines for 6 days worth of breakfasts to best use the eggs and the spinach.
tin of sardines: 60p
1 pack of spinach: £1.20
6 eggs: £1.85
TOTAL: £3.65 / $4.52
method:
the recipe was pretty standard, although my egg ended up very rubbery and a little dry, i usually do a spritz of oil in my cup before cooking microwave eggs in them, but jack seemed to think that the condensation from clingfilm over the top of the cup would be enough. it wasn't. i also don't understand why she didn't just scramble the egg before cooking it, especially considering that piercing the yolk essentially made it scrambled.
the spinach wilted, but became very uncomfortably wet, especially with the water from my sardines.
taste:
as you can probably tell, it was very watery and rubbery. i was able to make a few concessions over the course of the week, including oiling my cup and seasoning. bare in mind, jack does not recommend any sort of seasoning with this. not even salt and pepper. she also has sardines in oil, not even seasoned ones in tomato sauce, which are the same price.
mr helvetia noted that the macros weren't particularly great, while theoretically good for a cut, he found that the microwave basically destroyed any nutrients in the spinach, and it would've been best to steam it in the microwave similar to how i cooked the egg. even then, it's pretty brutal on the kinda fragile spinach.
subtotal pricing:
£6.65 for ingredients
30p per hour to run the microwave
£1.15 for a microwave-safe mug
TOTAL
£8.10
don't worry, i did pack a nice lunch for mr helvetia... (it's the recipe underneath this)
again, i went to Sainsbury's. i also purchased the spices from nil again, don't worry! they're all getting used, i just top off my other spices with the ones i buy from nil.
this is another vegan recipe, which I always feel like comes out more expensive. it probably doesn't, but that's just how I feel when buying the ingredients. again, full disclosure, I used my nectar card, which did give me better prices on some things. i also struggled to find some
ingredients!
jack calls for "2 medium onions or one massive one". she doesn't specify how big the onion should be for a large one, so I went into Sainsbury's and just brought 2 medium loose onions. she recommends a 1.5kg basics bag of onions, but I found that none of the onions in the bag were really... good? none of them I would consider above small. i also don't really eat brown onions, so it felt like a bit of a waste. i weighed mine and they came out to 23p.
again, with the really fucking vague ingredients, jack calls for "4 fat cloves of garlic". i didn't fancy cracking open the bulb in the middle of the aisle, so I chose the "large garlic bulb", which did come out to nearly 31p extra than just a regular bulb of garlic.
cardamom pods were an absolute pain to find.
sainsbury wanted £1.40 for 28g of cardamom pods, but they didn't sell them at my local Sainsbury's, so I tried Lidl, but they only sold the powder. i ended up at a halal shop where I was able to buy them loose. 4 pods cost me 20p, however I will use the sainsbury's calculation in my pricing as that is more fair.
oil was oil. i brought a 500ml bottle, which was £2.
jack also calls for both coriander powder and fresh coriander, which is mildly frustrating. fresh coriander was 52p for 30g. the powder was £1.10 for 36g.
jack wanted me to get fairtrade turmeric, non fairtrade was £1.15. i don't think Sainsbury's do fairtrade turmeric anymore so i just got the non fairtrade because i couldn't be fucked to go on a hunt for something that would just taste the exact same.
cinnamon was £1.10 for 38g.
chilli flakes, jack didn't specify what kind, so i went for sainsbury's "crushed chillies" pot. £1.90 for 85g.
mushrooms, again, no specification from jack. she called for 200g of them, so i went for the 300g pack of closed cup white mushrooms. 89p.
the chopped tomatoes weren't specified they had to be in a tin, but Sainsbury's do a tin of chopped tomatoes for 35p. basics are called the "stamford street co" these days.
50ml coconut cream, £1.65 for a 250ml carton.
2 medium onions: 23p
garlic: 55p
cardamom pods: £1.40
oil: £2
fresh coriander: 52p
powdered coriander: £1.10
cinnamon: £1.10
chilli flakes: £1.90
mushrooms: 89p
tinned chopped tomatoes: 35p
coconut cream: £1.65
TOTAL: £9.71 / $12.02
method:
I'm gonna gloss over a lot of the method, since it is mainly "cut this, now let me sperg about how my life is soo hard".
i had a few issues, as most of you know, i follow jack's recipes as closely as i can. she recommended cooking the onion and garlic with the cardamom seeds, but i found that the garlic cooked too quickly, and the cardamom seeds took a while between toasting and popping. if you want to try this, i'd say to add the cardamom seeds, then when they toast, add the onion and garlic.
she then adds all the spices, which really dried out my mixture. the mushrooms brought back a little moisture, but i added my tomatoes and water sooner simply because of how unbelievably dry the mixture was getting.
