Danny Redlin's Foolproof Bread

Tim and Ruth are still flailing around and unable to post, but luckily our much-appreciated guest bloggers are stepping up! Ro Ann Redlin's son, Danny, appears to following in his mom's footsteps as a fine cook, and he offers this recipe for what he swears is foolproof bread. The recipe comes courtesy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

The Master Recipe: Boule  (Artisan Free-Form Loaf)

Makes four one -pound loaves

3 c. lukewarm water
1 1⁄2 T granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)
1 1⁄2 T coarse kosher or sea salt
6 1⁄2 c. unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
Cornmeal for pizza peel

The artisan free-form loaf called the French boule is the basic model for all the no-knead recipes. The round shape (boule in French means “ball”) is the easiest to master. You’ll learn how wet the dough needs to be (wet, but not so wet that the finished loaf won’t retain its form) and how to shape a loaf without kneading. And you’ll discover a truly revolutionary approach to baking: Take some dough from the fridge, shape it, leave it to rest, then let it bake while you’re preparing the rest of the meal.

Keep your dough wet — wetter doughs favor the development of sourdough character during storage. 

1. Heat the water to just a little warmer than body temperature (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a five-quart bowl or, preferably, a resealable, lidded container (not airtight — use container with gasket or lift a corner). Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.

3. Mix in the flour by gently scooping it up, then leveling the top of the measuring cup with a knife; don’t pat down. Mix with a wooden spoon, a high-capacity food processor with dough attachment, or a heavy-duty stand mixer with dough hook, until uniformly moist. If hand-mixing becomes too difficult, use very wet hands to press it together. Don’t knead! This step is done in a matter of minutes, and yields a wet dough loose enough to conform to the container.

4. Cover loosely. Do not use screw-topped jars, which could explode from trapped gases. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flatten on top), approximately two hours, depending on temperature. Longer rising times, up to about five hours, will not harm the result. You can use a portion of the dough any time after this period. Refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and easier to work with than room-temperature dough. We recommend refrigerating the dough at least three hours before shaping a loaf. And relax! You don’t need to monitor doubling or tripling of volume as in traditional recipes.

5. Prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven. Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, then cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-sized) piece with a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on four “sides,” rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn’t need to be incorporated. The bottom of the loaf will flatten out during resting and baking.

6. Place the ball on the pizza peel. Let it rest uncovered for about 40 minutes. Depending on the dough’s age, you may see little rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on another shelf.

8. Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing, serrated knife to pass without sticking. Slash a 1⁄4-inch-deep cross, scallop or tick-tac-toe pattern into the top. (This helps the bread expand during baking.)

9. With a forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about a cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is browned and firm to the touch. With wet dough, there’s little risk of drying out the interior, despite the dark crust. When you remove the loaf from the oven, it will audibly crackle, or “sing,” when initially exposed to room temperature air. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack, for best flavor, texture and slicing. The perfect crust may initially soften, but will firm up again when cooled.

10. Refrigerate the remaining dough in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next two weeks: You’ll find that even one day’s storage improves the flavor and texture of your bread. This maturation continues over the two-week period. Cut off and shape loaves as you need them. The dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in an airtight container and defrosted overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking day.

Ro Ann notes: It takes a few minutes to stir. It rises and you 'cloak' it (get it in an acceptable round shape by pulling the edge over the whole round in a continuous motion.) Then shove it in the oven. Voila! I have watched him make it a lot and I continue to be amazed.  

Ruth and Tim note: We can't wait to try this. Will it displace Mark Bittman's No-Knead Bread in our affections? We'll find out. Thanks, Danny! 

No Need to Knead This Delicious, Easy Bread

Mark Bittman's recipe for No-Knead Bread may end up being his greatest legacy to cooking. Removing the tedious chore of kneading from breadmaking, the recipe is justifiably famous and has spawned scores, if not hundreds, of imitations.

We tried it ourselves not long ago, and although we were pleased with the bread we made, our friends Chuck Miller and Phil Van Kirk tweaked Bittman's recipe and came up with a version we like even better. Incorporating wheat germ, this bread is a bit denser than Bittman's, and it's tastier when it cools. Like Bittman's bread, it features a crackling, crunchy, irresistible brown crust. And it's jaw-droppingly easy. All you need are a few hours to let the dough rise.

