Candied Citrus Peel

I first candied citrus peels when I was living in Florence. In fact, I'm not sure that I had even heard of candied citrus peel before. I was amazed to find out that the pithy, spongy white part of the rind could be miraculously transformed into something far better than edible.... I would even say delicious. Do not be put off if you have made the mistake of buying some sticky, mute candied citron and swore that you would never, never again give your support to such an assault on fruit. Citrus peels candied at home are indescribably better. Even candied, the zesty peels have enough kick to pack a serious citrusy bite. Most American pastry chefs seem to like to candy just the zest, but I'm a sucker for the thick slabs of peel cut into chunky little strips.

I wanted to get this post up before Christmas, as candied peels can make a laudable addition to many Christmas goodies. (While in Florence I fell head over heels for Panforte and Panettone-- both traditional Italian Christmas treats- and have made them every Christmas since. Though I am still searching for a recipe for a fabulous christmas cookie I stumbled across--a butter cookie with candied orange peel, hazelnuts, and coriander. Mmm.) You can use candied citrus peel in anything that uses dried fruit-- cake, cookies, muffins, breads. Save your citrus peels in a bag in the freezer until you have accumulated enough to make a full batch. Then , with just a little time and sugar, you can turn your leftover lunchbox scraps into one of my favorite confections. If you are feeling particularly hedonistic, candied peels are exquisite dipped in chocolate.


1 part Citrus Peels (any citrus peel except for lime will work)
1 part sugar (measure your complete volume of peels, and use the same amount of sugar)
1/2 part water
optional seasonings*- cinnamon stick, allspice, star anise, coriander, black pepper, vanilla, a slice of fresh pineapple.


Prepare the Peels: If you are saving peels that have been pulled by hand off of the fruit, you don't need to prepare them any further. If you have cut the peels off of the fruit then it is essential that you scrape off any of the fruit membrane that is remaining, you want only the white spongy interior. ( If there is any fruit left, then you will end up with an impossibly hard, leathery piece of peel.)

Blanch: The whole reason that citrus peel is palatable in this preparation is because of blanching. By boiling the peel in water several times, you dilute some of the bitterness in the peel. Put your peels in a saucepan cover with cold water. Cover the pan and bring it to a boil. As soon as the water comes to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and pour off the fragrant, lightly colored water. Once again cover the peels with fresh, cold water and bring to a boil, then pour off the water. Repeat the process once more-- a total of three times. I have seen some recipes specify blanching as many as five times, but I think the amount of just-slightly-bitter tang after three boils is just right, but you can go ahead and blanch a few more times if you want a milder end product.

Candy: Add the sugar to the drained peels. Then add water (half the volume of the sugar and peels) Cover your pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting that will maintain a simmer. Keep your pan covered and simmer for about an hour. Every so often stir the peels and check to make sure that the syrup hasn't cooked down too much (you want the peels to remain submerged in syrup). If needed, add a little bit of water. Take a close look at the peels-- you want them to be translucent all the way through, even at the thickest parts of the peel. When the peels are fully cooked remove them from the heat and allow them to cool in the syrup.

Dry: Line a baking sheet with plastic wrap. Then place a wire rack on top. Spread out the peels to dry. Let sit at least one day. (I find the oven a convenient place to store the drying peels undisturbed)

Store: At this point the peels can be stored as-is, but I prefer to cut them up into strips. Then they are ready to be measured for any purpose which might arise. If your peels are still moist and sticky, you can toss them in a bit of granulated sugar. Candied peels will keep at room temperature for several weeks-- I keep mine in the freezer where they last indefinitely.


*I only add the optional spices if the peel is to be in a starring role-- if it is just going to be mixed in with a bunch of other dried fruit or nuts, then the subtleties of the spice will be lost. But if you are going to have the peel as a centerpiece I highly recommend the combination of vanilla, pineapple and coriander. Your kitchen will smell more delicious than I can articulate.

Cabbage Stem and Fennel Salad

The stem from one small head of cabbage
one small head of fennel
half of an apple or pear
the juice from one lemon
salt
olive oil

Cut Veggies: Using a grater or a Japanese Mandolin, cut the cabbage stem into paper thin slices. Getting really thin sections of cabbage is a must for this application--it helps to avoid that harsh, raw-cabbagey bite. So if you don't have a mandolin, I'd rather just grate the cabbage. Thinly slice or grate the fennel and apple. Reserve the fennel fronds for serving (as in the photo) or for another purpose.

Season: Mix the sliced or grated cabbage with a half teaspoon of salt and let rest for at least ten minutes and up to an hour. Discard any liquid that the stems give up. Mix the apple and fennel together with the sliced cabbage. Season to taste. (Start with a tablespoon of olive oil and the juice from half of a lemon. Add more salt if necessary.)

Store: In the refrigerator up to a week.

Cabbage

Cabbages are wonderful vegetables for the winter.They typically maintain a low price when the popular summer favorites (tomatoes, cucumbers) have either disappeared from the shelves or jumped in price (these out of season crops are shipped from farther away or grown in pricey greenhouses). So cabbage is a great vegetable for these long months after the fall harvest and before you can even start to think of spring vegetables. Cabbages do pose a few challenges, though. The biggest problem is often, well, how big cabbages are--particularly if you often cook for small crowds. So I find it helps to have a couple of easy cabbage recipes on hand, that way you can throw together a quick salad with whatever you have left over, rather than letting half a cabbage wilt and turn gray in the fridge.

To prepare a cabbage, first peel off the first outside leaves and discard. Cut cabbages in half lengthwise and then cut out the center with two slashes, resulting in a v-shaped trench. Then you can slice your cabbage leaves according to the demands of your recipe. Cabbage trimmings are a vegetable excess that does not work well for making vegetable stock--but do save your cabbage hearts-- they can still be but to good use.

Cabbage Stems

If you are cooking any member of the cabbage family-- brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli to name a few-- you probably cut off the leafy budded portions and discard the stem. The stems are more fibrous (and you are right to cut them off), but if you shave them thinly, you need only throw together a quick dressing and you'll have a tasty slaw. You can use the hearts/stems of cabbage in the same way. I use a Japanese mandolin to cut these stems into paper-thin slices. Then just throw in an acid (a little lemon juice or vinegar), some oil, and salt and you have a delicious cole slaw. I'm posting one recipe that I found to be quite good, but this is an ideal dish to play around with the flavors on-- I just experimented a few nights ago with fresh ginger and cilantro. Slaws will keep for several days in the fridge.

Pumpkin Mousse

This is one of those desserts that brings up the question as to what you mean when you say something is "light". The word light seems to have rather different meanings when applied to food. Sometimes light denotes lower in fat (like a salad) and sometimes it means airy in texture (like this mousse!) Often when it comes to desserts, the two meanings of light are at odds with one another-- mostly because cream, butter and egg yolks can be whipped into all sorts of delectable, airy consistencies. If this dessert is not light in the way that a salad is light (it is dessert, remember) it is spectacularly airy, and doesn't sit heavily in your stomach after a heavy meal. And it's easy, too! If you can whip cream and have made the pumpkin butter ahead of time, you can throw this dessert together in about ten minutes.

This is a recipe that fits into the "budget" side of things more as a way to improvise with what you have (I happened to have a bunch of squash and some cream cheese) rather than being composed of particularly cheap ingredients. Still, pumpkin is cheap and cream cheese and cream are not all that expensive. And if you're looking to make a dessert, you'll probably need to invest in some dairy anyhow and this dessert makes good use of a relatively small amount of dairy. The amount of sugar in this recipe is calibrated to my admittedly not-so-sugary palate. If you like things a bit sweeter, then you can either add more sugar to the pumpkin butter when you cook it, or add a liquid sugar (sugar syrup or maple syrup). I mention this because if you try to add granulated sugar at the end of the whole process, it won't incorporate.