jack recommends cooking rice with the fucking spare cardamom pods and the coconut milk, which made me intensely MATI, because they were the two most expensive ingredients i used in the rorgan josh. i served it with udon noodles, simply because i had some laying around.
the sauce became intensely thick and extremely sticky. i did add the coconut cream, but ended up adding more around 125ml instead of the measly 50ml she added. this made it far more creamier and pleasant.
taste:
the garlic was overpowering. you got a real kick of spice, but then a very bitter aftertaste from the garlic. the cardamom flavour was almost completely lost, except if you managed to bite into an onion chunk that had been coated in it.
the mushrooms were very strange. i picked out one, bit into it and after a slimy outer coating, you ended up with a burnt crust compiled of all the spices you threw in. i tried again where I added the mushrooms and the spices into a blend of the onion and tomato sauce, and it came out better.
the colour was also a little strange. mushroom rogan josh should hypothetically be pretty orange because of the cinnamon and turmeric, but jack's came out brown. similar to a stroganoff.
i did put the curry into a lunchbox for mr helvetia to take to work, but when i took it out to put in his workbag, i noticed there was about 10ml of oil just on top. oil isn't unusual to see with a curry, but this was excessive. it also hadn't sat well with the cream, and after i drained the oil, i noticed it had split a little. not enough to be unpleasant, but jack claims this can serve 4, and also can be eaten the next day cold.
subtotal pricing:
£9.71 for ingredients
28p for use of one burner for 40 minutes
waitrose meal deal mr helvetia brought instead: £5
TOTAL: £15
as always, let me know if you have any recommendations for cooking with lady jack recipes to try.
tldr of the above, they're expensive and her cooking methods are poor and jack really shouldn't be writing recipes.
i ended up doing two in a week, so have included both write-ups under the spoilers.
Breakfast sardines, spinach, and a mug-baked-egg
my husband is a weightlifter, and is on a cut at the moment, so needs something low-calorie, but high-protein and low carb. jack advertises this as such, and I'm annoyed mr helvetia didn't take out the bins, so he's getting this.jack spends the first half sperging about eggs in microwaves and about how hard (boo hoo) her life is from having to answer 999 calls from eggs exploding in microwaves.
ingredients:
as mentioned last time, turns out jack goes to Sainsbury's. i usually shop at lidl, since it's far cheaper, but to give the recipe the best chance of success, i went to Sainsbury's instead. i went in person, and had a few nectar coupons, but still, the sardines were the least expensive thing on the list at 60p each.
she used a whole tin of sardines to one egg, and a whole handful of spinach. it felt a little wasteful to me. my sardines were in spring water, and weigh 90g when drained. she drained the oil in hers into a jar, which i think would become disgusting after a few days, because there's no way you can prevent bits of sardine from getting into the jar.
a fistful of spinach was 17g. my spinach was £1 with my nectar card, £1.20 without. that was for 100g of spinach, which would last 4 breakfasts if i'd followed jack's recipe to the letter. as you'll hear in the review, even that was too much.
jack uses free-range eggs, which are 31p each, or £1.85 for 6.
in total, i brought enough sardines for 6 days worth of breakfasts to best use the eggs and the spinach.
tin of sardines: 60p
1 pack of spinach: £1.20
6 eggs: £1.85
TOTAL: £3.65 / $4.52
method:
the recipe was pretty standard, although my egg ended up very rubbery and a little dry, i usually do a spritz of oil in my cup before cooking microwave eggs in them, but jack seemed to think that the condensation from clingfilm over the top of the cup would be enough. it wasn't. i also don't understand why she didn't just scramble the egg before cooking it, especially considering that piercing the yolk essentially made it scrambled.
the spinach wilted, but became very uncomfortably wet, especially with the water from my sardines.
taste:
as you can probably tell, it was very watery and rubbery. i was able to make a few concessions over the course of the week, including oiling my cup and seasoning. bare in mind, jack does not recommend any sort of seasoning with this. not even salt and pepper. she also has sardines in oil, not even seasoned ones in tomato sauce, which are the same price.
mr helvetia noted that the macros weren't particularly great, while theoretically good for a cut, he found that the microwave basically destroyed any nutrients in the spinach, and it would've been best to steam it in the microwave similar to how i cooked the egg. even then, it's pretty brutal on the kinda fragile spinach.
subtotal pricing:
£6.65 for ingredients
30p per hour to run the microwave
£1.15 for a microwave-safe mug
TOTAL
£8.10
don't worry, i did pack a nice lunch for mr helvetia... (it's the recipe underneath this)
Mushroom Rogan Josh, 26p
usual whining from jack in the introduction of this recipe. personal highlight "I do get spices from a brilliant ethnic grocer" which just sounds like the jack / cooking version of "i have a black friend!"again, i went to Sainsbury's. i also purchased the spices from nil again, don't worry! they're all getting used, i just top off my other spices with the ones i buy from nil.
