Eat Well, Eat Cheap

Use Gourmet Cookware As Plateware

2012-01-21T00:56:00.000-08:00

We saw a clever idea for a dinner party in the latest issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Use your special gourmet cookware or some other non-traditional item as a serving platter or as plateware.

For example, you could use a picture frame with an appropriate photo as a serving platter, e.g. Sushi served on a frame with a photo of a beach or the sea.

Or if you have similar Le Creuset pans, use them as plates for a hot entrée.

One we've seen in restaurants lately is the small-single serving of dessert in a shot glass for those who don't want to overindulge in sweets.

Bargain Wine of the Week: 2009 Bordeaux?

2012-01-20T07:38:00.000-08:00

As a blog that preaches “eat cheap,” and exalts good wines costing less than $10, Eat Well, Eat Cheap doesn’t get much of a chance to talk about wines from Bordeaux, the most acclaimed wine region in the world.

It might not be the birthplace of wine, but it is certainly the Mecca of wine. Both because of the marketing value of its name and the actual greatness of its wine, Bordeaux wines are so expensive that four figures is not an unusual price.

But if you’ve been watching your online wine bargains lately, you would be excused for wondering whether the decimal point had been misplaced. $10.99, or even $9.99, is not uncommon for more than a few 2009 and 2010 Bordeaux bottles.

So, what gives? Are these wines any good? The answer, as is so often the case, is yes and no. Yes, there are Bordeaux bargains to be had. But no, not every $10 Bordeaux is worth even that miserly price. The new, lower prices are the result of lots of factors, but mostly it’s because the world’s wine regions produce an oversupply of wine and because 2009 and 2010 were good years in Bordeaux, both in quantity and quality. Only bad wine makers shipped bad Bordeaux in these years, so that’s good news for wine drinkers who want to try a Bordeaux that they normally wouldn’t even consider.

What to do? It’s somewhat difficult because the big names of Bordeaux are not dropping anything on the market at a reasonable price. And when you get into the unknown cousins of grand cru who live out in the Bordeaux burbs, the names are mysterious and the quality can be anything from rags to silk.

There are lots of DOCs (appellations or sub-regions) even within Bordeaux. Some you might look for are: Cote de Castillon, Cote de Blaye or Entre Deux Mers. These DOCs are all on the right bank of the Gironde River that splits the region. As with all Bordeaux output, the wines are blends of several grapes, but the Right Bank wines are typically Merlot blended with Cabernet Franc.

You still might have trouble finding a good Bordeaux for less than $10, but you could certainly find good bottles for less than $20 or $30.

These outlying DOCs, including the ones mentioned above, are the place to look. And while there is a big argument in rarified wine circles about whether ’09 or ’10 is the better vintage, our recommendation in the short-term is to go with an ’09, because they tend to be slightly fruitier and less tannic than the ’10s. The 2010 wines will be great, but they probably need a little time in the bottle.

Still confused about what to buy? Good, because there’s a lot of Bordeaux swill out there on the shelves.

With some help from our friend Paul Spring and lots of reviews, here are two suggestions:

1. If you see one or two reasonably priced ’09 Bordeaux bottles on the shelf of your local store or at your favorite online merchant, Google that wine and vintage to see what other online merchants and reviewers are saying about it. If they’re silent, stay away. If several are praising it, buy away.

2. Go to the biggest wine merchant in your area — one where they sell at least some Bordeaux wines — and tell them that some knucklehead who writes a wine blog said there are good ’09 Bordeaux wines to be had at decent prices and could he recommend one or two?

Take a chance. Buy a bottle or two at whatever price you can afford. Better yet, buy two and lay one down for 10 years in your cool cellar. If the first one tastes great now, go buy a case and put it away for a while. It will only get better.

You might not get a chance again for many years to put some inexpensive but good Bordeaux bottles in your cellar or on your table.

Can't Argue with This

2012-01-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

Gawker says it better than we ever could.

Pantry Project: Barley and Mushroom Risotto

2012-01-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

The pantry project continues apace! We've had a jar of pearl barley kicking around the shelves for a long time; even though we love barley, we never seemed to get around to using it. Then we saw a recipe from Bon Appetit that used barley in place of rice to make a chewy, rich risotto.

We were skeptical at first—wouldn't the barley get tough? But it nicely absorbed the vegetable stock, and the final addition of sautéed mushrooms made for a satisfying winter dish.

Barley and Mushroom Risotto

4 1/2 cups stock (vegetable, chicken, or meat)
2 t. butter
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup pearl barley
2 t. chopped fresh thyme or 3/4 t. dried
1 bay leaf
2 t. olive oil
1 pound assorted fresh mushrooms, sliced (we used Chinese shiitakes)
1 minced garlic clove
2 T. chopped Italian parsley (we used curly because Ruth hates Italian parsley)
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Bring stock to boil in a heavy saucepan. Remove from heat, cover, and set aside.

2. Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over low heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent, about five minutes.

3. Add barley, thyme, bay leaf, and two cups of hot stock; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until most of the stock has been absorbed, stirring frequently (about five minutes).

4. Add remaining stock 1/2 cup at a time, allowing it to be absorbed by the barley before adding more, and stirring frequently (about 45 minutes).

5. While the barley is cooking, heat olive oil in large skillet over high heat. Add mushrooms, and sauté until brown. Stir in chopped garlic. Reduce heat to medium and cook until mushrooms are tender (about five minutes).

6. When the barley is done, add the mushrooms, mix in parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Serves four.

Pantry Project: Great Cold Side Salad

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

In looking for a barley recipe (to use some of the multiple bags of grains in our overstuffed pantry as part of our pantry-reduction project), we stumbled into a great cold side salad recipe from cooking.com. It is one of those sides you could serve anytime, and it uses the sorts of ingredients that most people typically have around the pantry.

Our only problem was that our barley canister was short by a quarter cup. We quickly realized that this salad recipe's barley could be replaced by just about any grain or rice. We remembered that we had an overabundance of black rice, also called forbidden rice.

The consistency of black rice is about the same as cooked barley. You just have to make sure that you rinse it well so that the reddish-black cooking liquid doesn't color everything else in the recipe.

(We cold have substituted quinoa or faro or any of a number of other grains. But the black rice was crunchy and colorful.)

This salad would be particularly good in the summer, but it worked well in the cold depths of January as well.

Ingredients

2 cups cooked rice, barley or other grain
2 cups frozen corn, thawed
1 red pepper diced, or 1/2 red pepper and 1/2 green pepper, diced
3 scallions, sliced or chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro or parsley

Dressing
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper

Recipe
Cook the rice, barley, faro or other grain. A good rule of thumb is to cook the grain in twice as much water or stock, with a little salt, and simmer for about 40 minutes. Toward the end you might have to add a bit more liquid or drain off any excess. Just taste for doneness with a bit of crunchiness.

In a bowl, mix the first five ingredients.

In a small container with a tight lid, mix the dressing ingredients and shake well. Pour dressing over the salad and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

We've Got Worms

2012-01-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

That may not be the most appetizing post title, but it's true: determined to keep making compost during the slow winter months, we've started a worm farm to make use of our abundant kitchen scraps.

Our homeowners' association short-sightedly restricts the size of compost makers that residents can use. This limits us to one of those small drum units that are better than nothing, but not much better—especially for two cooks who prepare and eat a lot of vegetables and produce a lot of coffee grounds. Last winter our compost maker had filled up by December, and because the compost process goes dormant in the winter, we were looking at the wretched and wasteful possibility of tossing our kitchen scraps until spring.

We tried saving scraps in a covered container on the patio. That handled the overflow well, but the spring thaw was very smelly and messy.

Then we remembered that our friend Chuck, a fine gardener and veritable compost king, had built a worm farm in his garage to handle kitchen overflow. A helpful website showed us how to make our own worm farm with nothing more than a couple of Rubbermaid containers, a drill, a scrap of cardboard, a few pages of newspaper, and a handful of yard dirt.

We ordered a pound of red worms online, and soon our farm was up and working. Although the worms slow down a bit in the cold months, we can see that they're doing exactly what they should be doing: eating, digesting, and making more worms. Come spring, we'll add their efforts to our garden; in the meantime, we'll keep our new friends happy with buckets full of coffee grounds, eggshells, and other kitchen scraps.

The Pantry Project Redux

2012-01-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago we decided to concentrate on using up our pantry supplies, and although we made a fair amount of progress, our shelves still groan with containers of rice, grains, and beans, and our freezer is equally stuffed. Between our compulsion to try new ingredients, the abundance of fascinating ingredients at local ethnic markets, and our hatred of waste, we always seem to end up with Too Much Stuff. Now, in honor of the new year, we're resolved to draw down our supplies with renewed vigor.

So far we've gone through our freezer and pantry and made lists of what we found. As we hadn't completely emptied either place since moving into this house two years ago, this proved an interesting exercise. Apparently, we secretly expect a coming worldwide shortage of hot sauce—we found four unopened bottles. Our resolution to save bean-cooking liquid resulted in three-count-'em-three containers of white beans and their liquid. We found three large unopened packages of rice vermicelli—perfect for spring rolls, and enough to carry us deep into next year.

Does anybody have good recipes for black rice? Somehow we ended up with two bags of this mysterious grain, which was rare enough to be called Forbidden Rice long ago in China. Tim encountered it once in an Italian restaurant, but it seems to lend itself to Asian dishes.

Our plan is to "eat down" as much of this stuff as we can, preferably by using ingredients in combination.

Befuddled by how to use black rice in a nondessert dish, we threw a dart and tried this recipe from the blog Eat Make Read. Although the black rice dyed the edamame a scary dark color, the flavors were simple and lovely, and we'll make this recipe again. (Thanks to Trader Joe's, we always have bags of frozen edamame, which makes a great quick lunch or snack.)

When we picked through our giant basket of noodles, we discovered several bags of soba. Some of the noodles looked fairly new, though we honestly couldn't remember buying them, but another package seemed to date back to the last decade. Our common sense told us to compost it, but our frugality encouraged us to try it. So we mixed the new—well, newer—soba noodles with a handful of the old ones and were delighted to find that the old soba was just fine! Stir-fried with red pepper, onions, collard greens, and our all-purpose Chinese sauce, the noodles made a good fast dinner.

Still in a Chinese mood—and wanting to use up the beautiful but aging green cabbage we got in last summer's CSA box—we made a vegetarian version of Moo Shu Pork, using Boca crumbles we'd found in the freezer, shredded cabbage, slivered carrot, bamboo shoots, and some old tree ears we'd discovered in a Ziploc bag in the pantry. Served on flour tortillas slathered with hoisin, this dish made a swell end-of-the-weekend meal and had the distinction of using up three of our old pantry and refrigerated items.

Tonight we have another leftover trifecta: we're making a soup out of those old white beans and broth, some cooked collard greens, a single sausage patty we discovered in the back of the freezer, and canned tomatoes. Combined with a fresh batch of cornbread, this will make a delicious yet frugal dinner.

We'll keep you posted on our progress as we move through the stockpile!

Eat-Well Eating During the Holidays

2011-12-31T07:38:00.000-08:00

The holidays are a time that we mostly think about eating well in a context that we don't typically mean it here at Eat Well, Eat Cheap. With all of the celebrations and parties and plates of treats, we all tend to eat well around the holidays. Maybe a little too well.

Like us, you probably have a love-hate relationship with holiday food. It's mostly love, of course. We have a great excuse: We're celebrating — and it's only once a year. Well, only one season, but it goes on from Thanksgiving to New Year's.

The hate part is that we all know we're eating things we shouldn't. And so we pledge in our New Year's resolutions that we'll clean up our act just as soon as the champagne and chocolates are finished.

Because of our pantry-emptying project (post to come), we'd been thinking a lot about what we've been eating — with more than a little horror. So we decided to try to put together a healthy Christmas dinner that was in keeping with our year-round philosophy here at Eat Well, Eat Cheap.

We had a wonderful meal, which we did not intend to be vegan, but in a healthy, happy coincidence, it turned out that way, much to everyone's surprise and astonishment. Here's what was on the table:

We roasted brussel sprouts: trimmed, cut in half, and cooked in a 400-degree oven with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper for about 20 minutes. When they were hot out of the oven, we doused them with a little balsamic vinaigrette. Nutty and delicious.

We boiled potatoes and mashed them with about 1/3 cup of soy milk and two tablespoons of Earth Balance butter substitute. We know that these butter-substitute things can range from awful to OK, but Earth Balance rarely lets us down when we use it in cooking.

We made a mushroom gravy that got lots of raves at the table. We'll follow this up with the recipe, along with some variations, depending on what you're having with this essential sauce. For the extreme skeptics at the table, who didn't believe that gravy could be good without meat, it was a revelation.

For a bit of relief from the warm, traditional servings, we served Laurie's Cranberry Conserve, which we'd made the day before.

But what about the main dish? you're wondering. We bought something from the Field Roast company called a Cranberry-Hazelnut Roast En Croute. It's sort of a paté or meat-like loaf in a pastry crust. It's only available at holiday time—we found ours in the freezer case at Whole Foods—but it is available online.

The roast will surprise you, as it did us. (Some skeptics will never buy it. But just tell them it's full of meaty goodness and they'll love it.) When we took stock of the meal with our guests, we all agreed it was one of the best, and certainly the healthiest, Christmas meals we'd had in a long time. And then we realized there wasn't even any dairy in it. A vegan Christmas. Who would have guessed?

But it really was delicious and satisfying.

Laurie's Cranberry Conserve: Start Your Own Holiday Tradition

2011-12-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

The holidays are right for cranberries. They help cut through the typical celebratory turkey, gravy and spuds. The stores are full of cranberries, and if you time it right, you can get them pretty cheap.

Some people love the cranberry jell, right out of the can. Others prefer homemade cranberry sauce. It of tens depends on your family's tradition. The right cranberries will take you right back to mom's table and happy memories.

Want to start your own cranberry tradition with a cranberry conserve that most guests will rave about? Here's a recipe from our friend Laurie Sloan. It's not too sweet, and it's full of citrus, crystallized ginger and Grand Marnier liqueur.

Ingredients

3 cups cranberries (one bag)

1 cups water

1 cup sugar

1 small orange, cut in pieces and coarsely chopped in food processor (reserve juice)

1 small lemon, cut in pieces and coarsely chopped in food processor (reserve juice)

2 T coarsely chopped crystallized ginger

½ cups pecans, coarsely chopped

3 Tablespoons Grand Marnier (most of one mini-bottle)

1. In large heavy pot, cook cranberries in water over medium high heat until they pop

2. Stir in the sugar, oranges and juice, lemons and juice and ginger. Bring to a boil. Reduce eat to medium and simmer, stirring frequently, until mixture is thick and clear. Place a small amount of the syrup on a spoon and raise it from the pot; if large drops form on each side, the conserve is ready to remove from the heat.

3. Stir in pecans and Grand Marnier

4. Pour mixture into hot sterilized half-pint jars, seal and process in a boiling water bath according to manufacturer’s directions.

Makes 2 pints

Holiday Cookie Ideas: Are These the 10 Best?

2011-12-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

This is our favorite cookie all year around. Our version of the chocolate chip classic. But cooking.com is suggesting 10 other cookies for the holidays.

Cooking.com sent its daily eLetter to us this morning. Its topic was "The 10 Best Holiday Cookies." We would differ with its choices of cookies, but if you are looking for some quick ideas for cookies to make for the upcoming holidays, here are 10 you might want to try.

What Will Food Be Like in 100 Years?

2011-12-07T15:19:00.000-08:00

Michael Pollan, who has written three of the most important food books of the recent past — Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules, and In Defense of Food — answered readers' questions in a New York Times Magazine special on Food and Drink.

One of the questions, and his answer, intrigued us enough to post it here. Good food for thought, as they say.

Q: What will our food system be like in 100 years?

A: My best guess is that the food system will look very different in 100 years, for the simple reason that the present one is — in the precise sense of the word — unsustainable. It depends on fossil fuels that we can't depend on and exacts a steeper price in human and environmental health than we can afford. So it will change, whether we want it to or not.

We certainly won't be eating nine ounces of meat per person per day, as Americans do now — there won't be enough feed grain, worldwide, to continue that feast, and presumably we will have faced up to meat-eating's disastrous toll on the environment. If we haven't, we'll have much bigger problems on our plate than what to have for dinner.

What do you think? Crystal ball or ignorant negativism?

Mashed (Sweet) Potatoes with Garlic

2011-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

Few foods are better for you than sweet potatoes. Yet many people associate the yellow spuds only with maple syrup and marshmallows at holiday meals.

