Cinnamon has been an important spice since antiquity. Its origins were kept secret from Europeans by the Arab traders from whom they purchased this useful and expensive spice. Cinnamon was thought to have curative powers, was commonly given as gifts to royalty, and was burned in Roman funeral pyres. To these Europeans, it made sense that it should be such a pricey item, seeing as the Cinnamon birds first had to harvest it in order to construct their nests, and then particularly daring humans had to fake out the birds in order harvest the spice from those nests before it could even begin its journey along the Spice Road. Or so the Europeans were told.
Eventually, Europeans learned that cinnamon is actually the bark of a small evergreen tree that is indigenous to Sri Lanka, which, during colonial times, was known as Ceylon. Both the Portuguese and Dutch colonized Sri Lanka early on - separately, of course - and the Dutch created a monopoly on the export of Ceylon cinnamon. By the time the British took control of Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796, Ceylon cinnamon had competition from its relative, Cassia, which is what we in the United States most often find in our grocery stores. No Cinnamon birds or daring bird tricksters required.
I've never tried Sri Lankan, or "true", cinnamon myself, but I sure do love me some Cassia, which is often sold as Vietnamese cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon, or Indonesian cinnamon. I've been using Vietnamese cinnamon in my baking as that is the type that is readily available in the grocery store I frequent. You might recall that I have a bit of an apple-cinnamon obsession, so I do use a fair amount of cinnamon in my house, but nearly always relegate it to sweet dishes, not savory. That has all changed, now, people.
Many cultures use cinnamon in their savory dishes, but, as I am ever-so-slightly obsessed with the Italian culinary lexicon, and - while my knowledge of Italian cuisine is certainly far from encyclopedic - I don't know of any Italian dishes that feature cinnamon. But I was thinking about cinnamon in a savory context, and realized that cinnamon would pair nicely with chicken - and pork as well - hence, I came up with this concoction. Not only was it scrumptious, but it also fills the house with the wonderful aroma of cinnamon - or Cassia if we're being particular.
Cinnamon-pepper chicken with Orange-cinnamon Sauce:
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken, 3-4 pounds
salt
black pepper
1 teaspoon cinnamon
For the sauce:
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 cup orange juice (you could also substitute apple cider in place of the o.j.)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup raisins
salt
pepper
Set an oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Rinse the chicken and pat dry. Place the chicken breast-side up in a roasting pan or lasagna pan. Salt and pepper the bird, and then rub the cinnamon all over the skin. If you are looking at your teaspoon full of Vietnamese, Chinese, or Indonesian cinnamon and considering how ever you will rub it on the chicken skin, I can assure you it will be easier if you place it in a bowl first and pinch out what you need as you go.
Once the oven is preheated, place the chicken into the oven with the legs facing the back wall and the breast facing the oven door. Roast for one hour, or until skin is crisp and when the bird is pierced, clear liquid runs from it. If you're a bit concerned about your threshold for cinnamon enjoyment as it applies to the bird itself, you can omit the cinnamon, but still roast the bird at 400 for an hour. However, the cinnamon permeates the meat as it cooks and really does elevate the dish. In any case, once the Cinnamon bird is done cooking, remove it from the oven and allow it to stand for five minutes prior to carving.
Approximately 20 minutes before the bird is scheduled to come out of the oven, heat the olive oil in a large saute or fry pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, and saute until translucent, approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Add the orange juice, cinnamon, and raisins, stir to combine, and then simmer gently until the liquid is reduced by half, approximately 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the chicken with a spoonful or two of the Orange-cinnamon sauce, ideally with a grain such as Sardinian Fregola, which I recommend seeking out in your local Italian market as I have purchased it for $3.59 for a 1.1 pound bag at mine, or Israeli cous-cous, or perhaps a sweet potato, and some roasted carrots or sauteed kale and sit back as the Cinnamon bird transports your family's dinner routine to new heights.
Serves 4 to 6.
If you happen to be the homemade-chicken stock type, you can also salvage the chicken carcass and freeze it in a freezer bag or container until you're ready to make your next batch of chicken stock. It certainly does make the best use of the whole bird, that is for certain.
Dinner tonight: Roasted Chicken Legs with Olives, Crispy Kale, and Polenta. Estimated cost for two: $6.39. The chicken legs were $3.62 for 3. JR will eat one, I will eat one, and one will go to work with JR tomorrow for lunch. Presuming all were of equal size, which, of course defies all probability, but we do need a foundation for our math - they each cost $1.20 and two-thirds cents, so we'll call the two that are for dinner $2.42 to be safe. The kale was $1.99 for the bunch, we will eat about half of that, so $1.00, rounding up. But, if I were really being a stickler, the kale was actually FREE. Whole Foods doesn't charge you if an item rings up incorrectly. When I purchased the kale, there was a lovely sign above it in the produce section indicating that it was on sale for $1.99 - it is normally $2.49. At check-out, it rang up at $2.49. I told the cashier that the price was incorrect. He paged Evan in produce. Evan came to the register, said, "Yeah, the dinosaur kale is $1.99". I concurred. The cashier said, "But it rang up at $2.49, so it's free. Right?" Evan said yes. If Evan and I had our way, balloons would have dropped from the ceiling and a person in a dinosaur costume would have emerged from the hallway beyond the register to celebrate my free dinosaur kale. Alas, there were no balloons or dinosaur costumes, but there was much glee just the same. It's amazing what the occasional free item will do for one's mood. The olives were $5.99/pound for Castelvetrano (green) olives, and we are going to use just a couple of ounces, so that's around 75-cents. As you may remember from the last time we had this dish, it is a riff on a roasted duck with olives that I have had at Latte di Luna in Pienza, Italy. I still haven't seen duck on sale, or duck on offer, for that matter, so we will stick with the much more widely available chicken legs. I will use around 45-cents worth of olive oil in this dish, along with the other half of the onion that was used in the above Orange-cinnamon sauce. So the half an onion costs 25-cents, and I'll throw approximately 10-cents worth of thyme on the chicken legs. I will use 4 cups of chicken broth at $2.19 total using the Whole Foods store brand. The polenta was $2.69 for a bag that has nineteen 1/4 cup servings, and I will use one cup total so that we have leftovers. At 14-cents per 1/4 cup, that's just over 56-cents for one cup. I will use a tablespoon of butter to finish off the polenta, and at $2.79 for 32 tablespoons, that adds 9-cents to the tally. We will eat approximately one-half of the polenta, so half of $2.84 is $1.42. And I will look forward to leftover polenta in tomorrow's lunch. When last we had this, I served white beans instead of polenta, and that menu adjustment would save you 43-cents if you were so inclined.
It may seem to you that I've been remiss in my bread-baking responsibilities these last few weeks. I've noticed that I haven't posted about bread since the Panettone post in December, but I can assure you, I have been baking bread. And baking, and baking. Each week, I make at least one loaf, and since the start of January, the loaf-of-choice has been a plain white sandwich bread. And now, I am utterly exhausted of plain white sandwich bread, so I decided to make something a little more intriguing - a bread with some spice, some fruit, and some wheat flour. Wow. What a difference. I feel a little spring in my step just knowing I have some Brown Sugar Cinnamon Wheat Bread available for sandwiches, and, if we don't finish the loaf between now and Saturday morning, it will lend itself to creating some fabulous Valentine's Day French toast with a little butter and drizzle of honey. In fact, I think I'll take action to be sure that we don't devour it all between now and then. I'm glad you and I had this little talk.
If you'd like to have a loaf of delicious and slightly-more-healthy-than-white-bread for sandwiches, or, if you're looking for a scrumptious French toast starting block, here it is:
Brown Sugar Cinnamon Wheat Bread with Raisins:
Ingredients:
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (a.k.a. Sugar in the Raw, or Whole Foods has a good store brand version)
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar (light or dark - either will do)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (which is equivalent to 1 packet active dry yeast)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
In a large mixing bowl, combine the rolled oats, sugars, butter, salt, cinnamon, and raisins. Add the boiling water and stir to combine ingredients. Let stand approximately 5 minutes until water has cooled slightly.
If using active dry yeast, sprinkle it over the water mixture and allow to dissolve, approximately 5 minutes. If using instant yeast, add the instant yeast and whole wheat flour to the water mixture and mix on medium speed until the flour and yeast is combined with the water mixture. Add the all-purpose flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing on medium speed after each addition until dough forms. Knead by machine or by hand until dough is silken, approximately 5 to 7 minutes by machine and 10 minutes by hand. I like to mix the dough for a few minutes by machine and then finish kneading by hand to be sure it achieves that silken texture. And also because I find it quite satisfying to knead dough, which can help ease stress almost as much as pounding out pork sirloin cutlets for Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein.
Place the dough in a greased bowl that can accommodate the dough doubling in size. Cover with a clean kitchen towel or plastic wrap, set in a warm, draft-free area, and allow to rise until it is double in size. At my house, this took 1 1/2 hours.