1 c. pumpkin ginger butter
1 c. heavy cream
2/3 c. cream cheese
2t. brandy, rum or whiskey (optional)

to serve (optional):
chopped toasted walnuts
maple syrup
candied ginger

Yield: 4-5 servings

Soften the Cream Cheese: You will have an easier time if you allow the cream cheese to come to room temperature first. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, beat the cream cheese until it is softened and free of (almost) all lumps-- any lumps that you leave in at this point will be there to stay.

Incorporate the Pumpkin Butter: Starting with just a few tablespoons, mix the butter into the cream cheese. After you have worked a little butter in the cream cheese will loosen up and mixing will become easier. Continue mixing until all of the pumpkin butter is incorporated and you have a homogeneous mix. (This is the point that you can taste and adjust the sweetening to your liking.) If you are adding a liquor add it now.

Whip the Cream: Whisk very cold cream in a very cold metal bowl until it reaches soft peak. First your cream will start to look thicker and thicker, eventually leaving visible tracks from the whisk in the cream. When you lift the whisk out of the cream, the whisk should hold a little glob of cream. It can droop a little (this is the soft of soft-peak) but it shouldn't pour off the whisk in streams. When whipping cream sometimes just a few strokes can take your cream from soft peak to stiff peak to butter. So you definitely have to watch your cream carefully. I would err on the side of slightly under-whipping my cream rather than over-whipping. If you do ever find yourself having over-whipped cream (not that I would ever commit such a crime-- okay maybe just once or twice) then just continue whipping it until it looks thoroughly buttery and a watery substance is leaking out into the bottom of your bowl. Put the butter in a colander to drain. After it has drained wrap it and use it as you would any other unsalted butter.

Fold Ingredients Together: Begin by delicately folding in a third of the whipped cream into the pumpkin mixture. Once that is incorporated, fold in the remaining cream.

Serve: Scoop the mousse into bowls or, if you want a more fancy restaurant-style presentation, you can put your mousse into plastic wrap lined molds (bowls, muffin tins) and freeze it. Once the mousse is frozen solid, invert the molds and delicately pull off the plastic wrap. Transfer the mousses to dessert plates and let them sit at room temperature for about twenty minutes before serving. Whichever serving method you use, you can top the finished mousses with chopped toasted nuts, candied ginger pieces, a drizzle of maple syrup, or even just a simple topping of freshly ground nutmeg is lovely-- whatever you have on hand that strikes your fancy.

Pumpkin Ginger Butter

I have to give thanks to Ben for the inspiration for this recipe. I had intended to post it just after Halloween, with the idea that decorative pumpkins could be "reused" as... well, food. But, as is often the case, I was a bit ambitious with my posting and it took a bit longer than I had planned. So it has ended up as a Thanksgiving post, which is not entirely inappropriate given the seasonal pumpkin pie frenzy. Whether you are reclaiming decorative holiday squash or just making good use of this eminently affordable winter vegetable, I think that you will be pleased with the result (you might even like it if you are one of those people who doesn't like pumpkin pie!) The butter is not too sweet, and I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised by how delicious pumpkin is with a simpler, less typical spice treatment (just a dose of spicy ginger rather than the typical pie milieu). The jar in the picture is all gone, now. Whatever had escaped use in a mousse found its way onto hot buttered toast for my breakfast. I know I'll be revisiting this recipe in the long months before spring fruits and vegetables will be back.



2 c. squash- really you can use any combination of winter (hard shelled) squash.
2/3 c. lt. brown sugar
2 T. grated fresh ginger
a pinch of salt
1/2 - 1c. water

Yield: 2 cups

Roast Squash: Cut your squash into quarters, or in smaller pieces if necessary to fit it properly in a baking pan. Cover the pan with foil and poke a few holes in it to let the steam escape. Roast squash in a 375 F oven until a paring knife can easily cut through to the center of the flesh (between 30 and 50 minutes depending on the squash). This step can be done ahead of time, you can also cook more squash than you need for the butter at the same time.

Grate Ginger: I like to keep fresh ginger peeled in a plastic bag in the freezer. Frozen ginger is far easier to grate, and it keeps almost indefinitely. Grate your fresh or frozen ginger finely (I use a microplane grater). If you are using frozen ginger be sure to tamp it down when you measure it as frozen ginger had a crystalline airiness that makes it look like you've grated more than you actually have.

Puree: This step is optional, how you choose to approach it will affect the texture of your finished product. If you skip it all together, you will have a more rustic, textured butter with visible chunks of squash fibers. If you puree your squash in a food processor or press it through a fine mesh strainer, you will end up with a smoother texture.

Cook Butter: Place squash puree along with the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan over medium high heat. You want to add enough water to the mix to allow everything to come together and boil, but after that you are really just trying to get rid of the water, so use as little water as possible to bring all of the ingredients together. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium/low and vigilantly stir the butter as it cooks. (Pay special attention to the corners of the saucepan, where puree likes to stick and burn) Continue cooking and stirring your butter until it is thick enough to be mounded and easily scooped up with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat.

Store: in the refrigerator for up to a month, in the freezer if you need to keep it longer.

Serve: Spread onto buttered toast, swirl into oatmeal or pair with a nice, musty cheese on a cheese plate. Or... turn it into an easy, sumptuous mousse... (look for another post later this week).

Storing and Drying Fresh Herbs

From the window of my "cozy" (read: tiny) Brooklyn apartment I often indulge in wistful daydreams about having a little herb garden. I have intermittently made forays into the world of potted windowsill herbs, with uneven results. So, someday I hope to find myself able to stroll out into the herb garden and pick whatever I need for dinner that evening... but until then I am stuck buying the twist-tied bundles of fresh herbs like everyone else. There are a couple of things that make these little bundles a challenge. First, unless you are making a really herb-intensive dish like pesto, you probably have far more fresh herbs than you can use at one time. I find that with a combination of proper storage of the fresh herbs and preservation of the remainder, I can put the whole packet to good use.

First: to store fresh herbs. You can think of storing fresh herbs like you would fresh flowers. Cut the ends off and place your herb bouquet in a glass of water. Place a plastic bag over the leaves and store the whole thing in your fridge. Change the water every day or two. Most herbs kept in this fashion will last about a week and a half. If you want to further extend the life of delicate leafy herbs then you can pluck the leaves off and arrange them in a single layer between two damp paper towels (remember to save parsley and cilantro stems in your freezer, as they make an excellent addition to vegetable stock). Then you can roll or fold the paper towel packet and place it inside a plastic bag. I find that this method will further extend the life of leafy herbs by as much as a week. You might need to periodically refresh the paper towels, making sure to keep them damp.

So, now let's assume that you've chosen the right methods to store your fresh herbs, but you still have more than you can use. A lot of herbs retain their flavor pretty well when they are dried-- rosemary, sage, dill, oregano and thyme come to mind. I will be the first to say that there is a change in the flavor of dried herbs, but the dried herb is not necessarily inferior. And by drying them you are turning your herbs into a useful food product where they might otherwise wilt or degenerate into muck in your fridge. Hang these herbs upside down until they are fully dried. Then store in an airtight container for later use.

Thoughts on Spam and Confit

When my sisters and I were girls, my dad would try to trick us into eating Spam. He would cleverly try to slip it into something that cloaked its bright pink hue like, say, an omelet. But the pink chunks were not the biggest giveaway that something was awry, it was that devilish look on my dad's face, watching with just a tad too much relish as I suspiciously poked at the mysterious omelet. In my family you should never, never relax and dig in if someone is giving you that look (just ask me about the pickle juice incident if you need further proof). The question that I have looking back is: where did I get this spam-hating bias from? Why did I already think that spam was something to look down my little nose at, and my dad thought spam was a perfectly edible, if a bit nostalgic* food?