We think that there are lots of ways to better appreciate the flavor and healthy goodness of sweet potatoes than the overly sweet, often gloppy Thanksgiving dish.

We came across an old Vegetarian Times sweet potato recipe for garlicky mashed sweet potatoes the other day in a VT eNewsletter. We had four of the tubers in our pantry and needed a side for dinner, so we, ahem, whipped some up. They tasted very good and were a great accompaniment to savory piece of protein.

With four peeled and diced sweets, along with two peeled and diced apples, and teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and two teaspoons of salt, you're almost ready to go.

First you cut the top off a head of garlic, drizzle it with olive oil and rosemary, and then roast it in the oven for an hour.

Meanwhile, put the diced sweet potatoes, apples and salt in a dutch oven, and bring it to a boil on top of the stove. Lower the heat to medium and simmer until the potatoes are soft. About 10 minutes.

Drain the spuds, saving a cup of liquid. Squeeze the garlic out of its peel into the potatoes, add the teaspoon of balsamic and whip or mash the mixture. Add some cooking liquid if it is not creamy enough. Add some ground pepper and serve hot.

Here's the recipe on the VT website.

Great App(etizer): Brie with Honey and Thyme

2011-11-29T05:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a great — and quick — appetizer that will satisfy cheese lovers and also guests with a sweet tooth at the same time. It comes from Chris Kimball, editor of Cook's Illustrated.

Buy any old brand of Brie cheese in an 8-inch round. With a serrated knife, carefully slice off the top rind, leaving the side and bottom rind. Place the round on a microwave-safe serving plate, drizzle the brie with honey and sprinkle thyme or rosemary on top.

Heat in a microwave until the brie bubbles, probably about a minute or two. Serve with crackers to the delight of your guests. Easy, peasy!

For this recipe and other holiday cooking tips from Chris, click on this link, then click on "See the Recipes."

Video: A Fresh Side of Pears, Cauliflower, Sage and Hazelnuts

2011-11-27T09:01:00.000-08:00

Here's another recipe video from John Ross. He made it for Fine Cooking, the magazine and website. It features pears and cauliflower in a delightful side dish that is perfect for the holiday season — and very simple, too. Unfortunately, our layout cuts off part of the video, so we've included the link, so that you can go to finecooking.com to see it in wide screen.
Watch the video at finecooking.com

A Beautiful Banana

2011-11-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

This beautiful banana photo was taken by our friend John Ross, an up-and-coming food videographer whose recipe videos we have featured here (pasta w/ pumpkin, sausage and kale) and here (easy baked eggplant) on Eat Well, Eat Cheap. The banana photo was chosen as Photo of the Day by featureshoot.com. See it in all of its glory at the link below:
http://www.featureshoot.com/2011/11/photo-du-jour-7/#comments

Bargain Wine of the Week: 2010 Pacific Rim Riesling

2011-11-23T06:26:00.000-08:00

If you're in a quandary about wine for Thanksgiving dinner, here's a last minute tip that'll get you by with the dozen or so people gathered around your turkey on Thanksgiving.

Pacific Rim winery in Washington state is making superb Rieslings. If you think that Rieslings are too sweet for serious wine drinkers, here's the catch: Pacific Rim makes four 2010 Rieslings varying from dry to sweet and only one of them is too sweet for our palates.

There are two more notes about these wines that are worthy of mention. The first is that the three we like all scored 90 or 91 on Wine Enthusiast ratings. These are seriously good wines, no matter how sophisticated your mouth.

The second is that at our local liquor store, they range in price from $9.99 to $12.99. That's a tremendous bargain for three such high rated varietals from the same winery.

The three we like are Pacific Rim 2010 Dry Riesling, rated 90 points by Wine Enthusiast magazine. It's got only 1% residual sugar.

The next is Pacific Rim 2010 Riesling, which is an medium-dry wine that your sweet-wine friends will enjoy. It garnered a 90 from Wine Enthusiast. It's got a colorful label that says only "Riesling," without characterizing its level of dryness.

The third is Pacific Rim 2010 Organic Riesling, which is also medium dry and we find it the best of the three — as did the Wine Enthusiast folks who gave it a 91 rating. Look for the totally white label and the word "Organic" at the bottom. This bottle is three bucks more at $12.99, but well worth it.

Buy one of each and see which one is the favorite at your holiday meal.

Happy Hippie Eggplant Casserole

2011-11-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Ro Ann Redlin sent us this wonderful sounding—and wonderfully named—recipe in August, when tomatoes were ripening on the vines, and we're sorry to only be posting it now. Blame France, work, general life stresses, but this recipe has been in the back of our minds all along: whenever we spot a sleek, fat eggplant, we think, "We've got to try Ro Ann's recipe." She assures us that it's just as good in the cold months as in the summer. On this, as on all matters of cooking, we trust her.

Happy Hippie Eggplant Casserole

2 large eggplants, peeled and cubed ( I don't salt and wipe my eggplant. No need.)
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 to 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
A handful each of fresh basil and thyme, chopped
2 medium tomatoes, sliced

1. Throw the eggplant cubes, onion, garlic, basil and thyme into a cast-iron skillet or heavy skillet. Cook it down until the eggplant cubes are soft and the onion is translucent.

2. Spread half of the eggplant mixture into a baking dish and top with sliced tomatoes and half of the cheese. Spread the remaining eggplant mixture on top of the tomatoes and cheese.

3. Top the casserole with crushed butter crackers. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Yum.

Don't Toss That Old Cast-Iron Pan! Restore It

2011-11-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

It seems that for our entire cooking lives we've heard, "Nothing cooks better than a cast-iron pan." But we associated cast-iron with the heavy, rust-prone, pain-in-the-neck pans of our parents, so we went on to amass a collection of Circulon, Calphalon, All-Clad—anything but cast-iron.

But when Ruth's mother moved into assisted living and Ruth had to clean out her house, she found the old skillet that her father had used to fry sausage, eggs, pastrami, and other cholesterol-laden delights under the disapproving eye of his health-minded wife. The pan had fallen into neglect since his death, covered with rust and dust, but Ruth could not bring herself to put it in the Goodwill box. She took it home and—well, we'd like to say that she used it religiously, but she put the skillet in a out-of-the-way cupboard where it went on to collect years' more rust and dust.

Then we moved to a different house, leaving a few things behind for our occasional trips back to Connecticut. On these trips we discovered that we needed a good frying pan, and we remembered the old skillet in the back of the cupboard. Could it be restored?

Indeed it could. We were amazed by how easy it was to clean—and how well it cooked. We feared food, particularly proteins, would stick, but the cast iron released food at the perfect moment of doneness. The skillet held heat evenly—better, in fact, than our much more expensive pans in Virginia.

The handle is smooth from decades of use; the inside is scarred from decades of spatulas; the outside is as rough as an old ship's bottom. When we use it, we remember Ruth's father defiantly cooking his beloved sausage in a long-lost kitchen in upstate New York. We love this pan.

How to Restore a Cast-Iron Pan

First, we gave the skillet a good scrubbing, washing off as much of the accumulated crud as we could.

Then we set the empty pan on top of the stove, added about a quarter-inch of vegetable oil, and heated it at a medium setting until the handle was too hot to touch. That took about ten minutes.

We added about a third of a cup of kosher salt and—wearing a rubber glove on one hand and clutching a potholder in the other—rubbed the oil-and-salt mixture into the pan with a wad of paper towels, making sure we cleaned every bit of the inside surface.

We washed the pan with soap and water, then dried it completely and—important!—wiped a tiny amount of olive oil onto the cooking surface to prevent further rust.

As long as we apply that small dab of oil after each washing, the pan stays rust-free.

Did we say that we love this pan? It's true: Nothing cooks like cast-iron.

If you don't have a pan of your own, it's worth checking your local flea market or thrift stores, which always seem to have a lot of them, in varying stages of rustedness. Don't let their abused appearances scare you; chances are they can be salvaged.

Make It Yourself: Pizza Dough

2011-11-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

Actually, this may be a pointless point, as we are possibly the last people on earth to have figured out that there's nothing easier, and few things cheaper, than making your own pizza dough.

Why did we put off trying this? Maybe we thought it was a time-consuming process, with lots of kneading and rising times; maybe because we feared that the dough wouldn't rise. We don't even remember our thinking; we just got in the habit of buying raw dough from the supermarket. To be fair, there's a lot of good dough out there (as well as some bad dough—we're looking at you, Trader Joe!).

But when we went to the store the other day, there was no raw dough to be had. As we were craving pizza, we decided to take the leap.

Boy, did we feel stupid. What could be easier than this:

Homemade Pizza Dough

3 cups flour
2 t. salt
2 t. yeast
1 cup warm water (let your faucet run until it's almost hot)
2 T. olive oil, plus a little extra for the dough bowl

1. Put flour, salt and yeast in the bowl of a food processor. Give it a quick spin to mix things up.

2. Turn the processor on, and pour the water through the feeding tube, followed by the oil. After about 30 seconds, the ingredients will form a clump. (It will be pretty sticky at this point.)

3. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead it for just a few seconds until it's a smooth ball.

4. Oil a bowl, drop in the dough ball, and turn it until it's covered in oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour or two, until it doubles in size.

5. Remove the dough from the bowl and let it rest on a floured surface, covered, until it puffs up again (maybe 20 minutes). Then it's ready to use.

Makes one good-sized pizza or two small ones.

The Frugal Pantry: Brown Rice Syrup

2011-11-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

This liquid sweetener is less sweet than honey or maple syrup, with a rich caramel flavor that works well in many desserts. The other night we sautéed some apples that had turned mealy, as we sometimes do, and we decided to try our brown rice syrup instead of the usual brown sugar. The resulting dish tasted fantastic, like a hot, soft caramel apple.

Brown rice syrup is also a good addition to oatmeal cookies and quickbreads—basically, to any recipe that would benefit from a shot of caramel. You can find it in health food stores or, if you're lucky, near the honey and molasses in your supermarket.

Caramel Sautéed Apples

2 T. butter
Three apples, cored and sliced into crescents (we don't mind skins, but if you do, pare away!)
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
Pinch of salt (more if you like the flavor of salted caramel)

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan. Add the apple pieces and turn them until they are covered in butter. Stirring occasionally, let them fry until they are soft and golden, about 20 minutes.

2. When the apples are cooked, add the brown rice syrup and let them fry for another few minutes, until the syrup and apples have gotten to know each other.

You can either eat these plain or use them as a topping for cake or ice cream. Enjoy!

What Happened to Us?

2011-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

This photo pretty much shows how we feel when we consider our poor blogging output of the past month or so. But we hope to get some new posts up this week—please bear with us!

How to Mince Lemongrass

2011-10-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long drought of blog posts—it's our damn jobs; they really cut into our free time! Anyway, it's good to be back, and we'll start with a small but important tip that we discovered just today.

Much as we love Asian food, we've never found a good way of cutting lemongrass. No matter how much we peeled it, no matter how far down the stem we cut, we always ended up with woody little pieces that stuck out like bits of toothpick in whatever we were cooking. We tried lemongrass paste, but that was expensive and lacked flavor.

However, today we watched the Food Network show Chopped during lunch. If you haven't seen it, the premise is that contestants must whip up delicious dishes in very short time periods for the usual panel of picky foodies. On today's episode a contestant attacked a stick of lemongrass with efficient genius—she didn't bother chopping it, she simply grated it. Genius!

We'll cook something Vietnamese or Thai this week just so we can try this.

Château de Nages in Costières de Nîmes

2011-10-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

We have for some time admired the red Réserve from Château de Nages. A Syrah and Grenache blend from the Rhône, it is a superb bargain at less than $10. It's white sister, made from Grenache Blanc and Roussanne, is also a very good bargain.

So when we found that on our trip to southern France we would be staying within 15 miles of the winery and its vineyards, we made an appointment to visit. Michel and Tina Gassier agreed, but apologized that since they were in mid-harvest, something less than a full winery tour was to be delivered. We understood, and showed up at the appointed time.

Michel is the great grandson of Joseph Torrès, who started the winery. Michel is the wine brains. Tina, his wife, is the marketing brains and described by everyone there as the "dynamo." We found that to be the case. But instead of the shortened tasting-sans-tour we were promised, Tina took us on a "no BS" tour that started in the vineyards to walk in the Grès, the rolled pebbles on red clay, and to taste the (in this case Carignan) grapes that were about to be harvested.

We have been on a lot of winery tours, but this apologetically shortened tour was our best yet. (Unlike the U.S., where it is typically OK to just show up at a winery, in Europe the custom is to call ahead or arrange your visit beforehand.)

As we noted earlier, this 2011 harvest is a puzzling one, and we saw that in the overripe seeds swaddled in under-ripe meat and skins.

Back in the winery, we toured the wine storage tanks as well as a carbon dioxide filled room of viognier filled oak barrels that left us all woozy. Deep inside the winery bowels, a small room of glass vessels and implements serves as Michel's chemistry lab, next door to the room that holds the framed photograph of JT, Joseph Torrès and the three bottles of wine that Michel seeks to emulate: a Chateauneuf du Papes from the other side of the Rhône, a German Riesling and a Burgundy from La Tâche.

Michel and Tina believe that their Mediterranean terroir should speak loudly in their wines; that "we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children;" and that since turning to organic farming, their grapes and wine are better than they have ever been.

After all of the touring and answering some questions from us, Tina turned us over to a lovely woman who led us through Michel's lines of wine. The Réserve is more of an entry to the line, which rises in quality through the Chateau de Nages Vieilles Vignes, the Château de Nages JT (for great grandpa Joseph Torrès), the Nostre Païs, and the chin-out aggressive Lou Coucardié.

Michel is one to watch, because he's always thinking, always inventing, but always letting his land and his grapes speak loudly.

The winery's website is michelgassier.com.

Green Olive and Caper Sauce for Meat, Fish & Tofu

2011-10-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

At the exquisite Chaverdille restaurant in the little village of Caveirac, France, Tim's rare tuna steak came with a zesty sauce. He thought it would also be a great sauce for lighter fare such as pork, chicken or even grilled or sauteed tofu.

So, we tried to recreate it for our grilled tofu "steaks." The result was pretty close. This is a somewhat acidic sauce (but in a good way, as it helps take a somewhat bland piece of protein to a more interesting place. This is not a creamy sauce in the usual sense of what we typically think of as a sauce. It is more a collection of mildly pickled items blended in oil and wine.

We started with 2 Tablespoons of olive oil and 1 Tablespoon of butter or butter substitute in a medium-hot skillet. We added three diced shallots, three diced garlic cloves, and let them soften and become translucent. Then we added 14 diced green olives (we left the pimento in) and a Tablespoon of capers, followed by 1 Tablespoon of diced tomato (we used canned for convenience). After about 3 minutes of cooking, the mixture was ready for a quarter cup of white wine, which we let reduce and flavor the sauce. A little salt and pepper, and the sauce was ready to go.

It was great on the tofu we had marinated in red wine, soy sauce and olive oil, and it would have tasted great on the white meats and fish mentioned above.

This sauce would be good with either a crisp, non-oaky white (Sauvignon Blanc, unoaked Chardonnay or a Viognier).

The 2011 Puzzling Grape Harvest in Europe

2011-09-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Throughout much of Europe the wine masters are puzzling over the 2011 vintage, which has been harvested over the last month. They say they have never seen a harvest quite like it.

After a lot of rain last winter — "perfect," says Michel Gassier of Château de Nages in the Rhône Valley of France — a good spring followed, but July and August were rainy and cold. The grape bunches stayed tight, letting in little air circulation. The Syrah grapes in the Rhône were drying out on the vine. The vineyard tenders waited and waited. Now they are rushing.

The white grapes are off the vines, but the wine makers found that while the grapes were barely ripe, the seeds inside were overripe, dark and turning bitter, instead of the almond taste they should have had at this point. The pulp inside the skins is still solid and holding onto the seeds tightly.

The aromatic maturity should match the maturity of the pulp and the skins. But it doesn't, so they'll have to pick their grapes and try to work some magic in the winery.

What does it mean for the 2011 European wines you will be drinking for the next 10 years? No one is quite sure. But they are harried and just a bit panicked in the world-famous vineyards of France, Italy and Spain. Stay tuned.

Arles, France: Land of Van Gogh and Spanish Influence

2011-09-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

The city of Arles ("arl") is where Van Gogh painted sunflowers, starry nights and his apartment — and left part of his ear behind. The sunflowers are far past their prime in September, but Van Gogh's name is on many streets and businesses.