Once dough has doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and form it into a loaf. This resembles folding a business letter into thirds - if the business letter were a sphere of dough, of course - and then tucking the short ends over themselves to seal the edges. Place this doughy business letter with tucked short ends into a greased loaf pan. Cover with a clean kitchen towel (the one you just used to cover the dough should suffice. No need to dirty all of the kitchen towels in your house for one loaf of bread.) or with greased plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm, draft-free (sounding familiar?) area and allow to rise until the dough has crested one inch over the top of the loaf pan. The amount of time required will be different from home to home as it is contingent upon the temperature in your house, but at my house, this took another hour and a half.
Place an oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 360 degrees.
Bake the loaf on the middle rack for 33 to 35 minutes, or until the top of the loaf is browned and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from the oven, transfer to a cooling rack, and allow to cool for at least a couple of minutes before cutting into it and serving a slice or two out with butter. Then, cut it as thinly as is possible to have two slices constitute a sandwich, and do that all week long so that you can reserve a slice or two for French toast next weekend. And remember, it doesn't have to be Valentine's Day to partake of French toast, so feel free to continue with this thin-slices-for-sandwiches plan whenever the thought of Saturday morning French toast steers you that way.
Dinner tonight: Roasted Root Vegetable Pot Pie. Estimated cost for two: $4.46. I am using about a pound each of the following veggies: parsnip, $1.99; turnip, 79-cents; carrot, 80-cents; leek, 95-cents; and one onion, which costs 33-cents (1/2 pound of yellow onions that are 65-cents per pound). I may throw in some butternut squash, which, of course, is not a root vegetable, but I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't point that out as I would then have to rename the dish Roasted Root Vegetable and Winter Squash Pot Pie and that would be nearly the equivalent of naming the bread in this post Brown Sugar Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin Wheat Bread for Sandwiches and French Toast, and I think we can all agree that each of those are entirely too long a name. So if I use one pound of the ne'er to be mentioned winter squash, it's 80-cents. The gravy will consist of Whole Foods store brand vegetable broth, which is $2.19 for 4 cups, along with a cup of white wine, so using the least expensive white-wine-that-is-meant-to-be-drunk (not wine labeled "cooking wine"), that will be $1.67 as it is one-third of a five-dollar 750ml bottle. I will use around 6-cents in flour, some more onion, so we'll add in another 33-cents for that bad boy, 40-cents worth of Dijon mustard, around 20-cents worth of thyme, and 44-cents in olive oil. The savory pie crust costs $2.40 to make, and it is really easy - you should check out the post on that if you haven't already. So for 6 servings, it costs $13.35, or $2.22 and one-half cent per person. We'll call that $2.23, ok? I like to round up. It makes me feel like I'm not overselling the bargain. Particularly when a half-cent hangs in the balance.
I think you'd have to agree that a homemade chocolate sandwich cookie does say "I love you". I mean, making this cookie - while there is no question that it tastes infinitely better than a store-bought sandwich cookie - does not save you a single cent. What it does buy you, though, is the respect and admiration of your significant other, closest friends, or family. Notwithstanding the dollar-for-dollar inequity of making the cookie yourself rather than purchasing a pack, it is well worth the effort to bake, cream butter for frosting, and assemble these decidedly sophisticated sandwich cookies. There is a bit of salt in the chocolate shortbread, which contrasts nicely with the chocolate, and the buttercream frosting tastes like a premium vanilla ice cream. And yes, if you wanted to skip the ten or so minutes it takes to make the buttercream frosting, you can just as easily jam a cookie or two into a scoop of vanilla ice cream and call it a night.
With Valentine's Day fast approaching - admitting first that I am a Valentine's Day geek - and thinking that you may want to stay in for dinner this holiday and conserve your resources, this dessert would make a wonderful, very sophisticated, intended-for-adult-palates treat, and yet it doesn't take terribly long to make.
Chocolate Sandwich Cookies for Lovers (I did say I'm a geek about this, didn't I?):
For the Chocolate Cookies:
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is fluffy and pale, approximately 5 minutes.
While the butter and sugar are mixing, combine the flour, cocoa powder, and salt in a mixing bowl, stirring well to combine the ingredients. The last thing you want is one or two cookies with an inordinate amount of salt in them and nearly no salt in the others.
Once the butter and sugar are creamed, add half of the flour mixture. When you first add the flour mixture, if using a stand mixer, start on the "stir" setting to avoid a cloud of cocoa and flour dust floating around your kitchen. Once the first half of the flour mixture is completely combined with the butter mixture, repeat with the second half of the flour mixture until the dough comes together, approximately 2 minutes.
Turn the dough out onto a sheet of waxed paper cut to the approximate size of a large baking sheet. Form the dough into a rectangle in the same aspect ratio as the waxed paper. I've worked a long time in television, so aspect ratio, which is an everyday term in television, in this case means that the dough should be in the shape of a rectangle, with the long side of the dough being the same as that of the waxed paper. Sure. There was an easier way to say it, but really, aspect ratio jumped into my brain and wouldn't leave. So you now own it, too.
Cover the dough with another sheet of waxed paper with the dough between the waxed paper, roll the dough out with a rolling pin to approximately 1/4-inch thickness. Gently place the waxed paper-dough sandwich onto a large baking sheet and refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes to make the dough easier to handle when cutting circles out of it and moving those rounds to the baking sheet.
After the refrigeration period is over, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Set an oven rack in the middle position. Transfer the waxed paper-dough sandwich to the counter and line the baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a 2-inch round cookie cutter, cut rounds out of the dough and place them on the parchment-lined baking sheet, approximately 1/2-inch apart. These cookies do grow, but not very much, and even if you have some kissing (see? Geek.), it won't be a problem, they come apart pretty easily.
Bake cookies on the middle rack for 15 minutes, rotating the pan midway through the cooking time. Bear in mind that these are dark brown cookies, so you may question whether they are done at 15 minutes, but I can assure you, they are. You don't want to burn them, that would be very not-sexy. Remove from the oven, allow to cool on the baking sheet for 1 to 2 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack until completely cooled.
For the Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, and cut into pieces
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 egg yolks
2/3 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
I would undertake this process while the cookie dough is refrigerating. The making of the buttercream takes but 10 minutes, including assembling the ingredients, and it needs to refrigerate before you spread it on the cookies, so why not make good use of the in-between time?
Place the butter, vanilla extract, egg yolks, and confectioners sugar in a large mixing bowl and mix on medium speed until creamed. Approximately 5 minutes.
Could it be any easier? No, I didn't think you'd think so. So now take the buttercream, transfer it to a container for refrigeration, and let it chill for at least as long as it takes to bake and cool the cookies.
Once the cookies are cooled completely, bust out with the vanilla buttercream. Using a knife, spread approximately 1 tablespoon - or your desired cream filling amount - of the buttercream on the bottom of one cookie. Take a second cookie, place the bottom side against the buttercream and press gently to level out the frosting. Refrigerate until just before serving. Perhaps you want to place just one on a white plate, sprinkle some confectioners sugar over the plate, and then drizzle some chocolate sauce around the edge of the plate for optimal Valentine's Day presentation purposes. It's just a thought. Then surprise Lover with news that there are 16 or so additional homemade sandwich cookies in the 'fridge. That ought to get you in Lover's good graces if you weren't enough already.
Dinner tonight: Cinnamon-pepper Roasted Chicken in an Orange-Cinnamon Sauce with Roasted Carrots and Fregola (Sardinian pasta in a large cous-cous form, but toasted. Yum.). Estimated cost for two: $8.41. The chicken is large, 4.37 pounds, and at $1.39 per pound was $6.07. We will eat no more than half of it, so that's $3.04. The cinnamon for both the chicken-seasoning and the sauce will be around 20-cents. I never count salt and pepper, so there you have that. The Orange-Cinnamon Sauce will consist of a shallot, so 25-cents, a couple tablespoons of olive oil at 22-cents, a cup of orange juice, which in the size OJ I bought will run me around 70-cents. I am using raisins in the sauce as well, so at $1.99 for 8 ounces, I'll use around 2 ounces, and that's 50-cents. The carrots will be no more than a pound from a 5-pound bag that cost $3.99, so that's around 80-cents. The oil for the carrots will be an additional 22-cents. You know, I might toss some cinnamon on the carrots, too, so let's add another dime. The Fregola was a gift from my brother and his wife - yes, I get food gifts, and, you should not be surprised - I love food gifts. However, I know that it costs around $3.30, and we will use half of that, so that's $1.65. I have a sad-looking pear hanging around the house, so I think I'll throw that into the Fregola, and back when that pear was much more attractive-looking, it cost me 73-cents. Always thinking about how to not have food go to waste, I am. Now, if only I had eaten the pear when first purchased, I wouldn't be in that predicament, but even an over-planner such as myself can run amok once in a while. For 73-cents. I think I'll let that go, and I'd appreciate it if you would as well. Deal?
