Italian Week, The Sequel!

I’m on an Italian kick.  Usually I like to mix things up and since we had the pepperoni chicken last week, I normally wouldn’t fix Italian again BUT, the Eggplant was GORGEOUS today and I couldn’t resist.  Let’s talk about the Eggplant for a minute.  It’s arguably my favorite vegetable with asparagus running a close second.  Eggplant is the only vegetable that doesn’t lose its fiber content when it’s cooked.   It also comes in girl and boy varieties and it’s important to know the difference because the seeds can make a dish bitter and girls have more seeds than boys.  If you’ve read my blog before you know how to tell the difference but if you’re new to the posts let me tell you what to look for.  Look at the end of the eggplant away from the stem.  Girl eggplants have a pronounced “inny” belly button and boy’s belly buttons are more flush.  If you take two eggplants that are roughly the same size and one is a girl and the other is a boy, the boy will be significantly lighter because of the seed scarcity.  You’ll still probably need to salt that boy to pull out the bitterness from the seeds he does have, but it will be much fewer and if you get a juvenile you might find you don’t have to salt at all because the seed count is so low.  Eggplant 101!

So today I went a little nuts at the store.  Bill was $95 which kind of surprised me but I made a ton of food and I didn’t get to the farmers market this weekend which always helps keep that finally tally down.  It’s okay though, final tally for the month is a little less than $500.  Not my goal of $400 but still way better than mindless shopping and much of what I bought today will carry over into the first week of September, so I’m good with it!

On the menu for the first part of the week is Eggplant Parmesan and Chicken Piccata for dinner and then I made a huge batch of Quinoa Pea Pesto Salad.  We’ll eat that all week for lunches or quick bites.  It’s a beautiful veggie rich salad that is a complete protein to boot.  Later in the week, I’m making what we call stringy meat – basically a chuck roast slow cooked with cumin, chili powder garlic etc and we’ll have that as weekend treat next weekend as Fry Bread Tacos.  Those recipes will be up next week.   For now, you’ll have to satisfy yourself with Italian Week The Sequel!

Chicken Piccata 

I’m going to tell you how to cut up three medium sized chicken breasts and have enough portions to feed an army.  Take a boneless skinless breast and cut off the rib piece.  Then starting at the pointed end and working your way up, cut the breast on a sharp diagonal into ¼ slices.  If you do this right, without ending up with pieces that tear or are fat in once spot and skinny or nonexistent in another, you can get 12 or more slices out of each breast.  It’s a WONDERFUL way to get a little chicken to go a long way. The Picture for  this is 3 normal sized chicken breasts.  This would be enough chicken with salad, bread and pasta to feed 6 -8 people. Also, because the slices are thin and reasonably uniform in thickness they cook up super fast so it's a great what to make a chicken dish in a hurry!

3 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, cut on the diagonal into thin slices

¼ each salted butter & Olive oil

1 – 2 Tb minced Garlic

1 – 2 Tb lemon juice

2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning

2 Tb Heavy cream

Salt and pepper.

Melt the butter and olive oil together with the garlic.  When the oils start to make soft little bubbly sounds add all the chicken and stir over medium heat until the chicken is gently sautéed and just barely undercooked.  Add the lemon juice, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper.  Finishing the cooking, turn down to low, add the cream and let come to temperature.  This is lovely served over pasta.  You can also add couple of big spoonfuls of pesto to it, sundried tomatoes or capers.  Another nice variation is to add mozzarella cheese, a little bit of blue cheese, some artichoke hearts and serve it over gemelli.  So delish!

Eggplant Parmesan

In putting these recipes together, I’m trying really hard to give you good measurements.  Ain’t happening on this one because, when it comes to oil, Eggplant is a sponge so how you cook it, how hot your grease is, how thick the slices are will all effect how much oil you’ll use.  Same thing with the bread crumbs and the egg wash.  If you oven fry the slices, you’ll use less olive oil and normally I do it that way but I only have one teeny cookie sheet that fits in my new oven so tonight I fried it in two big batches in a big skillet.  I used almost 1/2cup of oil…this isn’t a dish for the faint of heart but it’s worth it.  It’s all about portion control!

2 Big Eggplants (Boys!) sliced into 1/3 inch slices.  Line them in a colander, salt liberally and let sit for 15 – 20 minutes, rinse really well and pat dry

3 Eggs beaten with 2 Tb water

Seasoned Italian Bread Crumbs.  I used about 2/3’s of one of those round containers

4 cups Italian Gravy or Spaghetti Sauce ( I used a bag of the gravy I made in an earlier post)

2 Cups Mozzarella Cheese

½ Cup Parmesan Cheese

Once you have rinsed and patted dry the eggplant, dip in the egg wash on both sides and the coat with the bread crumbs.  You can do all of this before you start frying.  If you are oven frying.  Preheat the oven to 450.  Coat the bottom of your cookie sheet with olive oil, place eggplant in a single layer and bake until golden.  You might spray the top side with Pam, flip and cook until golden on the second side.  If you're stove top frying, heat up your pan, add 1/4 inch of olive oil and when a little of the bread crumb sizzles in the oil, add the slices cook until golden, flip repeat.  You'll probably need to do this in a couple of batches and if the flipped side doesn't get a pretty gold, it's fine.

Layer half of the Eggplant in a 9x13 inch casserole, overlapping the slices.  Sprinkle 1 cup of the mozzarella and 2 cups of the gravy over and repeat ending with mozzarella.  Sprinkle ½ cup Parmesan on top and Bake @350 until bubbly and golden 30-45 minutes

Quinoa, Pea & Pesto Salad.  This is a great and unusual salad that is a hit everywhere I take it.  You can also make it with a pound of pasta shells but I like the Quinoa, it’s a complete protein and has a much lower glycemic index than anything made with wheat.  It’s pretty and pretty damn tasty and gluten free!