We happened to arrive on the day of the town's festival of the bull, which shows the influence of nearby Spain and the caballeros who work the nearby camargue on their white horses. Although we didn't have any, the meal of the day was paella, served as a special at every restaurant and the many street tents set up for the day.

The other dramatic influence here is in the form of huge stone amphitheaters and other buildings built by the ancient Romans, and still being used today in many cases. This is a rebellious part of France historically, much more Protestant than the heavily Catholic rest of France, and a place where the rulers in Rome or Paris could always expect trouble and an argument that led to violence.

But like the rest of France, the food is wonderful. We lunched on salads because we were still sated from our rich restaurant meal the previous night. Salad Niçoise is one of the regional favorites, and ours was refreshing, light and just the right amount to keep us walking and gawking.

France: Eat Your Way Through the Country

2011-09-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

There is one adjustment you have to make as an American when you go to France. You have to eat like the French. They typically eat small portions and don't snack. But the food is divine — and rich. And despite the photo above, usually not so obviously rich.

On our first full day, we went to the local market, not the supermarket but the building full of stalls with luscious vegetables, beautiful cheeses, olives of may flavors and meat and fish of every stripe. We were stocking up for the pantry at our villa in a little village near the Rhône River.

Once weighed down with bags and bags of produce and other food, we stopped into a little brasserie for lunch, where Ruth had the Cappuccino
pictured above.

Despite our haul of goat cheeses, fresh green olives in brine, cranberry beans, tomatoes, leeks, eggs, eggplant tapenade, we decided to eat at the local restaurant, Chaverdille, because it is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

It is the only restaurant in the little village, but the food was wonderful. Our theory is that it's difficult to find a bad restaurant in France, because they won't last.

The sauces are deep with flavors, and the preparation is almost always stopped at just the right line. And the wine is incredibly cheap. What's not to like?

Bargain Wine of the Week: 2009 Chateau l'Ermitage Costieres de Nimes

2011-09-07T03:43:00.000-07:00

One of the wineries we will visit during our stay in the Rhône region of France is Chateau l'Ermitage outside the city of Nîmes, where denim was invented and where the wineries blend the good taste of the Rhône with the low cost of the Languedoc and produce wines that are perfect for Eat Well, Eat Cheap.

We've tried both the 2007 and the 2009 red wines from Chateau l'Ermitage and they are a great bargain. Ruby red in color and fruity enough to enjoy before dinner, the wine also carries some hints of cinnamon and stone. But the tannins are very soft, so the taste is always pleasant.

This red is a combination of 50% syrah, 30% mourvedre and 20% grenache.

We've also tried the white blend from Chateau l'Ermitage, which is also widely available for around $10, and it is equally pleasing. The grapes are Roussanne, Grenache blanc and Viognier, and the taste is of peaches. This is a great summer sipper.

Arugula Pesto: Pesto di Rucola

2011-09-06T03:22:00.000-07:00

Why all of the pesto recipes? Well, mostly because Saveur magazine celebrated pesto by publishing dozens of recipes. But also because you get a lot of ideas by exploring one type of food and seeing how subtle ingredient changes make for big flavor differences. It also helps when you crave a dish, but the key ingredient is missing from the pantry or fridge.

In wine, you'd call it a vertical tasting. Sip a bunch of chardonnays or syrah side-by-side and compare the difference between France, Chile, Spain and California — or between northern California and southern California.

We have a friend who loves pesto so much that she probably eats it weekly. We have another friend who loves it so much that he wants to be slathered in it when he's buried (presumably to have something good to eat in the hereafter).

This might be our favorite pesto. Since making it from the recipe in Saveur magazine's paean to pesto, we've tried it on pasta, vegetables, tomatoes, toast, tofu and chicken. This spicy concoction makes them all taste better.

Admittedly, we like arugula. We've mixed it with lettuce and spinach in salads to add a peppery flavor. We've put it on pizzas. We've even had salads that consisted of nothing but arugula and dressing. So, yes, we like it.

But this is arugula in a totally different context, and many people who eat it have to ask what the green ingredient is in this pesto. Along with the cilantro pesto, this was the most popular when we served a spread of pestos. The magazine says it's great drizzled over steamed artichokes or grilled fish.

Pesto di Rucola

2 cups packed arugula
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil (we used 3/4 and it was fine)
1/2 cup finely grated percorino or romano cheese
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 Tbsp. lemon zest
1 clove garlic, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Process all ingredients in a food processor and season with salt and pepper to taste.

A Great Pesto Spread: Pesto Calabrese

2011-09-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

Some pesto doesn't look or taste like pesto at all. But this great spread is from Rocco Arena, owner of San Rocco Restaurant in New York, and Rocco swears it is pesto. We found the recipe in Saveur magazine's big article in praise of pesto.

The magazine says this pesto is spicy, but we didn't find it spicy at all. We found it pretty bland, in fact, so our suggestion is to add a little hot red pepper to the mix. But even in its bland state, this spread will be a hit with your guests.

Pesto Calabrese

1 small eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/2 -inch cubes
2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and minced
1/2 small yellow onion, minced
2 plum tomatoes, cored and minced
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/3 cup packed basil
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Place eggplant in a colander, toss with 2 tsp. salt and let sit for 20 minutes.
Drain and dry on paper towels, and set aside.

Heat oil in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat, add pepper and onion, and cook, stirring often, until soft and lightly caramelized — about 10 minutes.

Add eggplant and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 8 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook, stirring, until soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a good processor and add ricotta and basil. Puree until smooth.

Season with salt and pepper.

Cilantro Pesto: A Happy Marriage of Mexican and Italian Flavors

2011-09-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

As we've said many times before, pesto does not have to be made with basil. Instead you can use parsley, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, pistachio, sage, broccoli, red pepper, garlic scapes or cilantro.

We gave Mark Bittman's recipe for Light Cilantro Pesto that can be used as a dressing on vegetables or as an underlayment for any entree that needs just spark of pep. For example, we've smeared it on the plate under the stuffed roasted peppers we serve as an appetizer.

Saveur magazine's celebration of pesto includes a cilantro pesto made heartier by the inclusion of roasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds). This pesto was the biggest hit when we laid out several pesto spreads as appetizers before a recent dinner party. It's salty. It's hearty. It's aggressively tasty. Saveur recommends it with roasted squash or grilled fish.

We made a lot of this cilantro pesto, so we've used it as a sauce on pasta (delicious!), as a dressing on blanched green beans and as a topping for fresh sliced tomatoes. This is a very versatile pesto indeed!

Pepita and Cilantro Pesto (from Saveur magazine)

2 cups packed cilantro
1/2—2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup toasted pepitas
1/3 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Pulse cilantro, oil, pepitas, parmesan, lime juice and garlic in a food processor until finely chopped; season with salt and pepper.

Pesto Rosso: Substituting Red for Green in Delicious Pesto

2011-09-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

We normally think of pesto as being green and made with lots of basil right out of the garden. Saveur magazine's recent celebration of pesto noted that it is merely a paste, usually made in using a mortar and pestle, so it can be made with lots of different ingredients.

Today we tried a pesto that doesn't even depend on fresh greens from the garden (except a small amount of rosemary). Instead it's foundation is sun-dried tomatoes. We found it to be absolutely addictive and a wonderful hors d'oeuvre when spread on a nice slice of crusty peasant bread — or a cracker.

Pesto Rosso

1 cup virgin olive oil
1/2 cupe toasted almonds, chopped
2 Tbsp. rosemary leaves, minced
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. paprika (or Aleppo pepper, if you've got it)
20 pitted oil-cured black olives
10 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Process oil, almonds, rosemary, vinegar, sugar, paprika, olives, tomatoes and garlic in a food processor until finely chopped; season with salt and pepper.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Chateau d'Oupia Les Hérétiques 2009

2011-08-17T02:47:00.000-07:00

Our trip to southern France will include two major wine regions, the Rhône Valley and the Languedoc. We'll be based in a little village right on the border between the two regions.

The Rhône is by far the better known and produces consistently better quality wine. It's most famous output is Chateauneuf du Pape, and its wine tend to be a blend of Syrah, Grenache, and typically Mourvedre, Cinsault or Carignane.

But the Languedoc also has a very long and proud tradition of making wine since the days the Romans brought vines to this land nestled on the Mediterranean just north of Spain. Winemaking here has had its ups and downs, so it's wine is sniffed at by those who favor Burgundy or Bordeaux.

But we're in an up cycle, and that means bargains for the wine buyer, if you're willing to work your way through an occasional so-so bottle of vin.

The vineyards of Chateau d'Oupia are 100 years old and sit on the barren hillsides of the Minervois section of Languedoc. Proprietor André Iché has quietly been making good wine without the benefit of a big marketing campaign. He just keeps putting out what wine reviewer Robert Parker calls "ideal bistro wine ... with gobs of rich, peppery, red and black fruit."

This red wine, the 2009 Chateau d'Oupia Les Hérétiques, is a blend of Carignan and Syrah grapes. It probably won't get a 90+rating, but it should score in the high 80s, and at $10 that's still a great bargain.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Beso de Vino Seleccion 2009 is 'Shockingly Good'

2011-08-16T02:41:00.000-07:00

In our effort to taste the differences in Côte du Rhône wines in preparation for our trip to the region, we'll be mostly drinking wines made (as prescribed by local law) from Syrah and Grenache grapes.

It just so happens that a good deal of wine made across the border in Spain is made from the same grapes. Spanish wines, as we've noted often here at Eat Well, Eat Cheap, are a bargain that very often meets our criteria of less than $10 a bottle. And the quality is often superb enough to garner 90+ ratings from the big ratings "agencies."

As part of our testing, over the weekend we opened a Côte du Rhône and a Spanish wine from Cariñena. The Spanish red was a blend of 85% Syrah and 15% Garnacha (Spanish for Grenache). With a 90 rating from Wine Advocate, we knew it would be good, but we wanted to compare it to the Côte du Rhône.

Spanish wines in the lower prices often tend to be on the lighter side, but this one was not. It would have made a great wine for steak or lamb — very strong and hearty. Next to the Rhône, which was a good pre-meal wine in this case, the Beso de Vino was a perfect accompaniment to food.

Full of roasted coffee and muted fruit, this wine made Wine Advocate say that "it is shockingly good for the money." Can't disagree.

Oh, Yes, Another Recipe That Takes Advantage of Sage

2011-08-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

When we posted the five things to do with sage a few posts ago, we forgot one of our favorites: Butternut Squash with Sage Risotto. We posted this old fave of ours during the brutal winter of '09.

But it also works as a great summer or autumn dish, especially when the squash and sage is prolific.

We had an old butternut squash sitting around, and we were clearly going to lose it before long. And our sage plant, after some pruning two weeks ago, is growing like a weed. So we uncorked two bottles of wine made from Syrah and Grenache grapes to let them breathe (in slowly disappearing glasses) and cooked the risotto.

The squash was smaller than called for. The sage ended up being twice as much as in the recipe. But the dish, accompanied by sliced tomatoes, was divine.

What a pleasant mid-summer treat.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Domaine de Dionysos La Deveze Côtes du Rhône Villages 2009

2011-08-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

Before any major exertion you should train a bit, so that's what we're doing in preparation for our trip to the Rhône and Languedoc in southern France.

We've stocked up on $10 bargain wines from the area to form a base for our tastings while we eat and drink our way around the northwestern bank of the Mediterranean. We've already set up two winery visits — to two vineyards that we've reviewed.

In our effort to taste and determine the differences in Rhone wines, we opened a Côtes du Rhône that we bought online for $11, just a dollar over our $10 limit (thinking that in France it will cost $10 or less).

The Domaine de Dionysos La Deveze Côtes du Rhône Villages 2009 was rated 90 by Wine Spectator, so it was pretty much assured that it wouldn't be a loser.

Indeed, this dark mix of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Carignane was a great all-around buy. It sipped well before dinner and accompanied our summer meal of tomatoes and pasta extremely well. It smells and tastes of berries, with just a hint of flint to keep it from being too jammy.

A Great Column on Mindful Budget Eating

2011-08-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

Felisa Rogers has been writing a series of wonderful columns for Salon on eating cheap—but they're about much more than eating on a (very) tight budget. She explores the joys of foraging, of refusing to waste, of refusing to give in to financial despair, of appreciating. Her column today is a beauty.

We like Rogers's writing because it exemplifies our favorite quote from M. F. K. Fisher:

“ . . . there is a basic thoughtfulness, a searching for the kernel in the nut, the bite in honest bread, the slow savor in a baked wished-for apple. It is this thoughtfulness that we must hold to, in peace or war, if we may continue to eat to live.”

Five Tasty Ways to Use Sage in the Summertime

2011-08-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Sage is a wonderful but weird herb—wonderful because its deep, resinous flavor complements pork, chicken, potatoes, and squash so well, but weird because it flourishes in the summertime, when we tend to eat dishes that call for greener, more delicate herbs, like cilantro and basil. But you don't need to limit your sage use to Thanksgiving.

Here are five delicious ways to use sage in the summertime.

1. Sage and walnut pesto on pork or potatoes. This hearty pesto even works on the grill!

2. Crunchy fried sage leaves to garnish pasta or risotto or eat by themselves as a cocktail snack.

3. Roast potatoes with sage. Line a pan with whole sage leaves, then cover them with halved potatoes. The result: crunchy, creamy bliss.

4. White beans with sage and garlic. There's nothing easier than boiling some white beans with sage, garlic, and a little olive oil. You can eat them hot or cool them to use in a summer salad.

5. Sage vinaigrette. Add some chopped sage to a mustard vinaigrette for a tangy dressing on grilled or steamed vegetables.

Sage is a very easy plant to grow; it's disease-resistant and likes dry conditions. Depending on your climate, some plants will "winter over," providing years of tasty service.

Best Bought Veggie Burger Ever!

2011-08-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

As you know—indeed, as you are probably tired of hearing by now—we avoid processed food whenever possible, for reasons of flavor, cost, and health. But every once in a while we discover a processed product that is so wonderful—that's so much better than we can make ourselves—that we have to blab about it. Vegenaise is one. Morningstar Farms Chipotle Black Bean Burgers are another.

There are a few inherent problems with veggie burgers. Homemade ones can taste great, but they tend to be too soft to grill, so they can't provide the full burger experience. Processed burgers, on the other hand, too often are dry, bready, and tasteless.

But Morningstar Farms' chipotle-spiked black bean burgers grill beautifully, developing a "meaty" crust that could satisfy the most bloodthirsty carnivore. They're firm, flavorful, and, at a quarter pound apiece, satisfyingly large. They are heaven.

We discovered them at Costco, promptly finished a box, then went back for more, with some trepidation; Costco has a habit of dropping products that don't quickly catch on. Up and down the frozen aisle we prowled, worried that we'd never see the burgers again at a Costco price. Nothing . . . until we turned a corner and saw that Costco had devoted the entire "end cap" of its freezer section to a gigantic display of the burgers! As Costco is hardly a vegetarian paradise, we have to assume that this product is catching on with everybody.

Try them! You may never go back to hamburgers.

Burning Man ... in Spirit, Anyway

2011-08-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

August is here, and Burning Man is almost upon us. Admittedly, we won't be there—broiling in the Nevada desert is pretty much the last thing we want to do, even for the sake of art, community, and countercultural frisson.

Still, we're glad that other people go to Burning Man, and the website is a joy to explore. We particularly like the section on how to cook well for yourself in a place with no piped-in water or fuel. The tips and recipes would work just as well for camping, and some of them would be great even for air-conditioned suburbanites like us, looking for some easy, delicious, healthy food as the hot summer unfurls . . .

Bargain Wine of the Week: 2009 Bogle Sauvignon Blanc

2011-07-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

It's summer, and that means sipping a light, crisp wine on the patio or next to the lake. Sparkling wines, especially the light proseccos and moscatos from Italy, are a sure bet.

But not everybody likes a sparkler, so the next best bet is a Sauvignon Blanc. They are crisp, light, refreshing and they go with just about every appetizer — and they're great just for sipping. If you're a Francophile, buy a Sancerre, which is made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

The Sancerres are good, but they are a bit more expensive than American Sauvignon Blancs. Now, every wine shop has a selection of these summer favorites, but many of them are green and grassy and a bit harsh. How do you find one that is a) low-priced; b) guaranteed good; and c) available where you live?

Our sure bet of the summer is Bogle's 2009 Sauvignon Blanc (or any other year for that matter). It can often be had for $7.99, and rarely costs more than $10. Wine Spectator rated this wine with the familiar pheasant on the label at 88 and a Special Value.

