Coleslaw

I've never been a big coleslaw fan. I like it just fine once whatever barbecued item I'm eating with the coleslaw has dripped its spicy, tangy deliciousness onto the coleslaw. At that point, it's all just one dish. But enjoying coleslaw in its own right? Nah. As much as I love cabbage, I just don't like that weird fermented flavor that coleslaw in a bag has (for details on why claiming not to like "that weird fermented flavor" of a cabbage product makes me a total hypocrite, see my post on kimchi). And I have a fear of mayonnaise except under very specific circumstances. And did I mention that I don't like buying macerated produce in a bag?

So, now that we all know my coleslaw baggage: I made coleslaw last weekend. The recipe for pork tacos calls for a 16-oz bag of the stuff, and I figured I might as well make it myself, so that I could be sure about the mayonnaise. And here's the thing: it was good! I-wanted-to-munch-on -it good. I-would-offer-to-take-it-to-a-picnic good.

I used the Cooks Illustrated recipe and let the cabbage sit, draining (after having been salted), for the full four hours (they recommend 1-4). It's supposed to leave you with a less watery final product, and I think it did the trick. Here's the liquid that came out of the cabbage as it sat (it gets its orange hue from the shredded carrot that was mixed in with the cabbage):

I used Spectrum canola oil mayonnaise. Last time I faced my fear of mayonnaise (that would be the deviled eggs at Thanksgiving, thank you), I used Spectrum's olive oil mayonnaise, but this time I took a closer look at both labels and discovered that they're both canola oil-based, and the olive oil mayonnaise just has a little olive oil stirred in for flavoring. So, back to canola for me.

Here's the recipe (from Cooks Illustrated - originally published July 1995. I accessed it online):

Creamy Coleslaw

Ingredients
1 pound cabbage (about 1/2 medium head), red or green, shredded fine or chopped (6 cups)
1 large carrot , peeled and grated
2 teaspoons kosher salt , or 1 teaspoon table salt [Carrina's note: I'm pretty sure I used more than this when I salted the cabbage so that it could drain. I didn't have a bowl big enough to toss it around as much as I would have liked, and I wanted to make sure that it all got salted enough to drain. Note that you wash it all off later]
1/2 small onion , minced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
Ground black pepper

Instructions
1. Toss cabbage and carrots with salt in colander set over medium bowl. Let stand until cabbage wilts, at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours.

Here are the cabbage and carrot just after I salted them and set them up to wilt:

Aaaaand, four hours later. As you can see, there was a huge reduction in volume.

2. Dump wilted cabbage and carrots into the bowl. Rinse thoroughly in cold water (ice water if serving slaw immediately). Pour vegetables back into colander, pressing, but not squeezing on them to drain. Pat dry with paper towels. (Can be stored in a zipper-lock bag and refrigerated overnight.)
3. Pour cabbage and carrots back again into bowl. Add onions, mayonnaise, and vinegar; toss to coat. Season with pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Noodle Bowl #4 - brown sugar-roasted green beans and celery

I don't feel like I've been in the kitchen any less than usual, but it seems like every time I reach for the camera to record the haps, it's either out of juice or MIA. Nevertheless, I've accumulated some acceptable pictures over month since my last posting, so here's my plan for hopping back on the weblog-wagon: immediately post 4 or 5 things that I made back in April, then rest on my laurels for another week until I feel like posting again (unless my camera is magically within reach and charged when I make this rhubarb chutney tomorrow - mmm... so good on lamb!)

So, here's another episode of "Pimp My Ramen" (hey, I kind of like that...). This time around, I had some old leathery green beans and just a teensy bit of baby celery, from the very inside of the group of stalks.

I smashed the heck out of some ginger, as is my routine... (mainly sharing this picture because my Ikea meat mallet looks like something out of one of my husband's role-playing games):

I tossed the celery and green beans in some vegetable oil, brown sugar, salt, and five-spice powder... (green beans not shown here)

...and roasted them at 450 for a few minutes - until I could tell that they'd been roasted, but they weren't blackened or anything.

