Slaws

Cabbage is an under-appreciated summer veggie. Everyone gets excited about heirloom lettuce greens, but cabbage can be pretty remarkable too. They're preposterously cheap, something like 50 cents a pound. I love cole slaws for snacking on. The shredded cabbage is such a great canvas for all kinds of flavors, and the crispy-coolness makes such a nice pallet cleansing snack. I like anything I can eat a massive bowl of and feel good later.

I'm noming on some classic cole slaw now- shredded Savoy cabbage and grated carrot with a very very small amount of a dressing made with mayo, yogurt and white balsamic vinegar. I also put preposterous amounts of pepper in it. It's crunch and spicy and cold; it's like the savory equivalent of a popsicle.

I also made a slaw from Fine Cooking with cabbage, jullienned mango, raddichio, and sriracha, and it was So. Good. Especially with a gingerey tuna burger on top. I especially love how, unlike a salad, I can make a big giant bowl of it and eat it for several days without it getting soggy.

Chicken Parts

I've been anticipating learning to cut a whole chicken into pieces for a long time. For one thing, I love playing with large pieces of meat. I would be pretty happy being a butcher. I find the idea of buying an entire animal and cutting it into pieces to use much more appealing than buying a package of boneless skinless breasts one day, a package of thighs the next week, and a big carton of chicken broth every time I go to the store. I love making my own stock. Everything is better.

This weekend, I'm having people over for dinner and as I was looking through recipes for inspiration, the one that involved taking apart a chicken was the most appealing. Chicken is an obvious choice, and while I love eating a one-in, skin on thigh, I know that a lot of people don't. A whole chicken gives you a natural mix so everyone gets what they want. I've also heard that cutting up a chicken yourself yields better chicken than buying the same pieces.

I was nervous about taking this on, since I'd committed to the meal, bought these two chickens, and had arranged to serve it to people (people I've never cooked for) and I was attempting something I'd never done and been warned was difficult. But at the very least, I would still have chicken, and even if it was hacked up and weird, it's going into a stew.

Cutting up the birds went perfectly. The cuts all went along natural delineations, bones popped out of joints effortlessly. Taking out the breastbone was a challenge, but once that was done, even de-boning and splitting the breast was easy. Now I have a big pile of neatly cut up chicken parts and a big pot of stock simmering on the stove.

Paella

Tonight, I made paella. It's wonderful and easy and cheap and it makes everyone happy. I used shrimp and andouille sausage, but lots of things work. Combinations of seafood are common (like, maybe shrimp, clams and mussels) and they look really striking. I think having a few shrimp (maybe like 2 or 3 per person) and a decent amount of sausage is a good way to stretch it out. Chorizo or spicy Italian sausage are good as well. Or, you could do chicken and sausage, or chicken and shrimp. A quick epicurious search pulls up vegetarian paella (white beans and swiss chard, asparagus and sugar snaps), a turkey paella, even rabbit and artichoke. Snails are another traditional component.

Paella is a Spanish rice dish that is supposed to be cooked in a very thin, some would say very cheap, pan. Purists will insist that the title "Paella" requires a crunchy, almost burnt crust on the bottom of the pan. It's become a recurring theme in Top Chef (the TV show) for a contestant to make what they call paella. In most cases, they've used the high quality pans provided for them, and thus have produced a nice, evenly heated, perfectly cooked pan full of rice. This angers Chef Tom Collichio. In a few cases, the contestant has pulled this off (see: Ilan, Season 2, individual paellas, cooked in serving dishes, and not actual cookware. Clever, or lucky?). When this has happened, all the judges basically get off on this magnificent burnt rice. Padma Lakshmi, judge and host, delights in proding the crunchy bits with her fork, like an ethnic, stoner version of Amelie cracking the top of her creme brule, and she looks up and informs the viewers at home "the rice is soooo crunchy, you guys!"

But anyways. My "paella" did not have the crunchy bottum. I don't care for burnt rice, myself. I chopped up about 1 cup of onion and sauteed that till it was a little browned. I added in minced garlie (2 cloves), a big pinch of saffron and about 1/2 teaspoon of smoked spanish paprika. I used roasted red peppers from a jar, so I diced them and added them after the spices. (You'd add diced fresh bell pepper with the onions.) I poured in 2 cups of chicken broth (fish stock is good too), 1 cup of short-to-medium grain rice and an andouille sausage, halved and sliced. You bring the broth to boil, then lower the heat and cooked with the lid on for 15 minutes, till the rice is mostly cooked. Then I added the shrimp- I just layed them on top of the rice and pushed them into it so they were in the rice but not covered. If the rice looks dry, add more broth. Cover again and cook on very low heat till the shrimp are pink.

If you were using chicken, you would brown in in the pan before doing anything else, cooking it about halfway. Then, you'd add it with the rice and broth, letting it cook the rest of the way. Clams or mussels you'd add with the rice and broth. If you're using uncooked sausage, cook it with the onions and peppers. If (like I did) you havve cooked sausage, just add it with the rice so the flavor will infuse.

Saffron and Spanish Paprika are pretty strongly associated with paella. Saffron is amazingly expensive, and if I hadn't helped myself to my mom's supply, I'm sure I would not be using it in my own kitchen. I've made this with a little tumeric in place of saffron and been quite happy with the results. I think I even called it "Paella", not "Seafood and Sausage Rice Dish with Eclectic Blend of Spices and Without Bottom-Crust". It's very flexible- a 2:1 liquid:rice, as much meat or seafood as you like (or, as much as you have), and whatever vegetables seem appropriate (red or green bell peppers, tomato, green bean, peas, artichokes, asparagus...) This is a good dish for using vegetables that maybe aren't as great as they could be, whether they're canned or frozen or just leftover, because they'll be cooking in a really flavorful broth.