If you've read any of the previous posts in which I've described having Ribollita for dinner, you are already aware that it comes from the tradition of cucina povera, or the poor kitchen - also known as peasant cooking - which was the necessary means of cooking throughout Italy for generations. Many of the dishes of cucina povera were designed to utilize leftovers, hence, Pappa al Pomodoro (tomato and bread soup) was a way to use the previous day's bread rather than have it go to waste, likewise, Panzanella, a tomato and bread salad was designed for the very same purpose. Ribollita was often made from another leftover soup, and its name translates to "reboiled", so the soup would literally be recooked and then served over what? Yes, leftover bread.
It is fortuitous for us that those Italian cooks who had no choice but to use every last bit of food in their houses happened also to have fantastic taste. These foods tend to be very tasty despite their humble ingredients, and in many cases, are also quite substantial.
I have made this soup in a variety of ways to determine the easiest method - in the event that you were wondering if I am looking out for your interests, you now know that I am - and it turns out that there is one step at the end that, while seemingly an "extra", is actually vitally important to the garlicky goodness of the soup. If you don't love garlic, well, then, it is an extra. But if you, like me, are enamored of garlic, it is mandatory.
Now, let us make the garlicky Ribollita:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups dry cannellini beans or Great Northern beans
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 celery rib, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, diced
1 tablespoon rosemary, chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
8 cups water
(1) 15-ounce can crushed fire-roasted tomatoes
1 bunch cavolo nero (also known as "dinosaur kale") or one small head savoy cabbage, chopped.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon thyme
2 cloves of garlic, diced
kosher salt
pepper
a slice of crusty bread for each person partaking of the soup, or - even more in the spirit of cucina povera - leftover bakery bread that you can't believe you let dry out to the point of crouton consistency. If you want your soup to look like the one in the picture above, you may want to toast two slices of bread for each partaking person.
1 tablespoon olive oil (more if you are using more than 4 slices of bread)
1 large clove of garlic, peeled
The night before you plan to make the Ribollita, rinse the dried beans well, sifting through for pebbles, as beans are from the earth, they sometimes carry bits of earth with them to the grocery store. Once the rinsing water runs clear, place them in a large bowl and cover with cold water. The beans will expand to approximately double their dry size, so resist the temptation to soak them in a small bowl, lest you awake to find beans spilling over the bowl edge and cluttering your counter top. Not a very desirable first event of the day, I'm sure you'd agree.
Once you are ready to make the Ribollita, drain the beans and set aside. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic and cook until the onion is translucent and all of the vegetables are softened, approximately 8-10 minutes. Add the rosemary and crushed red pepper and stir to combine. Add the beans and stir to coat with the oil. When the beans are well-coated, add the 8 cups of water and the crushed tomatoes, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the beans are cooked through. Trust me, you will know if a bean is not cooked through. In the name of getting all the answers for you, I have tried a not-thoroughly-cooked bean, and there is no confusing it with a thoroughly-cooked bean.
Allow the soup to cool slightly. If you have read about or attempted to make either the Roasted Butternut Squash soup or the Roasted Fennel and Carrot soup, you know that pureeing hot liquid in a blender will most certainly result in kitchen walls, counters, cabinets, and any inhabitants of your household who happen to be in the kitchen, to be covered in whatever hot liquid you thought you might be pureeing. I'm sure I don't need to tell you - oh, but I will - this is extremely undesirable.
Now, that the soup has cooled, use a slotted spoon to remove the beans - at least half, and more than half if you like a thicker soup - to a bowl. There should also be some liquid (as mentioned in the previous paragraph) in the bowl and even some of the vegetables. You can't be sorting out diced celery and carrot pieces prior to pureeing, that would be infuriatingly tedious work. Working in batches, puree the beans and then return them to the stockpot. Once all of the beans you've chosen to puree have been returned to the stockpot, reheat (not reboil - just reheat, but conceptually, you are free to think of it as reboiling if it helps you better connect with your inner practitioner of cucina povera) the soup. Add the cavolo nero or Savoy cabbage at this point. Cook until the cavolo nero or cabbage is cooked through, approximately 20 minutes. Toward the end of the cavolo nero/cabbage cooking time, heat the 1 tablespoon of oil in a small pan over medium heat, add the thyme and garlic, and cook quickly - approximately 2 minutes - until the garlic is good and fragrant. Add the garlicky-thyme mixture to the pot, and give it a good stir. This thyme-garlic saute is the not-extra extra step. You must do it. Trust me. Now, taste the soup and salt and pepper as you desire. I find that Ribollita requires a bit of salt to highlight it's flavor, and kosher salt works best for this task.
Also during this cavolo nero/cabbage cooking time, you'll want to dry out the bread. Essentially, you are making croutons of the bread, so preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the slices of bread on a baking sheet. Drizzle just a little bit of olive oil onto both sides of the bread, they do not have to be doused in oil, a drizzle really will be fine. Bake in the oven until each side is lightly browned, approximately 5 minutes per side. Remove from oven and, using tongs to hold the bread as it will be hot, rub the cut side of the garlic clove over one side of the bread. If you love love love garlic, go ahead and rub both sides of the bread. Your eyes may sting from the heat of the garlic when you bite into your crouton, but, hey, you love garlic, so you already know this.
Place a slice of bread at the bottom of a soup bowl and ladle out some recooked bean and vegetable soup to submerge your crouton. If you so desire, drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil over top of the soup, and, heck, for good measure, you could even shave some Parmigiano-Reggiano onto the soup before serving, and then serve it forth, not feeling at all like a peasant, but like a very thrifty modern-day cook who just whipped up a very satisfying, tasty, and garlicky zuppa.
Dinner tonight: Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna. We haven't had this since before Thanksgiving, and I am only too happy to see it return to my dinner table, scrumptious as it is. Estimated cost for two: $4.24. The milk for the Sauce Bechamel is 25-cents per cup at $1.99 per half-gallon. I used 5 cups, so that's $1.25. If you happen to buy gallons of whole milk - I do not for they would spoil in my house and you must know that I hate waste after having read all about cucina povera above - the milk would cost $1.09 at $3.49 for 16 cups for the Whole Foods store brand. The butter is 39-cents, the flour is around 6-cents. The rosemary, if purchased - I have a plant sitting in my house because rosemary is JR's favorite herb - would be about $1.99 for a bunch, and you need about 4 sprigs, so we'll call that 50-cents. The butternut squash should be no more than 80-cents per pound, so that's around $1.60. The olive oil used to coat the bottom of the lasagna pan is around 11-cents, and the lasagna noodles are half of a box that cost $1.59, so we'll round up and call that 80-cents. The largest expense is the Gruyere, but you're worth it, so go ahead and spend the $11.99 per pound. We're only using 3/4 pound, so we'll tally that up as $8.00. The entire lasagna therefore costs $12.71. At my house, this only yields 6 servings, but if you're light eaters, it could be eight servings. However, we do the math based on what happens at my house, and so each serving is then $2.12.
When I first lived alone - by which I mean the very first apartment I had with no roommates, which was also my only experience living alone - I began cooking in earnest. I had started making up dishes years earlier, but, not insignificantly, the fact that I could afford an apartment on my own also meant I could better afford food. Add to that the fact that I was the only one around, which allowed me to cook or bake whenever I felt like it, and all that with the additional bonus of being able to avoid washing dishes for however long I liked without angering anyone but me.
During this time, I developed this beef stew recipe, which I shared with a friend of mine. She was from a large Irish clan - surprising, being that I live in Massachusetts, that I would have an Irish friend from a large family, I know - and she shared some with her mother, the seventy-plus year-old matriarch of the group. Her mother said it was the best beef stew she'd ever had. Now, I don't know if I should chalk that up to Irish graciousness, but if you don't mind, I'll keep it as a compliment.
A Highly Regarded Beef Stew:
Ingredients:
2 pounds beef stew meat
1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 garlic cloves, diced
pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour for coating the beef, plus more if needed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
10 ounces mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
(1) 750ml bottle dry red wine
4 cups beef broth
8 carrots (around 2 pounds), peeled and sliced into spoon-friendly pieces
4 stalks of celery, chopped into spoon-friendly pieces
2 pounds of potatoes (generally this will be around 4 medium potatoes), peeled and cubed into what? Yes, spoon-friendly pieces. Remember that you will be eating this with a spoon, so your vegetables must be hoisted to your mouth with said spoon.