...Stuck them in with the already-simmering water/chicken broth combo (the smashed garlic, ginger, and a star anise have already made it into the broth at this point as well)

...And from here, it's just a matter of following the instructions of Maruchan or Top Ramen, depending on who was on sale last time I stocked up: Boil noodles for three minutes, and serve!

No, we don't actually eat on the windowsill. It's just the only place in the apartment with good light.

Noodle Bowl #3 - Mustard Greens

Can I just say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of noodle bowls? They're the only thing I'm in the mood for on Saturday afternoons, and this week I realized that they also have the side benefit of helping me use up unruly produce that is just threatening to get slimey before I get to it.

That said, I don't really expect anyone else to share my interest in the whole thing. But since I've started taking pictures of them, I think I'll just keep doing it. I'll try to title the posts appropriately, so that anyone reading knows it's not an actual recipe.

I had some turkey lemongrass broth, left over from this recipe, sitting in my freezer for the last 4 months. Honestly, I had forgotten to label it and so wasn't sure if it was chicken broth, or turkey lemongrass. When its thawed scent revealed it to be the latter, I used it for a noodle bowl. Yay!

I used:
-2 cups broth
-1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
-dash soy sauce
-a few drops Sriracha or some other spicy ingredient
-a few drops dark sesame oil
-1 carrot, peeled and sliced thin diagonally
-about 2 cups chopped mustard greens
-1 green onion, chopped
-1 wedge lime, squeezed (or dash seasoned rice vinegar)

Instructions:
Bring broth to a boil. Add five-spice powder, sesame oil, Sriracha, soy sauce, and carrots, and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Return to a non-spilling-over boil, and ramen, and cook for two minutes. Stir in mustard greens and cook for another minute or until wilted. Pour into deep bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl (or splash with rice vinegar). Sprinkle with green onion.

and winning the least-photogenic award: Cabbage-Potato Soup with Bacon, Beer, Smoked Ham, and Cheddar (16-hour part optional)

I've made this soup a few times, and cooked some up again last week. I'm going to say this right off: this most recent batch did not live up to my standards. I have an explanation, though: I started making it at 3 in the afternoon on Saturday, but still thought I would try cooking it in the crock pot on low. I knew it wouldn't be done in time for dinner, but I figured I'd cool it down and put it in the fridge just before bed, for us to have the next day (and the next, and the next... this recipe makes a lot!) I also hedged my bets and put the chopped potato hunks into the crock pot completely raw. I just really, really didn't feel like boiling water, and told myself that, given enough time, the potatoes would have to soften. Right? Well, NO. At 10pm they were a nice tan color to match the rest of the soup, but were just as tough as when I'd thrown them in. And - the real test - I left the crock pot on low OVERNIGHT - so, for sixteen hours - and the potatoes still might as well have been raw. They would have been okay for a stew intended to be eaten with a knife and fork, but they just didn't cut it for a soup that relies on crumbly baking potatoes to give it a creamy texture.

So, lesson learned, I've been bringing each batch to an almost-boil and letting the potatoes break down for twenty minutes. Then, I whisk in the cheese right before serving. But the instructions I will be providing below are for the non-crock pot version of the recipe. If you use a crock pot, boil the potatoes and cabbage together in water, then drain and add to the crock pot with the other ingredients. Yeah... I think that'll work. And be prepared for your house to smell like CABBAGE!

Note: I end up using two large pots for this recipe - one to boil the potatoes and cabbage, and one to saute the vegetables, to which the rest of the soup is eventually added. If you want, you can use a large skillet for the vegetables and then transfer everything to the pot with the potatoes and cabbage. Just be sure to add some liquid to the vegetables and bubble away any brownness on the vegetable skillet, so you don't lose any flavor.


• 1/2 of medium or 1 entire small head cabbage, chopped into two-inchish ribbons
• 1 smoked ham hock
• 6 oz light-colored beer (I used an entire bottle this last time around and the soup turned out too sweet, so I'm turning it into a teaching moment: easy on the beer)
• 2 strips bacon (optional, but yummy for flavor). If not using bacon, you'll need a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1.5 large onions, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar (smoked if you can find it!)
• About 48 oz chicken broth
• About 48 oz water
• 3 small baking potatoes

Instructions:

1. Bring the chicken broth and water to a boil with the potatoes in a large pot. Once it comes to a boil, stir in the cabbage and turn down heat to a healthy simmer. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until potatoes are softened enough to use for mashed potatoes. MEANWHILE...

