The Recession Kitchen

Sweet Potato Casserole, a perfect once-a-year dish

A very quick note for Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday of the year. Please do not worry about calorie consumption today. It is a feast day. Feast.

In this vein, if you are looking for a side, wow folks with this sweet potato casserole which is sinfully rich, and has the lovely crunch of pecan combined with velvety smoothness. Oh, there's no marshmallow involved.

Sweet Potato Casserole

Serves a small army as a side.

Needs:

7 lbs. sweet potatoes

3/4 cups white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1T cinnamon

2 t nutmeg

2 T vanilla extract

4 eggs whipped

2 sticks butter (melted)

Mixer.

Lasagna pan.

Method:

Prick and bake sweet potatoes at 425 for at least an hour, turning at least once, until soft. Let cool and scrape all the sweet potatoey goodness out into mixer bowl.

Mix.

Add sugar and mix.

Add spices and mix.

Add vanilla and mix.

Add eggs and mix.

Add butter and mix.

When everything is thoroughly mixed pour into a buttered lasagna pan.

In a new bowl mix:

1/3 cup flour

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup chopped pecans

1/3 stick of melted butter.

Evenly spread the sugary, nutty crust over the sweet potato mixture.

Bake in a 350-oven for at least 30 minutes, taking out when the crust is melty-delicious, the potatoes have that nice casserole bubble and your kitchen is filled with the scent of heavenly goodness (may be up to 45 minutes or so). Also, this holds heat pretty well and re-heats great, which is good to know if you are determining how to ration oven space and time. 

Eat this once a year and you'll be OK. That's all I'll say about that.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Deconstructed steak and eggs: Top Chef for Toddlers

Having a toddler means the kitchen is always a playground. I don't mean this in the McDonald's Playland sense. I have neither room nor patience for, say, a Hamburglar slide in my kitchen. But having a young child means food always has room for fun.

Anyone who has ever given a toddler a sandwich understands that the brain of a young eater is filled with curiosity. It won't take long before each slice of bread is thrown aside, the exploration having begun. Soon pieces of cold cuts and cheese will find themselves tossed afield. For the young eater, the deconstruction of a sandwich is as much about play as it is understanding what is hiding beneath those slices of bread. Dining and play are inseparable. And that is how it should it be. After all, food should be more than sustenance, it should be fun.

So, this morning, partly inspired by my son's playful palate, and partly by Episode 6 of this season's Top Chef, I sought to deconstruct a classic: Steak & Eggs. First, I beat an egg and poured it into a skillet, as if I was making an omelet. When it was cooked, I simply flipped it over, cooked the other side and removed the large, flat egg from the skillet. Then I sliced the egg into triangle pizza-like slices. I cut a slice of American cheese into strips. Finally, I cut up some left over sirloin that we'd grilled for last night's dinner.

I plated the dish by placing some egg slices like a sunrise, arranging the cheese like a flower, and the steak in a small pile. I then presented them with some ketchup and a little A-1 because, well, the kid likes to dip stuff.

"Is that mine?" he asked as he sat in his booster seat.

"It is," I told him. "Steak and eggs deconstructed."

"Mmmmm," he replied, as he dug in and devoured his breakfast. I played. He ate. Happiness in the kitchen on a Sunday morning.

Fried Green Tomatoes, a gift of autumn

Each year, the end of summer is announced with a breath of cold air, a warning of frost, a rush to harvest what can be saved and the sizzle of green tomatoes frying in an iron skillet.

Green tomatoes are no longer reserved for gardeners or dinners at bistros specializing in southern cuisine. Many grocery stores now carry the jade colored fruit much of the year. I've noticed they are particularly available around the holidays, which means this may be a good time for you to give them a try.

The appeal of the fried green tomato lies in the salty, tart crunch that can serve as a vessel for any number of sauces. I prefer to dredge mine in a mix of corn meal and flour, though how you treat yours is entirely up to you. The real trick to fried green tomatoes is the patience require to extract as much liquid as you can from the sliced fruit.

I prefer a method that reminds me of the apple drying that was once ubiquitous in northeast preschool classrooms at this time of year. I thinly slice the tomatoes, salt them liberally, then use a lobster poker to run a long length of trussing string through them. I then hang the slices over sink, an emerald necklace, for at least an hour, allowing them to drip.

When much of the juice has been extracted and the slices begin to wilt, I dredge them in a 50/50 mix of corn meal and flour. I then  refrigerate them for about an hour, on parchment paper, before frying them to a golden brown in olive oil. After removing them from the oil, let your treat drain on paper towels.

