| Coq au vin |
[Sep. 22nd, 2007|01:15 pm] |
Occasionally i just can't take it anymore! Classic French chicken stew, prepared the day before, baked and reduced on the day of. Thighs are the right cut, i'm not giving a recipe here. Served some friends yesterday, leftovers with fresh bread that was a farm bonus. There'll still be leftovers but i think i can freeze. The sauce is amazing, 3/4 a bottle of red wine and 2 cups of chicken stock (storebought i admit) reduced by 1/3 or so. Had fresh thyme from the farm which really came out well. I ought to invest in a thing of bay leaves.
But today is about lunch. Got a Portuguese roll of some sort from the farm, sliced in half. One tomato diced coarsely, some shredded cheese, and genoa salami on top, baked in the toaster til it looked done. Possibly my favorite quick lunch.
Should I invest in 30 pounds of assorted grass-fed organic beef? $200. I wish I could but if I eat 2 pounds a week that's 15 weeks of only eating beef. It's really tasty though, and local. Would take up a lot of freezer room. |
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| Leftovers |
[Aug. 26th, 2007|10:52 pm] |
So the unromantic key to cheaply cooking for one is leftovers. Think of them as an advantage rather than a miscalculation. I roasted a 4-pound chicken (brined overnight, stuffed with some lemon, garlic and parsley, on a rack over potatoes) the other day but of course didn't finish it all. Today I took probably a pound of meat off the bird. Sauteed an onion and some garlic, added the chicken and tomatoes and some red wine and herbs and made a decent pasta sauce that will feed me twice. That's the core of 3-4 meals for about $5 and an hour and a half in the oven.
Other ideas for the leftover chicken:
Heat with random barbecue sauce : pulled chicken sandwich.
Add to veggie stir fry just long enough to heat.
Add to enchiladas or other southwestern fare.
Soup!
Any other quick ideas?
Also, stop and shop is silly and refused to sell me just one bird. They were literally plastic-wrapped together in pairs. So I am feeling adventurous: who out there knows how to fry a chicken? |
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| Car camping |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|09:00 pm] |
So I'm heading to a folk festival this weekend and want to cook at least one meal a day. I've got a Primus stove and a little camp pot and pan. The car is accessible and they sell ice, so I am prepping some things ahead of time and bringing a cooler.
Of course green salad, carrots and cucumber will make salads for most of the 4 days. I just made 2 cups (dry) of brown rice, grilled 5 zucchini, and sauteed four onions with lots of curry powder. That should feed a few people for one or two meals. I'm bringing some rice pilaf, barley, and black beans with me which should assemble to be another meal. Since the first meal is all cooked I will just have to heat it on the stove (or eat it cold, might be too hot out to bother). Then there's a few packs of ramen to deal with the leftovers, some hoisin sauce to make things interesting, and a thing of balsamic vinaigrette to put over the greens (or possibly a cold barley salad?). Spinach is coming along too, might go with the salad or get cooked with the ramen. I hope to eat and share my entire farm share. I also made very concentrated tea for icy goodness later. Chips'n'salsa and cheese'n'crackers round out the snacking and sharing supplies. They sell food there so there's no pressure except economics. I may pick up eggs and a loaf of bread for breakfasts or may be lazy and buy bagels or something.
Any road food ideas out there? Glass is banned at the site, so i just *had* to buy Guinness cans with the widget. I just finished making pesto with garlic seconds and all the basil I could find, but that will be saved for winter. If the swiss chard lasts I will deal with that when I get back. |
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| steak tips |
[Jul. 6th, 2007|07:41 pm] |
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I don't think this is a discovery of mine but I have not yet found what is wrong with the sirloin tips. The supermarket regularly has them on sale for $5 a pound which is obscenely cheap, it seems, for sirloin. They are long and thin, maybe an inch in diameter, so they do not look like a traditional bbq steak. They grill wonderfully however, or cut up for stirfry. With this last purchase (1.5 pounds for $8) I had two strips fresh off the grill, one cut up cold over a salad, and one cut into medallions and mixed up with rice, a can of diced tomato, red and orange peppers, and shredded cheese. The farm is providing all the veggies I could ask for, anyone with ideas what to do with collard greens please let me know. |
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| More spices |
[Apr. 25th, 2007|10:22 pm] |
Boneless skinless chicken breasts were on sale for $1.99 a pound. I'm low on chicken-roasting time. Perfect.
A few years ago in a scary oven I was involved in making chicken in orange juice. It turned out alright, but I thought I'd give it another try.
-Salted and peppered both sides of two chicken breasts. Browned ~2 minutes a side in the skillet. -Chopped an onion and some celery while this was happening.
-Removed the chicken, added the veggies, sauteed on medium for 3-4 minutes.