2. Heat a dutch oven or other big pot (big enough to hold 102 oz of liquid plus all of the solid ingredients in this recipe...) to medium-high heat and fry the bacon. Lower burner to medium; remove dutch oven from heat. Remove the bacon and chop it up. Return the dutch oven to the burner and return the bacon to the dutch oven (which should still be coated with the bacon fat) along with the carrot, celery, and onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 8 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Remove dutch oven from heat until the potatoes and cabbage are softened.

3. Add the potatoes, cabbage, and their cooking liquid to the dutch oven. Add the smoked ham hock and the beer. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to a low simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for 2-2.5 hours or until the potatoes are completely tender and/or disintegrated into the soup, and the ham hock is falling apart.

4. Remove the ham hock, shred, and return the meaty pieces to the soup. Whisk the shredded cheddar into the soup, stirring constantly until way after you think it's all melted. Otherwise, you will end up with fatty cheddar globules.

5. Serve! Your soup will not look as brown as mine did (below), unless you go the insane and regrettable 16-hour crock pot route.

I found some butterleaf lettuce on sale at the Sheridan Fruit Company, so we had a salad with minneola and that chipotle-honey glaze I used on that jicama salad with the soba noodles a couple of weeks back.
Here's what the soup looks like once the potatoes and cheese are properly distributed into the broth:

PASTA!!!

So, I've made pasta at home before, but I've always used the same whole-wheat tagliatelle recipe from an old Cooking Light. It's good - and it got even better after I realized that I'd been using a broken kitchen scale to measure my flour, using three times the amount of dry ingredients (back to the measuring cup for me!) I've always wanted to try making pasta with regular old semolina, though, and today I did! I used the recipe off the back of the Bob's Red Mill semolina flour that I bought for the pasta:



Basic Pasta Recipe (from Bob's Red Mill)

• 1 1/2 cups semolina flour (I used 3/4 cup semolina and 3/4 cup regular white flour - the recipe notes said "many people prefer" this, so I thought I'd try it the cheap way first)


• 1/2 teaspoon salt, optional


• 2 eggs or 3 egg whites, beaten


• 2 tablespoons water


• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine semolina and salt. Add beaten egg whites (or eggs), water and oil. Mix to make a stiff dough. Knead 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in towel or place in plastic bag and let rest 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.

I added the liquids to the dry ingredients by pouring them into the food processor while it was running (on the lowest setting - "stir," I think).

I made half of the dough into nondescript linguine-like noodles (the skinniest I could make them while still keeping them in one piece).

I decided to turn the other half into orrechiette, but not before I had already rolled the dough out flat. So I cut it up into little squares (doesn't it look like it's going to become Cinnamon Toast Crunch?), then pressed them into little ear-shell things.

Spaghetti With Lentils

We did indeed end up having spaghetti with lentils last night. However, I modified the recipe from the USDA website (read more about the site on yesterday's post, if you want to) a little, based upon what I had lying around in the kitchen.


First, here's the recipe from the USDA website:

Lentil Spaghetti Sauce

Serving Size: 1 cup
Yield: 6 servings
-1 pound ground beef
-1 cup chopped onion
-1 crushed garlic clove or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
-1 1/2 cups cooked, drained lentils
-1 jar (28 to 32 ounce) spaghetti sauce

1. In a large sauce pan brown meat. Drain.
2. Add onion and garlic to drained meat. Cook until onions are soft but not brown.
3. Add cooked lentils and spaghetti sauce and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook gently for 15 minutes.
4. Serve sauce over hot cooked spaghetti noodles.

Cost: Per Recipe: $ 8.10; Per Serving: $ 1.35
Source: Adapted from Montana Extension Nutrition Education Program Website Recipes Montana State University Extension Service

And then they give you the nutrition facts! (right)

The original recipe is a little high in sodium for my taste, but I cut back on that by using no-salt-added canned diced tomatoes, and some leftover tomato sauce and tomato paste, instead of a premade jarred or canned spaghetti sauce.



