Comfort Food for Fall: Popovers

Now that the weather has turned cool and the days are shorter, we find ourselves craving soup: mushroom, vegetable, barley, miso . . . any kind of soup works for us. But soup barely makes a dinner by itself, so to supplement it we often make cornbread or cheese toast (stale bread, grated cheese of any sort, and a broiler; nothing simpler or more frugal). Lately, though, we've been making popovers.

Do people still make popovers? They remind us of the June Cleaver 1950s, maybe because we use a recipe from the old New York Times Cookbook. Or maybe because our mothers made popovers. In any case, we like them so much we invested years ago in a popover pan, which has deeper wells than a muffin tin. (Nothing against muffin tins—that's what our moms used, and they still work just fine—but a popover pan gives you bigger popovers.)  


Here's our version of the Times Cookbook recipe:

1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 cup milk*
1/2 t. salt
1 T. vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Oil popover pan or muffin tin and set it aside.

2. Measure all the ingredients into a bowl and, using either a rotary mixer or a hand blender, mix until the batter is very smooth. Don't be afraid of overbeating; you want it very well mixed.

3. Fill the cups of the pan about half full and bake for 30 minutes. DO NOT PEEK before that, or you might make the popovers collapse. After the time is up, take a look: if the popovers are brown and rigid to the touch, they're done; if they're still a little pale and wobbly, give them another five minutes.

4. When you remove the pan from the oven, pierce each popover with a knife to let the air escape. This will prevent them from getting soggy, especially if there are leftovers.

Leftover cold popovers, dressed with butter and marmalade, make a fine breakfast.

* One day we were out of regular milk, so we apprehensively subbed soy milk, and the popovers came out lighter and crisper than ever before. If you have soy milk on hand, give it a try!

Pasta with Tapenade and Veggies

Back in Connecticut, in the days when we visited more restaurants, we loved Carole Peck's Good News Café in Woodbury. Carole specializes in fresh, organic ingredients and always offers a selection of great vegetarian dishes. We adopted one of our favorites for home use, and over the years it has evolved into a dish we make any time we have nice firm green vegetables on hand—a big bunch of asparagus, say, or a bag of velvety green beans.

The recipe features three ingredients: very small pasta (sometimes known as "soup pasta"), such as tubettini or ditalini; a lightly boiled green vegetable; and a dollop of tapenade. You can prepare it in the time it takes to cook the pasta.

Pasta with Tapenade and Veggies

1 pound small pasta (such as tubettini, ditalini, or acini de pepe)
1 pound or so firm green vegetable (green beans, asparagus, and broccoli all work well), cut into bite-size pieces
3/4 cup tapenade (you may want more or less—if  you're not sure, start with a half cup and work up from there)
2 T. olive oil

1. Start boiling water for pasta and the veggies. You can cook the veggies in the pasta water before cooking the pasta, if you like, or you can use a separate pot to speed things up.

2. While the water is heating, trim and cut the vegetables. Cook them if you are using two pots for the pasta and veggies.

3. If you don't have tapenade on hand, now is a good time to make some.

4. When the water comes to a boil, toss in your pasta and cook until done. Drain it, place it in a good-size bowl, and toss it with the olive oil. Then add the veggies and tapenade, mixing thoroughly.

You can serve this either hot or at room temperature. Feeds four moderate eaters or two to three people of strong appetite.

Love Potatoes? Don't Try This

Sorry for the scant postings of the past week, but it's been crazy around here. We'll try to catch up over the weekend. In the meantime, here's a hilarious if disturbing story about the executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission, who in a misbegotten attempt to prove the deliciousness and versatility of his product, went a bit too far. Reading it, you may never want to eat potatoes again. We hope he recovers soon.

Bargain Wine of the Week: 12 90s under $10

We don't really care where you buy your wine. We like buying ours from the local wine store. We happened to have good ones in both of our most recent places of residence. In Connecticut, it was a little shop that loved wine so much it had two big tastings for charity every year. In Virginia, we go to a big Mid-Atlantic chain that has a huge selection.

But we also buy a lot of wine online. We buy from an Internet outlet when we find a good bargain that we can't find anywhere else. We've already told you about the convenient way that you can search for bargains at most of these online retailers.

We're getting low on under-$10 reds (thus not many reviews here lately), so today we went to two of our online regulars and threw the dice. First we went to liquiddiscount.com and asked for all of their under-$10 wines that were rated 90 or higher by a wine magazine. The results were pretty much a bust. Nada.