The New York Times article about Spam in this week's dining section seemed like just the inspiration I needed to delve into a subject which has been on my mind since starting this blog-- that is the fickle nature of food snobbery. It is (obviously) nothing new that the type of food you eat/like/have access to can be a potent status symbol. And it's also nothing new that people often want to emulate the styles of the upper classes. So: not so surprising then, that in the last-- say-- ten year eruption of food magazines, television and blogs there has emerged a food lexicon that permits almost no mention of cost. It is as if everyone has unlimited food budgets. The only times that I can recall seeing cost mentioned in a piece of food writing are to exalt the qualities of some exotic and expensive ingredient like kobe beef or saffron. I, for one, think that leaves contemporary food writing missing a very important point.

Food products can be evaluated entirely separately on different criteria: cost and taste. It is the status symbol territory that conflates the two, and often in a very flimsy way. There are gads of historical examples where one particular food item, due to its exclusivity, carried a high social status and once the economic factors shifted and that food product became cheaper, it's reputation plummeted. Take black pepper: in the early middle ages when pepper was hard to come by, it was prized as a seasoning. As pepper became cheaper, it was seen as an inferior seasoning-- used only if you could not afford the "better" spices. The cheap, everyday oranges and bananas in lunchboxes across America were exotic luxuries to colonial Americans. Oh, and a sad inverse example: truffles in ancient Rome were apparently cheap and plentiful enough that even households of modest means could use them with abandon. The formula seems to be rareness equals exclusiveness equals desirability. And as far as I can see, all of that has only a tenuous (if any) relation to taste.

And this brings me to confit- what is now considered a very fancy, exclusive delicacy was once a way to --ahem-- cheaply preserve meat from the autumn slaughter through the winter. Meat (mostly fowl now, but by all accounts preserving ham in this manner goes back even farther) is salted, slowly cooked in fat, dried and then immersed in fat for storage. With the addition of a few preservatives (yes, nitrite is traditional) the meat would then keep for several months, eventually developing an ever-so-slight rancidity which, I am assured, is part of its charm. Have you figured out where I'm going with this?- cheap meat, preserved with salt and nitrite with a unique "acquired taste", looked down upon by food snobs... not so different from the decidedly proletariat cans of Spam. Now, let me say, I am not arguing that there is no qualitative difference between Spam and confit (there are definitely unique chemical changes that happen to meat when preserved as a confit), but I think that it is a good illustration of how the perfume of exclusivity sways the way that we talk, write and think about food.

What I'm trying to do with my recipes for this blog is provide a ratio: taste as a function of value. While I'm not going to start cracking open a can of spam any time soon (neither will I be eating confit, incidentally), I'm glad that other people are doing so in a spirit of exploration; making something beautiful out of something downmarket. This type of creative reexamining of cheap, maligned foods is good for everyone. So, Dad, it's a few years late, but I hereby raise my glass in salute to the strange canned, pink meat of your boyhood: Spam.

*I know that my dad is not alone in his nostalgia for the tinned boyscout fare of his childhood. In fact, I was intrigued to learn that Korean baby boomers have a huge nostalgia for spam (just look for the kimbap rolls in your local Korean restaurant, they might just have little slices of spam tucked in).

Roasted Beet Borscht with Dill Pickled Apples

Sometimes I start working on a recipe with one thing in mind, and then get completely sidetracked by some curiousity that had nothing to do with the original concept. With borscht: it was the color. I really, truly had not started this recipe with the intention of making the most garish soup on the planet.... I just found myself in line at the coop with yellow carrots, purple potatoes and, of course, gorgeously, vividly red beets. Once I realized what a root vegetable rainbow I had, I knew I had to do something to highlight it. Leaving some of the roasted veggies out of the puree worked splendidly. I think it might be the prettiest little soup I've ever made. But don't think this soup is all style and no substance; it's mighty tasty too. Borscht can get a bad rap, but I think if you temper the sweetness (the pitfall of many a borscht) with the right amount of salt and tartness you end up with a complex and lively bowlful. As it gets colder and the price of greens and tomatoes starts to climb, it makes a lot of sense to start to rely more on root vegetables and winter squash. And I found this soup to be just the right thing for a cold, rainy autumn evening.


1 pound of beets
1 small onion
2 large carrots
2 small potatoes
1 c. vegetable or chicken stock
2 cloves garlic
the juice of 2 limes
salt
black pepper

yeild: 5 servings

to serve:
1/2 c. creme fraiche or sour cream
sprigs of fresh dill
sour apple dill pickles

Prep the Vegetables: Wrap your unpeeled beets individually in tin foil. Place beets on a sheet tray. Peel carrots, potatoes and onion, reserve scraps for another use. Cut onions and potatoes into quarters. Place the peeled vegetables in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover the dish with foil and poke a few holes to let some of the steam escape.

Roast the Vegetables: Preheat your oven to 375 F. Roast both trays of vegetables until they are cooked through -- about 45 min-1 hour (test by inserting a paring knife, you should be able to easily stab through to the center, but still feel some resistance). Test beets and the other veggies separately as they may take different amounts of time to cook. Once the beets have cooled you can peel off their thick skins with a paring knife. You can do your veggie roasting up to a few days ahead of time.

Puree the Soup: Reserve one carrot and one potato. Place the remainder of the roasted carrots and potatoes in a blender along with the beets, stock, garlic and lime juice. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Serve: Place the pureed soup in a saucepan and heat. Add water as needed until the soup is the consistency you'd like it. Slice the reserved potato and carrot into small strips (or even chunks will do quite nicely). Slice the pickled apples. Arrange a small pile of carrots, potatoes and pickled apples in the center of each bowl. Pour the hot soup around the veggies. Add a scoop of sour cream and a sprig of dill.



Sour Apple Dill Pickles:

I was reading different borscht recipes and was intrigued by the many accompaniments suggested. One recipe suggested grated apple, many other suggested chopped pickle or fresh dill. I had a hunch that a tart, dill apple pickle might just be a perfect accompaniment to the sweet, earthy beet base. The resulting pickles were indeed a most satisfying addition to my borscht, just what I was searching for. The apples make a very tart pickle and work best in small doses; either as a contrasting flavor to a more mild base or chopped and mixed in as a tart-dilly seasoning. You can certainly make the borscht and not the pickles, either way I think you'll be glad you made it.


2-3 tart/crisp apples such as Granny Smith or Cortland
scant 1/4 c. white wine vinegar
3/4 t. salt
1 1/2 t. sugar
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp black peppercorns
a fistful of fresh dill fronds

Yield: 1 12 oz jar

Prepare the Apples: Peel and core the apples. Slice into 1/8” thick pieces.

Prepare the Brine: Bring vinegar, 1/2 c. water, coriander, pepper salt & sugar to a boil. Turn off the heat. Cover the pot and let the brine steep while you ready the apples in the jar.

Pickle: Arrange the apple slices in a 1/2” thick layer. Then cover the layer with a few sprigs of dill. Continue arranging the apples in layers and alternating with dill until all of the apples are used or your jar is full. Place the jar on a dishcloth. (This precaution slows down heat transfer -- you don’t want to have hot and cold spots in a jar, in the worst case the jar can break.) Slowly pour the brine over the apples. If necessary, add enough water to fill the jar.

Store: Refrigerate the pickles for at least one day before serving (they continue to improve in flavor for at least a week). Taste the pickles, if necessary adjust seasoning (too tart: add a teaspoon or two of sugar, not tart enough: add vinegar). Serve as a side or on sandwiches with a strong cheese.

Bread Scraps

Leaving leftover bread out to stale is actually on of the best ways to preserve it. When my bread has past its prime (usually 5 days for a home-made sourdough loaf-- breads that are not leavened with sourdough will stale more quickly) I cut off the crust and tear the remaining bread into pieces. Leave these pieces out on a sheet tray and they will be completely stale and dried in about a day, depending on the climate you live in. Bread scraps dried in this manner can be kept for a very long time, then used for croutons, puddings, stuffing and breadcrumbs. To make breadcrumbs simply throw thoroughly dried bread pieces in your food processor. Bread crumbs and dried out hunks of bread can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature.