Because the recipe requires us to run the oven at 450 degrees for almost an hour, we like to save energy by making two loaves at a time and freezing one until we need it.

No-Knead Bread

1/2 t. yeast
1/2 t. sugar
1/4 cup warm water
2 cups warm water

4 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 t. salt

1. Mix yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup warm water, and stir to break up any yeast lumps.

2. Put two cups of warm water in a large bowl, and add the yeast/sugar mix. Stir a little to distribute the yeast.

3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, wheat germ, and salt.

4. Slowly pour the flour mixture into the yeasty water, mixing with either a wooden spoon or your hands.

5. Cover the mixed dough with plastic wrap and set in a warmish place. (We've found that if we put it in the oven with the light on, that works great.)

6. After five hours or so, the dough will have risen considerably. Turn it out on a floured work surface, dust it with flour, and fold it over itself a few times. (The dough will be extremely sticky.) Put it back in the bowl, and return it to its warm spot.

7. After two more hours, the dough will have risen again. Remove it from the oven. Turn the oven on to 450 degrees, and put a Dutch oven or another covered dish into the oven to heat up. Make sure that the pot you use can withstand the high temperatures; plastic handles will melt. We use a Calphalon Dutch oven, but Le Creuset would also work well.

8. When the oven (and pot) are hot, carefully remove the pot from the oven and, using a spatula, scrape the dough into the pot. Let it bake with the cover on for 35 minutes.

9. After 35 minutes, remove the cover and let the bread bake for an additional 15 minutes.

10. When the bread is done, let it cool on a rack as long as you can stand it before tearing off a piece for yourself. Butter and honey make particularly fine accompaniments.

Makes one good-size loaf.

Last Minute Appetizers: Quick & Easy Bean Dips

We would find it hard to believe that the Super Bowl crept up on anyone, but let's imagine for a minute that the host of a party got sick and you volunteered to take on the hosting duties. Here are two very easy dip recipes for the big game that will tax neither your wallet or your cooking ability.

Complementary white bean and black bean dips for chips: preparation time, mere minutes.

Ingredients:
1 can (15.5 oz.) white Great Northern, Navy or Cannellini beans (Great Northern or Navy preferred), drained
1 can (15.5 oz.) black beans, drained
1 medium onion, divided into two halves and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided in two
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon white pepper (or black if you have no white pepper)
1/2 teaspoon ground sage
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese
4 garlic cloves
1 4.5 oz. can chopped green chiles, drained
1/4-1/2 cup sliced green onion tops

Recipes:
For the White Bean Dip
In a food processor, combine the white beans, half the onion, Parmesan, half the salt, white pepper, and 2 garlic cloves and pulse until smooth. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Then remove to a bowl, cover and refrigerate.

For the Black Bean Dip
In the food processor, combine the black beans, half the onion, green chiles, black pepper, cumin and 2 garlic cloves. Pulse until smooth. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Remove to a bowl, cover and refrigerate.

Assemble
In the spirit of opposing teams, spoon the black dip into one half of a serving dish. Then spoon the white dip into the other half. Garnish the dish with the sliced green onion tops, especially covering the middle where the two dips meet.

Serve with your favorite chips.

We've Got Worms

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.

Make It Yourself: Pizza Dough

Actually, this may be a pointless post, 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.

Omelet in a Bag: Great for Large Groups

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.

Cinco de Mayo Feast

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.  

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.

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

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.

Make It Yourself: Yogurt

For a long time, we resisted making our own yogurt. True, we ate it every morning of our lives, and those quart containers added up, both in cost and in recycling waste. But we didn't want to invest in a machine. We were loath to accumulate any more large kitchen gadgets, and we'd heard that homemade yogurt could never match the creaminess of its supermarket or health-food-store counterpart.

Then milk prices shot up, taking yogurt prices with them, and we began to experiment.

First we tried making yogurt without a machine, because so many people swore we could do it using nothing more than a deep dish, a dishtowel, and a warm counter. We just ended up with big bowls of spoiled milk.

Then we borrowed a friend's machine, with almost equally unsatisfying results. It only held six-ounce containers, which hardly justified the effort of homemade yogurt. And the machine didn't work that great.

