How to save on Christmas with cheaper dishes

  • From the aperitif to the dessert, passing through the main dishes, we give you very affordable and tasty alternatives

Is approach the Christmas and the wallet to tremble. These are days of going to the market with a scare in the body at the price that oysters, sea bream, lamb reach … Thinking about your pocket, here are some proposals of dishes to continue eating just as well but spending less.

Miguel Ángel Alonso is the chef at La Bodeguita del Arte, a restaurant located in front of Madrid’s Retiro Park in Madrid, a specialist in spoon dishes and pickles. His recommendation sweeps home: “If we don’t want to buy seafood that is too expensive, we can get some good mussels and a delicious marinade. We can present them on top of a quality artisan fried potato and with a little lime zest. They are brutal. ”

If we have some frozen prawns we can also present them with a sauce that makes a difference. “With a tartar sauce with chopped capers and the green part of chives, chopped gherkin, mustard, egg and mayonnaise. Everyone will be delighted & rdquor ;.

Avocado cream

Marina Rivas, chef and co-author with Inés Ortega of books such as ‘Our menus’ or ‘The kitchen of the four seasons’, proposes an aperitif based on “a good cream made with avocado from Malaga, which is in full season. “” Use individual tartlets and pour it inside. Accompany with a little extra virgin olive oil, coriander and a touch of lemon & mldr; You can decorate it with some pomegranate seeds, which is a seasonal fruit to make them very very beautiful & rdquor ;.

A pintona salad without resorting to overpriced ingredients? Miguel Ángel Alonso proposes to buy “some endives and make a roquefort sauce with cream to serve them. It can be very rich. ”

Spinach cake and seafood soup ‘low cost’

Rafa Prades, chef and gastronomic trainer, has just published the book ‘Cocina de repetitajos’, where he precisely focuses on cook with leftovers (those ‘repeats’ of the title) to make a flag of the use. A cheap and pintón starter for Christmas? “A spinach and pine nut cake with beaten egg. Once set in the oven, it is presented with a pink sauce and it is very good & rdquor ;.

Another of Prades’s alternatives has to do with seafood soup. “The key in these soups is to have a good ‘fumet’; a bottom with power. My recommendation is to freeze the heads and bones of the fish that we are consuming the previous days. Taking advantage of all this waste, we make a good ‘stock’ for Christmas with some saffron-infused hebritas that will give it a spectacular yellow color. The meat of the fish heads and any shrimp, mussel or chirla that we have will be the perfect pieces for a soup to fall on your back & rdquor ;.

Sea bass instead of hake, chicken and pork

As an alternative to hake – and at the prohibitive prices that it can reach at this time – Prades proposes to prepare a sea ​​bass stuffed with prawns and mushrooms. “First you have to remove the bones from the sea bass and remove the head, and then fill it with mushrooms and prawns that we will have previously sautéed in the pan. We tie the fish and bake for 15 minutes. A delicious and very colorful dish & rdquor ;.

Miguel Ángel Alonso is also convinced to choose some good soles and prepare them “in the oven with a mince of garlic and parsley. They look great and they don’t need more & rdquor ;.

For meat, Rafa Prades has no doubts: goodbye, turkey; hello free range chicken. “The key here is to make it stuffed with minced meat, tinned liver pate to give it smoothness and fat, a splash of brandy or Pedro Ximénez, raisins, dried apricots & mldr; Afterwards, we mix everything with beaten egg and thicken with breadcrumbs. It’s that easy and rich & rdquor ;.

Marina Rivas, for her part, encourages us to recover a recipe from yesteryear and thus propose something different. He also opts for the chicken, but in pepitoria, to surprise the guests. Instead of lamb, Miguel Ángel Alonso proposes to prepare a good baked pork tenderloin. “It is a meat that is always going to be juicy and that is much cheaper. Prepare it with some poorly baked potatoes, with very minced garlic, a dash of vinegar, another of white wine and julienned onion & rdquor ;.

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And if we are not willing to leave our salary on a very expensive cake, Alonso has a different solution and, above all, a very original one. “Buy almond paste, which costs nothing and less, and make a sweet soup with it. Infuse the paste with milk and sugar to taste to get a mixture with a tremendous almond flavor. Once it is ready, add slices of bread toasted inside the soup and a touch of cinnamon A dessert very different from everything and very economical & rdquor ;.

Marina Rivas encourages recover the pieces of nougat As Christmas goes by and prepare a ‘mousse’ with all the flavor of Christmas & mldr; but very little extra cost. With these ideas, the January slope does not seem so steep.

Reference-www.elperiodico.com

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