Broccoli Pesto: Low-Fat, Vegan, Extremely Tasty

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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.