-Added generous amounts of ginger, mustard powder, medium amounts of cinnamon, sugar, flour and just a touch of cayenne pepper. Poured a cup of orange juice over it all and stirred.
-Added the chicken, turned heat down to low, and covered. Flip chicken in ten minutes, check for doneness in 20.
It worked. I added a little more cayenne and salt to taste and served over rice. The sauce thickened nicely with the flour.
Anyone know why brown rice takes so much longer to cook than white? "because it's better for you" is not a scientific reason.
Adventures with the rest of the chicken in a few days... |
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| Ramen |
[Apr. 24th, 2007|11:22 pm] |
You know those 5-for-a-dollar packages of ramen? They're actually useful. A "real" meal in 5 minutes? Watch this.
Boil some water (2 cups or so)
Open ramen. Throw away "flavor" (salt) packet. Place noodles in boiling water, turn down to medium. Wait a minute. Stir/break up the brick.
Swirl water. Crack egg into swirling water. Break yolk. Wait another minute.
Drain some to most of the water. Turn down to low.
Add leftovers. Pork roast, chicken, stir fry, random veggies, anything tasty.
Find some sort of sauce - teriyaki, peanut, thai chili. Season to taste, eat.
It's not even that bad for you.
Anyone else have reasonable adaptations of five-minute food? |
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| Enchiladas |
[Apr. 14th, 2007|12:05 pm] |
So I've not written anything in quite a while. Partly due to being at sea, partly due to being busy afterwards. I also haven't cooked too many new things, lack of time means I've stuck with the basics. Still, here's a leftover chicken idea that worked well.
Take the chicken that you roasted this weekend (you did, right?) and pull off the meat you didn't eat right away. Sautee a bell pepper of some sort and an onion, add spices of some vaguely mexican variety as you prefer. Throw the chicken in the skillet for a bit to warm it up and get it out of the way.
Take the large size of round mexican flatbread (tortilla? enchilada? whatever.) and put some salsa across the middle. Add the pepper/onion/chicken mix, and some shredded cheese. Roll up and place in a (very lightly greased) baking pan, ideally glass. Repeat about six times. Sprinkle some cheese on top. Some recipes ask you to pour salsa in the bottom of this but I was too cheap. Bake for 20 minutes at 300 or so, enough to slightly brown the enchiladas and melt the cheese.
All sorts of other things can go in these, I don't generally buy refried beans but they are an obvious choice. Corn, rice, all sorts of leftovers. The salsa and spices are key, I recommend Paul Newman's Peach Salsa since it is one of life's better things. |
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| So much for variety |
[Nov. 28th, 2006|12:48 am] |
I realize I haven't written anything in a while. In part it's busy-ness, in part it's that I haven't made anything new recently. Once the farm shares stopped I guess I just go back to the usual. Roasting a chicken right now, I tried trussing it so the veggies in the cavity don't try to escape as much. While on the subject of poultry - once you try a local, farm-raised turkey, never frozen, recently walking around, you will be unable to eat a regular one ever again. Just a warning - could get expensive. Also indescribably good.
This bird should get me through the week, then one other meal and I'm off for foreign shores for a bit. Well, shores is a bit of a stretch actually. Suffice to say I will be in dire need of fresh fruit after 42 days at sea. |
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| Everything stew |
[Oct. 15th, 2006|04:49 pm] |
The combination of the academic year and fall weather has reoriented food towards quick, leftover-happy meals. Beef stew in the slow cooker is a perfect example. A pound and a half of cheap meat, 3-4 potatoes, 2 onions, some carrots, and just about anything else, i put some cauliflower in, celery would also be good. Cut everything to large bite-size, and throw in slow cooker with a packet of dry onion soup (e.g. Lipton's) and some tomato paste if you want. Slow-cook for 8 hours or so on low and it's food for the week over noodles, rice, or with some solid bread.
Scones again this week - they are turning into my canary. If I don't have time to make them and am relegated to buying baked goods it means I don't have enough time. If there were decent bagels for sale anywhere nearby this would not be such an issue. Alas, Dunkin' Donuts is it, and if I wanted fluffy white bread for breakfast I'd ask for it. |
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| CSA |
[Sep. 23rd, 2006|09:55 pm] |
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I know I am going to miss the fresh farm food during the winter, so I'm trying to store some things. Pesto is the easiest way, basil, garlic and olive oil (I can add the parmesan and pine nuts later if I like) in the cuisinart and freeze. Today I did baba ghanoush (except for the tahini) which is roasted eggplant, garlic and olive oil. I also added roasted red peppers since I had some. I would make a salsa or tomato sauce or something but I am too fond of the fresh tomatoes to bother storing them. If the fall harvest overloads my ability to eat it all simple vegetable soups are a possibility. Happily, there is still a full month or so until I have to rely upon the supermarket. Definitely doing this again next year. |
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psior's journal