Then, enjoy.

It is important to use tomatoes that are hard, not soft, as they are the best. Also, play around with this recipe, as you would with any. Before I go, here's a simple dipping sauce I enjoy:

Spicy rouge dipping sauce

1/4 cup mayo

3 T ketchup

1 T Habanero hot sauce

Couple, few shakes of Old Bay seasoning.

Mix, enjoy.

Pesto Change-O! Summer in a pasta bowl.

 

Enough with the red sauce. It's time to think green.

Summer remains largely elusive, but some things in the garden have done delightfully well. Already one eggplant has been sliced and fried. My pepper plants -- from jalapenos to yellow bells -- are heavy with offerings. And my cucumber vines are finally giving up their deliciousness, which require only a quick peeling and a dash of salt.

Great activity also reigns in the herb bed. While my flat leaf parsley can't seem to get going,  my other herbs are loving the warm days and cool evenings. I have a hedge of tarragon. My oregano shrub is being visited daily by some of the most wicked pollinators you could imagine. At the top of my own personal favorites list is the sweet basil, and my tiny basil forest of six plants has, at last, reached a point where I can do some serious harvesting. This, of course, of course means that it's pesto time.

I will concede something right off the bat. My pesto is not a classic Italian pesto. I apologize to those of you who have bicycled through the mountains of Italy and experienced real, hand chopped pesto, with it's unrivaled blend of basil, olive oil, pine nuts, and freshly grated Romano cheese.  Mine is Americanized. It's heavy on the garlic. It uses walnuts instead of pine nuts, mostly because walnut pieces are markedly less expensive than pine nuts, and it uses store-bought Trader Joe's Argentinian Parmesan cheese that has been pre-pulverized.

But I don't cheat on my basil. I make Pesto, if I'm lucky, three times a year. I usually make three to five cups at once, use some, and freeze the rest. It freezes well, which is great because I can pull it out again in January and enjoy a taste of sunshine in the dead of winter. To me, the key to pesto the basil. It is to get the leaves - no stems - right off of your plants, at the height of their growing season. This is when the plant's oils are most potent, and when it's leaves are the most sweet. It is why I grow basil, and why you, if you also love pesto, should spring for that pack of basil seeds.

Another great thing about Pesto is that it begs experimentation. The recipe below is not a mandate. It is a suggestion. The measurements are a starting point for a recipe that requires little more than an idea and food processor. Taste it as you go. If there's too much garlic, add more cheese and basil, if it's too dense, add more oil or a few spoons of pasta water.

Also, use it on whatever you like: straight-up with tortellini, saute some shrimp and toss it with linguine, grill some chicken and throw it over penne. Make a pizza. Make a sandwich. It's all up to you.

Pesto

2 cups packed basil leaves, washed and patted dry.
6 cloves of garlic*
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan
Salt
Pepper
1 cup extra virgin olive oil.

* if you are less of a garlicphile than I, start with 3 cloves and work your way up.

Method

1. Toss your garlic in the food processor and obliterate it.
2. Throw everything but the olive in and grind to a paste.
3. With food processor running, slowly pour in your oil and blend until everything is mixed.
4. Taste. Play.

Gail Green’s Chicago-style cheese bones pet treats

For the cheese-lover, these bones are sure to please!  Makes 25 bones.

 

Ingredients:

3 c. whole wheat flour

½ c. wheat germ or corn meal

1 c. parmesan cheese

1 c. shredded cheddar cheese

1 tsp. dried oregano

2 tsp. garlic powder

1 T fresh or dried minced parsley

4 T canola (or vegetable) oil

½ c. low sodium chicken or beef broth OR 1 cube of bouillon dissolved in ½ c. hot water.        

2 eggs

 

Topping:

¼ c. rolled oats

1 tsp. fresh or dried parsley

 

The Method:

 

1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Set aside.

2. Add wet ingredients and mix together into a stiff dough.  Press or roll the dough mixture out  ¼” thick on a floured surface.

3. Cut out bone shapes, using a small 3 ½” bone cookie cutter.  Mix the topping ingredients together on a small, flat plate.  Press the top of each bone onto the mixture and place onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.

4. Bake at 325° for 30-35 minutes or until hard.  Remove and place on a rack to cool.  Store in refrigerator in a sealed container for up to 10 days or in freezer for up to 2 months.

 

Creative Options:

• Bake in small fish or heart shapes for your cat.  Omit the topping.