The advantage of doing this is that it takes a lot of the guesswork out of wine buying. Very seldom will you dislike a wine rated 90 or higher. And if you can find such wine for less than $10, you can figure you're getting a good-to-great wine at a bargain price.

Next we tried empirewine.com, another of our online faves. Jackpot. The results listed about 20 highly rated wines selling at less than a 10-spot. We knocked out the sparkling wine and all the other rosés and whites but one. That left us with about 15.

One we recognized because we've written about it before and remark how great it is every time we open a bottle. Bodegas Sabor Real 2006 made from 80-year-old vines in Toro, Spain, $9.95. We just drained our last bottle a week ago. So we ordered a case of that.

We put together 12 individual bottles for another case. We'll write about each as we open them, but here's what we ordered. Again, all rated 90+ and all selling for less than $10:

Las Rocas de San Alejandro Garnacha 2007, delightful Spanish red we've had before and loved, $9.95.


La Mano Mencia Roble 2008, another Spanish red, $7.90.


Red Knot 'Zork' Shiraz 2007 from Australia, $8.45.


Di Majo Norante Sangiovese 2008, a Tuscan-style from the Molise region of Italy that we've had before and loved, $8.95.


Odfjell Armador Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Best Buys, $8.45. This is a crazy value.


Yalumba Y Series Shiraz Viognier 2008 from South Australia, $8.95.


Urban UCO Malbec Tempranillo 2008 from Mendoza, Argentina, $9.45.


Bodegas Lan Rioja Crianza 2006 from Rioja, Spain, $9.95.


Pillar Box Red 2007, a blend of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from Australia, $9.95


Bodegas Olivares Monastrell Altos de la Hoya 2008, inky purple with smell of Indian spices from Jumilla, Spain, $9.95. Another crazy value.


Montebuena Tempranillo 2009, "a sneak peak of the great 09 vintage in Rioja and Northern Spain," $9.95.


Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay 2008, the lone white, but we know we like it, $8.45


We think that this is a smart way to buy great bargain wine. We'll let you know if there are any clinkers in the box. 

Fast and Easy Appetizer: Spiced Nuts

Most people have a favorite quick-and-dirty recipe they pull out when they need to make a fast cocktail snack or party appetizer. For us, it's spiced nuts. We found this recipe years go in Martha Stewart Living, adapted it a bit, and have been relying on it ever since. As Costco shoppers, we always have big bags of nuts on hand, so this is very easy for us to pull together.

Any kind of nut works in this recipe, but we've found that nuts with lots of nooks and crannies, like walnuts and pecans, deliver the best results, as they can hold a lot of spices.

Spiced Nuts

1 large egg white
1/4 c. sugar
1 t. chili powder
1 t. salt
1/2 t. cumin
1/2 t. cayenne pepper*
1/4 t. allspice
2 1/2 c. mixed nuts (though they don't have to be mixed; if all you have are almonds, those will work fine)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2. Place the egg white in a medium-size bowl and rapidly whisk by hand until it is foamy.

3. Stir in the sugar, chili powder, salt, cumin, cayenne, and allspice.

4. Fold in the nuts, taking care to cover each nut with the spice mixture.

5. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the pan and stir up the nuts with a spatula, then return the pan to the oven, reducing the temperature to 250 degrees. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the nuts are lightly brown and no longer wet.

6. Remove the nuts from the oven, stir, and let cool. They will keep for a couple of weeks in a covered container. They also freeze well.

* The amount of cayenne pepper is really a matter of taste. This amount works well for an average group of people with average heat preferences. Heat lovers will want more spice, though, so feel free to add more—Martha's recipe calls for 1 3/4 teaspoons!

Another Reason to Avoid Fast Food

Yep, we're bashing on fast food again. But how can we not, when we read stories like this? (Check out the photo gallery!)

Rave Review: "Artisan" Lettuce

OK, first off—we don't much care for the term "artisan," which is to this century what "gourmet" was to the 1970s and likewise is indiscriminately applied to everything from mass-produced bread to gummy Costco cheeses. Nonetheless, the sudden appearance of "artisan" lettuce, as it is obnoxiously labeled, in our local stores and, yes, Costco, has dramatically improved our salads.

Our longtime problem with pre-mixed salads is the high spoilage rate: the mixture of lettuce varieties always means that some leaves decay before others, forcing us to either pick out the slimy deadbeats from the remaining crisp leaves or toss the whole package, an act we find unacceptably wasteful. Still, because these packages are often economical despite the spoilage, we've continued to buy them.