You can also keep your fresh bread in your freezer, wrapped tightly with two layers of plastic wrap-- I'll often do this if I know that I'm not going to be using a whole loaf right away. Or it can be convenient to make two loaves at once and save one in the freezer for later. Refresh your frozen loaf by throwing it directly into the oven for a few minutes. When I make a light sandwich loaf or brioche (even on a budget, I am of the opinion that we all deserve some pastry-related excess) I slice the whole loaf at once and throw it in the freezer. Then I toast individual slices as I need them. I find this method keeps the bread fresh enough that I am excited to eat it even when it gets down to the very last slice.

Labne with Slow Cooked Apples and Honey Caramel

I recently realized that after two months of blogging I have somehow have failed to post any recipes for a bona fide dessert (gasp). So I will do my best to remedy the situation before my pastry credentials are wrested away from me. All of the elements of this dish can be made well in advance, and combined and reused for other dishes. I think that they make a particularly delicious combination all together-- lightly sweetened apples with a velvety smooth texture, simple, creamy-tangy labne and a luscious honey caramel sauce (caramel is actually quite easy to make). Mix and match with whatever you have in your kitchen as you see fit. I think that you won't be disappointed. Yes, this recipe does require some of the rich (and more expensive) trappings of dessert, (cream and butter). But in a sauce these expensive ingredients go a long way. And the majority of the dish (apples and yogurt) is quite affordable indeed. And because each of the elements is so versatile, any leftover components will surely not go to waste.



Slow-Baked Apples:

I adapted this recipe from a Pierre Herme recipe-- I am of the opinion that in cooking, almost everything is stolen, and you will do well to pick carefully who you steal from. As far as I'm concerned if you are a patient and particular pastry person, Mr. Herme is the person to steal from (My understanding is that he adapted/stole the recipe from a colonial cookbook.) Pierre's recipe specifies cooking the apples for ten hours at a very low heat, all the while compressed by a weight. Because I have a gas oven which sometimes behaves erratically, I wasn't about to leave it on all night. So I split the cooking into two shorter segments, and left the apples to cook in the remaining heat (a technique which I was familiar with from poaching pears and leaving them in the hot poaching liquid overnight). What you get from all of this fussing with the cooking temperature is a an unparalleled texture. The flavor will not be that different from a baked apple, but the texture is melt-in-your-mouth smooth, entirely avoiding the mealy and mushy texture of overcooked apples. I do feel compelled to say, though, that if all of this sounds like a bit too much, simply sauteed apples would be delicious with this dish as well. But if you're up for a little kitchen experimenting, then this method puts an interesting spin on cooking something as everyday as apples.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Equipment:
two nesting 9x9" baking pans (or some other improvised situation that will allow you to place weight on the contents of one 9x9 baking pan).
a cast iron skillet or dutch oven
parchment paper

Ingredients:
4-5 Apples suitable for baking (I used some very tasty Mutsus, but there are many varieties that cook nicely)
Sugar
3-4 Strips of Orange or Lemon Peel
2-3 Bay Leaves

Prepare the Apples: Peel and core the apples. Reserve the trimmings in a freezer bag for another use. Slice the apple halves into 1/8" thick sections. Once all of your apples are sliced, arrange them carefully in layers on the base of your baking pan. Start with the slices all stacked together, just as they were when they comprised a whole apple-- then fan the slices out to achieve an evenly spaced covering. Sprinkle each layer with sugar (you make the judgment as to how much sugar the apples need depending on how sweet/tart your apples are). Arrange the next layer in the same manner, but rotate the pan 90 degrees, so the layers will be laying in different directions. Continue layering in this manner until you've used up all of your apples. On top of the last layer toss in a few bay leaves and strips of lemon or orange zest (you can fiddle with the seasonings, of course-- but if you haven't played around with apples without cinnamon, then I highly recommend giving it a try).

First Baking: Preheat your oven to 225 F. Cut a sheet of parchment paper to precisely cover the surface of your apples. Place the second baking pan on top of the parchment and apples. Load the whole assembly into the oven and then place a dutch oven or cast iron skillet on top (the goal is to squish the apples slowly as they bake, I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I'm pretty certain this compression is what prevents them from just turning to mush). Bake at 225 F for one and a half hours. Turn the oven off. Leave the whole assembly in the oven overnight (the apples will continue cooking with the residual heat).

Second Baking: The next morning turn the oven on to 225 F. Let the oven heat for one hour. Turn the oven off and again, leave the apples in the oven to cook in the residual heat.

Serving & Storing: After another six to eight hours the apples will be ready to serve (can you tell that I timed this recipe around my workday?). Remove the bay leaves and zest strips. Use a spoon to delicately scoop out the solid apple mass. Store the apples in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. The apples can be served cold, tepid or warm.



Honey Caramel:

If you haven't ever made a caramel before, then this is the right place to start. This recipe avoids a lot of the big scary things about candy making. You don't need to make a big batch in order for it to cook properly, you don't have to worry about your sugar crystallizing (cooking sugar together with a fat avoids this pitfall) and you don't need a candy thermometer. It's so easy and delicious, you'll never want to buy a caramel again.

Yield 6-8 servings

Ingredients:
Sugar 1/4c.
Butter 1/4c.
Cream 1/3c.
Honey 1/4c.
a generous pinch of Salt

Prepare your ingredients: Toss your butter and sugar and pinch of salt in a saucepan (for one recipe use at least a 1 1/2 qt. saucepan, you'll need a larger pan if you make a double recipe). Measure your cream and have it ready nearby-- the key to cooking a caramel is to cook it to the stage that you want, and stop it. In this case, you will stop the cooking by dumping in your cream, so you need to have it within reach exactly when your caramel is ready.

Cook the Caramel:Heat the butter and sugar over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Once the butter is melted stir vigilantly. As the mixture heats up it will look gritty, then start to come together, then it will separate and look a bit oily. Don't worry about any of these textural changes, the texture will come together at the end. What you do want to look for is the color. After a few minutes, the color will start to darken (once it starts to change it goes quickly). When it reaches the color of peanut butter hold the pan away from you (to avoid dangerous spatters) and pour in all of the cream at once. When the bubbling has subsided enough for you to start stirring, return the pan to the heat and stir until the mixture is homogenous-- you might have to bring it to a boil to incorporate some of the firmer caramel pieces. Once the sauce is smooth, remove from the heat. Stir in the honey.

Serve & Store: Once your sauce has cooled, you can store it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge and reheat it in the microwave or in a bowl of hot water as needed.



Labne:
2c. Yogurt Strained for 2 days will yield 4-6 servings as a dessert.



To serve: Scoop some warm apples into a bowl, add a scoop of labne, and drizzle liberally with warmed caramel honey sauce.

Labne (Yogurt Cheese)

Cutting back on my budget has, inevitably, meant cutting back on cheese. Cheese really ought to be an expensive product. To get a little perspective on food costs, I'll often think of all of the steps it takes to produce a particular food product. Cheese gets very involved: first feed must be grown to nourish the animals, the animals themselves must be cared for and milked, then that milk is condensed to produce the cheese curds, and finally the cheese has to be carefully aged. It makes sense that such a labor intensive product like cheese should be relatively expensive. But it is lovely isn’t it?

Lately I’ve been making a lot of labne to fill my cheese cravings. I can buy a quart of yogurt for just over three dollars, even though the finished volume will be about half of what you started with-- for a good quality soft cheese, that’s still a steal of a deal. All that is required to make labne is yogurt, a strainer and a piece of clean cloth. (A double layer of cheesecloth would do fine, I have a small square of linen reserved for this purpose.) Simply line your strainer with fabric, pour in your yogurt and let it stand in your refrigerator to strain for 1-2 days. The longer you strain the yogurt the more dense your yogurt cheese will be. I typically let mine sit for 2 days. This leaves you with a soft, spreadable, delicious cheese. Remember, though, that the finished cheese is only going to be as good as the yogurt you buy-- I like yogurts with a distinct lactose tang. You can also make different tasting yogurt cheeses with different yogurts (I’m looking forward to experimenting with goat labne). Labne can be used for either sweet or savory applications, so I’ll post a recipe for each. But I don't want to give the impression that you need to fuss too much to make labne palatable. It is also wonderful served very simply, either dressed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt or drizzled with a little honey.