 

General Note:  Because the treats do not contain any preservatives, refrigeration and/or freezing is recommended.

Recipe is from Cat & Dog Lovers’ Idea Book by Gail Green (Krause Publications/F & W), reprinted here with permission.

Vitico's Grown Folk Banana Split

This recipe came to me from a friend who suggested demanded that I put a platano maduro recipe on this site. After all, why give up dessert just because you're on a tight budget? At the Berwyn Fruit Market plantains are consistently under $1.00 a pound. Most recently, they've been at $0.89 a pound. So, when I noticed a buy-one-get-one-free sale on ice cream at another local grocer, I decided to give it a go.    If you're thinking "ice cream?" you're starting to understand why I didn't name this "Vitico's Sweet Fried Plantains."
In my experience, platano maduro is a side dish made by frying supremely ripened plantains that have turned as turned as close-to-black as the cook can get them without sacrificing the integrity of the sliced fruit.
In this dish, the plantains are a bit younger. The trick is to use fruits with a skin that has yellowed, but with flesh that is just beginning to soften. What you sacrifice in sweetness is made for by the other ingredients, and the texture of the cooked plantain has a density almost like a thick custard.
Used as a topping for vanilla ice cream, the result is a dessert that is sweet, yet balanced, with hints of the plantain's cousin the banana. It is a mature dessert, which isn't to say kids will turn their noses up at it. But rather that adults won't feel that their blood sugar levels are scraping the stratosphere.
Another great thing about this dish is its simplicity. Easily prepared in about 10 minutes, it is forgiving enough to be cooked after work on weeknight, when dessert is usually unthinkable.

Ingredients

1 large plantain, yellowed and sliced about 3/4" on a diagonal
3 T butter
2 T light brown sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
Vanilla ice cream

The Preparation
1. Melt 1 1/2 T butter in a skillet on medium heat.
2. Add the plantain slices and fry for 2-3 minutes or until they start to caramelize.
3. Flip the plantains and add the rest of the butter.
4. After about 1 minute add the brown sugar allowing it to melt as the plantains fry.
5. Drizzle the vanilla extract over the frying plantains and shake the pan.
6. When the second side of the plantains are done, remove from heat and pour into a bowl with any syrup that has been made.
7. Allow to cool slightly.
8. Spoon over vanilla ice cream.
9. Enjoy.

Pamela Todd's Prairie Winter Lentil Soup

From Pamela Todd:

There is no pleasure that can match a bowl of this soup and some homemade bread on a cold night. It almost makes winter worth enduring. We always make a bone-in ham on Christmas Eve, just so we’ll have a ham bone left to make this soup on boxing day.

 

 The ingredients

3 onions, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp. dried parsley flakes

½ tsp. thyme

1 ½ cups dried lentils, rinsed

1 28 oz. can chopped tomatoes

7 cups of beef broth

Two glasses of cheap red wine from Trader Joe's (one for you and one for the pot)

Ham bone

Pepper to taste

 

The preparation

Sauté the onions and carrots in a little olive oil until the onions are translucent. Then add the remaining ingredients and simmer for about an hour. Lentils don’t need presoaking, but should be cooked until they are tender. Remove the bone, cut any pieces of meat off that you can salvage, and add to the soup. Enjoy.

<$15: Think Spring Chops with Apple Sauce and Green Beans

One of the best ways to save money while still making delicious food is to concoct your own seasoning mixes at home. Typically grocery stores sell mixes in quantities you'll probably never use, for prices somewhere north of $7.00.
Instead, use that same $7.00 to buy a whole bottle of one spice with a wide range of applications. For example, a nice bottle of chipotle pepper or smoked paprika will offer your seasonings a depth you're not likely to find in a typical grocery store mix. By adding a couple of these higher end spices a month you'll soon have a cornucopia of options in your pantry, without having put too much of a hurt on your wallet. And, once you've collected a fair stash, you can experiment until your heart (and taste buds) are content.
This recipe combines the smoky heat of chipotle with the interest of cinnamon and allspice. The garlic powder and onion powder add some savoriness, and homemade applesauce lends a nice sweetness to the dish.
I wanted to create something that reminded me of grilled food, since, well it has been too damn cold to grill and I missed that flavor.
I'm not sure how much homemade applesauce will save, but it's so far and above anything you'll find in a store that it's not to be slept on.
Finally, this recipe does call for one piece of special equipment. It's a ricer. You can pick up a real nice one for about $20 and you'll never have to worry about it again.
Well, that's that. Now for the recipe.