2 bay leaves
Combine the Worcestershire Sauce, Soy Sauce, Dijon Mustard, garlic, and pepper in a large bowl. Add the beef stew meat and toss to coat. Cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, place the flour on a plate or in a bowl. Remove the beef from the refrigerator and coat each piece completely in flour. In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat. Working in batches, brown the flour-coated beef on all sides, transferring to a plate as they are finished browning. When all beef stew pieces have been browned, add the onion and cook for 2 minutes, until onion begins to soften. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are soft, approximately 5-7 minutes. Add the horseradish, thyme, and Dijon mustard and stir to combine. Add the red wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Cook the wine for a minute, then add the beef broth. Add the browned beef, carrots, celery, potatoes, and bay leaves, and stir well to combine all the ingredients in the pot. Cover, and simmer gently on the stove top for 2 hours or until the beef is tender.
Serves 8, but remember either to remove the bay leaves prior to serving or, if it is impossible to locate the bay leaves, inform those eating the stew that they shouldn't eat the bay leaf should they find it in their bowl. At a Superbowl party with some crusty bread, I'll bet you could serve a few more than eight. I find this stew very filling. Of course, if you want to serve a large crowd, feel free to double the recipe, just be sure that your stockpot can contain the gallons of beef stew you're making.
Dinner tonight: Sweet Italian Sausage with white beans and sauteed cabbage. Estimated cost for two: $6.81. The sausage is Whole Foods store brand, and it was on sale for $3.99/pound last week. I bought six and froze the bad boys, and we will have one each tonight. Six cost $6.22, and even though you and I know they aren't all equal-sized, we'll call those two 2.07. The beans are a can of the Whole Foods 365 store brand, which I find to taste better than a lot of the more expensive canned beans they carry, and those were 99-cents, though you could get Goya brand for 89-cents. I'm not going to sweat the dime at my house, however, and so Whole Foods brand it is. The cabbage cost $3.20. We are eating all of that, I assure you. The oil for the cabbage will cost 45-cents, and the garlic, which will be two cloves from one 50-cent head of garlic, which we will call 10-cents. This meal couldn't be easier and it is so darned tasty.
Of late, this has been my go-to appetizer dish whether I'm bringing or hosting. The lemon, rather than the usual tomato sauce served with these ground meats, is an unexpected combination, but it works surprisingly well and they are addictive. Seeing as you might have a Superbowl party to attend this weekend, I thought I'd share.
lemony meatballs just before the wine is added
Lemony Meatballs in a White Wine-Lemon Sauce:
Ingredients:
1 pound ground meat (I use a mix of beef, pork, and veal, but you can use a ground meat of your choosing)
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
zest of one lemon (hang onto that lemon - you need the juice of it for the sauce)
2 tablespoons dried oregano
3 - 4 large eggs
pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups dry white wine (approximately 1/2 of a 750ml bottle)
1 - 1 1/2 cups water
4 bay leaves
the juice of one lemon
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
salt and pepper
Combine the meat, bread crumbs, Pecorino-Romano, lemon zest, oregano, and pepper in a medium mixing bowl. Mix well knowing that you will have a fairly dry looking mixture on your hands. Add the eggs, one at a time, until the meat mixture holds together. You may only need 3 eggs, however, I have used 4 each time I've made this dish in recent weeks. I did say it was my go-to appetizer, did I not?
Place a piece of waxed paper on a large baking sheet or directly on your counter. Roll the meat mixture into golf ball-sized balls and place on the waxed paper. You will end up with 32 or 33 meatballs. I must add that I've ended up with 33 each of the last two times I've made this.
Place the flour in a bowl or on a plate and roll each meatball in the flour to coat completely. Shake off excess flour and return meatballs to the waxed paper. Resist the temptation to create the meatballs and flour them in the same step. You will only wind up with flour, meat, and egg-induced elephantitis of the hands if you try to combine those two activities.
Once all meatballs are flour-coated, heat the butter and oil over medium heat in a large brazier pan, dutch oven, cast iron fry pan, or another heavy pan with a large cooking surface and deep sides. Once the butter has melted and both it and the oil are hot, add the meatballs and brown on all sides. This may require some maneuvering of meatballs around the pan in order to fit them all, so don't be alarmed if it takes you a few minutes to get all 33 meatballs into the pan. They shrink as they are browning, so eventually you should be able to get them all in and browned. If this does not appear to be the case, remove some that are sufficiently browned and place them on a plate in order to make room for the ones that require browning, then once all are browned, return the removed ones back to the pan for this next step.
Add the white wine to the pan. It will bubble when it first goes in, so pour it slowly to avoid splashing it back in your eyes. Allow it to simmer for a minute, and then add the water such that the liquid comes almost to the top of the meatballs. You'll need to use your best judgment as to whether you need 1 cup or more of water. Add the bay leaves and crushed red pepper. Simmer gently, uncovered, until meatballs are cooked through, approximately 20 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the juice of that one lemon you zested. Salt and pepper to taste, transfer meatballs and all of the sauce to a serving bowl or casserole dish, and watch them disappear. If you are bringing these to someone else's home, so long as you put them in an oven-proof dish, you can reheat them at 350 degrees for around 15 minutes and they'll be good to go.
If you don't want to share with others (outside of your own household) and are looking for a new dinner option, serve the meatballs and sauce with spaghetti for a spicy-lemony take on the old classic.
Dinner tonight: Baked Rigatoni with Bolognese sauce. Estimated cost for two: $4.30. The ground meat was $3.79 per pound at Venda Ravioli, the carrot, celery, and onion for the soffrito (which is the slowly simmered base of the sauce) were about $1.00, the tomatoes were $2.00, and the amount of milk I'll use in the sauce will be about 50-cents. I'm also using anchovy paste and a bit of tomato paste, so let's call those $1.00, to be generous about it. The total cost of the sauce is $8.29 for approximately 8 servings, so $1.04 per person for that, but we already had two servings of it, so the cost for this dish is $6.24. The pasta was $1.99 for the box, and we'll be using all of that. The cheese was $4.69 for the bag, let's say I use all of that just to be safe. That's $12.92 for 6 servings, so $2.15 per person.
Tannat is a highly tannic varietal, with one theory on the origin of its name being that it is derived from "tannin". Makes sense to me: tannin, Tannat. In its native France, it is blended with less tannic varietals and then aged in oak to counter its inherent tannins. But in the high altitude of Argentina's Cafayate Valley - some 6,000 feet above sea level - the cool nighttime temperatures help to contain the natural tannins of this grape while emphasizing its natural deep violet color. Tannat is known as Uraguay's national wine, so it makes sense that it would eventually gain popularity in neighboring Argentina, though it seems just a speck on the Argentine wine map, where Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec rule. In fact, Tannat is not currently listed as a varietal on the Wines of Argentina website.
However, with the reduced tannins afforded by the high-altitude growing conditions, the don Rodolfo Vina Cornejo Costas Tannat 2006 is a lovely, deep purple-colored red wine with pepper, buttered toast, and a floral tobacco scent on the nose as my olfactory system interpreted it. It was incredibly smooth, thanks to that reigning in of the tannins, and that even with its 13.5% alcohol content. In my first taste, I detected raspberry and black cherry. Also in that first taste, I thought, "wow, smooth." (Have I mentioned "smooth"?) The don Rodolfo site says that their Tannat has eucalyptus on the nose as well as fruit, and there is also talk of leather and spice on the palate in addition to berries. Clearly the berries stuck out more to me than did the leather and spice. So I was close to the official description, but eucalyptus completely escaped me. However, the next time I have this wine, I will be on the lookout (or smell out?) for eucalyptus. It's all about growing the wine vocabulary, after all.
The don Rodolfo estate is one of just a few in the Cafayate Valley, and those few vintners produce 4% of all of Argentina's wine. That four percent is considered to be among the best of Argentine wines by some. The high altitude also protects the vines from pollution and disease, and irrigation is provided to a large degree by melting snow. The Tannat is harvested by hand and aged in stainless steel vats before being bottled and then aged in the bottle for an additional four months. Frank at Gasbarro's Wines in Providence - the man responsible for introducing me to this lovely value wine - informed me that they do not often have don Rodolfo's wines in-stock, due to the small production of the vineyards, but when they do, the wine quickly sells out. At $10.99 per bottle, this is an outstanding, rich and smooth wine that is beautiful to look at as well. If you can buy in quantity, Gasbarro's Wines just increased their case discount to 12% from 10% to help out we budget-conscious oenophiles. This brings the per-bottle cost down to $9.68 from $10.99. When your friends wonder aloud how the winemakers at don Rodolfo got the wine to be such a dark purple without a the mouth-drying effect of assertive tannins, you can tell them. That's just how they roll in the Cafayate Valley at 6,000 feet above the sea.