But a few months ago, packages of "artisan"—sorry for the quotes, but this term really grates—lettuces began to appear in our local supermarkets: tight-packed whole heads of red and green varieties. Not only did these cost less than the typical mesclun mix, they had a much longer shelf life.

Last night we apprehensively opened a two-week old box with one remaining head, which had been neglected on the back of a refrigerator shelf. Astonishingly, the lettuce was crisp and entirely usable.

A one-pound box of lettuces runs less than $4 at Costco.

Summer's Over — Time for Soup!

Fall not only means the onset of cool weather—sweet relief to those of us who broiled in a summer heat wave—but truckloads of ripe vegetables. The harvest is in, the leaves are turning, the nights are chilly, and it's time to make soup. 

RoAnn Redlin offers this simple but delicious menu for a fall dinner, using classic seasonal ingredients. 
She says: "I had a great dinner last night. I made the quiche lorraine from the New York Times Cookbook and a new soup: cream of carrot/parsnip. I had to make a dessert out of what I had on hand, so I sautéed some apples in butter and brown sugar. Then I threw the leftover pastry from the quiche on top of the apples with cinnamon sugar. Voilà! A great meal. I loved the soup." 

Cream of Carrot Soup

4 T butter
1 package baby carrots, chopped
1 pound of parsnips, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 32-ounce boxes of chicken stock
1/3 c. uncooked rice*
1/3 c. half-and-half
Sage leaves (optional)

1. Sauté first butter, carrots, parsnips, and onions for 15 to 20 minutes. 

2. Add the broth, and bring to a simmer. After about 40 minutes, add the rice. 

3. Once the vegetables are soft and the rice is cooked, purée the whole thing with a hand blender or in a food processor. Add warm half-and-half. Garnish with chopped sage leaves. 

* All I had was wild rice, and it added an exotic flavor.

The Frugal Pantry: Fermented Black Beans

"Fermented black beans" probably sounds better in another language,* but despite its unappetizing moniker, this Chinese staple (also known as "salted black beans") gives a quick and cheap flavor boost to any stir-fry.

This week we were too busy to shop or plan meals, and in any case we had no energy to cook them. One night we wrapped up work late and wondered what we could quickly make for dinner. We had little in the way of produce except some elderly green beans, onions, garlic, tofu . . . and ginger! The ginger tipped the balance: we would make a stir-fry.

We've learned how to make an all-purpose stir-fry sauce from oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, and chili paste. Still, with our lackluster vegetable lineup, we knew we needed something else. So we reached for the fermented black beans. A couple of tablespoons, quickly mashed with the side of a heavy knife, tossed in with the garlic and ginger at the outset of the stir-frying, made all the difference, lending a flavor that was earthy, pungent, and unmistakably Chinese.

Don't make the mistake many before you have made and substitute canned black beans; you'll end up with something completely different. Fermented black beans are dry and velvety and can be found in any Asian grocery. One bag will last a long time; as far as we can tell, they last forever . . . except in our kitchen.

* Actually, it's douchi, but to our immature minds that is hardly an improvement.

Squash Pasta: An Autumn Delight

This is the time of year that our gardens and grocery stores are displaying a bounty of winter squash. Acorn. Butternut. Pumpkin. Spaghetti. And heirloom varieties of all kinds.

Our solution to this wealth of Cucurbita maxima from Central America used to be the tried and true Baked Squash with Butter and Maple Syrup. We got tired of it and, frankly, never like it THAT much. Last week we gave you a wonderful recipe for Pumpkin Soup.

Here's an idea that Tim's brother Ron picked up at a cooking class. It sounds weird, and looks a little boring. But it is very complex and works as either a vegetarian main dish or as a main if you add shredded poulty: Pasta with Squash Sauce.

Cut a large (3 lbs.) squash of any winter variety in half lengthwise, spoon out the seeds and bake cut side down in a 350-degree oven with a sprig of Thyme and a clove of garlic underneath and a drizzle of olive oil over the top. Test for doneness by spearing with a knife. It might take about 30-45 minutes depending upon the size and shape of the squash.

Spoon the squash meat and the garlic cloves into a food processor (remove the thyme sprigs). Add 3/4 cup of vegetable stock (you could use chicken stock), 2 Tablespoons of cream, a teaspoon of curry powder, a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves (1/3 teaspoon of dried) a half-teaspoon of dried pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste. You don't need much pepper, but you should start with a teaspoon of salt, and you can adjust again later if it's not enough.

