If you are unused to poker jargon, all this stuff about rakeback, sit-and-goes, freerolls, then I apologize. But the basic message is this. There be free money out there. Most of the big sites offer freerolls, which are tournaments that you can join for nada. You probably won’t win much, but there are (improbable) opportunities to win lots and lots. And it’s a great way to practice and improve your poker. This blog, really, is about how to be a cheapskate. Poker freerolls are gloriously cheapskate.

Take about half a kilo/1 lb of self raising flour, (if you have no self raising, just add a couple of teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda) add a couple of teaspoons of sugar, a bit of salt, mix it up a bit in a bowl, then add your beer. You need to add enough beer that the dough becomes a, well, a ball of dough. The dough should not be too sticky to the touch, so if you accidentally add a bit to much beer, just add a bit more flour.  Put the dough ball onto a baking tray, squish it down a little, divide the ball into quarters with a knife, then slam it all into a hot oven until it looks a bit brown on top.

Actually, the method is very much like making soda bread, (when you think about it, it is soda bread!) except possibly even easier. In its own way, beer bread is even more economical than soda bread as you can use unwanted beer leftovers.  I did this with lager, and got good results. I imagine that a good ale or stout could yield a very interesting and possibly excellent loaf.

The O.U. are now offering courses for free! I’ve signed up for two courses in writing, one course featuring Goya, the artist, and a Spanish course. In general, the courses are concise, well thought out, and all material is availiable on line, for no cost. This is an excellent development. Click here for more info.

M.I.T. are also offering free courses. These are probably very very good, though I haven’t signed up with them. The reason for this is that the courses require that you purchase the books on their reading lists. For most people this won’t be a problem, but as I’m based in Argentina I’m beyond the reach of Amazon. Besides,  I’m too poor to blow perhaps hundreds of dollars on books.

One caveat is that there is absolutely no real tuition, no-one will mark your work, and you will gain no qualifications at all. But what do you expect for nuffink?

The availability of cheap and free education on the web is an interesting development, as it means that educational resources are available to anyone in the world with access to a computer. Which, I’m sure, in the near future, will soon include almost all earthlings.

I think that the KISS method’s fine, as it basically takes the mystery out of making pastry. However, here are some tips for making even better pastry…

• It helps to keep everything related to pastry making cold. Ideally, your hands should be cold, the utensils should be cold, you should use cold marble to roll the pastry. In reality, this is all too much for me. But if you’re making pastry for a special ocasion, you should bear this in mind. But one thing that is easy and well worth doing is to chill the dough ball in the fridge for an hour or so. Wrap it up in cling film of greaseproof paper. Doing this makes the pastry more manageble and less likely to shrink.
• Be quick when making pastry. Don’t spend ages pushing the dough about. As soon as the dough is done, it’s done. Over-working the pastry will make it more likely to shrink, and make it tougher. A food processor is useful here to reduce the time taken.
• Fat. For this simple type of pastry..known as shortcrust pastry, it’s best to use 50% butter and 50% lard.  Butter on it’s own is fine, but won’t be as light. Margerine is okay, but won’t taste as good. At a pinch you could use vegetable oil, but the texture changes a lot. Sort of totally unflaky and solid.
• Flour. Try sifting the flour…it gets a bit more air into the mixture, makes it lighter.
• When mixing the flour and fat, raise the ingredients with your hands.  This helps get a bit more air into the mix. 

To make pasta, you need 5 heaped spoonfuls (5 oz/125g) of flour. And one egg. Make a mound of flour, make an indentation in the top of this mound, and break the egg into it. Mix egg and flour together with your hands. Add a bit of water…a few drops at a time till you have a ball of dough. If you add a bit too much water, the dough will go squidgy. Don’t worry about that. Just add a bit more flour to the mix. Now, here’s the important bit. Keep working the dough with your hands. Pull it, push it, stretch it, pummel it, whatever. Work it for about 10 minutes. This workover changes the chemistry of the flour, and makes it more elastic, more like pasta, and less like a ball of flour.

Now roll the pasta flat and thin.  If you then cut it into strips, you have a rough-and-ready spaghetti, Largish rectangles can make lasagna, or rolled to make cannelloni. Small rectangles could make ravioli.