Soup!

It was unseasonably warm and sunny the past two weeks and I was not feeling it. In mid October, I don't want to have to deal with highs of 80 and constant sunshine. I'm looking longingly at leather boots and big sweaters. I'm so over sundresses.

The weather was throwing off my cooking as well. I have about 10 soup recipes I've been reading longingly at work, refreshing the Weather Channel page trying to see when it turns into fall. French onion soup, butternut squash with cumin and coriander, curried carrot soup, southwest tomato, miso soup, lentil soup.... And a recently bought an adorable little soup tureen-


Earlier this week I made a late-summer soup, an attempt to compromise with the weather. I made a bouillabaisse with tomato and corn. The recipe is intended to use fresh-from-the-farm heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn off the cob, which is lovely, but substituting two 14 0z cans of diced tomatoes and half a bag of frozen corn didn't do any harm. Cooked a little garlic in some olive oil, threw in canned tomatoes, a cup of white wine, a can of chicken broth, and a pinch of saffron. (Yeah, saffron is stupid expensive. I wouldn't recommend running out and spending your week's food budget on it to make this soup. If you have it, awesome.) Throw in a pound of some seafood- I used cod, cut up in chunks. You can use halibut, shrimp, bay scallops, mussels, or a combination there of. After the fish is cooked through, stir in corn.


And now it's nice and cold outside. Kinda rainy too. It seemed like a good day to try out my gorgeous new Wusthof chef's knife to chop up a big pile of vegetables for a minestrone. I diced up a medium onion, two stalks of celery, a big carrot and 3 cloves of garlic to make a standard mirepoix. Nice low and slow heat lets the onions caramelize a little, giving the soup amazing depth. The Fine Cooking recipe I was sort of following called for chopped savoy cabbage, but standing in the supermarket, the kale sitting next to the cabbage looked a lot more appealing. And I didn't have to buy a basketball-sized head of it. (And I freaking love kale.) After the chopped kale cooked down I added a can of diced tomatoes and 3 cups of chicken broth. Instead of pasta, I added some barley. I love whole grains, they have that dense chewy texture and nutty flavor. To pump it up, I threw in the rinds off of a wedge of Parmesan, a really cool way to give it more flavor. After simmering for a while I added in a can of kidney beans.



With vegetable broth, this is a really great well rounded vegetarian meal. Between the barley, the kidney beans, and the kale, this couldn't really be any more nutritious.

Recession Cooking (or, things I was already doing)

Everybody's seen these tips on how to spend less money on food, and being a poor student, I'll click on it every time. What do they say?

"Cook in your home instead of going to restaurants or ordering in" Check. I might not always cook the cheapest stuff, but for the price of pizza I can have a salmon fillet with roasted potatoes and sauteed spinach and have money left over for wine.

"Don't throw out food" Check. I've developed a complex about throwing out food, to the point where I will go out and buy 4 other ingredients to use up the cilantro or something like that.

"Make a big pot of something on the weekend to eat all week and take for lunches" Check. Almost everything I make.

"Eat less meat" Check. Beans are filling, and a can is like a dollar.

"Buy things like meat, chicken and fish when it's on sale and freeze it" Check for sure. I'm all about that; I'm looking at you, tilapia for $3.99/lb, Buy 1 get 1 free frozen shrimp, half-price organic chicken... This might be a better strategy for families. I have more meat and fish in my freezer than I am likely to eat in a month.

"Buy local produce" Check... but it's tricky. My yuppy heart melts as I walk into a place like Eastern Market in DC, the Ferry Building in San Francisco, Italian Market in Philly or even the Merchant Square Farmer's Market here in Williamsburg. You know, the kind of place with hand made fresh mozzarella and fresh picked lump crabmeat from the Chesapeake and homemade mushroom ravioli. The kind of place with lots of dogs and women in sundresses and heels, and there are children that beg their moms to buy lima beans and eggplants. No, I'm serious. The point is, you pay for this trip to crazy-puppy-baby-sundress-land. Or, you can find the guy selling produce out of his truck. That guy is awesome and he has the best peaches.

"Bring your lunch instead of buying it" Check...90% of the time. This is hard for the same reason quitting smoking is hard (well, almost). I miss taking walks to Wawa for lunch to get out of the lab, out of the air conditioning. Wawa salads are a good deal, but I can't get out of there without the biggest diet coke possible, fruit salad or a pretzel, and I can often be talked into a lunchtime beer. I make better decisions in the morning.

"Instead of buying pre-cut vegetables at the supermarket, buy whole vegetables and cut them yourself" Wait, people actually buy that shit? Why would anyone do that? It'll go bad immediately, if it hasn't already. Also, 4 times the price. That is some bourgeoisie shit.

"Bring coffee to work instead of buying it" ... I try. I just love those paper cups, and having one less thing to wash. And again, I just want an excuse to take an afternoon walk to the coffee shop. How about I just go 3 times a week? And I go to the cheap place? And I get a small coffee instead of large latte?

"Cut out non essentials, like desserts, wine, beer, and cocktails" Eh, I got most of others. Besides, I bought the wine for the soup.