Here's a tip: whenever you're watching your pennies and you're looking for a wine that won't break the bank but will taste good, put a Bogle in your shopping cart. If you're guessing at the wine store, you might as well make an intelligent guess. It's close to a sure thing.

More Hot-Weather Relief: Mango Salad

2011-07-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Though the humidity has backed off a bit, it's still late July in Northern Virginia, which means we're disinclined to turn on the stove or the grill. The solution: light, refreshing salads that make use of all the great produce that's available. All you need is a good knife and, if you're lazy like us, a food processor that can quickly handle the tedious job of shredding.

The other night we shredded a green mango and made a salad that was tart, sweet, a little hot, and completely delicious. This recipe makes two very decent portions; if you want to feed more people, it's easily doubled or even tripled.

Green Mango Salad

1 green mango (if all you have is a firm orange mango, go ahead and use that)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/3 cup chopped basil
2 scallions, minced
1/3 cup roasted chopped peanuts

Dressing:
2 T. fish sauce
3 T. lime juice
4 t. brown sugar
1 t. chili garlic paste

1. Shred the mango, either using a grater or (much quicker) the shredding blade on a food processor.

2. Mix with the cilantro, basil, scallions, and peanuts.

3. Pour dressing over all, and serve immediately.

Serves two.

Hot-Weather Relief

2011-07-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here in Northern Virginia it is 103 degrees in the shade, with a heat index estimated at about 115 and no relief expected for days to come. Needless to say, we won't be cooking for a while; even outdoor grilling seems too much heat to bear. Instead, we'll be relying on some hot-weather favorites that require very little effort and no stove.

First, drinks. This is perfect weather for a Liberator; if that's too strong for your taste, how about some nice sparkly Prosecco? Pour yourself a glass of something cool, put on some good music, pull out your knives, and get to work on a quick, light, delicious meal.

A salad composed of cool ribbons of zucchini dressed with lemon, mint, and Parmesan would be perfect on a day like this. So would a slaw of raw beets and carrots bathed in tangy Dijon. This watermelon salad with mint and feta cheese can be either a first course or a light main course. And this bean sprout salad mixes bold flavors with light veggies.

Want something more substantial? How about a crunchy Indian salad?

For dessert, all you need is some cold fruit, and maybe a little bit more Prosecco.

You Can Make Tapas at Home

2011-07-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

First, apologies for the long drought of posts. We were out of town and ran into Internet problems that, like all Internet problems, were both complicated and too boring to explain.

Now that we're back, we can write a post we've been meaning to write since Ruth's birthday back in June.

We celebrated with a trip to Jaleo, a tapas restaurant run by José Andrés that has gotten great reviews. As we don't eat out that often, we tend to be extra-critical of bad food and extra-delighted by good food; if the service and atmosphere also deserve high marks, we're disproportionately thrilled. This was one of those meals. Everything was great, from the opening dish of olives with tiny cubes of marinated Manchego cheese to the final bowl of olive oil ice cream and grapefruit sorbet. Best of all, we figured that we could reproduce our favorite dishes back home.

Usually, it takes at least a few tries to successfully approximate a restaurant dish, but the first one we tried—poached onions with blue cheese and pine nuts—came out great. We were astonished by how easy it was.

Because this can be made ahead of time and either warmed up or served at room temperature, this would make an excellent first course. We plan to use it as part of a homemade tapas lineup (our next post, also poached from Jaleo: stuffed peppers with tapenade).

You'll notice that one of the onions in the photo looks charred. That's because we experimented with grilling half of the onions in the recipe, wondering if that would make a difference. It did seem to add flavor, though the nongrilled onions tasted great too.

Onions with Blue Cheese and Pine Nuts

Two fat onions
6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
2 T. olive oil

1. Peel the onions and halve them through their centers, leaving their stem ends intact so they don't fall apart during the poaching.

2. Place them cut-side down in a deep skillet and pour the stock over them. Bring it to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Let the onions simmer until the stock is mostly evaporated and they are tender all the way through—depending on the size of the onions, this can take as a long as an hour.

3. While the onions poach, toast the pine nuts and crumble the blue cheese.

4. When the onions are tender, remove them to a plate, sprinkle them with pine nuts and blue cheese, and drizzle them lightly with olive oil.

Serves four.

Hot-Weather Treat: No-Fat Chocolate-Cherry Shake

2011-06-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here in Virginia summer has descended with its usual wallop—scorching temperatures and high humidity without even the occasional thunderstorm to cool things off. Fortunately, we've come up with a recipe for a cool summer treat.

Our inspiration came from Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book Eat to Live, which advocates a diet high in fruits and vegetables. Though some of his recommendations are a bit extreme for the likes of us—we're not sure a longer life would be worth living if it did not include olive oil—we're all in favor of fruits and vegetables, so we've been looking over his recipes with interest. One, for a chocolate spinach smoothie, gave us the idea for this chocolate-cherry shake, which we've been happily slurping for weeks.

Although this calls for quite a bit of spinach—a couple of fat handfuls—you'll never taste or see it in the finished product. You'll just have the invisible satisfaction of knowing that this cold, chocolatey deliciousness packs a lot of nutrition.

Chocolate-Cherry Shake

3/4 cup coconut water (you can also use any kind of milk)
Heaping 1/2 cup frozen pitted cherries
2 T. cocoa powder
2 dates, pitted
2 ounces baby spinach (about two good-size handfuls)
1/2 cup ice cubes

Place all ingredients in a blender, and let it rip. Makes two decent portions or one monster portion.

It's Summer: Greens, Greens and More Greens

2011-06-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Even if you don't receive a CSA box full of greens every week like we do, you probably either grow them yourself or you find your supermarket produce section sprouting some interesting leafy greens this time of year.

They're cheap. They're really good for you. And they're versatile if you use your imagination: in salads, steamed, cut up in soup or roasted into appetizer chips.

In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman published a matrix of greens by type and offered dozens of ways to deal with them. Here's the gist of his article and matrix.

Romaine is fine. But dandelion, tender lettuces, chard and arugula (real arugula, not the “baby” kind they sell in most supermarkets) are all ubiquitous this time of year, and they can be as flavorful as the juiciest tomato. You can make a different salad every day for weeks without repeating yourself.

Whatever strange green you find in your kitchen this time of year, the article suggests a tasty way to eat it.

Good Fast Food: White Beans with Greens and Sausage

2011-06-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

How versatile is this dish? For one thing, it can be served cold as a salad* or hot as a stew. Room temperature also would work just fine. The ingredients are nearly infinitely adaptable, depending on what you crave or happen to have on hand.

Our last batch was inspired by some leftover greens from the CSA box. We still haven't identified them—they resembled broccoli raab sans blossoms—but after we sautéed them we decided that they were a bit too chewy and strong-tasting to eat on their own, even with a splash of fruity fig vinegar. Though we were definitely not crazy about them, we're committed to using every molecule of our precious (and not inexpensive) CSA produce, so tossing them was out of the question.

We remembered that greens go well with white beans, so we cooked a pound of Great Northerns with plenty of crushed garlic and sage. When the beans were done, we removed most of the cooking liquid (saving it for soup) and added the mystery greens (cut in smaller strips to mitigate the bitterness), a can of fire-roasted tomatoes, four crumbled veggie sausages, a drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

(Though we cooked our beans from scratch, you could use a few cans of rinsed white beans for a nice fast meal.)

Our impromptu stew was wonderful; the bitter greens played well with the mild beans and salty sausage. But any kind of greens would do—chard, kale, collards—and roasted red peppers would have made an excellent substitute for the tomatoes. Plain diced tomatoes or halved grape tomatoes also would have worked. Chunks of Italian sausage (or Tofurky!) would have been delicious.

The lesson: Don't give up on something you've cooked, no matter how much it has disappointed you—chances are that with a little tweaking, it can be part of another dish that you'll like much better.

If you opt for a cold salad, remove all of the bean cooking liquid and add a little more olive oil.

Bloody Mary Salad Dressing: Apéritif without the Alcohol

2011-06-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

You never know where you are going to get inspiration for a recipe you love. On our recent visit to South Dakota — not typically a land of culinary distinction — we found two recipes we now love.

One was the result of a visit to a Vietnamese-run, Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant in Rapid City where the chef-owner showed us how she made the delicious sautéed tofu (recipe to come) we enjoyed.

The other was the Bloody Mary dressing served on our green salad at Jake's in historic Deadwood. Jake's is right on main street but is hard to find because the sign is small — but the reward is huge. We had a great meal. And, if this sort of thing helps you go there, it is owned by Kevin Costner, who fell in love with Deadwood while filming "Dances With Wolves."

Our green salad was bathed lightly in a Bloody Mary dressing that awakened our taste buds.
With a little experience making Bloody Mary's, a little imagination and some vague help from the waiter, we've reconstructed the dressing:

Bloody Mary Salad Dressing

4 Tablespoons juice from a can of diced or whole tomatoes
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon red wine or sherry vinegar
2 teaspoons horseradish
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons tomato paste
pinch celery salt
Salt and pepper, to taste

Shake the above ingredients in a small jar or container.
In a bowl, mix greens with a little feta (optional) and halved cherry tomatoes (optional), then dress with some of the Bloody Mary dressing.

And, of course, if you want some alcohol with your salad, this dressing goes nicely with a Sauvignon Blanc or a crisp Chardonnay.

Refrigerate the leftover dressing and use again the next day or within a week.

A Box of Great Meals

2011-06-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Last night we managed to polish off our first half-share box from our CSA. Here's how we did it:

Asparagus Risotto

Crispy Noodle Cake with Kale and Mushrooms (we included our single CSA garlic scape, minced)

Grilled Spring Onions

Green Salad with Bloody Mary Dressing

Strawberries for breakfast

As we move into the summer, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to finish a boxful of vegetables and fruit in a week, but we promise to give it our best shot.

Food Store Shopping Binge Receipt: $65 and More Veggies Than You Can Carry

2011-06-06T04:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the receipt from a recent trip to the store where we buy our produce. The booty was almost too much to carry, but it will feed us for some time.

The store's produce is typically inexpensive (if they can do it, why can't the big supermarkets?). Some items are not cheap: apples $2.79/lb.; grape tomatoes $2/pint. But broccoli crown was $1; cilantro $.50; strawberries $1/1.5 pint; limes $1/7.

Broccoli "Rice" Side Dish

2011-06-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Broccoli has its detractors, but we've always liked this year-round vegetable. The worst we could say — and we often did — was that it is BOH-ring.

Broccoli crowns were ridiculously cheap the other day at our local market, so we loaded up with a couple, and then checked our ever-growing shelf of cookbooks for a different way to love its green goodness. We ran across something called Broccoli "Rice," which wasn't rice at all.

The broccoli is minced into small pieces the size of a grain of rice, and the preparation gives broccoli a very fresh taste and creative presentation. It makes this winter vegetable into a summer surprise. And who would have ever thought of putting mint in a broccoli side dish? Brilliant.

The recipe is the brainchild of Eric Gower, author of "The Breakaway Cook." Serve this side next to any meat or protein, or under it as we did last night, as shown in the photo above.

Broccoli "Rice"

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, minced
Kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepper
1 medium head of broccoli, minced to rice size

Dressing
2 Tablespoons Greek or plain yogurt
1 Tablespoon citrus juice (we used lime)
2 Tablespoons minced fresh mint

Melt the butter and olive oil in a large pan or wok over medium heat.
Add the onion and salt and pepper liberally.
Cook, stirring once in a while, until softened but not browned.
Add the broccoli and continue to cook for about 10 minutes, until the vegetable is cooked through.
While it's cooking, blend the dressing ingredients, and add to the broccoli when it is done. Cook for another couple of minutes to blend flavors. Test for seasoning.

Serve under meat, fish or tofu and with a fresh, crisp white such as sauvignon blanc, viognier, or light chardonnay.

We served it with scallion-coated tofu and grilled spring onions from the CSA box.

Asparagus Risotto: Using the CSA Box Veggies

2011-06-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of the weekend one day after our first CSA box of veggies, we decided to open a swell bottle of Zinfandel and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and make something delicious with our first bounty of the season.

We decided to alter one of our favorite risotto recipes to take advantage of what we had. Instead of the green beans the recipe called for, we subbed in our large bunch of asparagus, which we steamed lightly to soften it up and cook it just a bit. Then we cut it into 3/4-inch pieces, saving the cute tops for garnish.

People avoid risotto because it requires more or less constant attention for 20 minutes, but it's really pretty easy. And we've never made a risotto that we didn't love.

The Recipe is from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. It's actually pretty low-fat and healthy.

1 Tablespoon olive oil
5 cups broth
1.5 cups arborio rice
1 bunch asparagus, lightly steamed and cut into 3/4-inch pieces
1 small onion
1 tomato diced
1/3 cup grated parmesan
1/3 cup pesto (optional), either basil- or cilantro-based
salt

Start with a Tablespoon of Olive Oil in a large saucepan or dutch oven on medium high. Add a chopped small onion until it softens (not browned). Add a cup and a half of rinsed arborio rice and stir it to coat the rice with the oil.

While you're getting ready to cook, heat 5 cups of broth (chicken or veggie stock will do) to a simmer in another saucepan.

After the rice is coated, add a cup of the hot broth and stir until all of the liquid is pretty much gone. Add another cup and stir until almost gone. Add a third cup and stir. When the broth from the third cup is almost gone, add the asparagus, which has been steamed and cut.

Add the last two cups of stock, one at a time, or even half a cup at a time, stirring to absorb the liquid each time. This slow cooking will cook the rice. Test to see that the rice is tender but still a bit al dente. Add salt to taste.

Add the tomato, parmesan and optional pesto. For pesto we used our fave cilantro pesto because we had some on hand, and it added a marvelous tang. (The original recipe calls for 12 cup parmesan, but we lowered the amount to 1/3 cups and it was great.)

We served it with steamed swiss chard with a splash of fig-infused vinegar. The sharp chard was a nice balance to the almost sweet and tangy risotto. They tasted great with both the red Zinfandel and the white Sauvignon Blanc.

New CSA Season: A Box of Veggies a Week Through the Summer and Fall

2011-06-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

We finally found a local farm that sponsors a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program — after two years of being without the basket of local goodness.

The CSA farm is in a town fairly far away (considering the horrendous traffic), but has a pickup arrangement with a local farmers market where we can pick up our box.

The first week's box is always small and predictable, but we consider it a warmup for the mid- and late-summer boxes that are a challenge to eat in one week. In fact that's the biggest CSA hurdle: eating everything you are given.

This week the box contained a large head of red leaf lettuce, a small basil seedling for planting, a bundle of asparagus, a box of strawberries, a bunch of kale and several spring onions. All grown locally and tasting great because they are fresh picked.

Interpretation Needed for Plum Chicken Sculpture

2011-05-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

We saw this "sculpture" in a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant the other day and quickly decided that we were unable to interpret it.

The saying underneath, "Plum Chicken ... More Than a State of Mind" is probably simple enough: The Plum Chicken on the menu is so wonderful that it will take your taste buds and your brain to places they've never been. Or something along those lines.

But then the sculpture above the words left us wondering. A flying rubber chicken tied with string to the finger of a hand — all encased in a wire screen dome.

Hmmmmmm?

If any of you can offer an explanation, please add a comment.

Try These Wines, But Don't Whine

2011-05-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

As every semi-serious wine drinker knows, the place where the grapes are grown has more to do with the quality of the wine than probably anything else — even the grapes. That's why Napa, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Sonoma, Mendoza and Rhone wines are famous.

Part of the place is the land itself, and in a way the tougher the dirt, the better the wine. No pain, no gain. The vines suffer for great wine. The other part of terroir — the place — is the weather. To oversimplify, hot days and cool nights make great wine.

But every place seems to have some local winemaking these days. So, it was not a total surprise on our recent visit to the Black Hills of South Dakota that we found some local wineries. (Our friend Sandy included an Eastern South Dakota wine, Schade, in her post on how to host a wine tasting.)

Finding wineries in the Black Hills is even less surprising when you realize that tourism — think Deadwood, Custer, Mount Rushmore, Indians, gold mines, Dances with Wolves, Crazy Horse, snow skiing and Reptile Gardens — is the lifeblood of the Hills.

But if this land will ever become a great grape-growing region, it will take some more time. The results tend to be sweet and sharp. On the other hand, put two aging Baby Boomers in a car on a long road trip and you can count on many of them pulling into a wine-tasting room with some regularity.

Our first winery billboard outside Hill City, SD, and only a few miles from Mount Rushmore, alerted us to the Stone Faces winery on US Highway 385. Across the road and not far north was the Prairie Berry Winery. Prairie Berry's signature wine is Red Ass Rhubarb.