Here's what I did instead of following the recipe exactly. In my case, my modifications actually saved money, since I had extra tomato sauce and paste sitting around in the freezer, but did not have any premade spaghetti sauce or ground beef. So, this is not supposed to be a recipe "makeover" by any means, because I've made the recipe the original way and it's very tasty. I just thought I would follow the spirit of the recipe by using what's most readily available to me.

New Ingredients:
- about 3 cups cooked lentils, mostly regular brown lentils, but 1/4 cup of baby red lentils thrown in as well. I'm not sure how much they were before they were cooked. 1 1/2 cups, maybe?
-1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup chopped onion (about 1/2 of a large onion)
-3 garlic cloves, minced
-1/2 teaspoon thyme
-1 bay leaf
-1 can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, mostly drained
-about 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce (or if you don't have it, just don't drain the diced tomatoes)
-about 1.5 tablespoons tomato paste (if you don't have it, use less liquid and switch heat to low as soon as the sauce gets chunky enough to spoon over pasta)
-3/4 cup red wine (totally optional. I have a 3-liter box of good red wine (really!) sitting in my fridge right now, and since the lack of air exposure in the box means I can actually use the whole thing before it turns, this means that adding the wine to the lentils cost me $1.04 [really - I calculated it]. Unnecessary, but cheaper than the ground beef would have been, and this is why I have the wine, anyway).

1. Cover the lentils with a bunch of water in a medium saucepan. Bring to an almost-boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover.
2. Put on water to boil in a separate pot for spaghetti noodles.
3. Once the lentils have had 10 or 15 minutes of simmering, heat the olive oil on medium in a Dutch oven or pot big enough to hold six cups of spaghetti sauce. When oil heats up, sautee onions until they soften. Add minced or pressed garlic and cook for a minute. Add diced tomatoes, whatever tomato liquid you are using (but not tomato paste), thyme, bay leaf, and wine. Bring to an almost-boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover [note: if you used a non-non-stick pan and little brown bits of onion and garlic are stuck to the bottom, you might as well add the wine first and have it help you scrape the brown bits back into the mixture].
4. When lentils seem like they are done, drain (if there's any water left over) and add to the tomato sauce. If your spaghetti noodles are still cooking, keep the sauce simmering and stir in the tomato paste when the noodles still have a few minutes left.
5. Taste sauce for salt and pepper (I added a fair amount of both), spoon over drained spaghetti noodles, and serve!

Not overly photogenic, but tasty as all get-out!

Economical Swedish Furniture Makes Me Ravenous

... so I was ready to eat when I got back from Ikea at CascadeStation (ha! A mall that thinks it's an insurance company, by the sound of its name) this afternoon. When I drive back from the airport on Sandy, I go past soooo many intriguing noodle places - Ohana, Got Pho?, Thai Lao Bistro, Pho Gia - and those are just the ones I can think of right now. There are literally at least five more, and those are just the signs in English. I really, reeeeally wanted noodles - but I really didn't want to stop or spend money. So, I dressed up some Top Ramen! I brought water to a boil with a few tablespoons of leftover chicken broth, part of the spice package, and half of a leftover carrot, quartered. Once it got to a boil, I added the noodles, a handful of frozen corn (whew! Finally used up the last of the bag), a clove, and some Five-Spice powder (cinnamon, anise, fennel, ginger, clove, and licorice root. Hey, wait... Sun Luck, are you sure you want to call it Five-Spice - yes? Well, okay...). I have no idea if four minutes of simmering was enough for the whole clove to make any contribution, but the five-spice powder certainly did its share!

Once the carrots were soft enough to stick a fork through, I put it all in a bowl, added a dash of rice vinegar, a dash of soy sauce, and a couple of drops of toasted sesame oil, and some sesame seeds on top just for sass. And it was great, and psychologically so much more filling than a regular bowl of ramen!