1 Cup of Quinoa, rinsed thoroughly, if you skip this step you will be sorry as quinoa is very bitter

2 cups Water

1 BIG Green Pepper, diced

2 BIG carrots, Diced

½  Big Red Onion, minced

1# Frozen Peas

8 oz Pesto

8 oz Feta Cheese crumbled

Put the Quinoa and Water in a pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes

Add all the vegetables in a big bowl.  Pour the hot Quinoa over it.  Then add the pesto and feta and stir to blend.  It’s good cold, at room temp or right out of the bowl when its done!

Buon Appetito, ya'll!

Along time ago, when Brian and I were dating seriously, our favorite place for a nice dinner was an Italian restaurant up on Park Rd beside the old Red Cross building called, Carlos.  At the time it was, in my opinion, the best Italian restaurant in Charlotte.  It had a diverse menu that wasn’t all red sauce and garlic.  It is also one of the first places we dined in that I realized I knew enough about the food I ran into frequently to start picking the recipes apart.  From Carlos came my linquine and clam sauce, the tastiest of garlic breads and what was my personal favorite on the menu, Chicken Sorentino.  I have no idea how the Sorentino differentiated this chicken from any other chicken but it was a great dish with complex flavors, roux based and silky perfect.  In hindsight, I should have know that the restaurant was doomed when they cheapened it up using cream of chicken soup as the sauce base.  Alas, Carlos is no more, but before it passed into the annals of culinary history, I did manage to recreate the Chicken Sorentino which is generally in my house known as Pepperoni Chicken.

Here’s a great Italian Menu for dinner, dinner with friends, a great buffet or when you need to take a cool appetizer to someone’s house.

Tuscan Beans.  The inspiration for this has come from several restaurants and while I’ve never been able to duplicate a recipe exactly, I’m very happy with this and you will be too.  Great thing about it is its really a confit an if you keep it covered in oil, you can leave it on your counter for a couple of days.  I think this is a perfect thing to serve at the holidays when your fridge is bursting at the seams.  It’s also a great thing to take to a hot summer picnic because it doesn’t have anything in it that needs to stay cold to keep from giving you some retched stomach problem.

1 can Cannelini beans well rinsed

½ medium onion minced

1 Tb Minced Garlic

½ cup sun dried tomatoes, packed in oil, minced

2 TB of the oil from the sun dried tomatoes

Several Grinds of Pepper

1 TB Dried Rosemary, crushed

¼ tea fennel

Pinch of crushed red pepper

1/3 cup of olive oil

1 good splash of red wine vinegar.

Put everything in a shallow pan or skillet.  Bring to a boil.  Stir.  Turn off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.  When ready to serve, strain out the beans and serve with garlic bread (see below)  Take the left over oil and pour it back into the jar of sun dried tomatoes. 

Pepperoni Chicken.  We call it this because most of the time I have left over pepperoni in the freezer but traditionally it should be made with prosciutto.  I’ve also made it with pancetta.  Honestly most dried meats or sausages would work but I wouldn’t make it with cured bacon as that would be too overpowering.  Now, before we get to the recipe I want to caution you.  Do NOT have a heart attack when you see how much olive oil the recipe calls for.  Seriously, calm down.  This recipe will easily make 2 9x13 inch casseroles and can feed anywhere from 18 – 24 people depending on what and how much you serve with it.  Freeze one of the casseroles for later use, or do as I do, make it in one big ½ sheet pan dish and have people over for dinner!

2.5 # Chicken Breasts, cubed

½# prosciutto, pancetta or ½ a pillow pack of pepperoni shredded

All purpose Flour for dredging plus 2/3 – ¾ cup for making the roux

Salt & Pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon minced garlic.  Here’s a note.  I used the jarred stuff.  If you want to use fresh feel free.

1 Tablespoon dried rosemary, crushed

¾ cup Olive oil, divided

1 cup red wine

8 cups stock (chicken, vegetable or light tomato)

3 oz tomato paste (this is ½ of a small can.  To freeze the other half, pat flat on some cling wrap, wrap it up and stick in the freezer.

1#  Penne

8 oz of shredded mozzarella

Put a goodly amount of flour in a plastic grocery bag, season with salt and pepper and add the chicken cubes, fluff around until the chicken is coated.  Here’s a hint, make sure your chicken is completely defrosted if frozen and always pat it dry so it doesn’t use a ton of flour.

Preheat a big skillet.  The secret to getting food not to stick in a pan is this.  Hot pan.  Cold oil.  So let your pan get warm, add ¼ cup of olive oil and sauté the chicken cubes until golden.  You may have to do this in batches so add a little bit of oil with each new batch.  When it’s all done, remove from the pan.  Add the prosciutto, rosemary and garlic and sauté for a few minutes.  Remove from the pan.  Add the remaining ½ cup of olive oil and 2/3 of a cup of all purpose flour.  Stir continuously to make the roux until the color is just past peanut butter.  Be sure to scrape up all the tasty bits on the bottom.  A note about roux.  Roux is one tricky SOB.  You’ll be stirring an stirring an nothing is going on, turn your head and the next second it’s burnt and burnt roux can not be saved.  Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t fool you!