Prairie Berry is one of 15 wineries in the Black Hills, all producing a total of 300,000 bottles of wine a year. Prairie Berry specializes in fruit and honey wine. The Prairie Berry parking lot was full, and much busier than Stone Faces', because in the land of tourists, a gimmick is worth a pan of gold.

Omelet in a Bag: Great for Large Groups

2011-05-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

Depending on how seriously you take your omelet-making, it is either fairly easy or really difficult. But there's one thing about omelets that is always difficult: making them for a lot of people so that everyone can eat at the same time.

On our recent trip to a wedding in South Dakota, all of the family members of the bride and groom were invited to breakfast the following morning at the couple's newly expanded house. On the menu? Omelet-in-a-bag.

Some were skeptical, but we were all game, because it meant that no chef had to stand over a hot burner and we could all sit down to eat at one time — all 12 of us. And every omelet is unique and made-to-order.

It starts with a one-quart freezer bag, like a Zip-Loc. (They have to be freezer bags; the lighter sandwich bags won't hold up.) Break two or three eggs into the bag and squish them around until the yolks and whites are mixed. Then have a table full of omelet ingredients such as chopped mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers and onions — along with shredded cheese and cooked ground sausage and chopped ham.

Each diner selects the specific ingredients and exact amounts of what they want in their omelet. Merely throw it in the bag for the omelet of your choice.

Next comes a pot or two of boiling water. The pot should be big, like a stock pot, and the water should be boiling rapidly. You just drop in the bags and wait a short while for breakfast to be served.

Here's the part you have to remember: No more than six bags in each pot at a time; and leave them in the boiling water for 13 minutes. When the timer alerts you, pull each one out with a long set of tongs — or use your fingers if you have construction hands.

(One of our bags opened up during the cooking, but the omelet stayed inside and was perfectly delicious.)

We rolled the omelets out of the bag onto a plate, where they looked almost as good as any we would have made in a skillet. Then we each added salsa and fruit to our plates and gathered around the table at the same time for a fine post-wedding breakfast.

Is It Cheaper to Be a Meat Eater or a Vegetarian?

2011-05-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

We think it's probably cheaper to be a vegetarian—depending, of course, on what and where you eat. This site lays out one scenario and concludes that vegans eat most cheaply, but this post raises valid questions about how they calculated it. In any case, it's worth checking out and thinking about.

EWEC Named One of Best Cheap-Eats Blogs!

2011-05-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to report that Eat Well, Eat Cheap has been named one of the 50 Best Cheap Eats Blogs by the Culinary Arts Degree website. Their list includes a lot of great-sounding blogs we didn't know, so we'll have fun exploring them, and maybe picking up some good ideas!

Bargain Wine of the Week: Evodia 2009 Old Vines Garnacha

2011-05-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

If you see the label pictured next to this write-up, buy it. In fact, buy several. Spanish red wines are a great bargain, and this one stands out. We could not believe we were drinking a $9 bottle of wine. It tasted like $20 easily, and that's not bad for a freshly bottled 2009 vintage.

The International Wine Cellar (we're not sure what that is, to be perfectly honest) gave this wine a 90, so it was on that basis and the cost that we bought four bottles. We wished we had bought a case.

IWC called this wine "sexy" and we agree. This has the taste of berries without being jammy, so it's a great food wine. Deep color, great finish in your mouth, and the aroma of preserves and flowers.

We wish we could find more, but every place we look, it's sold out. If you find any, let us know. We always write about bargains. This one is in the top 5 percent of values.

Buying in Bulk

2011-05-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

As you know, we're devoted Costco shoppers, to the point that we can't imagine anyone not being a Costco shopper. But often people will say to us, "There are only two of us, so it doesn't make sense to buy in bulk." That's probably true for things like gallons of milk and crates of mangoes, but some things last nearly forever, so why not buy them in bulk, provided you have the storage space? Not only do you save money, but you have a ready supply of cooking ingredients.

Rice falls into this category; we buy it by the 20-pound bag. Also, cinnamon, which we use for granola and muffins; Costco sells an 11-ounce jar that lasts a good long while. Ditto for peppercorns and canned tomatoes.

And capers. Now, to some people, it may seem ridiculous to buy capers by the quart; they only use them a tablespoon at a time, and not all that often. And we don't use capers all that often—say, a few tablespoons a month. But it's great to know that they are always there when we need them, pickled in brine, waiting to be turned into sauces and tapenade.

A while back, after emptying a quart jar of capers that we'd owned for years, we bought an eight-ounce jar that seemed to disappear overnight. That just seemed wrong, so we went back to Costco and bought another megajar of capers. Now we're set
. . .

Light Cilantro Pesto

2011-05-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

We cooked adzuki beans for the first time the other day, with no idea what we would do with them. They look like small red beans and have a flavor partway between a red and a black bean. Anyway, we ended up with about four cups of them, so we decided to eat some of them last night for dinner . . . but how?

We could have thrown them into a soup, paired them with rice and salsa, or used them as part of a salad. But in the spirit of trying new things, we turned to our beloved Mark Bittman's cookbook How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. His recipe for Bean Croquettes caught our eye, partly because he promised it was fast and easy. (We realize that "bean croquettes" sounds like something served in a bad hippie café, but we always trust Mark Bittman.)

Spiked with onion, barbecue sauce, and chipotle, the croquettes tasted great, but Bittman suggested pairing them with a light cilantro pesto. Because he provided the pesto recipe and because we had a bunch of cilantro and because we were still savoring the spirit of adventure, we tried it. It was wonderful—light as promised, with a shot of lime, it provided a tangy contrast that elevated the adzuki croquettes to another level.

Often we buy a bunch of cilantro, use a couple of tablespoons, and lose the rest—it's pretty perishable stuff. This sauce is a good, easy way to use it up and grab yourself some quick, easy flavor while you're at it.

Light Cilantro Pesto

1 bunch cilantro, washed but not stemmed
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 T. peanut oil
1/4 t. salt (you might want more, but start with this)
about 3/4 T. lime juice (again, you might want more)

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor, whir until combined.

This would be excellent on grilled vegetables or fish.

Cinco de Mayo Feast

2011-05-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

If you are scratching your head for something to make in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, We've got a few suggestions. Viva la Mexico!

(By the way, May 5 is not Mexican Independence Day. It was the day an outnumbered Mexican army defeated a double-sized French army, and it came 40 years after the revolution.)

For hors d'oeuvres, make your own chips and salsa. Make the Baked Tortilla Chips from those partial packages of corn tortillas that are languishing in your fridge. And no salsa is more fresh tasting than the kind you make yourself. We suggest Chuck's Surprising Salsa. Also consider a meatier appetizer, Fried Cheese or Queso Fresco.

For a pre-entre warmup, make some Red Mole Black Bean Soup, or if you're loose enough to consider celebrating New Mexico on Cinco de Mayo, make one of our favorite soups, New Mexico Green Chile.

If you are feeding an army, as the Mexican government was doing on the original Cinco de Mayo, try RoAnn's Chicken Enchiladas, Mexican Rice and Beans, or Salsa Casserole.

If it's more an intimate dinner you're preparing, you can't beat our own Fish in Adobo Sauce, modeled on a great dish Tim had in Mexico.

If you want to play really loose with the history, stretch Cinco de Mayo all the way to Argentina and make Chimichurri, a hearty crowd-pleaser.

And with all of the above, it wouldn't be Cinco de Mayo without Cornbread and your favorite beer. You know that we lean toward wine here at Eat Well, Eat Cheap, but we haven't found a Mexican wine that we can recommend. In Mexico, most of the restaurants serve wine wine from Chile, which we recommend often here. But for our money, with the spicy cuisine of Mexico, you can't beat a great white Sauvignon Blanc or, if you prefer red, a snappy Zinfandel.

Happy Cinco de Mayo from the Mexican food fans at Eat Well, Eat Cheap.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Emiliana Eco Balance Carmenere 2009

2011-05-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

We've often said that we've never had a bad wine from the Colchagua Valley of Chile. It might be luck, but we think this little valley that produces relatively little wine is always a winner for our Eat Well, Eat Cheap bargain-wine palates.

And we've said once or twice that the long-forgotten, historically significant, little known Carmenere grape produces great wine that others have called "Cabernet Sauvignon in silk pajamas." Sounds good, right?

We hit the jackpot the other day when one of our regular wine eLetters offered Emiliana Vineyard's Eco Balance Carmenere 2009 for $8.99. Two extra bonuses: the price and the fact that if not totally organic, the grapes are farmed with environmentally friendly, integrated-vineyard management practices.

When Ruth served her bridge-playing neighbors this wine the other night, they raved. It's a pretty tight little wine for a $9 bottle. Strawberry smells waft out of the glass. Smokey flavors from the oak barrels land on the tongue, and the velvety tannins of the Carmenere grapes cut the dry edge that gets in the way when you're drinking wine with light hors d'oeuvres.

If you've never tried a Carmenere from Chile, especially one from the Colchagua Valley, pick one up at your wine store. You might discover a new favorite.

Broccoli Pesto: Low-Fat, Vegan, Extremely Tasty

2011-04-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

We love pesto. On pasta, or on pizza. However, there are two potential problems with it. 1. Basil is not available most of the year. 2. If you're watching your cholesterol, the wonderful parmesan edge in traditional pesto is no-no if consumed too often.

We came across this broccoli pesto recipe in a Vegetarian Times eLetter the other day and altered it just a bit. We expected blah pesto and were more than pleasantly surprised by how good it was. The bonus is that it's also vegan, meaning no dairy, and low-fat — without tasting like it's food penance.

Broccoli Pesto on Pasta
3/4 cup toasted walnuts (toast them in a hot skillet, flipping almost constantly so they don't burn). Save a few for garnish.
(The VegTimes recipe calls for blanched hazelnuts, but we didn't have any on hand.)
2 cups broccoli florets (1 small bunch was about right)
1-1/2 cup loosely packed parsley leaves (we chopped the stems off a supermarket bunch)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup mint leaves (fresh from our yard because you can't kill this plant)
4 tsp lemon juice (1 juicy lemon or 1-1/2 regular lemons)
1-1/2 tsp grated lemon zest (about 1 lemon's worth)
1-1/2 tsp capers (VT says rinsed and drained and optional, but we threw them in from the jar)
3 large garlic cloves (VT said 5, but 3 was about right for us; 5 for real garlic LOVERS)
1 tsp salt
1 lb bowtie or ziti or other pasta (VT called for 12 oz. but we found 1 lb just right)

1. Toast the nuts 3-5 miutes in a skillet or until golden brown. Chop very coarsely and set aside.
2. Boil a large pot of water. Blanch/cook broccoli in boiling water until tender, maybe 3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon, rinse with cold water, set aside.
3. In a food processor, pulse nuts, broccoli, parsley, oil, mint, lemon juice, lemon zest, capers, garlic and salt. Use a little cooking water if too thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Cook pasta. Reserve cooking water.
5. Toss pasta with pesto. Add small amounts (1/4 cup at a time) of cooking water if too thick. (It should be thick, but it should coat the pasta.) Garnish with a few nuts. Drizzle with a little olive oil.

6. Open a bottle of crisp, rich white wine or a red Zinfandel — something that can stand up to garlicky, rich, strong green sauce — and enjoy as a main dish or as a filling side.

Mango "Hollandaise" Sauce

2011-04-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Asparagus is plentiful right now, and although we love this beautiful vegetable roasted, steamed, stir-fried, or merely barely blanched, sometimes we want a little bit . . . more. So the other day we experimented with a low-fat substitute for Hollandaise sauce, and in our opinion, we got it just right on the first try (very rare!).

This sauce, which tastes surprisingly mustardy despite its lack of mustard, worked great on steamed asparagus and as a light salad dressing; there are doubtless many other ways to use it. With only two tablespoons of olive oil, it's delivers maximum flavor for minimal fat.

Mango Sauce

1 small mango (the Champagne variety would be perfect; you could also use half of a big mango or simply double the other ingredients and use the whole big thing)
1 small shallot (either a small Asian shallot or one section of the bigger American variety)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T. olive oil
Pinch salt
Grinding of black pepper

Place all of the ingredients in a blender and whiz until smooth and emulsified. Then use liberally on whatever you like.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Muscadet

2011-04-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

There are certain bargain wine categories that rarely strike out. Aussie Shiraz. Spanish wines, especially Rioja. Chilean Carmenere, especially from the Colchagua Valley. On the other hand, it is hard to find good bargain white wines. And bargain wines from France of any color are as rare as a corkscrew in a dive bar.

Here are two that never seem to miss and they're both from the Loire Valley: Muscadet and Sancerre. The Loire River is in west-central France. It is less well known than Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone. But it is relatively inexpensive and it mostly bottles white wines.

Sancerre, which is made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, is at the inland end of the Loire Valley. Pouilly Fumé is the other appellation that uses Sauvignon Blanc grapes and it is immediately across the river from the town and appellation of Sancerre. Lots of grapefruit and citrus flavors matched by acidity. They are very crisp and delicious white wines — slightly weightier than Muscadets. We buy Sancerre moderately often, but it tends to cost a bit more than Eat Well, Eat Cheap's $10 wine limit.

At the Atlantic Ocean end of the Loire Valley is the town of Nantes, home to the Muscadet appellation. Muscadet is so crisp, it is close to sparkling wine. Muscadet is made from the unknown Melon de Bourgogne grape, which is rarely grown anywhere but in the Muscadet appellation.

When we recently bought a case of wine at EmpireWine.com, we found a Muscadet for $8.95 that Robert Parker had rated 91. You don't see that combination often. It was a bottle of Domain du Haut Bourg 2009 Muscadet Cote de Grandlieu Sur Lie. The Sur Lie is a way of getting more flavor out of white grapes by leaving the wine after fermentation "on the lees," which includes sediment, grape seeds, yeast cells, pulp and stem and skin fragments.

The wine smells of lime, herbs, shrimp and the sea near its vineyards. It is a remarkable value and a great food wine as well as a good porch wine.

Three Ways to Use Stale Pita Bread

2011-04-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

The other day we were standing before our open freezer, lamenting the fact that we couldn't squeeze any more food in. Clearly, it was time to use up some of our frozen reserves. So we pulled out the leftover package of whole-wheat pitas from the top shelf, only to spot another partial package of pitas behind it . . . and another one behind that. Standing there laden with icy bags, we were forced to admit the uncomfortable truth: we are pita hoarders.

Fortunately, it's easy to use up leftover pita bread. Here are three good ways, all of which we are employing this week.

1. Pita Chips. We based this extremely flexible version on a recipe by Ellie Krieger. Whereas Ellie uses cumin and coriander, we had a hankering for garlic and smoked paprika. Any combination of spices and oil would work.

Spiced Pita Chips

3 big whole-wheat pitas, torn into chip-sized pieces and separated so there are no double thicknesses
2 T. olive oil
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. smoked paprika
1/2 t. crunchy sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the pita pieces in a good-size bowl. Mix the oil with spices and salt, then pour over the pita pieces, taking care to cover them as evenly as possible.

3. Spread the chips on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, tossing them around midway for even cooking.

2. Pita Croutons. We've written about these before. Like the chips, they can be coated with any spice or no spices at all. Like croutons, they add crunch and interest to a green salad.

3. Pita Toast. Chances are, your leftover pita bread is too tough to stuff with hummus or other sandwich makings. But you can still use it as bread, provided that you don't try to open it up. Cut a pita in half, run it through the toaster, and use the two halves as you would use two slices of regular bread. Or you could dip the crunchy pieces into hummus, tabbouli, or tuna salad.

Leftover stale pita bread may present even more opportunities than its fresh equivalent.

Bargain Wines of the Week: Flipflop Riesling and Pinot Grigio

2011-04-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

Over the years we've developed a fondness for what we call "porch wines"—unpretentious yet tasty whites that have just enough zip and fruit to pair well with hot weather, appetizers, and a screen porch. A good porch wine should dance on the tongue and spare the wallet, so friends can enjoy a few bottles without feeling wasteful.

We've recently discovered a West Coast winery named Flipflop that sells a range of reds and whites for only $7 a bottle. These days, that's a gimmick we can get behind—especially when the wines are this good. After trying Flipflop's 2010 California Pinot Grigio and 2009 Washington Riesling, we can enthusiastically say that these are extraordinary porch wines, especially at this price.

We tried both bottles with a group of friends, to get multiple opinions. Everyone agreed: the Pinot Grigio is very good, much richer than the average Pinot Grigio—closer to a Sauvignon Blanc, in fact; and the deep, fruity Riesling is a knockout. For $7 you cannot go wrong with either bottle. Even if you aren't personally a fan of porch wine, we're pretty sure that once the temperature is climbing and the weekend is at hand, your friends will love these.