this is another vegan recipe, which I always feel like comes out more expensive. it probably doesn't, but that's just how I feel when buying the ingredients. again, full disclosure, I used my nectar card, which did give me better prices on some things. i also struggled to find some
ingredients!
jack calls for "2 medium onions or one massive one". she doesn't specify how big the onion should be for a large one, so I went into Sainsbury's and just brought 2 medium loose onions. she recommends a 1.5kg basics bag of onions, but I found that none of the onions in the bag were really... good? none of them I would consider above small. i also don't really eat brown onions, so it felt like a bit of a waste. i weighed mine and they came out to 23p.
again, with the really fucking vague ingredients, jack calls for "4 fat cloves of garlic". i didn't fancy cracking open the bulb in the middle of the aisle, so I chose the "large garlic bulb", which did come out to nearly 31p extra than just a regular bulb of garlic.
cardamom pods were an absolute pain to find.
sainsbury wanted £1.40 for 28g of cardamom pods, but they didn't sell them at my local Sainsbury's, so I tried Lidl, but they only sold the powder. i ended up at a halal shop where I was able to buy them loose. 4 pods cost me 20p, however I will use the sainsbury's calculation in my pricing as that is more fair.
oil was oil. i brought a 500ml bottle, which was £2.
jack also calls for both coriander powder and fresh coriander, which is mildly frustrating. fresh coriander was 52p for 30g. the powder was £1.10 for 36g.
jack wanted me to get fairtrade turmeric, non fairtrade was £1.15. i don't think Sainsbury's do fairtrade turmeric anymore so i just got the non fairtrade because i couldn't be fucked to go on a hunt for something that would just taste the exact same.
cinnamon was £1.10 for 38g.
chilli flakes, jack didn't specify what kind, so i went for sainsbury's "crushed chillies" pot. £1.90 for 85g.
mushrooms, again, no specification from jack. she called for 200g of them, so i went for the 300g pack of closed cup white mushrooms. 89p.
the chopped tomatoes weren't specified they had to be in a tin, but Sainsbury's do a tin of chopped tomatoes for 35p. basics are called the "stamford street co" these days.
50ml coconut cream, £1.65 for a 250ml carton.
2 medium onions: 23p
garlic: 55p
cardamom pods: £1.40
oil: £2
fresh coriander: 52p
powdered coriander: £1.10
cinnamon: £1.10
chilli flakes: £1.90
mushrooms: 89p
tinned chopped tomatoes: 35p
coconut cream: £1.65
TOTAL: £9.71 / $12.02
method:
I'm gonna gloss over a lot of the method, since it is mainly "cut this, now let me sperg about how my life is soo hard".
i had a few issues, as most of you know, i follow jack's recipes as closely as i can. she recommended cooking the onion and garlic with the cardamom seeds, but i found that the garlic cooked too quickly, and the cardamom seeds took a while between toasting and popping. if you want to try this, i'd say to add the cardamom seeds, then when they toast, add the onion and garlic.
she then adds all the spices, which really dried out my mixture. the mushrooms brought back a little moisture, but i added my tomatoes and water sooner simply because of how unbelievably dry the mixture was getting.
jack recommends cooking rice with the fucking spare cardamom pods and the coconut milk, which made me intensely MATI, because they were the two most expensive ingredients i used in the rorgan josh. i served it with udon noodles, simply because i had some laying around.
the sauce became intensely thick and extremely sticky. i did add the coconut cream, but ended up adding more around 125ml instead of the measly 50ml she added. this made it far more creamier and pleasant.
taste:
the garlic was overpowering. you got a real kick of spice, but then a very bitter aftertaste from the garlic. the cardamom flavour was almost completely lost, except if you managed to bite into an onion chunk that had been coated in it.
the mushrooms were very strange. i picked out one, bit into it and after a slimy outer coating, you ended up with a burnt crust compiled of all the spices you threw in. i tried again where I added the mushrooms and the spices into a blend of the onion and tomato sauce, and it came out better.
the colour was also a little strange. mushroom rogan josh should hypothetically be pretty orange because of the cinnamon and turmeric, but jack's came out brown. similar to a stroganoff.
i did put the curry into a lunchbox for mr helvetia to take to work, but when i took it out to put in his workbag, i noticed there was about 10ml of oil just on top. oil isn't unusual to see with a curry, but this was excessive. it also hadn't sat well with the cream, and after i drained the oil, i noticed it had split a little. not enough to be unpleasant, but jack claims this can serve 4, and also can be eaten the next day cold.
subtotal pricing:
£9.71 for ingredients
28p for use of one burner for 40 minutes
waitrose meal deal mr helvetia brought instead: £5
TOTAL: £15
as always, let me know if you have any recommendations for cooking with lady jack recipes to try.
tldr of the above, they're expensive and her cooking methods are poor and jack really shouldn't be writing recipes.