Then we discovered the Waring Professional Yogurt Maker, which allowed us to make four 16-ounce containers at a time. We bought one a couple of years ago and have not looked back. Not only is our homemade yogurt much cheaper than the store's, it tastes much better, being almost as creamy as super-rich and super-expensive Greek yogurt.

Once you've bought the right machine, the trick to homemade yogurt is boosting the creaminess of the milk you use. We do this by adding a cup of nonfat dry milk to every half-gallon batch we make. Also, we use 1 or 2 percent milk; although you can use skim milk, we're happy to trade taste for extra fat. 

The other tricky part is finding the dry yogurt culture you need to turn hot milk into yogurt. You can find it at health-food stores; Whole Foods also carries it for a good price (in startling contrast to everything else Whole Foods sells).

Once you've got your machine, your dry milk, your yogurt culture, and a candy thermometer, all you need is an hour to get everything going.

All of this may seem complicated, but it doesn't take that long to master.  For anyone who eats a lot of yogurt, it will quickly pay off.

Homemade Yogurt

1/2 gallon milk
1 cup nonfat dry milk
1 packet yogurt starter

1. Add the milk to a nonstick pot and whisk in the dry milk. Heat until the milk is almost boiling, then remove from heat and let cool.

2. When the milk has cooled to a temperature of between 110 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit, whisk a few tablespoons of it into the yogurt starter (we use a custard cup for this). Then whisk this mixture into the warm milk. Be sure to work quickly, because you don't want the milk to cool down much.

3. Pour the yogurt-cultured milk into your containers, place in your machine, and set it for nine to ten hours.

4. When the time is up, refrigerate the yogurt, and bask in the pleasure of knowing you've saved a whole lot of money.

Tapenade: A Love Letter

We love black-olive tapenade, especially in the summer, when produce is abundant and as often as not we eat dinner off the grill. Originally hailing from Provence, this pungent olive paste dresses up pasta, grilled vegetables, bruschetta—anything that can benefit from a wallop of Mediterranean flavor.

Not so long ago, we never would have considered making our own tapenade, for the same reason we don't make cherry pies—the prospect of laboriously pitting a couple of cups of stony fruit is overwhelming. (We bought a cherry pitter a few years ago and managed, after great effort, to successfully pit about three cherries; the pitter went into our Worthless Gadget drawer, where it now lives with the garlic peeler and the egg poacher while awaiting its final trip to Goodwill.)

Fortunately, companies like Trader Joe's and others now sell reasonably priced pitted calamata olives, so it's easy to make our own tapenade. Last year Guest Blogger Paul Spring provided this excellent recipe for homemade tapenade, and it's worth repeating, given the ripe tomatoes on the market right now.

Last night we mixed a couple of tablespoons of tapenade with a quarter-cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper. Drizzled over sliced tomatoes and basil, it made an excellent light dinner.

Another Quick Summer Treat: Strawberry-Rhubarb Pops

On the same day that we were posting the easy ice cream recipe, NPR ran a story about two guys in Washington, DC, who started a popsicle company called Pleasant Pops (because Popsicle is a trade name). Their pops are decidedly different, with fruit and herbs mixed to bring about great taste. Imagine Watermelon-Black Pepper or Peach-Ginger.

They revealed one of their easy recipes: Strawberry-Rhubarb pops that can be made in the freezer. No machines needed.

Make It Yourself: Barbecue Sauce

Walk down the condiments aisle of your local supermarket and you'll see an amazing array of barbecue sauces, ranging from sticky-sweet to vinegar-sharp to red-hot. This makes sense, given the wide array of barbecue styles in this country.

Some people like the sour tang of Carolina barbecue, while others prefer the tomatoey, molasses-rich flavors of the Midwest. Whatever you like, it's very easy to make your own sauce, adjusting the base to suit your taste. If you like a thick sauce, all you need is ketchup and a few basic ingredients; then you just need to figure out how hot, sweet, and sour you want to make it.

Over the years we've learned that barbecue sauce is very flexible. Heat can come from cayenne, chili powder, or even bottled hot sauce. If you don't have molasses to provide the sweetness, brown sugar works fine. Don't have red wine vinegar? Plain old white distilled will also work.