Apologies

2011-04-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

We're sorry for the long dry spell in blog posts, but unavoidable family business took us out of town. We'll get back on track next week, we promise. In the meantime, here's a wonderful post on Salon about budget grocery shopping. It particularly resonated because after we got home this week, exhausted and sad, we had to scrounge around for dinner and came up with chorizo (well, soy chorizo) tacos.

How to Save Money on Vacation Meals

2011-03-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we decided, quite on the spur of the moment, to take a four-night trip to Cancún. We've been there many times before and knew that we'd have an excellent mini-vacation, which for us means one thing: lounging on a beach, books in hand.

We got a great deal on the trip, but we knew from experience that our great deal would quickly be spoiled by hotel gouging if we ate breakfast and lunch at the place we were staying. As it happened, our hotel sat on a fairly undeveloped (for Cancún) stretch of land, with few nearby restaurants or grocery stores. But over the years we've learned how to avoid forking out for hotel food.

On our first evening in Cancún, we rode a bus into town and loaded up at our favorite supermarket. For US$19 (roughly the cost of a single trip to a hotel buffet) we bought a quart of milk, a quart of yogurt, two bags of granola, a box of pistachios, two liters of water, three quarts of fruit juice, two beautiful mangoes, a bunch of small bananas, and half a papaya.

We'd packed plenty of Starbucks VIA, instant coffee granules that can be mixed with hot or cold water or milk. In the past we'd traveled with our own coffee machine (much to the amusement of less-coffee-obsessed friends), and although we were at first doubtful whether VIA would be able to match the taste of freshly brewed coffee, we had to admit that it is really good. And it saved us lots of packing and mess. Thank you, Starbucks!

So we were well set for breakfast. While our fellow tourists trooped down to the overpriced dining room, we laid around in our underwear, reading, eating luscious fruit, and enjoying the sunrise on the ocean.

For lunch, we visited a taco joint across the street. But we easily could have eaten in our room: sandwiches, improvised tortilla wraps, fruit and veggies. Our friend Paul Spring has an even more ingenious solution: He searches out a nice piece of fish and marinates it in lime juice and tomato for his own ceviche.

To eat in your hotel room, you need a few helpful items:

* Sharp knife (checked through with your bags and not carried onto the plane, obviously)
* Corkscrew (ditto)
* Unbreakable coffee mugs
* Forks and spoons
* Unbreakable plates or bowls
* Sugar, salt, and pepper
* Paper towels
* Collapsible cooler

We filled our cooler with ice twice a day, and our milk, yogurt, and fruit stayed fresh.

Although we began eating in our room years ago to save money, we now prefer it. It's great not to have to get dressed, go downstairs, and wait to eat; who wouldn't rather enjoy their breakfast sitting up in bed or on a beautiful balcony?

Bargain Wine of the Week: Larrikin 2006 Barossa Valley Shiraz

2011-03-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

There are certain consumer products that are bargains right now. Home repair contractors (because there isn't any work and every builder has turned to remodeling to keep the doors open). Clothing at department stores (because it's all made in Asian and nobody's buying much of anything). And wine.

Spain continues to be a stupendous bargain. You can buy good Spanish wines for $10, and great Spanish wines for $20. Chile has been a bargain wine location for many years — and its wines are getting better. And Australian wines can be a great deal, as well.

We found a Barossa Valley Shiraz online for $10 that was not rated, but frankly we're wondering why it was not noticed by someone. The Larrikin 2006 Barossa Valley Shiraz is incredibly well-balanced and full of black and blueberries, with some hints of chocolate and nutmeg. Barossa Valley wines are well thought of and can be expensive. But this one is not costly, and it is worth putting in the shopping cart if you run across it.

Crunchy Indian Salad

2011-03-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

First off, we have to acknowledge that this salad isn't for everyone. Some people (mystifyingly) just don't like Indian food, and others might have trouble finding some of the ingredients. But if you love Indian flavors, you'll be willing to track down what you need, either at an Indian grocery or online.

The good news is, this has only a handful of ingredients and can be whipped up in about ten minutes. It would be especially good on a hot summer night, either as part of a bigger meal or all by itself. With complete protein, it offers all you need nutritionally.

The chief ingredient is bhel mix, which is more or less an Indian version of Chex Mix, with puffed rice, chickpea-flour crunchies (known as "sev"), and assorted spices. Indian stores usually have a gigantic selection of these bagged mixes, in varying levels of hotness. We've had good luck with the Gujarat blend, which is not overly spicy but provides a nice warm buzz.

We first had this in a restaurant (listed on the menu as "Bhel Puri") and were able to duplicate it pretty successfully at home.

Crunchy Indian Salad*

2 1/2 cups bhel mix
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
1 hot chili pepper, minced
3 T. tamarind chutney (or more, depending on dryness of salad and how much you like this sour flavor)
Lime quarters

Mix all ingredients. If you're feeling fancy, you can mold it into a small bowl and upend on a plate before serving. Squirt each portion with lime juice before eating.

Serves two gluttons, or four people as an appetizer.

* Some recipes call for about a half a cup of mashed potato, and although we haven't tried this, we bet it's good.

Favorite Kitchen Utensils: Another Small Whisk

2011-03-09T08:34:00.000-08:00

We've written about our beloved mini-whisk, which we use almost every day. A few years ago you could walk into any dollar store and find one, but they seem to have disappeared—at least, we haven't seen them for a long time. As our present whisk is beginning to show its years of service, we've been worried about replacing it.

But the other day, browsing in the implements section of Crate & Barrel, we found this long-handled cocktail whisk: It's only slightly bigger than our present whisk, so it will do a good job of mixing salad dressings, egg yolks, dry baking ingredients, and everything else a mini-whisk can do. The long handle makes it even easier to use. Best of all, it was only five dollars! (Unfortunately, it's not on the Crate & Barrel website, but we see that Amazon sells them for half of what we paid.)

Relieved that we've found a replacement for our old little utensil, we can now look forward to years of happy whisking.

Quick Sauces for Fish

2011-03-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

From left to right, chipotle mayonnaise, teriyaki sauce and wasabi mayonnaise.

We mostly grill our fish — unless it is blizzarding outside. And we don't sauce it up too much, because good fish is, well, good fish, and you don't need to smother the taste.

When we grill, we usually just top it with a squeeze of lemon and a tiny bit of olive oil, which keeps it moist on the hot grill. See our earlier post about prepping fish for the grill.

But sometimes we want to add just a touch of taste, particularly when we have guests who might not see heaven in a piece of unadorned fish the way we do.

So here are three great sauces — or toppings — to serve with any fish, whether grilled, broiled or pan fried. Two are spicy and one is on the slightly sweet side.

Wasabi Mayonnaise. Wasabi mayonnaise is available at Trader Joes, but you can make it quickly and very inexpensively by merely adding wasabi powder or wasabi paste to mayonnaise. Wasabi is often available in the Asian aisle at supermarkets. We start with 3 Tablespoons of mayonnaise and add 3 teaspoons of wasabi. If you like it really hot, add more wasabi. But be careful. This is not tartar sauce. A little goes a long way, and so it accompanies the fish rather than masking it.

Chipotle Mayonnaise. For those who like a southwestern taste rather than an Asian flavor, chipotle mayonnaise is made by adding 3 teaspoons of the adobo sauce that comes in a can of chipotle peppers. If you want it really hot, add a chopped up pepper from the can, but only add a small one and be careful, because these canned peppers are really hot.

Teriyaki Sauce. Not everybody likes spicy food, even a little sauce on the side, so serve a little teriyaki sauce on the side for those who like just a hint of sweet. You can buy it in bottles at the supermarket, or you can make it at home. Mix 1/3 cup soy sauce, 1/3 cup Mirin or rice wine, 1/3 cup sake and 2-1/4 teaspoons of sugar. This makes a very liquidy sauce that you would use if you were to glaze the fish while it was on the grill, but it's not thick enough to serve as an accompanying sauce.

We add 2 teaspoons of arrowroot and heat it in a small pan on the stovetop. It will quickly thicken to a syrupy consistency.

Your guests are sure to love one of these little sauces with their fish.

Five Delicious Ways to Eat Tofu—No Joke

2011-02-26T06:10:00.000-08:00

We've been waiting for a good time to write this post because, let's face it, there are few quicker ways to turn people off than to mention tofu. The soft soybean curd become so thoroughly entwined in the popular mind with the worst kind of vegetarian cooking that some people say they could never give up meat because of all the resulting tofu.

We realize there are few things less appealing than flavorless white mush. We don't like that either. But we love tofu's nutritional value—it's low in fat and high in protein and iron—so we've found a number of delicious ways to add it to our diet.

Yesterday our beloved Giant Asian Market was selling a six-pound box of "restaurant tofu" (whatever that is) for $3.99. Only when we got home with our heavy box did we stop to look at the expiration date: March 4. So we're thinking about ways to use it up, and we figure now's as good a time as any to write our long-deferred tofu post.

Tofu does not have to be boring, and you don't have to be a vegetarian to eat it. Maybe you simply want to cut back on your meat and egg consumption—tofu can help you do that. Here are five good ways to use it.

1. Sautéed tofu. Many people are turned off by tofu's mushy texture, but if you sauté it, you end up with something closer to meat. Be sure to use extra-firm tofu, available in any supermarket. Cut it into one-and-a-half-inch cubes or quarter-inch slices, and sauté in a little olive oil or peanut oil (the latter if you're making an Asian-flavored meal). One tablespoon of oil is plenty for a package of tofu. Once the pieces are sizzling in the pan, dribble a little soy sauce on all sides, and pepper liberally. Let them fry until they're golden brown. You can eat them plain, but the fried cubes are great in a stir-fry.

2. "Ground" tofu. If you freeze tofu, then thaw it and squeeze out the water, it takes on a ground-meat texture that works well as a substitute for hamburger, turkey, or chicken—think tacos, shepherd's pie, or the Thai salad larb. And because tofu soaks up spices and flavorings better than meat, you'll get more bang for your protein buck. Yesterday we immediately froze half of our giant box of tofu, knowing that we'd never be able to eat six pounds before the expiration date.

3. Scrambled tofu. Want to cut back on your egg consumption? Mix tofu in with the egg mixture when you scramble it. Squeeze it in your hands before adding it to the pan for a more "scrambled" texture. Or you can eat scrambled tofu all by itself; we like it mixed with sautéed onions, garlic, and peppers.

4. Barbecued tofu. Again, extra-firm is key here. So's marinating. Slice the tofu into half-inch pieces—nothing too slim, or they'll slip through the grill!—and let them soak for a good hour (overnight would be even better) in a marinade of your choice. For an Asian marinade, you could mix soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, rice wine vinegar, and ginger; for a Mediterranean marinade, try olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper.

5. Smoothies. Add a chunk of tofu to the blender with your berries or banana to give your smoothie an easy protein boost and a creamy texture.

Try these recipes—you'll see that tofu doesn't have to be a joke. And if anybody else has good tofu ideas to share, please send them along!

The Secret to Good Thai Curry: A Good Recipe

2011-02-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

We've been making Thai coconut-milk curries for years, with mixed results. Sometimes they're too heavy and greasy, sometimes they're too spicy, sometimes they're too bland. Sometimes they're pretty good, but we've never stopped searching for a better recipe. We've scoured Thai cookbooks and the Internet. It never occurred to us to simply consult the curry paste jar.

Thai Kitchen curry paste is widely available in supermarkets—just check the Asian aisle. We use both the green and red varieties, bearing in mind that the green is much hotter. For most dishes, we prefer the red. Actually, we own many different brands and colors of curry paste, but we tend to reach for the Thai Kitchen most often, simply because the glass jar is easier to deal with than a can. Little did we know that the jar label offered the best curry sauce recipe we've found so far.

Here's the version we made:

Thai Red Curry

1 t. peanut oil
1 1/2 T. red curry paste (spice lovers may want to use more)
1 can coconut milk
2 T. fish sauce
1 T. brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 package fake-chicken strips*
1 red pepper, seeded and sliced into quarter-inch strips
1 handful sugar snap peas
6 ounces cooked wheat noodles**
Cilantro, basil, or both to garnish

1. In a good-size saucepan, heat the peanut oil, then fry the curry paste for a couple of minutes. Add the coconut milk and let the mixture simmer for about five minutes.

2. Add the fish sauce, sugar, and broth, and bring back to a simmer. Add your protein, red pepper, and snap peas, and let them cook for a few minutes.

3. Add the noodles and heat through.

4. Garnish with herbs and serve.

* Any protein would work well with this sauce, including real chicken, tofu, shrimp, or meat.

**Normally, we would serve the curry over rice, but we're once again trying to draw down our pantry stockpiles, so we used a package of curry-flavored noodles we bought a long time ago at Trader Joe. They were wonderful. Rice noodles would also be good.

Never Waste a Flavor: Don't Toss That Bean Cooking Water!

2011-02-19T16:05:00.000-08:00

Frankly, we debated whether to write this post, fearing that readers would find it pathologically frugal. But one undeniable fact proved the deciding factor: this cheapskate habit has given us many pots of delicious soup and stock. (Also, we come by our frugality rightfully: Ruth's late father left behind a box of batteries carefully labeled "not completely dead.")

As we've reported almost ad nauseum, we cook a lot of beans—black, white, pinto, chickpeas—and eat a lot of lentils. This results in a great deal of rich cooking liquid that we use to boost the flavor of soups and stews. Last week we made a pot of vegetable soup, adding a quart of frozen black-bean cooking liquid; the soup ended up with a velvety richness it would not otherwise have had. Lentil liquid would have been even more velvety.

If you find yourselves with a few cups of leftover bean or lentil cooking liquid, freeze it for later use; if you aren't cooking soup, add it to your homemade stock. You'll be glad that you made the effort.

TWO IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER: Although the cooking liquid from beans is wonderful, don't confuse it with the soaking liquid you use to soften the beans before you cook them. That liquid should be discarded and replaced with fresh water before cooking. If you don't, you'll end up with an indigestible bunch of beans and a nasty batch of cooking liquid.

Also, this tip should only be used with homemade beans. Don't use that slimy goo that comes with canned beans; although canned beans are great in a pinch, the liquid they come with is full of salt and God knows what else.

Food Label Lies

2011-02-17T06:19:00.000-08:00

Here at Eat Well, Eat Cheap we're all about eating healthy, so we're always on the lookout for helpful tips that make it easy to buy, cook and eat healthy food.

Bicycling magazine writes a lot about healthy eating. The advice is usually very good because avid bicyclists need a fair amount of food, but they try to eat well. Imagine going on a 100-mile bicycle ride after you've eaten a Quarter-Pounder, large fries and a Big Gulp. It's not pretty.

Bicycling suggests reading food labels to help with healthy eating. Today, it gives a quick overview of what to believe and what nine labels should be relegated to the Bullsheet.

Here's the Bullsheet:

BE WARY WHEN YOU SEE THE FOLLOWING WORDS ON FOOD LABELS—THEY HAVE EITHER NO LEGAL DEFINITION OR NO THIRD-PARTY VERIFICATION SYSTEM:

NATURAL
FREE-RANGE
CAGE-FREE
ANTIBIOTIC-FREE
CHEMICAL-FREE
HORMONE-FREE
RBGH-FREE
ECO-SAFE
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AND
GREEN.

Here is a link to the article about the five labels you can trust.

Bargain Wine of the Week: An All-Purpose Cheat Sheet

2011-02-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

Eat Well, Eat Cheap gives you all sorts of great wines for less than $10. But then you walk into your local wine store, and you can't find one of our recommendations for wine values at a bargain price. We've tried to give you some universal pointers on brands that are consistent enough to be reliable, but what's a person to do when faced with aisles of anonymous labels?

Wine Enthusiast magazine, arguably the most trusted wine magazine, has come to the rescue. In its new issue (March 2011) it published a reliable wine bargain cheat sheet for the wine store, supermarket or wine discount store.

Wine Enthusiast divided its bargain list first by country. Then it listed the labels that have proved to be the most reliable in its "Best Buy" listings over the years. After each label, it lists the specific regions and varietals that are the pick of the label's bottles — by varietal but not by year.

So, for example, for Chile, it lists eight wineries that consistently produce great bargains. Santa Rita, Concha y Toro, Casa Lapostolle and Los Vascos are among the eight. Under Casa Lapostolle, it lists the winery's Rapel Valley wines, and specifically its Rapel Cabernet Sauvignon and its Carmenére. The winery imports many more wines than those two, but Wine Enthusiast says that those are the two that are consistently good and consistently bargains.