Dinner tonight: Lemony meatballs with pasta and a white wine-lemon sauce. Estimated cost for two: $3.75. The meat is a blend of pork, veal, and beef, which I buy for $3.79 per pound at my favorite Italian market, Venda Ravioli, in Providence. I will use a pound. The breadcrumbs will cost around 50-cents, the cheese, which is pre-grated Pecorino-Romano cost $4.79 for the amount I last purchased, and I will use half of that, so $2.40. I will use around 10-cents worth of dried oregano - though the oregano I am using grows wild in my garden - plant it once, you have it for life, people, so I'll credit myself the dime in my mental tally. I will use two eggs, which are from our chickens, but if you were to purchase them, as I expect you will, the most they would be is 52-cents. I will use about a half-cup of flour to coat the meatballs, and that costs 11-cents at $3.99 for 19 cups of flour. The butter and oil for frying the meatballs is around 70-cents total. The lemon zest that goes into the meatballs, I will tally up in the sauce figure, so for $8.12, I will have around thirty-two 1-ounce meatballs, each of which costs just a fraction over 25-cents. I estimate that we will have 6-8 meatballs total with tonight's dinner, so on the high end, that's $2.00. The sauce consists of the butter and oil we've used for frying the meatballs, about 1.5 cups of white wine, which cost $5.00 for 3 cups, so $2.50, about a cup of water, and the juice of one lemon, which is 50-cents, so the sauce, which will provide leftovers for the remaining 24 meatballs, is $3.00. To be fair, I'll divide that over 4 servings (8 meatballs x 4 servings =32), and that's 75-cents. The pasta is 1/2 of a one-pound box of Whole Foods store brand fancy Italian pasta that cost $1.99, so that's $1.00. The lemony meatballs also make a good appetizer, so I will be sharing this recipe soon in case you want to have some lemony meatballs at your Superbowl party.
You have to admit - unless you are superhuman healthy - every once in a while, you crave a little fried somethin' somethin'. There are days when walking past a restaurant that reeks of Fryolator can be the undoing of even the most determined-to-be-fit individual. As I would only fit into that category on January 2 each and every year - January 1st is a holiday, fer crying out loud - the wafting scent of bubbling oil can really send me into a tizzy.
JR makes a dish that I like to call "JR's Famous Breaded Chicken Breasts", and they have many uses: stuffed, with red sauce and melted cheese, or simply with some herbs mixed into the bread crumbs. We haven't had a whole lot of boneless skinless chicken breasts these last few months, and I was missing their fried goodness. As it turns out, pork sirloin cutlets make a darned good vehicle for breading and frying, and are generally less expensive per pound than boneless skinless chicken breasts. They have the added benefit of having an official and oft-maligned name. Pork Schnitzel. Or, were you to be ordering the dish in Austria, Weiner Schnitzel vom Schwein will differentiate it from true Weiner Schnitzel (pssst - "schwein" is the key here).
Weiner Schnitzel refers to veal cooked in the style of Vienna, though - and here is the shocking part given that I am writing about it - it is possible that it originated in Milan where it is known as cotoletta alla milanese. So it seems your suspicions are true. Everything I cook comes right back to Italy. Or may come right back to Italy. There are a few theories on the origin of the Schnitzel dish, so I suppose I shouldn't choose to believe the one that most appeals to me. But, then, isn't that what we humans do?
Regardless of my predisposition to believe this is a dish of Italian origin, we can prove that it satisfies the requirement for fried scrumptiousness, and for very little money. Though it is typically served with lemon and parsley, JR and I enjoyed ours with some sauteed mushrooms and orzo with butter. Why stop with breading and frying when you can add butter to the dish as well, right?
Weiner Schnitzel vom Schwein alla armer Mädchenfeinschmecker (or Breaded Pork Cutlets in the style of Poor Girl Gourmet - I'm sure this is the absolutely 100% correct translation, so don't you worry about a thing. And I had to include the "alla" in there because, well...I think the dish originated in Milano, ok?)
Ingredients:
4 sirloin cutlets, approximately 1/4 pound each, pounded to approximately 1/4-inch thickness. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to unleash your frustrations on the cutlets. I whacked the bad boys around with a hefty rolling pin for about ten minutes. Quite satisfying. And they were quite flat when I was done with them.
1 cup panko breadcrumbs - these are Japanese-style breadcrumbs and are more coarse than your standard breadcrumbs. Whole Foods sells a store brand that costs $1.99 for 4 cups, which is a pretty good deal for extra crunchiness, in my humble opinion.
2 teaspoons fennel seed
2 teaspoons dried thyme
salt and pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour for dredging the cutlets
2 eggs, well beaten, for coating the dredged cutlets
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
The cooking time on this entire dish is about 4-6 minutes. However, there is a small amount of prep time as you must first whack the cutlets into submission, which for them means being flattened to about a quarter-inch, then, you will need to coat them with seasoned breadcrumbs. This whole process takes ten to fifteen minutes up front, then an additional 30 minutes to refrigerate the breaded cutlets.
The breading technique is this: mix the breadcrumbs with the fennel seed and thyme, and then add enough salt and pepper to season the crumbs to your liking.
Place the flour, the eggs, and the seasoned breadcrumbs into three separate shallow bowls. If the flattened cutlets are too large to fit in the bowls, you are free to cut them into manageable shallow-bowl-friendly pieces.
You will need to bread each cutlet separately, so to start, dredge the first cutlet in flour so that it is covered lightly over its entire surface. Second, coat the cutlet with egg, and allow excess egg to drain off before moving the cutlet to the seasoned breadcrumbs. Next, cover completely with the seasoned breadcrumb mixture, and finally, transfer the cutlets to a baking sheet lined with parchment or waxed paper. Repeat with the remaining cutlets, and then, as you've been made aware previously, you must set the pan with the cutlets in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes. This chilling time is important because it allows the crumbs to adhere to the cutlets rendering a complete crust rather than a crust-in-patches, which is slightly less desirable and would then be referred to as teilweise-Schnitzel, or "partially Schnitzeled" as I translate it to English. My German is stellar, so you should really trust me on this.
Now that your cutlets have been properly refrigerated and all crumbs have adhered to the pork, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large non-stick frying pan. Working in batches if you are unable to fit all of the cutlets in one layer, cook until each side is golden brown, approximately 2-3 minutes per side. If you need to keep the cooked cutlets warm while you fry up a second batch, place them on a pan in an oven that has been preheated to 200 degrees. If you used waxed paper on your refrigeration pan and want to use that same pan for the keeping-warm task, be sure to remove the waxed paper first.
Top with some simply sauteed mushrooms, or perhaps you're a purist and would prefer to go the lemon and parsley route, or maybe some caramelized onions have caught your fancy - feel free to choose a side that suits you. As mentioned previously, I also served orzo coated with melted butter for we cannot have a meal without the ever-present starch dish, but you could just as easily prepare wide egg noodles, mashed potatoes, or pan-fried potatoes (more frying!). No matter what you choose, you still have the satisfaction of a breaded and fried dinner, and sometimes that's exactly what you need.
Serves 4.
Dinner tonight: Roasted Chicken Legs and Olives with Crispy Kale and White Beans. Estimated cost for two: $6.91. The chicken legs were $3.12 for 3. JR will eat two, I will eat one. The white beans are 99-cents per can, and, yes, I am using canned. It's a weeknight, so cut me some slack. The kale was $2.49 for the bunch, we will eat about half of that, so $1.25. The olives were $5.99/pound for Castelvetrano (green) olives, and we are going to use just a couple of ounces, so that's around 75-cents. This is a riff on a roasted duck with olives that I have had at Latte di Luna in Pienza, Italy. I may try it with actual duck in the near future, but you'll need to keep me posted as to when duck is on sale, ok? And seeing as I'm not going to be in Pienza, Italy any time soon, chicken legs with olives will have to do. I will use around 45-cents worth of olive oil in this dish, along with a shallot (for the flavoring of the crisping of the kale part), which costs 25-cents, and around 10-cents worth of thyme. If you don't love beans, you could just as easily do this with either orzo (love the orzo), rice, or cous cous.
In terms of foodstuffs, I mean. And in that category, apple pie is considered the ultra-American dessert. But really, I think chocolate chip cookies deserve a mention on the all-American list, don't you? I mean, they were developed in the United States - in Massachusetts, the home of the Revolution, no less - so they must be at least as American as apple pie. And yet, they are never uttered in the same breath as As-American-as-apple-pie, are they? Let's do a little something to change that, shall we? In addition to returning to a sense of financial restraint and a responsibility to help those less fortunate than us, as our new president has requested, let's all take up chocolate chip cookie baking and see if we can't add it to our list of patriotic sweets. I have to admit, I'm not one-hundred percent sure why a dessert should be considered patriotic, but on this, the day after the Inauguration, I'd like you to entertain this folly if you don't mind. After all, you will certainly benefit from baking and eating chocolate chip cookies with your friends and family. Just think of all the joy freshly baked chocolate chip cookies will bring, even if you aren't quite clear how we arrived at this all-American edibles discussion.