When the roux is the right rich color and smells nutty delicious, deglaze the pan with the wine then add all the stock.  Bring to a low boil.  The thickening properties of roux don’t kick in until it’s boiled.  Add the tomato paste and simmer for 5 minutes until it is thick but not gloppy.  Think motor oil.  You want this on the soupy side as you’re going to bake it in the oven with pasta and if it’s too dry or stiff in the pan it will be paste with the pasta!  Add the chicken and prosciutto back to the pan and simmer for 5 -10 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

While this is going on, bring 4 quarts of water to a boil and add the penne.  Cook for 7 minutes.  You do not want this fully cooked or it will be mush in the casserole.  Drain it.  Add it to the chicken dish stirring well to mix.  Now, you can either split this between two casseroles or put it in one big one.  Cover with the cheese and bake at 350 for 30 - 45 minutes or until golden brown and your house smells like pure sin!

Salad with A selection of dressings (See dressings later on – luring you in to buying my cookbook!)

Garlic Bread.  This will make enough garlic butter to do one big baguette or two little ones.  If you have leftovers, don’t worry, keep it in the fridge, you’ve just made a composed butter that would cost you a bundle in a store.  You can toss it with hot pasta and a little cream or just keep eating garlic bread.  In my house, garlic bread has its place on the food pyramid! And as I found out at Carlos, you dip this into your glass of red wine, honey, you will die from a flavor fit!

½ cup butter or margarine, softened.  Honestly?  I use margarine for this.  I like the taste better and it’s easier to mix

2 TB Garlic Powder

1 TB Italian Seasoning

1 good squeeze anchovy paste

Mix it all together and lightly spread on bread.  Now you can either split the bread down the length and then cut into pieces after it’s cooked but since I’m having this with an appetizer and the appetizer is going on the bread I like to slice it down the length of the loaf in diagonal ¼ inch slices. Diagonally cutting the bread will give you more slices per loaf with more surface area.  Run under the broiler for a few minutes until golden, flip and cook for another minute or two but keep an eye on it so you don’t burn it to bits!

If you have to have dessert, a nice lemony gelato will suffice. Or if you want to kill yourself and your friends, hazelnut chocolate soup but you’re just going to have to wait on that recipe….trust me…it’s worth it!

Ciao!

4x4 Taking Stock.

I did make it to the Farmer's Market this weekend and as I was underwhelmed by the eggplants, there isn't going to be eggplant parm in the rotation this week.  The tomatoes on the other hand looked FANTASTIC and at 79 cents a pound, I was sold!  I bought 10 pounds, 3 grapefruit sized onions and 3 carrots that quite literally were going to be big enough to choke a horse...a really big horse at that!

All of this is the beginnings of my Italian Gravy which I make in a 10 quart stock pot for pennies relative to that jarred swill you find in the store or just as vile, sauce made with canned tomatoes!  Yes, yes yes, I get it.  Convenience.  Time.  Blah blah blah.  In the dead of winter when there is a poverty of good tomatoes go crazy with your canned jarred self, but in the height of tomato season, it's pretty much a character flaw in my book not to use fresh.

Let's talk tomatoes for a second because just like a carpenter, you need the right tool for the job.  Green tomatoes are good for frying and not much else.  Cherry tomatoes are great for salads and passed appetizers but they are too labor intensive for sauces.  Some people swear by Roma tomatoes in a sauce and while I do like the flavor I find them kind of dry and prefer to use them in salsas not sauces.  For my gravy I want big juicy vine ripe "sammich maters".  You know the ones.  You cut them in big thick slices, slather mayo on white bread, salt, pepper and maters, and eat it leaning over the kitchen sink lest the pinkish mayo juice get on your favorite Izod.

On another note, if you don't own a 10 quart stock pot you should even if you only cook for one.  Stocks are pack creatures, they like friends, the more the merrier and it is impossible to make a good stock in a small pot.  Besides you'll be freezing this in meal sized bags so might as well make a bunch.  Go get yourself a good heavy bottomed stock pot with a lid and you'll have made a friend for life.

Here's the gravy recipe, with a light tomato stock recipe thrown in for good measure.

10#s of super ripe tomatoes.  Wash them.  Cut a big X in the bottom and drop into 6 quarts of boiling water.  Be careful they don't splash you and you can probably only do 8 or so at a time.  I find that using the strainer basket tool for stir frying is an easy way to get them in and out of the pot without a scalding.  Blanch for 5 minutes.  Remove from the water and place in an ice bath.  Pull off the skins.  Cut out the stem end and any hard shoulders and diced.   Keep all the tomato scraps (skins and trimmings) and the water you blanched the tomatoes in.  We're going to make stock out of that in a minute

3 HUGE onions, diced
3 HUGE Carrots, peeled and diced
8 - 10 garlic cloves minced
Olive oil
1 cup of red wine
1/2 cup dried parsley
1/8 cup each dried basil, dried Italian seasoning, rosemary, crushed
2 Tea Fennel Seeds
2 Big Pinches Red Pepper flakes
The tomatoes
8 cups of stock (chicken, vegetable, or light tomato, just don't use beef or all your gravies will taste like pot roast)
12 oz of tomato paste
You can also add a couple of pounds of chicken wings but if you do, picking the bones out is a pain so I usually just use stock instead.
Saute the onions, carrots in the olive oil until the onions start to caramelize.  Add the garlic and continue sauteing until cooked.  Deglaze the pan with the red wine (if you don't know what that means, it means dump in the red wine stir around for a bit) Simmer until the red wine is reduced by half.  Add all the herbs and spices and cook for a couple of minutes.  Add the tomatoes and the stock.  Cover and simmer for at least an hour.  Add the tomato paste and go at least another half hour.  This makes a ton of gravy.  I freeze it in 4 cup portions.  It cost me less than 10$ for the vegetables and I had the spices and stock on hand.  If we ate nothing but Italian food, it would be enough sauce to make about 2 months worth of meals.  It freezes beautifully and can easily go 6 months if not more in the freezer but I wouldn't know because it never lasts that long here at Chez Hagman! 