For American wines, it offers separate categories for California, Washington and Oregon.

The magazine offers this invaluable "Cheat Sheet" as a three-page pdf for download, so that you can take it to the store the next time you shop for wine. You might want to leave it in the car for those times when you pop into an unknown and untried store (or even for restaurant wine lists).

Why Go Out for Your Valentine's Dinner?

2011-02-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

The weather's still cold in most places, and restaurant (not to mention gasoline) prices are high—why not take a fraction of what you'd spend on a fancy dinner out and treat your Valentine to a home-cooked meal? This menu relies on inexpensive ingredients and simple preparations that leave you plenty of time to spend with your loved one. Who knows, maybe your loved one will be grateful enough to do the dishes . . .

First course (main course for vegetarians): Pasta with Silky Squash Sauce

Main course: Easy Peasy Roast Chicken

Vegetable dish: Tian with Winter Vegetables

Dessert: Pavlova

Wine: See our previous post

And for those of you who don't have a Valentine this year—who, in fact, have had it uptohere with all the red hearts and doilies and saccharine commercial crap—why not make yourselves a good dinner? Why not set a nice table, turn on your favorite music, pour yourself a delicious glass of something, and toast your own fine company (and your own good sense in not having settled for a jerk)?

Bargain Wine of the Week: Valentine Values

2011-02-09T18:00:00.000-08:00

So, you're entertaining your sweetie on Valentine's Day. What appropriate wine to serve? Something tasty, low-cost, and with a hint of romance. Here are three that we suggest.

A white wine to go with seafood, or with a pre-dinner salad, or with dessert, or just for sipping and kissing? How about a nice wine for your cupcake?

The Cupcake Vineyards 2010 Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region of New Zealand is a winner, because it is a wine of conviction. That is, it celebrates the uniqueness of its region and the taste it imparts to sauvignon blanc grapes.

We found this wine at Costco for $7.89. It has strong hints of Meyer lemons and Key limes, but it is not sweet. It's perfect for shrimp or pasta with cream sauce and yet will hang in there with your not-too-sweet dessert. (BTW, it's won a bunch of awards. Not bad for less than $8 for your little cupcake.)

Now Valentine's Day is associated with red: red hearts, red pajamas, red sweets. Here's a solid, all-purpose red wine: Ménage a Trois 2009 California Red Wine. Now maybe a name like this will scare the faint of heart, but this wine will win over your partner or partners, no matter how many you have.

As the label says, "surrender to the seduction of dark, rich berry with a hint of pepper, a lush, lingering finish leaving you wishing for more..." Does that not make you think of love?

This wine was also only $7.89 at Costco. A real bargain for the hearty side of Valentine's Day. "Three saucy grapes make up the blend," the winery says. "Zinfandel adds a juicy character. Merlot mellows and Cabernet adds backbone. Forward, spicy and soft, this delicious dalliance makes the perfect trio."

Our third wine is from the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County, California. It's also a spicy red with a hint of romance: Sin Zin Zinfandel. You might have trouble finding it for less than $10, but you shouldn't have trouble finding it for about $12. It's got spice and pepper and will stand up to any food or any rough treatment you might suggest.

Easy, Low-Fat Mustard Sauce Tastes Good on Everything

2011-02-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

Just as we feared, yesterday's appointment with the doctor brought unwelcome news about our cholesterol. Even though we tried to blame the insanely rich egg nog we stupidly but delightedly drank just before our bloodwork, he didn't buy the excuse and ordered us to clean up our dietary act in the next three months, or else.

So we got home and leafed through our vegan cookbooks. Our experience with vegan recipes has been mixed—some are great, some are OK, and some taste strictly like penance—but Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's Veganomicon has been pretty reliable. Isa and Terry understand that new vegans walk a tough road, so they load up on flavor and encouragement (also, they're a lot of fun to read). Their recipe for mustard sauce caught our eye, partly because it used only one tablespoon of fat: a single dollop of olive oil.

Could it possibly be as good as they said? We hauled out the ingredients and whipped it up in a matter of minutes, and we had to agree: this sauce is amazing. Packed with mustard and lemon flavor, it would be great on anything from roasted vegetables to pork loin to fried tofu. (We ate it over sautéed seitan and wild rice, and meat-eating Tim thought it was great, possibly because it disguised the seitan.)

Here's the recipe:

Mustard Sauce

2 T. cornstarch (we used arrowroot)

3/4 c. vegetable broth

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 t. dried thyme

1 T. olive oil

1/2 c. sherry (we used sake)

1 T. soy sauce

1/4 cup whole-grain Dijon mustard (we used regular)

1 T. lemon juice

2 T. capers (with brine)

1. Mix the cornstarch with the broth and set aside.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, sauté the garlic and thyme in the olive oil for about a minute.

3. Add the wine and soy sauce, and raise the heat to high. Once the mixture is boiling, lower the heat to medium and simmer to reduce, about four minutes.

4. Add the vegetable broth mixture, mustard, lemon juice, and capers, and whisk. When the sauce is bubbling, lower the heat and simmer for about three minutes. The sauce should be on the thick side.

Let cool a bit before serving; this sauce tastes great just above room temperature.

Five Easy Super Bowl Snacks

2011-02-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's Super Bowl time once again, which means newspaper food sections are scratching their heads trying to come up with new ideas. Well, some are; others, like the Washington Post, are throwing in the creative towel: today the Post seriously compares the nutritional value of Doritos and Utz cheese balls.

But it's possible to have a fun Super Bowl without spending a fortune or loading up on junk. Here are five snacks that can be easily and inexpensively made at home:

1. Fried cheese. Both of these recipes can be made in minutes and will deliver more flavor than a whole tub of Utz cheese balls.

2. Spiced nuts. We talk about these a lot because they are so easy and fast to make, and cheap if you buy nuts in quantities at places like Costco. Here are two good recipes.

3. Sunflower snappers. Easy, fast, delicious, and because you make them yourself, you control the salt.

4. Tapenade. You can spread this pungent olive paste on toast, scoop it up with vegetables, or add it to a salad dressing. Loads of flavor and little fat.

5. Kale chips. We're still getting grief over our many kale-chip recipes of a few summers ago. But kale is abundant in the winter, and these chips make a fine accompaniment to fried cheese. Don't knock them until you've tried them!

Now, what to drink? A Riesling would work well with salty snacks; look for Jacob's Creek Reserve Riesling, which can still be found for less than $10. And for a good red, you can't go wrong with the 2008 Red Diamond Merlot we discovered at last weekend's wine tasting. You can find it at Safeway and Trader Joe's, among other stores.

A Saturday Wine Tasting Party

2011-02-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

Note: On Saturday night we went to a wine tasting party held by our friends Chuck and Sandy. They're enthusiastic and curious about wine, but they are by no means snobs. This is why their wine tastings are fun. They gather about ten friends; set out a few disguised bottles and some delicious, absorbent snacks; pass out ratings sheets and pens; and let everybody decide what they like best. Part of the fun, for us, is watching people who are initially shy about their wine-tasting abilities develop confidence in their own palates—before long, everybody's tossing out opinions and asking for second tastes. There's no right or wrong about wines; there's only what you like. A wine tasting party lets you and your friends decide what tastes best to you.

Here are Sandy's tips for hosting a party:

All you need to host a successful wine tasting party is a couple bottles of wine and friends game to sip and learn. The impetus for our most recent wine tasting was the acquisition of an intriguing red from an unlikely source: a little winery in South Dakota making wines from hybrids of grapes native to northern climes.

Since Frontenac, St Croix and Valiant grapes are not widely crushed, we decided the likeliest matchup for our Dakota Red was Merlot, typically a soft medium-bodied red. The four contestants were:

1. Dakota Red NV, Schade Vineyard & Winery, Volga, SD, $10.

2. J. Lohr Paso Robles 2007, chosen because Jerry Lohr grew up in South Dakota before making his wine fortune in CA, $17.

3. Red Diamond Merlot 2008, Washington State, $10.

4. Stonehedge Napa Valley 2007, $12.

We invited friends to a blind horizontal tasting, which means the bottles were disguised in brown paper bags and we judged each Merlot on its merits. (A vertical tasting is similar to what you get at a winery, starting with whites and working your way up to reds and dessert wines.) The number of wines is up to you and your friends' patience. Three is probably the minimum; we've had seven, which was too much alcohol and took forever. We usually aim for geographic diversity. If you're tasting Chardonnays, for instance, try them from several countries, or several states, or several different California regions.

We used a wine tasting form from Epicurious and asked guests to judge the wines on a scale of 1 to 5 in these categories: color and intensity; aroma; flavor/acidity/sweetness; tannins/body/alcohol; and finish/complexity.

None of us are wine experts, but we had a wonderful time guessing at aromas (cinnamon, earthy, pepper, currant, and to our merriment, coconut). Alas, the Schade wine stood out for its sweetness and ranked dead last when the scorecards were tallied.* First place went to the Red Diamond, judged smooth, complex, long finish, and simply "my fave."**

We served an assortment of non-spicy hors d'oeurves, hot and cold, and simply warned wine tasters that a radish or really stinky cheese might affect their palate. But as our friend Ruth pointed out, one of the best pairings she ever had was a Sauternes with an extremely ripe American blue cheese.

We learned something about wine, without the snobbery or intimidation of a real wine connoisseur on hand. Then again, who's to say we're not connoisseurs? The definition of connoisseur is "an individual with a discriminating taste."

For professional tips on a wine tasting party, go to: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/entertaining/partiesevents/winetasting

Notes:

* While it's true that the Schade is a bit sweet for most food combinations, in our opinion [we hasten to add!], it has a nice sherry-like flavor and would make a good aperitif or even dessert wine.

** Check out the price on the Red Diamond! Best of all, you can find it many places, including Trader Joe's.

Make It Yourself: Chili Powder

2011-01-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

We use a lot of chili powder. We love Mexican and Indian food, so between guacamole, beans-and-rice, and assorted curries, it seems we're always emptying a jar. Fortunately, we've learned how to make our own, which not only costs a lot less than the measly supermarket jars of McCormick's but results in a much toastier, richer-tasting spice.

Most supermarkets now carry packages of dried whole peppers in the produce section. For chili powder, ancho, New Mexico, or Anaheim peppers work especially well. Ancho peppers are dark and wrinkly;

while New Mexico and Anaheim peppers are smoother:

Anaheims are the mildest of the three, but all three (as well as the hotter guajillo pepper) can be mixed and matched to make good chili powder. Dried peppers are inexpensive and last virtually indefinitely, so it's easy to experiment with different varieties until you find a blend you like. (Do not use small dried red peppers you typically see in Asian markets, unless you want to end up with cayenne powder, which is much too hot to substitute for chili powder.)

Once you've got your dried peppers, heat your oven to 325 degrees and spread the peppers out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast them for ten minutes, or until they turn dark red and crispy, but be careful not to burn them. A little scorching doesn't hurt, but if you let them go too long, they'll be too far-gone to work in chili powder. Ten minutes is usually plenty of time to get the results you want. (The toasting peppers give off spicy fumes, so you may want to do this with an open window in your kitchen. At the very least, don't make the mistake we once made and roast hot chilies while someone else is standing on a ladder; the rising pepper fumes will make them come down in a hurry!)

Let the peppers cool, then remove their stems and shake out their seeds. Then, using a coffee grinder or a mini food processor designed for small jobs, start grinding them. Tear the peppers into small pieces, and grind them until they turn to powder.

Once the peppers are ground, you can mix them with other spices for a "rounder" chili powder. We like oregano and ground cumin—say, a teaspoon of each mixed with the equivalent of a package of chilies. For extra flavor, you can toast cumin seeds in a dry pan for a few minutes, then run them through the grinder before you mix them with the chilies. This will give you a good-size jar of chili powder.

If you're like us, you'll come to love the smell of roasting chilies and look forward to making your own spice.

Make It Yourself: Tamari Almonds

2011-01-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Sure, you can buy packages of delicious, salty Tamari Almonds at the supermarket, but they tend to be very expensive and not particularly fresh. Fortunately, they are one of the easiest and fastest snacks to make. We make them when we need a quick cocktail snack and don't have time for even our usual fast-and-easy snack, Spiced Nuts.

Tamari Almonds

1. Heat a teaspoon of sesame or peanut oil in a pan over medium-high heat, then add two cups of raw almonds. Stir them to coat with the oil, and stir frequently to avoid burning. (Once nuts begin to burn, they really burn!)

2. After about ten minutes, the nuts will be brown with a few dark spots; when this happens, remove the pan from the heat and add two tablespoons of tamari or other soy sauce. It will sizzle and almost completely evaporate, which is fine. Stir to mix with the nuts. If you like, you can add a few shakes of Liquid Smoke, which adds a flavor reminiscent of that old favorite, Smokehouse Almonds. (You usually can find Liquid Smoke near the ketchup in your supermarket.)

3. Add a very light sprinkling of sea salt for crunch, but be careful not to oversalt on top of the salty tamari.

Then all you need to do is restrain yourself from eating all of the nuts before serving them.

Appreciating Wine, Even If It Costs Little

2011-01-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

Tom Shroder, former editor of the Washington Post Magazine, was a wine newbie, so he decided to enlist the help of a trained wine expert to help him determine the difference between Two-Buck Chuck and a more expensive bottle of wine. What she told him might surprise you. Here's part of his article. For the full article, click here.

Kathy Morgan, head sommelier for Michel Richard Citronelle, one of Washington's finest restaurants, and the master of a 6,000-bottle wine cellar.

Given her morning activities, I felt a little silly about what I had planned for her next: a blind taste test of two wines, a Two Buck Chuck cabernet and an $18 cabernet I had already tested and didn't like.
As she sat at my kitchen table, back straight, two wine glasses set before her, professionalism swirled around her like a mist. I offered her a glass of water to cleanse her palate between sips.

"That's the worst thing you can do," she said. With no preparation, the acidity and tannin in the wine shock the palate. Water just resets the mouth to neutral, she explained, so you react with shock all over again. It's best to sip another wine first, eat some bread, or just take two sips, ignoring the first.
She swirled the first glass, stuck her nose in it, sniffed. She did the same with the second, then sipped and swirled.

Something in her eyes flashed, and I knew she saw the wines as plainly as if their labels were etched in the glass. Now it was time for her to be kind.
"When do you usually like to drink wine?" she began.

I explained that I sometimes had a glass with dinner, but more often, after a day at work, I sat on the porch and sipped as I watched the sun dip behind the pines.
This answer seemed to explain something, and she continued.
"Number 1 is more astringent. Number 2 is softer and fruitier. So, if you are drinking without food, you'd most probably prefer 2."

Number 2 was the Chuck -- the one I, in fact, preferred.
"Number 1 changes with food," she said. "The tannins soften up. Number 2 is manipulated in the fermentation process so the tannins, which is what makes wine astringent, soften without food. For a cabernet to be this low in tannin, well, it's done on purpose."

In other words -- I was going for the bubblegum music of the wine world.
"I didn't say that!" she said, laughing. "And I really don't mean manipulated as a negative. They do in the winery what otherwise food must do for the wine. [It appears to involve centrifuges.] Number 1 is made in a more traditional way, intended to drink with food. That's why steakhouses have a huge cabernet list. Astringency needs food. Do you have any roast beef?"
I didn't. But I had ham, and I put slices on a plate.

"Take a bite of the ham," she said. "Then sip Number 1."
I did as she asked. It was ... amazing. The sharp, unpleasant scratchiness in the wine that I didn't like had vanished, replaced by an interesting spicy warmth. It wasn't that the taste of the food complemented the taste of the wine -- which is what I had always assumed when people told me that certain wines went with certain meals -- it was that the taste of the food changed the taste of the wine.
"Now take another bite of ham and taste the Number 2," the Charles Shaw, she said. I did, and nothing happened. The Charles Shaw was immobile, inert. It had the same cheery fruitiness as it had before the ham -- if anything it was even fruitier -- and suddenly it seemed ... insipid.
Again, it was as if she was reading my thoughts.

"I'm not saying this wine is of no value. It's a very friendly wine. It's very smart of them to make this wine. It's a style that can be done successfully for $3.59 a bottle."
And it can be done at $3.59 a bottle, she explained, because it can be produced on a large scale, with the conditions identical each time; whereas the traditional fermentation process changes with every batch of grapes, might take shorter or longer depending on the crop, has to be watched carefully and can't be predicted. Then, it takes time to cure, and often requires barrels made of expensive materials, such as oak, to complete the process.