Seeded Granola

I have done a lot of fussing with granola recipes. I wasn't able to find one that I liked (crunchy, clumps that don't dissolve at the sight of milk, not too sweet). So I was forced to fiddle until I found a method that I liked. The procedure I've arrived at is, admittedly, not the most direct. First the oats and seeds are toasted, then the whole mix is baked a second time at a lower temperature. Yes, it's a little bit fussy, but the end product is well worth the bother. I was inspired to make this particular granola after baking some wonderful seeded German ryes. I thought that the hearty seeds and spices would translate perfectly into granola. The seeds also make this granola a perfect exemplar of a home-made, cost conscious product (nuts are really the only expensive ingredient in granola; seeds are a fraction of the cost). To really save money, look for a store that sells grains and seeds in bulk; they are almost always cheaper. While I have worked out several tasty granola flavors, this is the one that I can eat every day and never get sick of. It tastes like what those packages of whole-grain-oat-honey-seed-nut bread should taste like but never do.

The barley malt in this recipe gives it a hearty, bread-like quality. Look for barley malt on the counters of your health food store near the molasses. I like my granola with fresh fruit, but if you like dried fruit, go ahead and mix it in after the granola has cooled.



4c. oats
4T. butter, melted
1c. wheat germ
1 1/4 c. seeds (any mixture of sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flax and poppy seeds.)

2/3c. sugar
1/3c. water
1T barley malt
1tsp whole coriander seeds
1/2tsp fennel seeds
zest of 1 orange (or 3/4t. powdered orange peel)

1/2tsp Kosher salt
1/4c. All Purpose Flour
1egg

Yield: 2 quarts

Toast Ingredients: Preheat oven to 350 F. Toss the rolled oats with the melted butter. Spread oats on a sheet tray and bake for 10-12 minutes. On a separate sheet toast sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds for 8-10 minutes. Stir each sheet once to achieve even toasting. Reduce oven heat to 300 F.

Prepare Seasoning and Sugar Solution: Finely grind coriander and fennel in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestel. Bring the sugar, water, spices, orange zest and barley malt just to a boil and turn off the heat. Set aside.

Mix: Place oats, seeds, wheat germ, salt and flour in the processor*. (This recipe will fit into an 11 cup food processor). Process in batches if you have a smaller processor or are making a double batch. Pulse five or six times for a few seconds. Add sugar mixture and egg. Pulse the food processor until the liquid is evenly distributed.

Second Baking: Grab handfuls of the granola, squeezing and breaking the mixture into walnut sized clumps onto your sheet tray. Bake at 300 F for 30 min, stirring once -- the granola might get a slight golden hue, but do not wait for it to turn visibly brown. Let cool. Store in airtight container for up to a month.

*If you don't have a food processor, you can still make this recipe. The clumps will not be quite as solid, but you'll still have a lovely granola. Just stir the sugar mixture and egg into the oats by hand.

Vegetable Broth

A lot of the trimmings from vegetables are removed because they have a different texture. Some of these trimmings are perfectly edible (potato and carrot peels) while others are too fibrous to eat by themselves (leek leaves and parmesan cheese rinds). Either way these scraps can be used to make a wholesome, tasty broth. Broth is made by boiling a base (vegetables, meat or bones) until the essence leaches out into the liquid, leaving only a spent fibrous carcass behind. It is really an ideal use for scraps; the pieces of the vegetable with objectionable texture can still be mined for flavor. I keep a quart sized bag in my freezer and add my vegetable scraps to it until the bag is full. Then it’s time for a new batch of broth.


To make broth:

Collect your broth ingredients: I don’t follow any particular recipe for the amount and types of vegetable scraps, I just use what I have and add other elements if I think that the flavor is lacking in some respect. Generally, I like so see a good mix of root vegetables, herbs or spices and something with a solid, earthy-savory structure (either parmesan cheese rinds or mushroom stems work well for this role). Whatever else I have, I always add in a whole onion and a few garlic cloves. If you don’t have one of these groups, you can improvise and add things to round out the flavor. Use a base of 1 part vegetables to 2 parts water. I typically make two quarts of broth at a time, but you can certainly make larger batches. I do not salt my broth, but prefer to add salt later to suit the dish.

Boil the Broth: Place all of your scraps and your water a large saucepan or stock pot. Cover. Bring to a full boil. Reduce heat and boil until all of the vegetables are limp and beginning to fall apart (about an hour) Strain.

Store: At this point you can either cool and store your stock as-is or further reduce it to concentrate the flavor. I like to reduce the stock and then freeze it in an ice cube tray. Once frozen, the broth cubes can be conveniently stored in a freezer bag, and you can defrost whatever amount you happen to need.


Scraps to Save for Making Broth:

mushroom stems
parmesan cheese rinds
stems of parsley or cilantro, or wilted, sad-looking parsley or cilantro
skins and trimmings from root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, parsnips)
the root end of onions (left over after chopping the rest of the onion)
the tough leaves of leeks
celery leaves and trimmings

Extras (amounts are based on 2qts of broth):

cumin seeds- 1T
coriander seeds- 1T
bay leaves- 3-5
black peppercorns- 2t
onion- 1
whole garlic cloves- 2-4
dried mushrooms- handful

Onion Ends & How to Cut an Onion

While I was writing a recipe for vegetable broth, I realized that it might be helpful to include instructions on cutting an onion. Cutting onions seems to cause a lot of undue strife. It's not just the tears, it's the geometry. The concentric rings don't translate obviously into an even dice. If you cut an onion properly, then you leave the root end in tact (which you use as a handle to hold the rest of the onion while cutting it). Then you have a little end of onion leftover which can be saved with the rest of your veggie trimmings for broth. So without further ado: my treatise on slicing and dicing onions.



-Before you start, it is most important to use a very sharp knife. The tear-inducing chemicals are the product of a reaction that occurs when chemicals from different parts of the cell come into contact with each other. So the more you crush your onion's cells with a dull knife, the more you will be crying.

1. Halve and skin the onion. If you are preparing a lot of onions, then it can be worthwhile to soak them in tepid water for a few minutes. This will make the brittle skin more flexible and easier to peel off. If I'm just cutting one or two onions, I don't bother. Cut the unpeeled onion in half from root to stem. Trim away the top quarter-inch of the onion, and then pull the peel away from the rest of the onion. Trim away the very edge of the onion roots; you only want to get rid of the roots that are holding dirt. Discard skin and root trimmings.

2. Make horizontal cuts. With the palm of your left hand gently pressing down on the onion, make a series of three or four (depending on how big the onion is) evenly spaced horizontal cuts (the cuts should be about 1/4"-3/8" apart). If you are right handed, that means the root end of the onion will be to the left and you will draw your knife from right to left, holding it parallel to the counter. Do not cut all the way through, though. Imagine a line about half an inch up from the root end and do not cut past that line. Keeping the root end in tact is the key to cutting onions efficiently.

3. Make vertical cuts. For these cuts, the stem end of the onion should be facing you. Make a series of (6-7) evenly spaced vertical cuts. Again, leave the root end in tact by starting all of your cuts a half inch away from the root end. Place the knife blade precisely where you want the cut to begin (see illustration) and press straight down.

4. Dice. Hold the onion with your left hand, curling the tips of your fingers in (this technique makes cutting safer -- your knuckles keep the knife edge away from the tips of your fingers.) It is a grip that feels awkward at first, but will actually allow you to cut more quickly once you have mastered it. Starting at the stem end, slice your onion in 1/4"-3/8" slices (this is the exciting part, when all of your diligent skillful cuts reveal a gorgeous dice!). When you get down to the end of your onion, you will be left just holding the last little bit attached to the root end. Toss these onion ends in a freezer bag with the rest of your veggie scraps for making broth.