The inspiration for this chocolate chip cookie recipe came from one of my family members. My brother was making his favorite chocolate cookies - not chocolate chip, mind you - over the weekend. He's all about mixing it up, even if they are his favorites, so this time he made them with orange zest instead of mint - and he asked me if he could use dark brown sugar in place of light brown sugar. Sure, I replied, but dark brown sugar will lend a deeper, more molasses-y flavor to the cookies.
And then I started thinking about my favorite, should-be-all-American chocolate chip cookie recipe and how it might benefit from a little molasses-y flavor. And how turbinado sugar (sold as Sugar in the Raw, among other brands) might also jazz them up a bit. And you know what? The two of them did. This is my new perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, and replaces the one I've been using for the last ten years.
Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies:
1/4 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup turbinado sugar (a.k.a. Sugar in the Raw)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips (such as Whole Foods 365 brand)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (for crispy cookies, preheat to 375 degrees). Grease two cookie sheets (hint: the wrapper for the softened butter will usually provide you enough residual butter to grease the cookie sheets.).
In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and sugars together until well-combined - also known as creaming the butter and sugar. You may read this somewhere else down the line and I want you to be informed so it doesn't take you by surprise.
Add the egg and vanilla, and mix well to combine.
Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt together to be sure the baking soda and salt are evenly distributed throughout, and then add the flour mixture to the creamed butter-sugar mixture (and you weren't surprised because you know that it is called "creaming". See?). Stir until combined, then add the chocolate chips and mix those bad boys in.
Using two spoons or a small ice-cream scoop, scoop out the dough and place it on the greased cookie sheet so that each ball of dough is approximately two inches from any neighboring balls of dough. Bake on the middle rack for 10 to 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown, turning the cookie sheets midway through the baking time. If you are unable to fit both cookie sheets on the middle rack, place the oven racks just above and just below the middle rack and, in addition to turning the sheets midway through baking, switch the top sheet to the bottom rack and vice versa.
Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack, and enjoy with a big glass of cold milk, or maybe a coffee or hot chocolate. You feel more all-American just reading about it, don't you?
Yield: 24 cookies. However, if you are a dough-eater such as myself, you may yield closer to 22 than 24. You know, it could have been 23 for me, but that little wee bit of dough just didn't seem like enough for a whole other cookie. But this is one of the joys of adulthood. You can eat the dough if you want and no one can reprimand you for it. So go ahead, feel the joy.
Dinner tonight: JR will be having beef stew, and I will be having whatever I can make quickly as I am going to a class tonight to learn how to effectively pitch magazines my stories. I sure do hope I can be trained. But for the sake of the cost of our meal tonight, let's assume I will also have beef stew as it needs only to be reheated, so that seems quick enough. Estimated cost for two: $4.48. The beef was $6.01 for 1 and 1/2 pounds. The wine was the $3.99 bottle of Portuguese wine that I bought the other morning at 10am. The broth was $2.19 for Whole Foods store brand beef broth. I used one onion, which we estimate is 50-cents on the high end (actually, in this case it would be 32.5-cents as it was a half pound at 65-cents per pound, but just to be fair in case you pay 99-cents per pound of onions). The carrots were 1 pound - in this case, 8 carrots - at $3.99 for 5 pounds, so 80-cents. I used 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes at 57.5-cents per pound, so that's around 86-cents. The celery was 4 stalks from a bunch containing 12 for $1.99, so that's 66-cents. The flour was about a half-cup, so at $3.99 for 19 cups, that's 11-cents. The mustard was 20-cents, the horseradish about the same, and the thyme was 10-cents or so. The marinade consisted of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, a clove of garlic, and a tablespoon of mustard, so all of those items together are roughly $2.34, with the soy costing 68-cents, the Worcestershire $1.36, the garlic 10-cents, and the mustard 20-cents. The stew yields 6 to 8 servings, so for $17.96, figuring on the low end of the serving spectrum, it's $2.99 per serving. And on the high end at 8 servings, which is what it's working out to at my house, it's $2.24 per serving.
It seems a little too momentous an occasion to be focused on discussing food. But tomorrow we can all look forward to chocolate chip cookies. How's that sound? A full day with the new president, and cookies. I like it. I hope you do, too.
And by shrimpy-shrimp, I do mean small shrimp. As I was discussing with my friend Debby this morning, I wasn't so sure I would serve these shrimp to guests, but then she described a conversation she had with a friend of hers regarding shrimp, which caused me to reevaluate my stance on the shrimpy-shrimp. It seems Debby had served Thai shrimp at a recent dinner for her friends, and one of her friends noted that they had no taste. Actually, the friend's mother initially pointed this out to the friend who then shared it with Debby, but no matter. The fact is, those previously frozen imported shrimp do not have any taste. But the shrimpy-shrimp JR and I had were fresh Maine shrimp, and they were actually quite sweet and tasty, if small. And a half-pound for the two of us was certainly adequate. As an added bonus, they were on sale and they cost only $2.00 for the half-pound in our tasty shrimpy-shrimp meal. At regular price, they'd be $3.00 for a half-pound - oh, and did I mention that they taste - so in either pricing scenario, that's well worth it. If you have the opportunity to purchase locally-caught shrimp instead of those tasteless frozen imports, you must do so. I insist. You will be amazed at the difference. And, as Debby said to me, you should serve them to guests. They taste like something.
Shrimp with Broccoli and Linguine in a Garlicky-Lemon Sauce
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium shallot, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 cup dry white wine
The zest (yellow parts only) and juice of two lemons
1 pound sweet local shrimpy-shrimp, shells peeled and rinsed
1 pound linguine
1 pound broccoli, cut into florets
Bring the pasta cooking water to a boil and cook linguine according to manufacturer's instructions.
Just after you add the pasta to the pasta water pot, heat the butter and oil in a large saute or fry pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook until shallot is translucent, being careful not to burn the garlic, about 3 minutes. Add the white wine and cook for 2 minutes. Add the shrimp and cook through, approximately 3-5 minutes, depending upon the size of your shrimpy-shrimp. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Reduce heat to medium-low. As soon as linguine is cooked al dente (cooked through, but firm to the bite), transfer the linguine to the saute pan, leaving the pasta cooking water in the pasta cooking pot. A pasta fork with drainage holes will help you complete this task and works well for straining the broccoli out of the water as well. Quickly return the pasta cooking water to the boil and add the broccoli to it. Cook until the broccoli are bright green, yet still firm, approximately 2-3 minutes. Remove the broccoli from the water, add to the pan with the shrimp and linguine, and stir to combine. Alternatively, you could add the broccoli to the pasta water while the linguine cooks, but be aware that the addition of room-temperature broccoli to the pot with the linguine will slow the cooking of both linguine and broccoli down. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve the tasty shrimpy-shrimps forth.
Serves 4.
For four people, even presuming that you purchase the shrimp at regular price, the cost is $13.87. If you purchased the shrimp on sale, it would be $11.87 The shrimp are $5.99/pound regularly, and were $3.99/pound on sale at Whole Foods. The linguine is $1.99 for a one-pound box of Whole Foods store brand fancy bronze die pasta. You can buy less expensive pasta if you like, but the bronze-dye type has better texture in my opinion. The lemons are $1.00, the butter and oil are 35-cents and 33-cents respectively. We'll call the garlic 30-cents. The shallot is 25-cents. The one cup of wine should not cost more than $1.67 if it is 1/3rd of a $5.00 bottle that you bought expressly for the purpose of cooking. And you should not spend more than $5.00 on a bottle of wine for cooking. Finally, the broccoli is $1.99 per pound. My friend Debby says you can serve shrimpy-shrimp to guests, so you'd better believe you can.
Dinner tonight: Beef Stew with Red Wine Broth. Estimated cost for two: $5.98. The beef was $6.01 for 1 and 1/2 pounds. The wine was the $3.99 bottle of Portuguese wine that I bought the other morning at 10am. The broth was $2.19 for Whole Foods store brand beef broth. I used one onion, which we estimate is 50-cents on the high end (actually, in this case it would be 32.5-cents as it was a half pound at 65-cents per pound, but just to be fair in case you pay 99-cents per pound of onions). The carrots were 1 pound - in this case, 8 carrots - at $3.99 for 5 pounds, so 80-cents. I used 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes at 57.5-cents per pound, so that's around 86-cents. The celery was 4 stalks from a bunch containing 12 for $1.99, so that's 66-cents. The flour was about a half-cup, so at $3.99 for 19 cups, that's 11-cents. The mustard was 20-cents, the horseradish about the same, and the thyme was 10-cents or so. The marinade consisted of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, a clove of garlic, and a tablespoon of mustard, so all of those items together are roughly $2.34, with the soy costing 68-cents, the Worcestershire $1.36, the garlic 10-cents, and the mustard 20-cents. The stew yields 6 to 8 servings, so for $17.96, figuring on the low end of the serving spectrum, it's $2.99 per serving. And on the high end at 8 servings, it's $2.24 per serving. And it is rich and filling, so I'd wager we get 8 servings. But, as you know, I am a fan of rounding up in order to not shock you with a bill that is 75-cents more than I allege per serving, so round up I will.
using the outdoor snow cooler to keep the Torrontes "refrigerated"
Torrontes is a grape varietal that is grown solely in Argentina, though recent studies reveal that it is genetically the same as Malvasia, a white grape grown in Mediterranean countries. There is speculation that Torrontes was, in fact, introduced to Argentina by Spanish missionaries, and quite a while ago - as in when Spanish missionaries first arrived in Argentina - as Argentines consider Torrontes their national white grape, so their collective memory does not seem to recall a time before Torrontes. Regardless of collective memory problems, Torrontes, as is the case with many Argentine wines, provides a great value and can routinely be found for $10 to $12 per bottle, and at a consistent level of quality at that price.