PS.  I don't salt my sauces or stocks.  They all go into final dishes that I salt when I'm cooking and I just find that if I wait to salt the final dish, I use a lot less salt which is a good thing.

Stocks.
Every time I go to the store and I see the shelf upon shelf of packed salt and chemical water they sell as stock I want to shoot myself.  Stocks are so easy to make.  So CHEAP to make.  So much tastier and better for you, that to buy those EXPENSIVE cartons or cans is just silly.  I keep a gallon sized zip lock bag in the freezer and into it I put, onion skins and ends, tomato skins, carrot trimmings, garlic skins and trimmings and if I have it parsnip ends.  I save the stems of parsley and those celery stalks that are too sad and floppy to eat but are still good for stock. I get a bag full or when I need some stock, I dump the frozen stuff into 5-6 quarts of water, throw in some pepper corns a bay leaf and simmer it for 20 minutes or more.  Let it cool.  Freeze it in 4 cup bags.  It's like free food to me because you're not buying anything special to make it and when those boxes of swill run almost 4$ per...well that looks like highway robbery to this girl.

In this case, take all the tomato skins, the onion skins and trimmings, carrot peels, some whole garlic cloves and throw them into the water you used to blanch the tomatoes. Simmer for 20 minutes. This makes a light tomato stock that is perfect to use whenever you have a recipe that calls for  vegetable stock or even chicken stock unless it's a recipe that you won't like having it dyed a light pink!  It's a pretty color, takes advantage of your scrapes and you aren't tossing 6 quarts of water down the drain!

Chicken Stock
Again, scraps.  Skin, bones but not the organ meats.  Wing tips.  Whatever you have or if you're cooking a whole chicken to make chicken salad or some other dish, this is the perfect time to make chicken stock.  Put it in a pot with 6 quarts of water.  Add an onion, carrot, celery stalk all rough chopped, a couple of bay leaves, some peppercorns and a cinnamon stick.  Yes, a cinnamon stick.  Bring to a boil and skim off the foam.  Reduce to a simmer and if you're cooking the whole chicken, cook until done.  Otherwise, simmer for at least 30 minutes or until your house smells like someones Grandmother has taken over your kitchen!

Beef stock is the only complicated stock to make.  You'll want a bunch of beef bones and they are hard to come by.  If you have a friendly butcher who will hold some out for you great.  Otherwise you'll probably end up using beef shanks and then retasking the meat.  Again, water, beefy things, garlic, onion, celery, water.  Simmer. Skim.  Simmer. Voila stock. You can used the meat for soup or some other dish including shredded beef tacos or burritos. If you have the bones, rub them with olive oil and put them in a baking pan with carrots, garlic and onions and roast them until they are golden brown.  This takes about an hour.  Then dump them into a pot, cover with water and proceed as normal.  Beef stock, really needs to be reduced to be as flavorful as it should be.  Honestly?  I usually substitute chicken or the light tomato stock for beef stock.

On fish stock.  I make it but I never freeze it because it goes bad too quickly.  When I need fish stock, I have something else on the menu that requires shrimp.  I use the shrimp shells and water.  It's quicker and easier than using heads and bits and pieces of fish for a true fish stock, no one has ever said to me, wow, this is shrimp stock instead of fish stock.  And...if they did....well...it would probably get ugly.

How To Freeze Stocks.  Okay, this may sound simple, or maybe I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier but it took me years to figure out how to freeze multiple bags of stock without it turning into one icy glob of God only knows what hanging between the rungs of the shelves in the freezer.  I've had to use a hair dryer and a hammer to get these globs apart until one day, I had an epiphany!  Take a cookie sheet that will fit flatly in your freeze.  Spray it with Pam. Add your stock to the bags, press out extra air, and seal.  Stack your bags of stock or whatever else you're freezing on the cookie sheet with a good spray of Pam in the middle..this will keep them from sticking to each other and tearing when you try to pull them apart.  Freeze then you can stack flat or stand them up like books.  Safes a ton of space in the fridge and makes it easy to use them when you need them!

Confessional!  Sometimes, we are cooking and we get busy doing something else or we forgot to turn down the burner and we burn something.  I did this today!   Here's the thing.  The odds are good, if you catch the burn quick enough, and your nose will usually clue you in in time, that you haven't ruined the whole dish but have just burnt some of the dish, probably in the center of the pot.  What to do?  Well, first, don't panic.  Second, get the food off the heat.  Third, and most importantly, DON'T STIR IT.  If you carefully dump the contents of your pot into a colander, the truly burnt pieces will adhere to the bottom of the pan.  That's why no stirring.  You don't want them contaminating the whole dish.  Once you've seperated the good from the bad, rinse your pot out.  Add fresh oil.  If all you burnt was vegetables, rinse them off.  Yep, you heard me.  If you burnt meat up, that's a bit trickier.  Make sure you got all the charred bits out.  Put everything back in the pot, re season (easy on the salt if you already seasoned it) and cook for a couple of minutes then sniff.  If the dish smells or tastes charred, shrug and pitch it.  I find though that most of the time, I'm good to go and don't end up ditching an entire dish when only a little bit was charred.

4x4 It's the little things!

Some days it’s really the little things that make you the happiest. When you’re doing a social experiment to see if you can feed your family on $400 a month and you’re running way a head of schedule, finding pasta on sale 10 for 10$ and Tuna 10 for $10 just makes me giddy with happiness. In my house, you can get a lot of mileage out of a box of pasta and a can of tuna!