*If you want slices of onion rather than diced onion, skip steps 2 & 3.

Ten Ways to Stretch Your Food Budget

I’ve been living on my self-imposed food budget for just over a month now, and I have so far managed to avoid scurvy, night blindness, and violent fits of chocolate envy. Between pouring over the comparative prices of bulk grains and turning my leftovers into soup, I have dutifully been scribbling notes to myself. What works? What takes a lot of time? What cuts out the most waste? Through my haphazard ruminations, some patterns emerged. The result was a handful of concrete, practical strategies: a few things to add to your culinary repertoire, a few places to look for waste, and some organizational strategies. The list seemed to round out nicely at ten, so here they are: the ten techniques I think will serve you best in stretching your kitchen budget.


Cook your own grains. Nearly every cuisine has a cereal grain for a backbone (though on occasion tubers will take on this starchy role). Western Europe has wheat; Eastern Europe, rye. Most of Asia depends on rice (though millet has even older roots in Asia). South America has corn. It matters little, in terms of saving money, what grain you’re cooking; what does make a difference is that you are cooking your own grains. The basic product that you buy (flour, milled grains) is almost always pretty cheap. What costs more money is processing. When you invest the time to cook your own rice or bake your own bread, your food budget is directly converted to the staple of your diet.

I find it much easier to manage a diet when I stick to one central grain. Right now I’m working with a wheat-centered diet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally cook a rice- or corn- centered dish. Sticking to one grain, there are just fewer things to manage -- I can easily judge if I have enough bread for the rest of the week or if I’ll need to do some more baking. That calculation is a bit more tricky when measuring a half dozen different grains and leftovers. No matter if it’s bread, millet, quinoa, rice, cous cous or dried pasta, when you cook your own grains your money is efficiently spent.

Eat Dried Beans. I know. There really isn’t anything sexy about dried beans. I don’t know what has done the most harm to the reputation of beans, their propensity to induce flatulence or the very long-standing, rather snobbish verdict that beans are lower-class food. But I adore them. I really think that our little friends in the pulse family are about as close to a superfood as anyone could ask for. Impossibly cheap. Nutritious. Capable of being stored just about indefinitely. Oh, and they are also delicious. Ok, so now the bad news. They do require specific (though not difficult) preparation (properly preparing dried beans can also minimize their wind-generating properties). It’s true that canned cooked beans are a pretty cheap source of protein too, but I think beans are so much better when you cook them yourself. It’s more than just my queasiness about the disturbingly viscous liquid canned beans are suspended in. When you cook your own beans you can add other ingredients to punch up the flavor (garlic, broth, bay leaves, spices). I promise to follow with a post detailing my tips for turning various beans into tasty dishes.

It might be a cliché that rice and beans are the staple foods of the cost-conscious. But there is real wisdom behind this trope; grains and beans are cheap and nutritious. Making them the center of your everyday meals is an easy, effective way to trim down your food budget.


Produce is really important. The concern is not just achieving the right balance of foods for a healthy diet (which does need a lot of plant foods), produce is also essential in making your daily meals satisfying, varied, and interesting. But produce can also be tricky. It is often expensive. It’s unpredictable. It goes bad. I’ve found this to be such a critical area of concern that the next four tips largely address how to buy produce in a cost-effective manner and use it before it goes bad-- though many of the same principles apply for meat and dairy.


Juggle fewer balls. Sometimes maintaining produce feels impossibly complicated. Bananas, pears, kale, potatoes, tomatoes, avocados somehow make their way into your fruit bowl or vegetable drawer, looking so innocent and promising. But then they unexpectedly turn on you. The avocados and bananas are not ripe when you need them, and overnight they turn into something brown and sticky, like clay. Kale turns yellow and bitter while spinach dissolves into a slimy green sludge. It is really, really hard (even for experienced professionals) to gauge exactly when fruits and vegetables will be ripe, and for exactly how long they will last. I think that the easiest thing you can do is to simplify the equation for yourself. Do not buy a lot of produce that has a narrow window of time when it is palatable (fresh greens, avocados, bananas, pears, berries, stone fruits). All of these foods make their own schedule; you have to be ready to act when they are in their prime. If you’re buying too many types of demanding produce at once, you are setting yourself an unpredictable culinary obstacle course. The solution? Buy less, (particularly less types at once). You can also simplify your tasks by buying fruits and vegetables with longer hold times (apples, citrus fruits, root vegetables, onions, winter squash). Buying in this manner does mean that you might have to go to the store a bit more frequently to supplement your fruit or salad greens, but I think it is a worthwhile trade-off for not throwing out your priceless plant foods.

Buy Seasonally. This tip gets bandied about quite a bit in discussions about eating ecologically. Again, it is one of those tips that makes some rational sense -- when less of your dollar is spent on shipping costs (and all of the involved processes to grow and transport produce out of season) your dollar is converted more directly into food. Depending on your source, seasonality can also apply to meat and seafood.

Make your own preserves. A dear friend of mine recently confided to me her childhood memories of canning. It was an all-day affair. In the heat of summer, endless sweaty hours were spent boiling jars, and pitting, skinning and cooking the pounds of slick, wet fruit. It was an activity that left the whole family distinctly cranky.

Let me first say that this is not the type of preserves that I am talking about. In fact, I use the term preserves rather loosely. I would include freezing extra vegetables and simply cooking fruits or vegetables to store in the refrigerator -- anything that extends the life of your produce is some type of preservation. And some of these techniques are phenomenally easy. Tossing cooked or raw vegetables in a simple brine at least triples how long they will last in your fridge (you don’t have to sterilize jars if you’re just making pickles in your fridge!) And if you cook fruit with sugar you can similarly extend its life span. Of course, I’m not arguing against canning your own peaches, but making preserves doesn’t have to be a complicated, intimidating project. And some of the simple things means of making preserves can save you a lot of money by avoiding spoiled produce.

Save useful scraps. A lot of the trimmings of vegetables and fruits are useful ingredients in their own right. This is such a rich topic that I’m making it an ongoing discussion/exploration. I will follow with posts about what scraps are useful to save as well as how to use them. It is surprising how much goodness you can wring out of leftover trimmings. The calculation on this one is obvious: turning scraps that you would normally throw away into delicious food is as close as you can get to making something from nothing.


Consume luxury foods sparingly. I’ll admit that this is the one that scared me. I am fully guilty of making food purchases in the thrall of an exotic or unknown ingredient -- I have bought sapodillas and cold-pressed pumpkin seed oil without the slightest idea as to what I was going to do with them. So it was with some amount of trepidation that I weighed and calculated the cost of ground espresso that it takes to make my morning latte (a habit which I have cut back on, but not eliminated). I would term “luxury” anything that has to either travel from a long distance, or is a highly concentrated product. Wine, beer, liquor, cheese, cream, chocolate, coffee: these are all goods with truly unique qualities but they are made precious by either the great mass of care (and sometimes a lot of raw food matter) that goes into their production, or their unique origin. So far, though, cutting back on the expensive foods hasn’t really bothered me. After my first two-week budget, I had enough money left over to buy myself a cheap, but enjoyable bottle of red wine (thank you, Trader Joe’s for your well-selected, affordable wines) and a bar of good chocolate. Consuming these items sparingly has, for me, actually made them a bit more enjoyable. Call me crazy, but spreading a thick pat of pasture-raised butter on my morning toast or nibbling on a small square of dark chocolate with my afternoon tea leaves me feeling that I eat very richly indeed.