My friend Mark at Gasbarro's Wines in Providence recommended this particular bottle, Finca el Origen Torrontes Riserva, to me with the caveat that while it was a good wine as an aperitif or with snacks, it might be best relegated to snack-accompaniment, rather than dinner-accompaniment. You may recall Finca el Origen from the review on their Malbec vineyards are 2000 meters above sea level in the I did back in December. They own all of their own vineyards, so they are able to better regulate the viticulture of the grapes. I'll wager it's much warmer there, even at 2000 meters above sea level, than it is here in lovely New England, but then, I digress. We're talking about wine here, not the unfortunate northeastern winter, after all. I have to say that I found it to be a very crisp and pleasant wine, and while it had tropical fruit on the nose, I only detected pineapple - and just mildly - in my tasting of the wine. The typical aroma profile of Torrontes includes passion fruit and lychee, which I have to admit would not be recognizable enough from my eating and smelling experience to register in my casual quaffing of this wine, but I did pick up a bit of honey aroma in addition to my general "tropical fruit" assessment. Though I did not snack while drinking this wine - unless you'd like to count the lemon juice that squirted into my face while making the shrimp dinner - I found that it worked well with the lemon of the sauce and the sweetness of the shrimp. I'll get into the sweetness of the shrimp in a subsequent post, but if you live where you can buy locally caught shrimp, you will be rewarded with shrimp that actually tastes, and so I highly recommend that you get yourself to your fishmonger and buy away.
For ten-dollars a bottle, even with the additional caveat that white wine does not always excite me, this was a very good value, was refreshing (in the event that the negative 6 degrees outside wasn't refreshing enough), and worked well with tasty shrimp and lemon. And garlic. If you're looking for a change of pace from Pinot Grigio or if you want to get away from oaky Chardonnay, I recommend you give Torrontes a try. Preferably in Argentina during their summer months, but if that's out of reach, a glass might just transport you away from the winter doldrums back home.
Dinner tonight: Pork Schnitzel with Mushrooms and Orzo. Now, schnitzel is a term that I could have replaced with "Breaded Pork Cutlets", but I thought I'd be true to its origins and call it schnitzel. Estimated cost for two: $6.29. The pork cutlets cost $2.21 for 3 cutlets. Two are for us to eat, one if for me to photograph for the Pork Schnitzel post, but I'm sure it will make its way into JR's lunch once it's had its close-up. The mushrooms were $2.25 for 10 ounces, a little more expensive than the farm stand, but the farm stand is closed until April, so there we are. I will use butter and oil to saute the mushrooms and will start that saute with a shallot, so it should be around 38-cents for fats, and 25-cents for the shallot. The orzo is $1.00 as it is half of a box that cost $1.99. I'll stir a little butter into the orzo as well, and that will be around 20-cents. The mushrooms and orzo will be the most time-consuming part of the cooking, as the schnitzel will take about 2 minutes per side once it is breaded, so it seems like an ideal weeknight meal.
In the neighborhood where JR lived as a child, there was a family that he insists ate caramelized onions at dinner every night. This makes me believe that they must have also eaten either beef or pork every night as well as caramelized onions best complement meaty dishes - you wouldn't normally think of having caramelized onions with cod, after all - so perhaps caramelized onions were their budget concession in order that they could afford meat with such regularity. Or perhaps JR only imagined that they enjoyed caramelized onions each and every day. And I can see why he might dream that dream, for, in addition to going well with meat, caramelized onions elevate the humble onion to a sublime comestible. One which happens to top off mashed potatoes rather nicely, to boot, which is of infinite value if you are a meat-and-potatoes lover.
Caramelized Onions:
2 pounds onions - roughly 4 medium onions, peeled and sliced across the grain into 1/4 inch pieces such that you end up with rings
1 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
In a large saute or fry pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the pile of onions and cook over medium heat until onions are softened and translucent, stirring constantly. This could take up to 20 minutes as you have quite a few onion rings here. Not to worry, they will shrink considerably as they cook.
Once the onions are softened and translucent, sprinkle the sugar over the entire surface of the onions, and stir to combine. Cook until the sugar begins to caramelize. If you haven't previously caramelized sugar, this is a fun process to watch unfold. I know that the first time I did it, I said, "hey, wow, it's making caramel!" Yeah. Clearly the "caramelized" in the description didn't clarify it nearly enough for me. In any case, the sugar and butter will combine to become caramel. The mixture will bubble and turn a golden brown. Once it is golden brown, add the vinegar and stir to combine. Allow to cook for 2 to 3 minutes more to meld flavors. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve them up alongside something meaty. But be sure to alternate with other vegetables from night to night. Even though these are addictive, you need some greens in your diet as well.
Serves 4.
Caramelized onions also happen to be quite versatile - think toppings for pizza, salad, focaccia bread, an addition to a frittata - and, as mentioned once or twice above, as a side dish for meats - and have I mentioned their affinity for mashed potatoes?
As described here, this side dish costs $3.10 for four servings. The onions should be the least expensive you can find - there's no need to spend your money on sweet onions for this as the onions will be made sweet by caramelizing. I bought a two-pound bag of yellow onions at Whole Foods for $1.65. The butter is 1/4 of a package that costs $2.79, so that's 70-cents. The balsamic is not the fancy-schmancy aged balsamic, it is the more common type found in every grocery store and was $7.99 for a bottle containing 33 tablespoons. Break that down, and for three tablespoons, it costs 72-cents. And the magical sugar that creates the caramel was 3-cents.
Dinner tonight: People, check your sales fliers. This week, Maine shrimp is on sale at my local Whole Foods. Thus, we are having Shrimp with Broccoli and Linguine in a Garlicy-Lemon Sauce. Estimated cost for two: $6.89. The shrimp were $3.99 per pound. These are not jumbo shrimp and they are going to require me to peel and de-vein them myself, but we haven't had shrimp in a very long time, and so I am quite happy to clean them up. We only need a half-pound for this dish, so that's $2.00. The garlic will be around 15-cents, the shallot will cost 25-cents. The lemon is $1.20 at 60-cents each. The butter for the dish is 35-cents, the olive oil is 33-cents. I'm using both oil and butter so that the butter keeps from burning as it cooks. It's a trick you can use yourself. That's why I share. The linguine is half of a one-pound box that cost $1.99, so that's $1.00. The broccoli cost $1.61 for just over 3/4-pound. I suppose we could use less than the entire head of broccoli, but for the sake of rounding up, we'll just leave it at that. So we get to have a seafood meal for less than $7.00. Not too shabby. Beef and shrimp all in the same week? Sweet.
Yeah. I do. That's right. And I tell anyone who will listen why I'm there.
Frequently, when I'm making a dish that calls for wine, I use leftover wine that I had purchased to drink. This causes me to think of the wine in the dish as "free" in terms of the overall tally for making the meal, but not everyone keeps wine in the house, and some of those who do don't have leftovers. I'm not judging, it's just what I understand based on the wisecracks I hear when certain celebrity-types tell us, via chain emails - which I am all but certain they didn't actually draft - how to preserve leftover wine for future cooking use. The punchline, of course, is "what leftover wine?!"
