I got the hint about pilchard curry from reading an interview with an asian comedian - but it is apparently quite common.
I decided to do a thai version.
You need:
1 x 450g tin of pilchards in tomato sauce 70p (NOT the ones in brine - they are much too fishy in this).
1 x 200g block of coconut cream 30p.
1 or 2 tablespoons of Thai red curry paste 10-20p (a 400g tub costs £1.70 and makes between 8-20 curries).
100g of green veg - it is near-essential that a red curry contains greens that retain some texture.
Fresh french beans are best, but frozen peas are good @ 20p - even a can of peas is OK. Frozen french beans are no good.
Onion is optional but I'm almost physically incapable of making a curry without them - 10p (a 5kg bag costs £1.20 - mad to buy in smaller quantities).
How:
Slice & fry the onion in a little oil, add the curry paste and half the coconut - stir and fry a tiny bit more until smooth and add the whole can of pilchards and juice. Break the pilchards into teaspoon-sized bits.
No need to cook the canned pilchards, but if you use something else then cook it through.
Add the veg and the rest of the coconut - bring to the boil but don't overcook the greens - they need texture.
Done.
Feeds 3 or 4 for £1.30 (excluding rice). Even when I make it my wife will eat this...
I suppose at the price it should be tried but somehow the
Pilchards in tomato sauce with salad they used to serve as a school dinner in the 1950s still makes me want to throw up so much I can not even touch a tin of the things.
Pilchards from a child YUUUUUUUUUK, same as PH. ;D
Tuna curry is quite nice, not sure on the pricing though.
I've got a cilli chopper machine, but a small food processor should do the job.
Put the rice on to cook, then...
Finely chop equal amounts of fresh ginger and finger chillies (or any type you like) with some garlic cloves. (This can be prepared in large batches and frozen in bags, I put it in a plastic bag and roll it flat before freezing so that lumps can be broken off easily)
You can adjust the amounts to suit your taste.
Fry one medium chopped onion per person (onion wasn't in the original recipe though, I just added it to bulk it out).
Add as much as the above mixture as you like, and add one or two small tins of tuna in water per person (the cheap stuff is better, as it is already broken up).
Add 1/2 a tin of water per tin of tuna, simmer until the rice is ready.
It should reduce down.
Put the rice on the plate and pile the tuna curry on top, or you can mix the rice and tuna together in the saucepan and serve.
Yum yum!
Actually thai red curry is the ideal kind to deal with strong flavours - it really does taste good with pilchards and this canned oily fish has impeccable credentials both nutritionally and sustainably - much better than tuna and without a mercury load too.
The curry does taste of fish - but that's the point - it's actually a good thing! - the combination of tomato and curry sauces means that it doesn't taste any stronger than grilled trout - in fact I prefer this to trout.
It would be a waste to use a subtly flavoured fish and even tuna would be swamped - though it might be OK in a green curry.
If you want to replace the pilchards then you can't do better than liver or kidney - cheap and deeply, richly delicious.
You guys don't know you're born getting pilchards at school! what a privileged upbringing! did you all go to public school? ;)
Salad? at school? if it was more than 20 years ago then we are talking an expensive public school in the home counties probably.
We had to put up with grey mashed potato that was simultaneously watery and lumpy every day (never chips), cheese pie every Friday made with dried cheese powder that tasted like sick, and very occasional doses of meat - but (apart from the liver that was 90% tubes) it was always transparent enough to use as a light show slide (fat and gristle with the odd thread of muscle). Fish? - never in a month of Sundays... (and no, I didn't go to school on Sunday).