Minimize Processed Food. This is a tough one. So much has been done by all parts of the food industry to make prepared foods convenient and appealing. Often we’re just trying desperately to keep up with overburdened schedules; adding extra culinary tasks seems like an impossibility. I don’t have any easy fix. The calculation is simple though: if you turn basic ingredients into food yourself, you pay for the ingredients. If you buy a food that is processed, you pay for the ingredients plus the processing plus the packaging and marketing. Making food in your own kitchen is just more economical. There are a few products that particularly kill me with the markup. For instance cereal and crackers are fairly basic, grain-based products; the cost of the raw materials in them is very low. The pre-made packaged varieties, however, are not so cheap. Some of these items are pretty easy to make at home (I promise to follow up with my recipes for crackers and granola soon). The absolute worst culprit in this regard, though, has to be soft drinks. Really, any bottled drink. The cost is particularly egregious when you consider that you are getting almost no nutritional value for your money.


Make allowances for your eating and cooking habits. I’m betting that most people have some eating or cooking foible. I need to have a snack in the afternoon. If I don’t then I get hungry and surly, and when I get home from work I eat a big snack and spoil my dinner. For a while I tried to work around it -- maybe I should eat lunch later? drink more water? Sometimes this would work, but all too often I found myself popping out of the office to grab a snack or reverting to my cranky, dinner-spoiling habits. So for me the solution is simply that I need a little snack. By planning for this, I can make sure to bring my own snack rather than buy some expensive, not-very-nutritious tidbit. Your allowances need to meet you wherever your foible lies. Perhaps you need to always have a soup or pasta in the freezer for when you are just too tired to cook what you had planned. If you’re having a tough time keeping up with your cooking, then it is worth taking a good hard look at where and when you turn to prepared foods or take-out. Anticipating this ahead of time can keep you from needing to turn to these more expensive options.


Improvise. I think the truest measure of a good cook is how they react when something goes awry. And there will always be unpredictability in a kitchen. Ingredients will be missing. Unexpected bushels of zucchini and eggplant will materialize. Guests will show up unannounced. To make the most of these opportunities, you need to be nimble. I find that flexibility comes from equal parts expertise and gusto. So, yes, it is absolutely important to bone up on your culinary knowledge. Read and talk endlessly about food -- many of my best ideas have sprung from meandering discussions. But I can’t overstate how important it is to experiment. Be a little reckless. It is easy to feel pitted into one of the cook stereotypes: either you are some sort of domestic prodigy-- effortlessly turning out four course dinners served on time around a tasteful hand-made centerpiece, or you are the buffoon-- instantly all thumbs whenever there is a knife in hand. Neither of these images is very helpful. Anyone can learn to cook; but it does take practice. And a little fortitude. The biggest barrier to improvising in the kitchen seems often to be a lack of confidence, not a lack of culinary ability. And the only reply I have is to just dive in. Take on bigger, more involved projects. Try new techniques that you’re unsure about. Having a broader set of skills will serve you well when you inevitably have to deal with something unexpected. It seems my final suggestion has turned into something of an argument for home cooking. I can stand behind that. Cooking at home is likely the best single move you can make to get good food for less money. Cook at home to save money. Cook for sustenance. Cook for pleasure. Cook unapologetically. But do, do cook.

Citrus Peels

Very often I’ll need the juice of half of a lemon for something; the remaining shell need not be neglected. The peel is, in many ways, the most interesting and useful part of a citrus fruit. It contains the fragrant, flammable citrus oil, and a lot of handy pectin to boot. There are a few different uses for citrus peels, and they require different preparation. Lime peels are an exception to a lot of the rules of citrus peels... you can’t dry or candy them (a difference in the chemical composition of their skins makes them turn brown and leathery). You can, however, shave the zest off and save it in the freezer until you have another use for it. I feel compelled to mention that I have read some very alarming reports about pesticides used on citrus fruit trees seeping into the oil of citrus fruits, making the peel of conventionally grown citrus a bit questionable. For whatever its worth, I only use the peels of organic citrus.

To dry citrus peels: Use a vegetable peeler to shave off the outer layer of peel. With a needle and thread string the strips of peel onto a length of string. Hang the string of peels up in a well ventilated area, and the peels will dry in a few days. Dried peels can be stored indefinitely in spice jars. Dried strips of citrus peel can be added to stocks or soups to brighten the flavor, You can also use them to make your own flavored tea. You can turn the dried strips into powder them by whizzing them for a few seconds in an electric coffee grinder. The resulting powder can be added to baked goods or sprinkled on top of a cappuccino.

To save citrus peels for marmalade: If you only need the juice of an orange or lemon, you can use a course grater to remove the zest and some of the peel from the outside of the fruit. Then you can juice the fruit as you normally would. Again, wrap the zest well and freeze it until you have enough to make the preserves of your choice.

To save citrus peels for candying or jams: Scrape away the inside of the fruit so that all you have left is the spongy white peel. Throw it in a bag in the freezer until you have accumulated enough to make a batch of candied peels (I promise to post a recipe once we reach prime citrus fruit season).

Saving Scraps

If you are cutting your vegetables in a very formal, French manner, there is a prescribed, unvarying system. Your cutting station contains three bowls: the first bowl contains the whole, unmanipulated plant matter; the last bowl contains the finished, geometrically cut product; the middle bowl contains everything you have scraped, cut and peeled away in the process. Savvy cooks know that there is a lot of useful stuff that gets thrown in that middle bowl (and usually subsequently into the trash.) Turning those scraps into useful and delicious food is a really easy and rewarding way to stretch your food budget. It certainly gives me the feeling that I have performed some feat of wizardry- making something delightful from nothing. So this is the beginning of what will be an evolving list of useful scraps to save, accompanied with recipes and tips about how best to use them.

Pappa al Pomodoro

It is, I will admit, a little late in the season to feature a tomato and basil dish. Tomatoes are at the end of their harvest, and most of the basil has flowered and taken on the stronger anise notes of maturity. But I was still able to get a pint of beautiful local multicolored cherry tomatoes for a pretty cheap price. So why not cling to those last vestiges of summer produce while they are still available? Beside all of that, I’m nursing a nasty cold right now and I’ve found myself in need of some comfort food. And this dish is comfort food at its best. I had not heard of pappa al pomodoro before I lived in Italy. Even though most Americans have not grown up with this Tuscan classic, after eating a few bites you might feel like you’ve been eating this your whole life. It is one of those gems of northern Italian cuisine: simply prepared, economical and satisfying.

My version uses cherry tomatoes (which are not exactly traditional), but cooking them for a few minutes breaks them down and you are spared the additional tasks of chopping and seeding. I find it is much easier to obtain consistently tasty cherry tomatoes rather than, say, plum tomatoes. If you happen to have other tomatoes on hand, you can certainly use them for this dish. If you are using larger tomatoes and want to be fussy (as I often do), you can scoop out the seeds and coarsely chop the meat of the tomato.



Yield: 2 servings

olive oil
1 large clove of garlic, finely minced
1/2 red onion, diced

A small handful of basil leaves, snipped into strands
2 c. stale bread pieces
2 c. cherry tomatoes
1 1/2c. broth (vegetable or chicken)

1/2 tsp. salt
freshly ground pepper
olive oil
parmesan cheese


Cook the Vegetables: Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions, cook for a minute and then add the garlic. Cook until the onions are starting to look translucent. Add the whole tomatoes and chopped basil. Cook for about 5 minutes over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally to break up the tomatoes.

Cook the Bread: Once the tomatoes have broken down, toss in the broth and return the mixture to a boil. Add the bread. Cook, stirring frequently, for another five minutes or so until the bread has broken down and the mixture has thickened.

Season & Serve : Add salt and pepper to taste (remember that the parmesan cheese is also salty). Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, fresh black pepper, a few fresh basil leaves and parmesan cheese shavings. This dish can be eaten hot, tepid or cold.