Anyway, yesterday, I made a rough “spaghetti”, and added this to my bolognaise sauce as it was cooking, but just a few minutes before serving. In this way, fresh pasta is a bit easier to prepare than dry, as you can add it directly to the sauce instead of boiling up water separately.

A couple of points:

• Fresh, homemade pasta is a bit different to the shop bought stuff. It’s a slightly more rustic, rough and ready experience. Don’t expect it to look like machine-generated pasta!

• Despite the meat sauce I used here, fresh pasta tends to go better with creamy sauces rather than meaty/tomatoey sauces. (But is just fine with meat too!)

• To make fresh pasta, you do not need posh, hard wheat flour. The cheap stuff is perfectly okay. Fresh pasta is softish, quite unlike shop-bought hard pasta. It’s supposed to be a bit soft.  But not too soft, so cook it quickly. Maybe a couple of minutes should do it if cooked in boiling water, four or five minutes if added to a slower cooking sauce…

Bon appetit!

Scones are easy. Scones are amazingly tasty, and people usually adore them.

Use 8 heaped tablespoons (8oz or 200g) of Self-raising. (Or use ordinary flour and baking powder)

Add 3oz/75g butter/margarine.

Mix these together with your fingertips. The idea is to get a lumpy breadcrumb effect. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

Add an egg, some salt, and about 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Stir this mixture a bit, then add a little buttermilk..usually no more than 3 tablespoons is enough. (Buttermilk: find out how to make this in my Soda Bread article)

The mix is okay when you can form a ball of dough that hangs together nicely, but isn’t so sticky that bits of dough stick to your hands. The texture of the dough is very similar to that of soda bread.

Put this dough into a baking receptacle, flatten it just a little, divide into quarters and slam into a pretty hot oven for about 10 minutes. ( I say about 10 mins, because, frankly, it varies) The scones are ready once risen & a little brown on top. Leave the scones to cool down for about ten minutes.

In England, these things are usually eaten with clotted cream, a cream so thick that it might deliver instant heart attack. But it tastes great. So eat your scones with the thickest cream you can lay your mits on.  And plenty of jam.

I think the fish would have been a bit boring without a sauce though. This was my sauce.

One medium size onion (shallots would be best), juice of one lemon, juice of two oranges, about half a glass of white wine. Simmer  till  syrupy. Then add some heavy cream..a couple of heaped table spoons. Let the mixture reduce by about half. Add 200g/6oz butter. It makes a tangy rich sauce that goes really well with the fish. And goes really well with the baked potatoes that you might prepare for a meal such as this. Baked potatoes are great because they´re so easy and delicious!

This isn´t food for total paupers. But potatoes here are down to 1 peso/kg, (that´s like 12 cents a pound), and the salmon was about 13 pesos/kg.

Others at the barbeque did meat. The mix of fish, meat, spuds,sauce and grilled veggies and wine made for a rather luxurious eating experience.

This is a dish I originally found in the paupers cookbook (Jocasta Innes). I think the books out of print now. Anyway, the combination of mussels and pasta doesn´t sound good maybe, but it is. Very.

First chop up an onion, chop up a load of garlic. Fry the onion till soft, add the garlic, cook a bit,  add a can of tomatoes and tomato puree, add some cumin or curry powder and salt & maybe a little sugar. Let the mixture reduce a bit.

While this is going on,  clean your mussels. I use a wire washing up pad to dop this, Remove the beard. Make sure your mussels are closed. This means that they are alive and therefore fresh.

Now add the mussels to the vegetables. Keep cooking, once the mussels are open, the dish is done. Personally, I like to cook the mussels for  maybe 10 mins after they have opened. I prefer them well cooked. Now eat with spaghetti.

This dish can be altered freely. Use some white wine, use fresh tomatoes,  maybe add a bit of cream, throw in a finely chopped carrot, or zuchinni/corgette, whatever you have to hand. This is basically a cheap dish. Mussels in Buenos Aires only cost US$3 a kilo. Even in Britain, mussels can be very inexpensive if you buy them at the right time of year from the right place. Come to think about it, in the northern hemisphere, mussel season is starting around now…