My cheap and oh-so-good noodle bowl got me thinking. A couple of years ago, I discovered the USDA's online recipe-finder tool (http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/). It features a sizeable database of easy, generally healthy, and very economical recipes. Each recipe has been analyzed for cost and nutritional content. Many of the recipes are submitted by nutritionists who are trying to get people to eat healthily while using food stamps. This makes it a great place to go to find basic, bare-bones recipes that cost between 30 and 90 cents a person (some more). Then, if you decide that you want to splurge on kale or use leftover green onions, you can do that - but in most cases, you don't have to go out and buy something crazy just because it holds the recipe together. And, the database is incredibly searchable, since it's partly intended for social workers to use to get their nutrition messages across.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can search:

-Nutrition Education Topic (Calcium-Rich Food; Whole Grains; Less Saturated Fat, Trans Fat and Cholestorol)

-Theme (Ready in 30 Minutes Or Less, Food Resource Management)

-Menu Items (self-explanatory)

-Ingredients

-Ratings

-Audience (Parents of young children, Middle Eastern, Southern, Vegetarian)

-Cooking Equipment (Microwave, Wok, No Cooking Required, Stovetop/Hot Plate)

-Aaand: recipe cost! Yes, you can actually specify that your search results cost less than a certain amount per serving and/or recipe.

There are even official-looking Nutrition Facts with each recipe, as well as a shopping list feature (you can browse through recipes, click "Add to shopping list" when one looks good, and then view your list to see what you'll need).

In honor of our crappy economy, I've decided to start using this website a lot more. It's such a great tool! In fact, I may try to cook things from it every day this week. I'll let you know how they turn out.
So, tonight we're having Spaghetti With Lentils, which is kind of cheating because it's the first recipe I ever used off of this site when I first discovered it.

Refried Beans With Cinnamon and Clove (wait - beans don't COME refried?!?)

I tried this recipe a week and a half ago and am just now reporting back on it - but that's the way it goes. First things first: this dish was very economical to make. As in, $4.25 for four servings, INCLUDING the twelve (small) tortillas and organic produce. As the queen of cheap (sounds like a tarted-up Mary Engelbreit character) (except when it comes to my morning espresso), I will be coming back to this recipe again and again, especially now that I no longer get a free lunch at my workplace. Oh, and did I mention that the beans hold up extremely well? I took three-day-old leftovers on a train trip, and they were very forgiving. The notes in the cookbook even say that they'll keep for five days! Ultimate econo-food, this.

I got the recipe from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper.

-Good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil

-1 large onion, chopped into 1/4-inch dice

-Salt and fresh-ground black pepper

-4 garlic cloves, fine chopped

-1 fresh jalapeño, seeded and fine chopped

-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

-1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

-One 14-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained

-Two 15-ounce cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained [Carrina's note: SURPRISE! The red kidney beans are (or will become) the refried beans. I can't even imagine what a cinch this recipe would be if you just threw everything into a can of ready-made refried beans. Hmmmm...]

-1 1/2 cups water

-2 tablespoons butter

1. Generously film the bottom of a 10-inch skillet with olive oil, and heat over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions with salt and pepper to taste until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. You want to hear a sizzle as they cook.

2. Add the garlic, jalapeño, cinnamon, and cloves, and cook the mix until it is fragrant, about 1 minute, taking care not to burn the spices. Add the tomatoes, crushing them as they go into the pan. [Carrina's note: "...as they go into the pan"? Meh, what a pain. Wish I'd just stuck a spoon and the can and crushed them right then and there.] Sauté for another minute.

3. Stir in the beans and water.

Bring to a fast simmer, crushing the beans with a potato masher (or the back of a large spoon) as they cook,

and scraping the bottom of the pan as the beans begin to thicken.

Simmer until the beans are thick, about 10 minutes. Blend in the butter, and taste for seasoning just before serving [Carrina's note: pursuant to this blog's subtitle - I did it! I did taste for seasoning just before serving!]

Speaking of cinnamon and clove, go to Better With Garlic for recent recipes for Red Chile and Cinnamon Clove honeys! (two different types of honey - although the combination sounds delicious as well).

*I've tagged this recipe as gluten-free. This does not take into account the flour tortillas that I used.