One of the cool things about this challenge, to me, is that it forces me to pay attention to what’s in the pantry and not just get to the store list in hand and not remember if you have something and then when you get home you find out that not only did you have turmeric, you have 4 unopened bottles of turmeric! So the net effect of paying attention meant that my Harris Teeter weekly tithing was a mere $65. Can you imagine? I’m going to feed my family all of next week on only $65 dollars worth of new stuff! This is like earth spinning backwards, cats lying down with dogs, Y2K significance. Quite noteworthy!


What are we having? Some seriously yummy stuff that’s what.



Weekend treat is going to be empanadas, a jicama salad maybe some salsa and other Mexican accompaniments depending on if I get to the farmers market on Saturday.

I found a huge package of cube steak on mark down so country style steak, mashed potatoes, steamed cabbage and onions and pinto beans are on the menu and depending on again if I get to the farmers market, I will probably make some eggplant parmesan, I'll save that recipe until I make it so I can measure! Lunches and breakfasts are leftovers, soups, pasta salad (love me that dollar box of pasta with some veggies, maybe a can or two of tuna, some hardboiled eggs and mayo, we’re good to go for DAYS!)



Empanada

1 Box of Pie crust with two crusts. Yes you can make your own pie crust but the store bought stuff is SO good and so consistent, unless you’re a master pie baker, why bother. If you’re a vegetarian though, pay attention, sometimes the shortening is actually lard. Ghastly, albeit delicious, lard.

1# of browned hamburger meat, drained. You can really use just about any kind of meat here. I’ve made it successfully with chicken, pulled pork, left over roast and even vegetarian “beef” crumbles.

Olive Oil

1 Large Onion, sliced

1 Large Green Pepper, diced

1 small jar green salad olives with the pimento, rough chopped

2 TB Chili Powder

1Tb Cumin

1Tb Garlic Powder

1 Tea Onion Powder

Salt Pepper and Texas Pete to taste

2 Tb Flour

½ cup of water



1 egg white beaten with 1 TB of water for an egg wash



Extra flour



Brown and Drain the meat if using beef, if using leftovers just put them in a pan and if you’re using raw chicken cut it into thin strips (maybe 2 big breasts) and cook. Reserve the meat on a separate plate. Add olive oil to the pan and add the Onion and Pepper and sauté until they are translucent. Add the meat back in and the rest of the list up to the two tablespoons of flour. Cook for a few minutes to blend, then sprinkle the tablespoons of flour, stir well and cook for a minute or so longer. Add the water and simmer until the dish is thick and smells great!



Unroll the pie crust and dust one piece with flour then invert on a cookie sheet or pizza pan. Spread the meat mixture over the top leaving a 1 inch border. It’s ok if you have to pile it up. Gently stretch the second crust over the “pie” and roll and crimp the edges. Brush the whole thing including the crimped edge with the egg wash. Cut an X in the center of the crust and roll back the edges so the steam can escape. Bake at 425 until golden…maybe 30 minutes I’ll update this after I actually make it to give you a time



Jicama Mango Salad. This is Tyler Florence’s recipe and it’s perfect for summer. Crunch, fresh and just a wee bit of heat. It’s easy and cheap. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/crunchy-jicama-and-mango-salad-with-chile-and-lime-recipe/index.html



Country Style Steak

Cube Steaks. However many you want. Doesn’t change the recipe

1 – 2 BIG onions slivered

Flour, Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Paprika…how do you like those measurements, huh?

Water

Olive Oil.

Kitchen Bouquet



In a plastic grocery bag, make sure it doesn’t have any holes. Add 1 -2 cups of white (do NOT use whole wheat) flour, grind in a bunch of pepper, a little salt and a few shakes of the rest of the seasonings. Fluff the bag to mix every thing. In the mean time, heat olive oil up in a good sized skillet that has a lid. Put the meat in the bag and flop around to evenly coat the meat. Fry the meat in olive oil until it just starts to brown on both sides. Add the onions. Add most if not all of the seasoned flour, cover the whole thing with water, put a lid on it, turn the heat down to a simmer, cover and leave alone for maybe 20 minutes. Check, if it’s two thick add water, if too runny add more flour. This is going to be gravy so use your judgment to decide if the consistency is right. Keep cooking until the meat is tender and the gravy has “gravified”. You’ll know it when you see it that it’s right. Take the meat out of the pan, add maybe a couple of tablespoons of the kitchen bouquet, stir, adjust seasoning, add the meat back in and go another 5 -10 minutes for good measure.



Milk Free Mashed Potatoes

1 Carrot, cut into big chunks

1 Onion, Peeled, cut an X over the root in but leave whole

1 Stalk Celery, cut into big chunks

1 Bay Leaf

Salt Pepper

Baking Potatoes, diced…don’t use waxy potatoes like white or red ones, the mashed consistency is gross!

Water.

Add it all to a big stock pot and cover with water. Boil until potatoes are cooked but not mushy you don’t want them to lose too much of their starch or the finished consistency will be soupy.

Pull out the vegetables, drain the pots saving the water. Mash with ¼ cup of margarine or butter and add in just enough of the cooking liquid to get the right finished consistency. Adjust seasonings.



Steamed Cabbage and Onions

So easy and even if you think you hate cabbage you’ll love this.