Here's our usual recipe:

Barbecue Sauce

1 T. olive oil
1 small onion, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup red wine (old leftover wine works well here)
2 T. red wine, sherry, or balsamic vinegar
2 T. molasses
1 t. Liquid Smoke
1 t. Dijon mustard
1 t. chili powder
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
a few grinds of black pepper

1. Heat oil in a saucepan, and add onions and garlic; cook for a few minutes, until soft and golden.

2. Add everything else. Stir, cover, and cook for a few minutes. Taste to determine how you want to adjust the seasonings. You might want more cayenne, more vinegar, or more molasses.

This lasts a very long time in the refrigerator, so if you make a big batch early in the season, you'll have it on hand when you need it.

Make It Yourself: Chai Latte

At Starbucks and other upscale  coffee joints, chai lattes provide a lower-caffeine alternative to espresso drinks, but they're very expensive. Although you can buy boxes of chai concentrate, these are also overpriced and usually way too sweet.

It's very easy to make your own chai—and your own concentrate, for that matter. All you need is tea, fresh ginger, chai spice, milk, and a strainer.

We like Brooke Bond's loose Red Label tea, but you can use plain teabags if that's all you've got. You can even use prespiced tea, if you're feeling extra-lazy. But it's also easy to make your own chai mix:

Chai recipes vary, but usually contain a mix of ground cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, allspice, coriander, and a little black pepper. Experiment to get the mix you like—say, using equal amounts of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, and allspice, half as much coriander, and a touch of pepper. Keep an ongoing jar of spice mix and adjust it as you like. (We think Starbucks' version is way too heavy on the cloves and way too light on the ginger, but this is strictly a matter of taste.) You'll only need about a quarter teaspoon or so for each batch of chai that you make.

Once you've got the spice mix, you're ready to make your lattes. This recipe from Dhyanyoga Centers tells you how to make a good couple of cups. If you want concentrate for future batches, simply make more of the basic water/spice/ginger/tea mix, and set it aside; when you want chai, just add milk and heat.

A homemade chai latte costs a fraction of the $4.50 and up that Starbucks charges, and if you keep a container of the concentrate on hand, you can make a quick cup in much less time than it would take you to grab the car keys and head to a store.

Grow It Yourself: A Container Garden of Herbs and Lettuce

Although it's nice to have a garden plot in which we can grow our favorite vegetables, many of us don't have the room or the time. But that doesn't mean we have to do without good herbs and lettuces. Most of these grow just fine in pots on a sunny patio or balcony.

Sage, basil, thyme, rosemary, mint, parsley, cilantro, and other herbs all thrive in sunny containers. Even if you don't have a lot of sun, you can still grow lettuce in pots, fitting three or four heads to a good-size container. When it's ready to eat, just snip off what you need as you need it. Right now we're growing mustard greens and butterhead lettuce. (Because lettuce bolts at the end of its natural life—especially when the weather turns hot—it's good to have a backup container of seedlings to take over once your first crop is done.)

For us, one of the joys of warm weather is being able to stroll onto the patio and snip off enough mixed herbs and greens for a salad. For just a few cents and very little effort, we have some of the ingredients for a delicious light dinner.

There's Still No Place Like Home

Our very first post at Eat Well, Eat Cheap extolled the pleasures of dining at home on a Friday night. But by dinnertime last night, we were both fried and a bit cranky—Tim from a week of relentless meetings, Ruth from a massive case of poison ivy. We debated whether to go out for a quick, cheap dinner—there's a good Vietnamese place about a mile away—but decided we were too fried and cranky even for that. We also lacked the energy to go grocery shopping for something grillable.

Grudgingly, we decided to pull a meal together from what we had on hand.

Mint had recently popped up in the herb bed, with a vengeance. We also had spring roll wrappers, rice noodles, cilantro, and fake-chicken strips from Trader Joe's. With a grumpy sigh, we supposed we could make our own version of summer rolls. It would be easy, at least, and allow us to quickly dispense with the problem of dinner.

So we boiled water for the noodles and sautéed the fake-chicken strips. (Normally, we would use tofu and shrimp, but we didn't have any.) We washed big lettuce leaves from the garden and tore up the mint and cilantro. We made a dipping sauce from crunchy peanut butter, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, and sriracha.