In my ongoing quest to be absolutely certain that when I'm pricing these dishes, I'm accounting for what would actually be spent on all the ingredients, I took a mid-morning trip to the liquor store. Now there's a good time of day to be seen loading up on wine. Be confident that I roundly announced my mission repeatedly, "I'm just here for cooking wine. Yup. Cooking wine. That's what I'm here for." At 10 a.m., thank you very much. Now, I still think that the little four-packs of wine with the screw caps are a good deal for when you need a small amount of wine, say a cup or so. But for the dish I'm going to lay out below, you need 2 cups of wine. One 750ml bottle of wine is roughly equivalent to 3 cups, which is convenient for us, as we can avoid measuring the wine by just pouring out two-thirds of the bottle into the pot, and that seems like an economy of time, albeit a small one. I wanted to be sure there was a good option for the wine that was palatable to our pocketbooks as well as our taste buds, so my mission was to find wine for five dollars and under. Here is a helpful hint. Just as the international section of your supermarket likely has good deals on spices and beans, wine-producing countries that are less-touted than the big players like France and Italy will garner you big bargains. I found a bottle of Portuguese red table wine for $3.99, which I will be using in beef stew this weekend during our umpteenth snow storm of the barely month-old winter. I also found some Slovenian Cabernet and Pinot Grigio for five dollars a bottle. As previously mentioned, I kept announcing my reason for my morning liquor store visit, so the man at the cash register responded to my "cooking wine, cooking wine, cooking wine" mantra saying that when people come in and say they're going to cook with the wine, they advise them to buy an inexpensive bottle, such as Gallo burgundy for five dollars. "If they use a twenty-dollar bottle, they're cooking all of the flavor out, so they're not benefiting from it," he went on to say. So lest you be concerned when you read directives such as, "be sure to use a wine you would drink" in your cookbooks, they aren't asking for you to dump an expensive bottle in the stew, they (whoever the collective they may be) are trying to reinforce that we should buy wine meant for drinking. Not a product labeled "Cooking Wine" on a supermarket shelf. So go ahead, buy the least expensive wine-intended-for-drinking you can find and make yourself some beef shanks. Which, at $2.99 per pound at my local market, make for an incredibly inexpensive beefy meal. In light of that, perhaps you want to splurge on a ten- or eleven-dollar bottle of wine to go with it.
(4) 3/4 pound beef shanks
Salt and pepper
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish (such as Gold's. By prepared, I mean already shredded as opposed to buying the horseradish root itself)
1 tablespoon thyme
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups dry red wine
3 cups beef broth
Salt and pepper the shanks.
In a dutch oven or large, deep pot that has a lid, heat oil over medium-high heat until the oil is shimmering. Add the shanks, working in batches if necessary not to crowd them. Cook until browned on each side, approximately 3 minutes per side. Remove from pan and place on a plate.
Reduce heat to medium. Add additional oil if necessary to coat the bottom of the pan. Add onion, celery, carrot, and garlic and cook until onion is translucent and vegetables have softened, approximately 5-7 minutes. Add mustard, horseradish, and thyme, and stir to combine with vegetables, cook for one minute. Add the flour, sprinkling it over the entire surface of the pan. Stir flour into vegetables and cook, stirring constantly, until flour is cooked, approximately 3 minutes. Add the red wine, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for one minute, then add the broth, and allow to simmer for 5 minutes to blend flavors. Return the shanks to the pan in one layer with liquid almost to the top of the shanks. If there is not enough liquid, add more broth until it is almost to the top of the shanks. Bring to a gentle simmer - not a boil - cover, and cook for 2 hours, or until the meat falls off the bone, turning the shanks every half-hour to insure even cooking.
When you plate the shanks, top the meat with some of the red wine gravy and serve away.
Serves 4.
What's so nice about this dish, aside from the fact that each shank will cost you around $2.25, is that it is a little fancier than beef stew. You could actually serve this to guests and not feel like you need to be watching the Superbowl. We had it with caramelized onions and mashed potatoes, and while that made for a very brown and white meal - perhaps you'd prefer oven-roasted carrots instead of the onions to mix up the color palette - it was very satisfying and beefy. And we all need a little beefiness once in a while. Particularly when we're on a budget.
Dinner tonight: The end of the Ribollita (Tuscan bean and vegetable soup). See, you have to have a few trade-offs. Beef shanks one night, beans and veggies the next. Not that I'm taking anything away from the beans and vegetables, because it is one hearty soup. But it's not beefy. And so, it is much less expensive than the beef. Estimated cost for two: $2.96. The beans were around $1.00 in the bulk section at Whole Foods, which is a quarter less than what I paid for beans the week before at the Providence Winter Farmers Market. The celery, onion, and two carrots were no more than a dollar. The leeks were $1.75. The garlic was 12-cents if you consider it was less than a quarter of the 50-cent head of garlic. The can of tomatoes was $1.67. I did buy bread because it was so darned good the last time, so we'll use about a quarter of a loaf that cost $3.39. That's 85-cents. The bread is toasted, then rubbed with garlic and placed at the bottom of the bowl of soup to make one bad-ass garlicky crouton. The cavolo nero, or dinosaur kale, was $2.49. This recipe yields 6 servings at a cost of $8.88, for a grand total of $1.48 per person. No, you are not having deja vu. You have seen this all before. For we just had it a few days ago. Hey, but it's still a bargain at $1.48 per serving, wouldn't you agree?
I was on the fence about what to have for dinner tonight - pancetta and peas or the last of the ribollita (Tuscan bean and vegetable) soup, but selecting the photographs for today's post has ended my quandary. Pancetta and peas it is.
Pancetta is an Italian cured pork product. It is also produced in Spain, and in both cases, it is the same cut of the pig - the belly - that is used to produce bacon. Unlike bacon, pancetta is not smoked, so it doesn't present itself in as pronounced a manner as bacon, though it does add a nice saltiness to a dish without overwhelming it as a smoked bacon might. Pancetta is also used as the base to many Italian pasta sauces, and is traditionally used in Bolognese sauce, though, in an effort to keep the cost of my untraditional version of Bolognese down, I omit it. Pancetta is a natural companion for peas as its saltiness pairs beautifully with the sweetness of the peas. It is slightly more expensive than bacon, at $8.29 per pound at my local Italian market, while bacon averages around $4.99 per pound, but it is worth it for the nuance of flavor it provides, and you don't need more than two ounces per person to produce an incredibly satisfying dish. In fact, you could probably get away with closer to an ounce each, but just in case you have a large appetite, we'll go with two ounces per mangiatore (eater). When you see the 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper in the ingredient list, you may become alarmed, but this little tidbit should assuage your fears: generally speaking, JR does not love spice-generated heat in his food, but for this dish, he happily makes an exception. If he can do it, so can you, so try it spicy first - scale it back to 1/4 teaspoon if you're unconvinced - and if you don't like it, which I think is nearly impossible, omit the hot pepper the next time you make it. Because believe you me, there will be a next time.
Pancetta and Peas with Spaghetti and Egg:
Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound pancetta, thinly sliced (specify this at the market when you purchase it, though they should know this as they are professionals) and then cut into roughly one-inch squares
1 medium shallot
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 cups peas
1 pound spaghetti or orecchiette
2 tablespoons olive oil for frying eggs
4 eggs (one per mangiatore)
Salt and pepper
In a large saucepan, start the pasta water to boil. Just before it comes to the boil, heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large saute or frying pan. Add the pancetta, and stir to spread evenly throughout the pan. Don't forget to start cooking the pasta now that its water is boiling. Cook the pancetta for approximately 5 minutes and then add the shallot and crushed red pepper, stirring to combine with the pancetta. Cook the pancetta, shallot and red pepper for approximately 5 minutes, and then add the peas, stirring to combine them with the pancetta mixture.
When the pasta is al dente (cooked through, but firm to the bite), drain it, reserving 1 to 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking water, and add the pasta to the pan with the pancetta mixture. Add one cup of the pasta water to the pan and stir to combine the pasta with the pancetta mixture. Reduce the heat to medium-low. If it looks like the pan is drying out at any time while you're working on the next step, go ahead and add the remaining 1/2 cup pasta water to the pan.
In another frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add the eggs, being careful not to crack the yolks. If you do happen to crack a yolk, it's not the end of the world. I'm sure someone in your family either thinks runny yolks are icky (this person is likely under 10 years old) or some other person will decide that it's their turn to take one for the team and will volunteer to eat the broken-yolk egg. And that person is probably you who is cooking this, for it would be me at my house. The cook goes down with the broken-yolk ship, as it were. Cook the eggs until they are set, but the yolk is not cooked through, also known as Sunny Side Up.
Transfer 1/4th of the pasta with pancetta and peas to each of four plates and top each mound of pasta with an egg. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve them forth.
Serves 4.
This dish is quick to prepare, which, in addition to being inexpensive, is a nice feature. Including the time it takes for the water to come to a boil, the first bite of pasta, pancetta, peas, and runny egg yolk is on your fork in about 35 minutes. To make this for four costs $8.95. The pancetta is $8.29 per pound, so 1/2 pound is $4.15. The olive oil is around 55-cents for both the pancetta and the egg portion of the meal. The shallot is around 25-cents as I just bought 5 for less than $1.25 the other day, and the peas are roughly two-thirds of a bag that cost $1.29. The crushed red pepper probably put us out 10-cents. The pasta shouldn't be any more than $1.99, and if you choose to use orecchiette, that should be no more than $1.79. The eggs are about 26-cents each, so we'll call that $1.05, and the richness of the yolks replaces the need for any Parmigiano-Reggiano shaving, which is why it is employed here. To save a buck or two.
Dinner tonight: You know it. So half of $8.95 is $4.47 plus one-half cent. We'll just call that $4.48, ok?