Yes, there are some wines that are poorly conceived and poorly made and fail on every level. But in general, she insisted, you can't judge wines on any absolute scale. Different wines have different purposes. Just as you wouldn't take a Maserati off-road and use it to ford streams and climb steep mountain trails, it made no sense to sip a $300 Burgundy, meant to make rich meals with red meat and heavy sauces incandescent, on somebody's porch at sunset with a dish of peanuts.

"Best of the Blogs" — We Made It!

2011-01-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

Fine Cooking listed the Best of the Blogs for 2010, and we're proud to say that Eat Well, Eat Cheap got a mention as one of the best Penny-Pinching Blogs! No other category could have made us happier. Thank you, Fine Cooking.

Back to the Land of the Eating...

2011-01-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

Man, it's been a rough few weeks: head colds, a sinus infection, pulled muscles, and medications that pretty much destroyed our desire to eat. At first we could manage only a few bites of rice, then a fruit smoothie now and then. Even water tasted weird. But slowly, slowly, our appetites are returning, and it's been interesting to observe this. First we wanted vegetable broth, then broth with a little pasta, then plain white beans. We managed a shepherd's pie the other night, and last night we wanted more pasta. In the process, we discovered a dish that helps bridge the sad non-fresh-tomato winter months.

Right now, Costco and other stores are selling Campari tomatoes, which are slightly smaller than Romas, with a sweet, almost-summery taste. Last night, finally feeling hungry—in fact, almost feeling ravenous—we decided to try roasting them.

We halved each tomato and set it cut side down on a baking sheet drizzled with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Then we sprinkled the tomatoes with salt, pepper, and thyme and roasted them in a 375-degree oven for 45 minutes. When the skins looked dark and caramelized, we pulled them out. The skins were easily plucked off and discarded.

The tomatoes had cooked down to a sweet paste and merged with the hot olive oil, resulting in a silky, satisfying and incredibly easy sauce for linguine. For the first time in weeks, we had seconds.

Perhaps most exciting was the realization that the winter months don't necessarily mean canned tomatoes.

Red Knot Shiraz 2007

2011-01-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

Some wine lovers like to keep their finds to themselves. Obviously, if we were like that, we wouldn't be writing a public blog about where to find great tasting wine values for less than $10.

The only complaint is that the more obscure the source, the less likely our readers are to find the wine buys we love. A couple of months ago we wrote about finding 12 highly rated wines (90+), each for less than $10.

One of the wines we bought was a 2007 Red Knot "Zork" Shiraz from Australia. What we liked was the middle ground it walked between a good fruity sipping wine and a very good food wine with the right dryness to make the food and the wine come alive. It's a medium-bodied wine, fairly dark red, with spice and a bit of strawberry and cherry and currants — but enough acid and tannins to hold its own against a steak or a plate of pasta with tomato sauce.

We found it on the Internet, at a retailer we use once in a while, and figured we'd never see it anywhere else, ever again.

Then, on our recent holiday slog through bronchitis and chest colds and wrapping paper, we were stuck one night in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere with Thai takeout and our two dogs. So on the way back from picking up the green curry and rice, we stopped at a forlorn liquor store to see what we could score.

Not five feet inside the door, there it was on a "specials" rack for $11.45, a bit more than the $8.45 we paid online, but not a bad price for a walk-off home run. To make it even better for the road, good old Red Knot doesn't need a corkscrew.

It's nice when you find one of our obscure buys in a most unusual place. Some days the road rises up to meet you.

A Good Resolution for the New Year

2011-01-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the scanty postings lately, but between the holidays and the World's Worst Head Cold, we haven't been able to write. We hope to be back in the kitchen in the next couple of days, our appetites restored. In the meantime, here's a fine article by Salon's Francis Lam, who has resolved not to eat cheap, unhealthy, inhumanely raised chicken in 2011,

Regardless of whether you eat chicken, Lam's thoughtful reflections on how we eat are very much worth reading.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay 2008

2010-12-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Chardonnays can be as grassy or light as a Sauvignon Blanc -- or as thick and buttery as fresh-squeezed fruit juice. Depending on your mood or what you're eating, either type might work very well.

Chateau Ste. Michelle's 2008 Chardonnay is somewhere in the middle between these styles. That's not a bad thing. For fish especially, sometimes you want a wine that won't overpower the food. After all, at dinner, wine is supposed to be a rhythm guitar, not the lead.

We tasted it next to the very California, very buttery, very thick and very rich Sonoma-Cutrer Chard, which we love. The Ste. Michelle could sit in the band right next to the Sonoma-Cutrer if the food isn't too rich.

This is an $8.45 bottle of white that rated a 90 by Wine Spectator, which said, "Bright and jazzy with pretty pineapple, grapefruit, elderflower and spice flavors that linger on the finish without excess weight."

The good news: this wine is widely available throughout the United States.

The bad news: it should be drunk before 2013 to be at it's best.

Bargain Wine of the Year: Odfjell Armador Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

2010-12-20T05:07:00.000-08:00

Chilean wines are among our five current regional defaults for great bargain buys: Washington State, Australia, Rhone River in France, Spain and Chile.

The only problem with Chile is that there are still enough swill wines coming out of South America that you have to be as careful as you would be picking fruit in a grocery store without being able to touch it.

Here's a sure thing from Chile, and it's a whopping bargain to boot. Armador Cabernet Sauvignon from the Odfjell Winery in Chile's Maipo Valley was one of Wine Spectator magazine's Top 100.

We defy anyone to taste this blindly and not guess that you're drinking at least a $20 to $30 bottle of Cab. At $8.45 a bottle, it is far and away our Bargain Wine of the Year. This isn't an overly complicated wine, but it's got light cassis and berry fruitiness, and it'll make you smile every time you drink it -- if not from the exquisite flavor, then from the incredible steal you've got in your hands.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Di Majo Norante Sangiovese 2008

2010-12-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

Italy's Tuscan region is one of the most civilized and beautiful in the world. Florence is full of great paintings, world-class cathedrals, tremendous culinary offerings and centuries of history.

South of Florence, in the Tuscan countryside, vineyards of Sangiovese grapes cover the hillsides and form the basis of Tuscany's celebrated wine.

These red Tuscans can be expensive, but unlike France's Bordeaux, there are bargains to be had if you search for them. Many are obscure, and take some undercover work to find. One way to get a great Tuscan-style wine without the high price is to search for an Italian Sangiovese in a neighboring region such as Molise, southeast of Tuscany.

One low-priced and very tasty Sangiovese from Molise that we love is relatively easy to find in small wine stores throughout much of the U.S.

We've been buying this wine for at least three years and have noted it before: Di Majo Norante Sangiovese. We found bottles of the 2008 edition online for $8.95. This is a wine that critic Robert Parker gave a 90 rating.

While it's a good enough food wine, it's fruit-laden tastiness also makes it great for conversational sipping and enjoying with friends. No sharpness in this pleasing pasta and meat wine, and a finish long enough to carry you to the next course or topic.

This wine was one of the fantastic 90-plus bargains we found last month online. If you see it at your local wine stop, by all means pick up a bottle for your next Italian dinner.

Mulligatawny Makes You Feel Better

2010-12-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

There are many upsides to being a vegetarian, but one undeniable downside: it's tough to find comforting soup when you're getting sick. There's simply nothing that can compare in restorative properties to chicken soup. At least, that's what Ruth always thought, until weekend before last, when she started feeling bad.

She wasn't sick exactly, just achy and sniffly, with all the warning signs of an impending head cold. As it happened, Tim was craving Indian food—not just any Indian food, but the food served by one of our favorite local restaurants. The wind was cold and blowing in circles, so we bundled up and trundled off.

Chilled and cranky, Ruth only wanted soup, so she decided to try mulligatawny for the first time. Why had she never tried it before? Maybe there was always something more enticing on the menu, but that night, after the waiter assured her it was vegetarian, she hopefully ordered a big bowl.

She was glad she did.

Hot, lemony, subtly spicy from cayenne and subtly sweet from coconut, the soup made her feel better instantly. The next night she made a big pot at home, working off several Internet recipes. She intended to freeze half of it, but there wouldn't be enough left to freeze: in a cold, achy week, mulligatawny was the only thing either of us wanted.

But that head cold? It never happened (note: sadly, it did happen, not long afterward—R&T). Mulligatawny might work even better than chicken soup.

This recipe seems infinitely adaptable—some versions call for apples, some for green peppers and cabbage—so feel free to experiment. Just aim for a balance of spice, sour, and sweet.

Mulligatawny

1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 cups chopped onion
5 chopped garlic cloves
1 1/2 T. garam masala
1 1/2 t. ground coriander
1 t. turmeric
3/4 t. cayenne pepper
a couple of whole dried red peppers (optional, depending on how much heat you like)
2 bay leaves
2 cups dried red lentils
8 cups vegetable broth
1 medium-size potato, peeled and chopped
1 big carrot, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cans coconut milk
4 T. lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
lemon wedges

1. Heat the oil in a big pot over medium-high heat.

2. Add the onions and cook until starting to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes

3. Add garam masala, coriander, turmeric, cayenne, dried peppers, and bay leaves. Stir for a minute. Add the lentils and stir until they are coated in spices.

4. Add broth, potato, and carrot and bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables and lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Discard the bay leaves.

5. Using either a hand blender or a regular blender, purée the soup until smooth. (If using a regular blender, do it in small batches to avoid burning yourself.)

6. Add the coconut milk and lemon juice, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Easy Peasy Roast Chicken

2010-12-08T06:10:00.000-08:00

Guest Blogger Amy Friedman shares her recipe for a classic comfort dish:

Every recipe book says roast chicken is THE easiest thing to cook. However, according to my friend Ruth, the lovely lady who helps run this fab blog, roast chicken is actually surprisingly tough to do well. For everyone, the tough parts are different: is it having moist meat? Tasty meat? Crispy skin? Hating basting? Could even be as simple as just takes too much darn time and attention.

After several years of experimenting with various techniques, I finally hit on a surefire way to get a lovely moist roast bird with an absolute minimum of fuss and bother. Warning: If you're a huge fan of crispy skin, skip this recipe, as there won't be a lot - just some over the breast and around the legs.

The most important piece of equipment you'll need is a three-quart Dutch oven with a lid.

Easy Peasy Roast Chicken

1. Buy a 3 1/2 -pound chicken. Unwrap, take out the giblets, and rinse.

2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

3. Put the chicken, breast side up, in the Dutch oven. If you want, you can dice an onion or two and sprinkle on the bottom. Sometimes I do, sometimes no. Put the neck (if it came with the giblets) next to the chicken.

4. Sprinkle the chicken inside and out with your favorite mix of spices. I like black, red, and white pepper, garlic powder, oregano and dill.

5: This is important: Take a largeish whole onion, slice off the top and bottom, skin it, and put it inside the chicken. This will keep the chicken from drying out. If you don't have an onion, an apple works fine. The onion's better, because you can eat it after the chicken has roasted.

6. Once the oven has heated, put the lid on the Dutch oven and stick the whole thing in the oven.

Timing: 20 minutes per pound, plus an extra 20 to 30 minutes. If you've got a three-pound chicken, the bird will be in the oven for about 1 1/2 hours.

For crispier skin, it's okay to remove the lid for the last half hour or so. However, I've found I get enough crispy skin for a happy husband without lifting the lid.

Once the timer bings (always use a timer!), turn off the oven, let the chicken sit in the oven for about ten minutes, then take it out. Uncover the chicken, let it rest for about 15 minutes, then remove it from the pot.

Every time I've used this method, I've gotten very tender, moist, falling-off-the-bone chicken with nicely spiced, crispy top skin. If the chicken's fatty, I also get a lot of nice drippings, which I save and reuse.

The last chicken I cooked this way must have been an athlete, because there weren't a lot of drippings! What there was, however, was densely flavorful, so I used it to cook the snow peas I was serving with the bird.

The cool thing about this method is that you can break up the cooking time. For larger chickens, I've started it the night before, on very low heat (250 degrees), turned it off in the morning, and then restarted it at 4 p.m., turning the oven up to 375. (I leave the chicken in the oven during the day; the Dutch oven retains a lot of heat, which keeps the cooking process going almost like a barbecue.)

Moist meat, crispy skin, no basting, no fuss. Pop it in, do your laundry or take a nap, and awaken to a great dinner. What could be easier?

Mushroom Sauce without the Can of Campbell's—Easy and Much Better

2010-12-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

The stores are always full of cremini (button) mushrooms, and often they are on sale. They're always good for you, and we've found that prepared correctly, they can enhance many, many dishes. So why do we insist on using canned cream of mushroom soup as a liquid binder in so many recipes when the glop is nearly tasteless and always too salty?

It turns out that making your own mushroom sauce or cream of mushroom concentrate is really easy—and it tastes so much better.

We purchased a bunch of cremini mushrooms and another bunch of shiitakes for a faux-chopped liver appetizer and had about two cups of each left over. We also had lots of turkey and lots of cooked green beans from our Thanksgiving feast. Sounded like a casserole to us, so we decided to make our own cream of mushroom soup to hold it all together—with a bit of help from our trusty old New York Times Cookbook.

We chopped the mushrooms roughly and chopped a good-size onion as well. Then we melted two tablespoons of butter (we used Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread, which is remarkably like butter and doesn't burn when used this way) in a saucepan and heated the onion until transparent. We tossed in the mushrooms and sauteed them another ten minutes, until they had given up their liquid and started to dry out again. Then we poured in a half cup of white wine and a half cup of red wine and simmered the mixture down to a slightly wet sauce.

At that point, we took the mixture off the heat and stirred in three tablespoons of flour, a teaspoon of leftover gravy and a teaspoon of Braggs Liquid Aminos (for flavor). We added added a bay leaf and two turns on the pepper mill and a cup and a half of water (we'd have added stock, but we didn't have any handy). We added the water slowly, stirring constantly, and put the saucepan back on the burner to bring it to a boil before then reducing the heat and simmering the mixture for another five minutes.

After the five minutes of simmering, we removed it from the heat, removed the bay leaf and had a beautiful silky mushroom sauce that we could have served with steak, or pork chops, or chicken filets. We put it in our turkey (and faux turkey) casseroles with the leftover beans, dressed up with a half cup of cream and a pinch of kosher salt.

With double the stock and cream, we'd have had cream of mushroom soup. But our sauce was perfect for, well, a sauce—and for a casserole. It would work just as well in tuna-noodle casserole or any of those comfort-food favorites that we have stopped making because want to avoid the salty can of Campbell's.

Breakfast Rice

2010-11-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes necessity is the mother of deliciousness. Last week, caught up in Thanksgiving lists and plans, we forgot to buy fruit and bread for breakfast, and we also forgot to make granola. One morning we woke up with virtually nothing to eat.

As we never, ever, skip breakfast, this posed a challenge.

Foraging through our overloaded pre-Thanksgiving refrigerator, we found that we had leftover brown rice and soy milk, and we remembered a dish we used to make, from the undelicious-sounding but very good Ayurvedic Cookbook, by Amadea Morningstar. You simply simmer cooked white or brown rice with an equal amount of milk, along with a shake of cinnamon and a handful of raisins, for a delicate-tasting and surprisingly hearty breakfast dish. If you start with leftover rice, the whole process takes about five minutes—just long enough for the rice to absorb some hot milk and for the raisins to plump up.

We've said it before, but this experience reinforced our conviction: never, ever, throw out leftover rice.

Giving Thanks

2010-11-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

Today, as we prepare our Thanksgiving meal and look forward to dinner with dear friends and a houseful of dogs, we are grateful for many things. Among them: the faithful readers of Eat Well, Eat Cheap (particularly Belinda, the world's best commenter!). Thank you all. Hope you have a great holiday.

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

2010-11-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

This time of year, sugar pumpkins (also known as pie pumpkins) are in abundance, prized not only for their decorative value but for their sweet, velvety flesh. Listening to NPR one evening, we heard Dorie Greenspan share a recipe that immediately captivated us, both because of the ease of preparation and the NPR interviewer's rapturous description.

Dorie Greenspan calls this Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good, because you can put pretty much anything in a whole pumpkin, bake it, and wind up with something delicious.

The first time we tried it, we used the NPR recipe, which relied on breadcrumbs. It was good, but we should have doubled the amount of filling to fully stuff the pumpkin, and we should have used a lot more cheese. The second time, we used wild rice, brown rice, and almonds, and made sure to fill the pumpkin cavity, and it was wonderful.

In both cases, we served this as a main course, accompanied by a green salad. But it would make a great addition to the Thanksgiving table.