Cabbage

2 Big Onions

Olive Oil

Salt and LOTS of pepper

Sliced the onions and caramelize to a deep golden brown in the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the cabbage. I usually use a ½ a head of green cabbage. Stir to coat the cabbage in the oil. Add water. You don’t want to cover it just give it enough to steam in. Maybe a couple of cups depending on whether you have a wide or a deep pan. Put a lid on it, reduce to a simmer and cook until the cabbage is translucent. Check it every now and then to make sure the water hasn’t evaporated.



Pinto Beans

I like to cook my beans from a dried state. I like the smoky flavor of cooking them with a ham hock but won’t use one so what I’ve found instead is that if you add 2 cubes of bouillon (chicken or vegetarian) a splash of olive oil and a cap full of liquid smoke, no one knows you didn’t put the piggy in the pot! You can use this as a cheat for collards too! Chop a Vidalia onion over the top of the cooked beans before serving.



Have a good week of eating on the cheap!

4x4 update Mid August

Here we are in the middle of August and to date my spending on food, including house hold essentials and dog food is a little less than 300$  It's higher than I was hoping for but when you have two big dogs both needing a bag of groceries and a birthday dinner, it can add up quicker than I'd like to think.  I do have plenty of provisions though and I think that if I'm careful and thoughtful about the next 19 days I can come in around $450 which isn't awful.

Someone asked me recently where I got the number 400, thinking that it was just a measure of $100 per person.  It isn't.  $400 a month is what you get in food stamps for a family of four so I'm actually trying to see how that works out in the real world before I stand in judgement of someone less fortunate than I am and how they ration out their food dollars. 

We started the month off with a huge Indian feast that was better than I could have imagined it would be.  Even my youngest who is the pickiest eater on the planet pronounced the chicken korma really good.  This past weekend I made a vat of chili which used up a goodly amount of dried cannelini, navy and great northern beans.  We had it as chili several nights and then turned it into nachos for the weekend which were tasty.  In the middle of the week, we celebrated Brian's birthday with a pizza fest which was so fun and seriously good.

Today, I'm cooking a big pork shoulder in the crock pot that will go at least until Wednesday when I'll probably turn it into an emanada pie and push it to Friday.  Rounding out the list of goodies will be a yellow split pea soup, spinach sauted with olive oil and garlic, steamed cabbage and onions and corn bread.

Here are the recipes (except the chili, I'm sure you have your own favorite and mine is just simple beans, meat, tomatoes, seasonings, cook)

Pizza 4 Ways
Superb make ahead crust
7.5 cups of flour (use a good hard flour like King Arthur all purpose)
3 cups water at 110 degrees
3 packages yeast
1 TB Salt
1 Tb sugar
3 TB Olive Oil
Corn meal
Mix the water yeast and sugar together an let sit until a fully yeasty bloom is underway.  Add the olive oil and salt and stir.  Add half the flour and stir to make a slurry.  Add the rest of the flour in 1 cup increments until a soft ball forms and it starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Roll out onto a floured surface and kneed for 10 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic.  Grease a bowl.  Put the dough in, cover with saran wrap and a towel and put in the refridgerator...YES, the refridgerator.  You can leave in there up to 48 hours before you need it.  Mine rose for a good 12 hours and turned out perfectly.  When you're ready to use it, this much dough will easy cover two big cookie sheets or 4 pizza pans.  Punch the dough down.  Decide how much you're going to use (I used it all) cut it up and freeze what you aren't using.   Preheat the oven to 450.  Spray whatever pizza pan/cookie sheet you're going to use with Pam, lightly coat with corn meal, shaking to cover the whole pan, then gently stretch the dough to fit.  If the dough is resisting your efforts and keeps drawing back on itself, leave it alone for 10 minutes then pounce on it again.  Eventually it will surrender!

Toppings
I made two pizzas and each half was a different type.  The first one was just plain old pepperoni with store bought pizza sauce and mozzarella on one side and BBQ Chicken Pizza on the other.

3 Chicken Thighs or 1 big breast cut into thin strips
3 BIG onions sliced
Olive oil
4 -5 cloves of minced garlic or a generous spoonful of the preminced jarred stuff
1/2 cup barbeque sauce
8 oz smoked cheddar cheese, grated or half sharp cheddar and half smoked cheddar or any cheese you like but a smoked one puts this in a category by itself

Carmelize the onions in the olive oil.  You know the drill.  Pan, onions, olive oil.  DO NOT TOUCH.  The carmelization happens from the onions touching the hot pan not from you stirring them.  As they turn color, then stir, shake the pan to disperse them evenly and leave alone some more.  About halfway through add the garlic.  When the onions are cooked add the chicken and the bbq sauce and reduce to a simmer until the chicken is done.  Spread on the pizza dough and top with the cheese

Bake at 450 for 15 -20 minutes or until crust is nice and golden

The other pizza was a Tenderloin and Horseradish wonderment and a vegetarian one that is a knock of of my cannelini bean dip that is just right

Tenderloin & Horseradish - this is a sauceless pizza
1 small beef filet cut into 1/2 inch dice
4 -5 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
8 oz Mozzarella
2/3 cup of Mayo
Prepared Horseradish to taste.  I like a lot like 2 -3 Tablespoons

Use all but about 2 oz of the mozzarella and cover the pizza crust with it.  Add the chopped steak and the tomatoes and then top with the remainin cheese. This helps to keep the toppings from burning.  Bake for 15 -20 minutes or until the crust is golden.  Combine the Mayo and the horseradish and put in a zip lock back.  Seal then cut a small hole in one of the corners.  Squeeze and decorate the pizza generously with the mixture.  This is just soooo good!