We shared a little Simonassi while we soaked, stuffed, and rolled up the rice paper sheets. (After much trial and error, we've finally figured out how to handle these brittle rice sheets: dip them in warm water and let them rest on a dish towel for about 30 seconds.) A thunderstorm had left the air heavy and wet, and the damp floor tiles in the kitchen reminded us of the hotels we'd stayed in in Mexico. Etta James sang on the radio. The dogs lounged on the sofa, happy to have us home with them.

We worked side by side, Ruth laying down the filling, Tim rolling up the rice sheets. One after another, our ad hoc summer rolls filled up the platter. Sam Cooke began to sing "You Send Me."

And suddenly we realized that we were having a great Friday night.

Make It Yourself: Croutons

Does anybody really like store-bought croutons, those overpriced, throat-scorching little cubes of processed nastiness that taste only of salt and have an ingredient list as long as your little finger? Okay, that's a little judgmental. But the fact is, homemade croutons are so easy and economical that once you get into the habit of making your own, you will forget all about the kind on the supermarket shelf.

All you need is some bread. Fresh bread works fine, but we like to use stale leftover heels. By stale we mean anything from two days old to rock-hard. Any type of bread will do. White bread, wheat bread, pita bread—anything nonsweet works (though if you want cinnamon-raisin croutons in your caesar salad, go for it).

Cut or tear the bread to the desired size. For salads, we like roughly one-inch cubes that will stand up to crunchy greens and a strong dressing.

Put a skillet on medium high heat and add a little olive oil. You don't need much, just a couple of tablespoons for about two cups of croutons. Once the oil is hot, toss in your bread and, using two spoons, keep tossing it to spread around the oil. Then let it cook, tossing again every few minutes to avoid scorching.

When the cubes are beginning to brown, add salt, pepper, and anything else you like. Chopped garlic is good. So are thyme or sage—dried or fresh. Last night we put smoked paprika on whole-wheat pita croutons, and it tasted great. Let the croutons cook for a few more minutes, until they are golden. That's it.

Leftover croutons will last a couple of days, but we've found that we rarely have leftovers.

Make It Yourself: Coffee

Okay, we admit it: despite our DIY convictions, we still stop at Starbucks and other overpriced coffee shops. But we stop there a lot less than we might, because we can make delicious espresso drinks at home for a fraction of the cost.

We've been doing this for many years, having started with a humble two-cup Braun espresso maker that cost us about $20 and is still going strong a quarter-century later. (We pack it when we travel.) About ten years ago we moved up to Starbucks' Barista model, which served us well for a long time and is still running. But for our anniversary a few years ago we splurged on a DeLonghi machine that requires very little fussing—it grinds the beans and neatly spits the used grounds into a special container. It wasn't cheap, but it's saved us a fortune.

If you find yourself dropping $4 or $5 a day at coffee shops, consider buying your own machine. It will quickly pay for itself and reward you with years of cheap, guilt-free espresso drinks. Even a $750 machine will pay for itself in a few months, depending on how much coffee you drink.

* The machine in the photo is Saeco's Etienne Louis.

We've never seen one in real life, but love the way it looks. Who wouldn't jump out of bed in the morning to make coffee on one of these?

Make It Yourself: Cornbread

We're mystified by how many people use mixes to make cornbread when it is almost as easy and fast, and much cheaper, to make it from scratch. In our favorite recipe, from Bread, by Beth Hensperger, buttermilk provides tanginess and moistness and eliminates the cloying sweetness common to most box mixes.

Cornbread

1 cup flour

1 cup cornmeal*

1/2 t. salt

1 T. baking powder

4 T. sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup buttermilk

4 T. melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a good-size bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and sugar. (If the baking powder is lumpy, first push it through a fine strainer to prevent the harsh-tasting lumps from cooking into the bread.)

2. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, buttermilk, and butter. Add to the dry ingredients. Gently stir until it's just mixed.

3. Transfer the batter to a greased pie pan or square baking pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the bread gets a nice, brown crust and a knife comes out clean. If you like your cornbread on the moist side, check it at the 25-minute mark; it may be baked enough for you.

4. Devour, but remember that the leftovers are wonderful split and toasted.

* Any cornmeal works well, but we think a mixture of coarse and fine provides the most interesting texture. Again, it's a matter of taste.