Pickled Carrots

About a month ago I bought a bunch of shallots from the greenmarket to pickle. That got me brushing up on my pickle reading and I happened across the recommendation that any leftover brine you have prepared can be kept almost indefinitely. That was just enough to rekindle my interest in light pickling. Not all pickles have to steep for months (like my pickled shallots) Some can be ready to eat overnight. Lately I’ve been using light pickling to extend the life of my prepared veggies. Last week I roasted a bunch of chiogga beets and tossed them in a jar with some of the leftover brine from my shallots. I’ve been enjoying beet and goat cheese sandwiches ever since. If you're making pickles to eat relatively soon and store in the fridge, you don’t need to go through all of the labor intensive processes of sterilizing and sealing jars. Just make a quick brine (salt, sugar, vinegar in water) and pour it over a jar of veggies. Your pickles won’t be the kind that will last for months out of the refrigerator, but the acid or salty environment of the brine will help your pickles long outlive other cooked or fresh veggies in your fridge. While I was roasting my carrots, I remembered having some beautiful pickled carrots at Franny’s a few months back. I figured that it was a perfect opportunity to try my hand at something approximating them. The result was so tasty I had to post it. The pickles are pleasantly salty and tart, but those sensations yield to the delicate, sweet, earthy essence of carrot.



Yields about 1 12-14oz jar

5-6 roasted carrots, cut in half lengthwise and trimmed to the length of your jar
white wine vinegar
salt
bay leaves
strips of lemon peel


Arrange your carrots in a jar. Tuck in a few pieces of lemon peel and bay leaves. Pour white wine vinegar (or other light-flavored vinegar) into the jar until it fills about a quarter of the jar. Pour in water until it is about 3/4 full. Add a teaspoon of salt. Close the jar and shake to dissolve the salt. Adjust the seasoning of the brine to taste (remembering that the carrots are sweet and you want a fairly tart brine. (At this point you're leaving a little room left in the jar so that you can adjust the tartness and saltiness of your brine) Fill the jar up with water and store in the fridge. Your carrots will be ready to devour the next day. As this is the first time I've made these pickles, I can't say how long they'll last. I have a sneaky suspicion that my jar will be empty long before these little carrots lose their charm.

Carrot Soup

I must have had dozens of carrot soups. Perhaps it is not encouraging that I distinctly can’t remember any of them. Carrots seemed like a rather obvious choice for a penny stretching dish. Though they are readily available and uniformly cheap, they can also be mediocre and forgettable. I’ve been playing around with a couple of techniques to try to wring an exciting flavor out of this humble root vegetable. I tried cooking the carrots in a number of different ways before settling on my old standby favorite for root vegetables: roasting. Then there was the question of how to best fit these (now quite tasty) carrots into a soup.

I’ve found that my favorite soups often have at least two parts. The pesto stirred in just as you serve a pesto soup gives a brightness and bite to what would otherwise be a rather plain vegetable soup. Spice infused cream provides a subtle and sweet counterpoint to my favorite autumn chestnut soup. And who can resist the charms of sour cream, cheese and crumbled tortilla chips on a spicy black bean soup? I think that these toppings and additions are so appealing because they offer contrast. The often long cooking time of a soup can tend to give it a boiled, warm homey character; comforting but one dimensional. But add a little bit of bite and texture contrast and: voila! You have a soup worth writing about. For this recipe, I seasoned the roasted carrots two ways. A scoop of the fresh, zesty marinated carrots is served atop each bowl of rich, roasted carrot soup

Yield: 5 servings


Carrots (about 10, any variety)
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 potato, peeled and cut into large cubes
6-7 sage leaves
3-4 bay leaves
salt
pepper
brown sugar
olive oil

1/2 cup vegetable broth (substitute with water if you don’t have any)
water

Roast the carrots: Peel and cut the tops off all your carrots. Place all of your vegetables in a baking pan. Sprinkle liberally with salt, brown sugar, and pepper. Scatter a few sage and bay leaves in the tray. Drizzle with olive oil. Cover the pan with tin foil and poke a bunch of holes in it. Roast at 350 until the vegetables are cooked through, but still firm (you can test the texture of a carrot by inserting a paring knife, it should offer some resistance but still yield fairly easily to the knife). It will likely take 45 min-1 hour for the vegetables to cook.





Puree the Soup: Set aside three carrots for the relish. Place all of the other roasted vegetables in a blender with broth and two cups of water. Puree until smooth. Add water until you have the desired texture. Adjust salt to taste.

Serve: Pour soup into bowls and serve with a scoop of carrot relish.



Carrot Relish
3 roasted carrots
the juice from half of a lemon
a tablespoon chopped Italian Parsley
a quarter of a red onion, finely chopped
salt

Dice the carrot and onion. Mince the parsley. Add salt and lemon juice to taste. Let the carrots sit and marinate for about 20 minutes before serving.

Initial Thoughts

I most often decide what to eat haphazardly; there is rarely any narrative, only emotion. I feel like Sushi. Tamales. Pasta. Or, if I'm feeling lazy, just a reliably satisfying hunk of cheese. Being trained in food doesn't help limit my stream of consciousness -- actually, it throws a wrench in. I inevitably have a long mental list of recipes and ingredients that I'd like to try out, which usually doesn't help out the coherence of my meals. In The Omnivore's Dillemma, Michael Pollan eloquently describes this aimless eating as a uniquely American culinary identity crisis. Without a strong culinary tradition, the poor American cook is vulnerable to innumerable trends, hype, fear and insecurity. Preparing such meandering meals also produces a lot of waste. Because there is not a core group of ingredients, little snippits are left to languish, forgotten, and irrelevant to the dinner of the next day. Every time I clean out my fridge I find myself awash with guilt as I uncover scraps of leftover tofu, a handful of slimy spinach that I forgot about and sometimes the tragedy of an avocado half which has turned to mud.

Being financially conservative is certainly practical and relevant (and timely given the much talked about ballooning of food prices), but it is not the only reason this experiment is interesting to me. Using your ingredients well and fully is arguably the highest respect that you can bestow on them. It is a different level of intimacy with your ingredients. I am learning to gauge how much flour per week I will need to make bread, when that is my primary source of starch. Ingredients suddenly have heft. Their mass is relevant. Kitchen management feels a bit like shepherding the flow of ingredients as they pass through this strange kitchen/human beast. The various elements must be put to good use, and at the right time. Wheat enters the kitchen, then is turned into bread. The bread keeps for 4 days, then the crust must be removed from the remainder and frozen for croutons or allowed to dry for use in other dishes. Produce is the trickiest. Pears that are verging on overripening must be cooked before they go bad. A gift of garden-fresh cucumbers must be eaten within a few days, or else pickled. Kitchen management is a much more complex task than just producing a good meal. And the product of kitchen management is much more than just a tasty dish, it is a dynamic process. A tricky, interesting process.

Panzanella

About a year ago I was researching recipes from de re Coquinaria , Apicuis’s collection of recipes. There are several recipes for various bread salads. Though traditional Panzanella is clearly post-Colombian exchange (it highlights that most useful new world fruit, the tomato), it has clearly grown out of that same tradition of combining raw vegetables with stale bread and seasonings. Take my word that the description of stale bread and raw vegetables does not do this dish justice. Panzanella is both light and satisfying. I find it is the perfect dish for a hot summer evening, particularly late in the season when good tomatoes and cucumbers are abundant and cheap. In fact, I was prompted to make Panzanella after I received some lovely tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from a friend's garden. Panzanella is usually served as a small plate, but if you add hard boiled eggs or tuna it can hold its own as the centerpiece of a meal.



(serves 2 as a main course)

2 1/2 c. diced vegetables (mix of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers)
1/2 onion chopped finely
1/4 c. white wine
1 T wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 t salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves of garlic
2 c. dried bread
a handful of basil leaves, snipped finely with scissors
4 hard boiled eggs



Finely mince your onions. If you are using a sweet onion, (such as vidalia) simply set it aside to mix in. If you are using a standard yellow onion (what I happened to have on hand) then you may want to let the onion sit in a little cold water for a while. This rinses off some of the chemical components that give onions their harsh edge. I cut my onions first, and let them sit while I finish chopping the other vegetables. Chop the remaining vegetables.



Mix together chopped vegetables, bread, wine, olive oil, vinegar and salt. I like to add garlic a little bit at a time as some garlic cloves are stronger than others. Serve with quartered hard boiled eggs.