Veggie Pizza
1 can of cannelini beans, drained
1/4 cup commercially prepared pesto
1 can quartered artichoke hearts drained
1/2 jar sun dried tomatoes in oil drained
8 oz mozzarella

Spread the peston on the crust.  Top with all but about 2 oz of the mozzarella.  Add toppings and cover with the remaining cheese.  Bake 450 15 -20 minutes or until the crust is golden

These pizzas would be a great meal for a pizza dinner party for 6 -8 people.  As it was it was just us 3 and we had plenty for dinner and snacks over the weekend.  YUMMMY!!!


Pork Shoulder
Make a rub of garlic powder, salt, pepper, chili powder and smoke paprika and spread it generously over the whole shoulder.  You can either roast it at that point in a dutch over and cook it low and slow 325 for 4 or more hours or throw it in the crock pot.  You can pay less attention if you throw it in the crock pot.  When the meat is pull apart tender, pull it apart!  Then sauce it to taste with the following.  This vinegar is also wonderful to sprinkle on beans or to macerate onions and cucumbers in.  Remember this is the South, if it ain't fried or pickled it'll go bad in the heat!

2 Cups Ciger Vinegar

1 Tb Sugar

1 Tb Cayenne

1 Tb Texas Pete

1 Tea each Salt and Black Pepper

It isn't for sissies but nothing makes piggy taste better!

Yellow Split Pea Soup

3 cups of split peas soaked in 6 cups of water for at least an hour, drained (BTW, if you soak and drain your beans and use fresh water to cook them, the properties that give them a "musical" quality go down the drain with the soaking liquids

Olive Oil

1 big onion, minced

1 large carrot, cut into small dice

1 stick of celery, minced

3 -4 cloves of garlic

1 medium baking potato, peeled and diced (this will work as a thickener)

Stock or water to cover

Simmer until peas are mushy.  If you feel like you need to drain off some liquids, do so.  Puree in batches in the blender.  Return to the pot and adjust seasoning.  Salt, Pepper and just a teeny bit of smoked paprika.

Super good.

4 on 4 redux

This last time I was writing my blog I did a month long challenge to feed my four pack of a family for a month on 400$. I ended up spending over 500 but that was still a huge difference and I was pretty proud of myself. Now, a couple of years later, we're down to three as one is living large in NYC, and I want to rededicate myself to the process. So it's now 3 on 4. Sounds like a losing basketball game but a good way to keep an eye on the food costs.

We've just move so I tossed out a bunch of stuff from the larder so we're pretty lean and mean pantry wise right now except for dried beans. GOOD GOD YA'LL have I got dried beans! One of my objectives is to cook up the bean supply and regain an entire storage bin for other uses. I should probably take a picture and show you just how many beans we're talking about but it's embarrassing and I can tell you that it's easy 20 pounds plus.

This week I'm pretty on point for food. It's going to be a larder oriented week because I've got the stuff and I need the room. It's not cheating! Never ever have I cooked my house down to zero and then started off from scratch the next week.

What I have on hand
Canned Goods -
Tuna - cheap king 1.07 a can from Target
Progresso Lentil Soup. 1 can makes two lunches
Tomato products
Other random stuff

Meats
Chicken Breasts & Thighs

Produce
Apples
Salad fixings

Dry goods
BEANS
Rice
Pasta

We make a little food go a long way these days which is good. We've got maybe half of a grilled london Broil steak left from cooking out Friday. Brian will work on that for another two days which is when I'll do my mid week cook. I also have a big bowl of Quinoa Black Bean Salad. We'll have a tossed salad every night but I know I 'll need to refreshen the lettuce supply. There are a couple of odds and ends I know I'll need for what I'm planning on making. Breakfast as always is egg whites and I made buckwheat pancakes Sunday that will go another couple of days run through the toaster as a get up and go kind of carb. Lunches will be tuna salad and left overs for Brian. Soup and Quinoa Salad for me. If I get to the farmers market I'll pick up some additional things. Maybe a water melon and some more fruit. Will keep you posted on that.

I'm going to make Chicken Korma, an Indian curry dish, and Makhani, a lentil and kidney bean kind of curry that will use up some of both the black lentils and kidney beans I have on hand. Both are delicious and I'll fill out the plate with basmati rice and if I get really energized homemade naan (which by the way isn't hard to make at all so don't be intimidated!) It's a little starch heavy as I'm looking at it so I'll have to watch the portions and I might make a spinach curry too so we have something green other than romaine to eat. We'll see! But here is what I'm thinking about making. Most I have on hand.  This amount of food will feed us for 3 or 4 nights (thank God for leftovers and maybe some lunchy stuff too)

Chicken Korma (I'm going to double this and use half on Tofu)
Marinade
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons Garam Masala
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
1 cups greek yogurt
2 Big chicken breasts, butterflied and cut into dice. Marinate for an hour. If using extra firm tofu, freeze over night, defrost and press for a half hour to get the liquids out before adding to the marinade)

1 Onion, diced
1 1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
4 or 5 garlic cloves, or a big soup spoon
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Carmelize the onions, add the ginger and garlic and saute until tender, add the chicken (or tofu) with the marinade and cook over low heat until chicken is done. Add tomato sauce simmer for a few minutes. Add the cream and cook over low heat until well blended

Makhani
3/4 cup dried kidney beans soaked over night
1/4 cup black lentils soaked over night
1/4 cup dried chick peas soaked over night
1 in pieced of ginger, minced
2 – 3 garlic cloves minced
2 green chillies, minced
salt to taste
Seasonings
3 TB butter
1 Teas Cumin Seeds, toasted then groun
2 – 3 garlic cloves
pinch asafoetida powder
1/2 Tea Fenugreek
3/4 c tomato sauce
to finish
1/2 cup cream
1/2 tea or more chilli powder
1/2 tea garam masala
method
Soak all of the bean in water overnight. Drain.  Put the beans in a crock pot with 5 cups of water.  With the garlic, ginger and chilis.Cook on high until beans are really soft.  Drain off excess water, it should be light a slightly soupy stew.  Mash the lentils lightly with the back of a ladle.
To make the seasoning, butter in a heavy pan until hot, and add the cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds, and stir until they crackle. Add the garlic and fry until beginning to colour. Add the asafoetida powder and tomato puree and stir for a minute. Add to the cooked beans, mixing well. Bring the beans to the boil again, adding the chilli powder garam masala and cream. Heat Through.