The Dish: Cary's Rolled Funky-Stuffed Eggplant

Cary stopped by The Recession Kitchen with a tasty dish that just may make me add another eggplant plant to my garden this spring.

Cary:

Being a quasi- vegetarian I make a lot of vegetable dishes.  Here is something I like
to make:

Cary's Rolled Funky-Stuffed Eggplant

The Ingredients

Diced tomatoes
Tomato sauce
salt
pepper
garlic
eggplants
corn meal/ flour
eggs
lo-fat milk
grated Mozzarella cheese
light ricotta cheese
shredded Parmesan cheese
vegetable oil

(quantities vary based on portion size.  You can kinda play it by ear. )

In a medium sauce pan sauté a few cloves of garlic (chopped, crushed, or diced) in vegetable oil until golden, add 1 or 2 diced tomatoes and cook.  Then add 1 can of tomato sauce, some salt and pepper to taste.  Let simmer on low.

The eggplants I got were very long and skinny.  Peal the skin of the eggplant with a carrot peeler.  Cut eggplant lengthwise into long thin strips about 1/8" in thickness.
Combine 2-3 eggs and a dash of milk in a small mixing bowl.  In a shallow baking dish Mix cornmeal (and if you want flour).  Dip each strip of eggplant in egg mixture and then coat with cornmeal mix.  Heat skillet and add vegetable oil.... and place "breaded" eggplant strips in pan, flip until golden.

In a separate mixing bowl mix ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan.  Cover the eggplant strips with a thin layer of the cheese mixture and roll (like a jellyroll) and place in a baking dish.  Pour tomato mixture over and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

< $15 : Chicken and Rice

Our little guy has developed an obsession with Dumbo. We watch it in the morning. He asks for it after lunch. It's his last word before he drifts off to sleep and the first he utters as awakens to a new day. He has two plush toys he's named Dumbo. One is a Dumbo. The other is a Horton toy with an identity crisis. I've so-far mostly suppressed the notion his Grandpa is trying to indoctrinate him. Mostly.
Last night I made dinner during the second third viewing of the day. On the menu was one of my favorite one pot dishes. It's something my mom made while I was growing up and that I built upon while living with a Dominican family in South Bronx the summer after I finished grad school (love you Berroa family!). It's a dish that is meant to be personalized and that makes enough food to feed a family at least three times. It's also a recipe that calls more for freewheeling than exact measurements, violates most of the rules of cooking rice, and absolutely requires a big heavy casserole. If you don't have one yet, pick a TJ Maxx Homegoods or Marshall's and stalk it until you do, you'll save about 70% off what you'll pay for it anywhere else.
My recipe results in a thick, almost mushy rice. So be warned. But it's also got a savory goodness that works well in the dead of winter, when you are stuck inside with a toddler, watching Dumbo, again.

Chicken and Rice                    Cost
8 Chicken Thighs                    ($4.28)
5 cloves of garlic chopped       ($0.34)
2 medium onions chopped       ($0.32)
2 jalapenos seeded/chopped   ($0.15)
1 1/2 cups crushed tomatoes    ($0.75)
2 cups white rice                    ($1.27)
2 cups chicken broth               ($2.50)
1 can of kidney beans              ($1.34)
1 cup frozen peas                    ($0.75)
4 T Olive oil                            ($0.80
2 T Goya Adobo                       ($0.12)
shake ground dried Thyme        ($0.25)
shake cayenne pepper              ($0.21)
1 cup water                              (tap)
                                            __________
                                            total: $13.08

The preparation

1. Wash and dry chicken and sprinkle with adobo, meanwhile heat olive oil in heavy casserole on medium heat.
2. Brown chicken in oil, I mean really brown it.
3. Remove chicken and set aside.
4. Add onion and garlic and saute 2 minutes, add jalapenos, cook til soft.
5. Add rice to pan and stir to coat everything in deliciousness
6. Add about half of your stock and deglaze the pan.
7. Add the rest of the stock, the tomatoes, the rest of your spices, and stir. Return your chicken to the pot with any juices that have collected.
8. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to maintain simmer, cover.
9. Come back in 20 minutes and stir again, add a little water if needed.
10. Come back in 10 minutes, stir, add a little water if needed.
11. Come back in 10 minutes add beans and peas, add a little water if needed
12. Cook for 10-15 minutes more, remove from heat, let sit for 10 minutes, serve.

Enjoy.