Basamati Rice

Naan
1 pkg Yeast
Pinch Sugar
1/2 cup warm water
2 - 3 cups flour
1/2 teas salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil plus 1 TB spoon
1/3 cup greek yogurt
1 egg
1 onion minced
2 TB rosemary crushed

Carmelize the onion in 1 tablespoon of oil. Add rosemary and stir for a minute or two. Let cool.
Combine the yeast, sugar an water in a bowl and let sit until nice and foamy. Add the oil, yogurt and egg and mix. Add the onion and rosemary to the dry ingredients, mix well and then add to the yeast mixing to form a ball. Turn out and kneed for a few minutes adding more flour as you need to to keep it from sticking. Let sit covered for an hour. Punch down divide into 8 or more balls depending on how big you want them. Working with one ball at a time, keeping the rest covered, roll out to 1/8 - 1/4 inch. Heat a heavy bottomed pan on med - med high heat, spray grease, add naan one at a time cook uptil bubbled on top and golden on the bottom, flip and let color on the bottom. DIVE IN!

Spinach curry
2 10oz bags of spinach
2 16 oz cans diced tomatoes with green chilis
1 large onion, diced and carmelized in 1 tb of Oil
1/4 C prepared Red Curry Sauce
1 can lite coconut milk

Combine everything and let simmer until the spinach is wilted.  You can also add drained and diced extra firm tofu and some chick peas for a stand alone meal.  I fix this all the time!

Calories In. Calories Out. Blah, blah blah

Calories In Calories out, blah blah blah

It sounds like a simple enough equation doesn’t it, but to anyone who struggles with weight, the process of burning off a pound of blubber is way more complicated and hard.  I am becoming convinced that much of this is because we have absolutely no idea what the caloric content of food is and we have over inflated ideas about how many calories our lardy little butts are actually burning.  Walk for 15 minutes on a hot day and surely you’ve burnt off 500 calories, right?  More like a 150 and that’s if you’re fleet like Mercury moving at a 15 mile an hour pace.  Dog walking clearly doesn’t count for much which suggests that sofa sitting, even if you fluff the pillow once every now and again, really isn’t the aerobic calorie burning machine that most of us hope it is.  CURSES!

This is weekend is a case in point.  I’ve thrown away my home scales in an act of rebellion.  The number never changes much (except upwards) and hopping on it every time I go to the bathroom, hoping that pee actually got rid of the forty pounds of “water weight” I’m carrying, became a cause of self flagellation and loathing that seemed counter productive.  Now, I weigh on Fridays when I go to the Y.  I picked Friday’s so that I can see how my Herculean levels of self discipline during the week have returned impressive results.  So this past Friday, after a sin free week, I confidently strode onto the scales without even taking off my tennis shoes, ear rings, rings, clothes, or running my hands through my hair to shake off any hefty stragglers which is what I normally do in an attempt to be as “light” as possible.  The scales rewarded me with a pathetic  ½ pound over the previous week.  That means that over the course of the entire 7 days I managed to burn a measly 250 calories a day more than I consumed.  This sucks.  Really it does.  I work out EVERY DAY.  Weights and walking (the fast kind) MWF and I run on Tues and Thurs.  Plus with the move I’m working my tuckus off lifting, hauling and unpacking and all that effort only equals 250 calories a day?  No wonder I’m still a Weeble.  In my mind, all this effort, all this careful eating, no wine (sniffle, sniffle) working out, being mindful crap should at least count for 5 pounds.  3 at a minimum.  Not even one?  That’s just plain mean.

Unfortunately, the adipose fairy is much kinder on the add not subtract side of the equation.  I took my measly half pound and then when I got home Friday, I mowed the grass in 100+ degree temps, which took an hour and 15 minutes, was ridiculously hard because the self propelling action is not working on the mower so now all forward momentum is provided by yours truly, then I cleaned and scoured my bathrooms.  Saturday morning I went for a three mile fun.  I am a machine, I tell you, a Machine!!  Surely I earned the bottle (small one) of wine I drank over the course of the whole weekend?  Surely, the little teeny, hardly worth heating the oven up for, Totinos cheese pizza I ate (okay one on Saturday AND one on Sunday but they are SO SMALL!) can’t be counted against me in the face of such enormous physical activity?  How can it possibly be fair that I can’t sit on the sofa and watch the Olympics and through osmosis lose weight and become one of the hard bodies (okay I’d be happy with firmer fat)?  If you do in fact become what you think and I’ve been thinking “rail thin” for years, how is it right that it hasn’t made the least bit of difference?  I ask myself this question all the time, but over the sound of crunching potato chips, I can never seem to hear the answer.

This morning, at the Y, I decided just for self satisfaction, to step on the scales and see just how much good all that activity did me and lo and behold, my half pound that I scoffed at?  She’s back. In toto.  Which means that in 2 days I ate 1750 calories more than I burned.  And that my friends, tells you and me and everyone else, what the hell is actually going on in my fat fueled furnace of a life.