Meanwhile, cook 1 lb. pasta (we used linguini) in boiling water. Drain the pasta and immediately mix in the squash sauce. (Taste the sauce again for salt, curry and pepper flakes before mixing.) Top with shredded chicken, if you're inclined. Either way, garnish with some thyme leaves and sprigs and parmesan cheese.

Serve with more grated parmesan at the table.

The curry and faint hint of heat from the pepper flakes give the otherwise mono-tasting squash a depth and complexity that is very fulfilling.

This recipe would taste great with a crisp and un-oakey Chardonnay, but we served it with a Zinfandel from the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma, which nicely complemented the spice in the dish.

Celebrate the Harvest with Curried Pumpkin Soup

Our friends Chuck and Sandy put in a big garden every year, and this year we really appreciated it, as our own garden consisted solely of an inadvertently massive herb bed and, thanks to the Evil Stalker Groundhog, three pots of lackluster tomatoes. Not only did we get to taste lots of good food at Chuck and Sandy's house, they generously shared their bounty. A couple of weeks ago, Chuck presented us with a sugar pumpkin, a bag of herbs and chili peppers, and a considerately printed-out recipe.

Though we're always sad to see the summer go, we love the harvest, and this soup makes good use of it.

One suggestion: Thrifty though we are, we try not to cook with those big Halloween pumpkins, which tend to be very fibrous. (Still, a friend of ours tells a great story about her extremely frugal mother, who used to drive through her neighborhood on November 1, make her humiliated children scoop up the smashed pumpkins, and then turn the road-kill vegetables into pies. We can't help admiring that.)

If you can, use a sugar pumpkin; butternut squash would also work well.

Curried Pumpkin Soup

4 cups puréed pumpkin*
2 T. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, chopped
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 t. fresh thyme leaves
2 T. chopped parsley
1 t. curry powder
1 small hot pepper, minced (optional)**
1/2 cup cream or 3/4 cup whole milk

1. To prepare the pumpkin, cut it in half, extract the seeds and strings, then bake upside-down in a pan with about an inch of water in a 350-degree oven for about 50 minutes, or until you can easily remove the pumpkin from the skin.

2. In a large pan, heat the oil, then sauté the onion and garlic until soft and golden.

3. Add the stock, thyme, parsley, curry powder, and hot pepper.  Bring to a boil, the simmer for about 30 minutes.

4. Using an immersion blender, stationary blender, or food processor, purée the soup until it is smooth and creamy. Put it back in the pan (if you removed it to purée it) and simmer for an additional 30 minutes. Before serving, add the cream or milk and heat for a minute or two.

Though the soup is good served plain, a dollop of sour cream or a few toasted pumpkin seeds finish it nicely.

*If you can't get four cups out of the pumpkin, adjust the recipe proportionately.

** Chuck added a finely chopped, tiny habanero pepper to give the soup a kick; we used a couple of very small but deadly Thai peppers, which provided a nice afterglow.

Favorite Things: Food Processor

We're still on the road, and won't be back in the kitchen until Thursday. But we've been meaning to write an ode to our beloved Cuisinart, and today Mark Bittman beat us to it. His column has a lot of tips for making the best use of this device, which we still find miraculous after 30 years of several-times-weekly use.

A lot of people own food processors but let them gather dust in cupboards because they're a pain to drag out and (people think) a pain to clean. Maybe today's Bittman column will liberate some of those forgotten pieces of equipment so they can do the jobs they were meant to do.

Road Food: Visit Farmers' Markets to Avoid Junky Restaurants

We've written quite a bit about eating on the road—basically, how to avoid junky fast food. This past week we've
been traveling around Boulder, Colorado, and the city's splendid
farmer's market has allowed us to eat particularly well.

Boulder's residents love both food and the environment, so the local market features almost exclusively organic produce and baked goods. We loaded up on tomatoes, peaches, bread, and cheese, confident that we would have some great picnics.

For the next few days we ate lunch in local parks, tearing apart our crusty bread to make impromptu sandwiches as we gawked at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. The September air was clear and crisp, and the peaches were the juiciest we have ever eaten; afterward, we had to douse ourselves with bottled water to keep the yellow jackets at bay.

Our lunches here have ranked among our best lunches ever  . . . and proved yet again that road food can be delicious and life-affirming, especially when it's eaten outdoors. If you find yourself traveling through a city with a farmer's market and have time to stop and shop, you're guaranteed of getting a better lunch than any fast-food or chain restaurant can provide. (The Local Harvest website will tell you if there's a market in the area you'll be visiting.)

Sweet-Savory Fruit Preserve Tastes Good on Everything

Guest blogger Amy Friedman shares a recipe that turns blah leftover fruit into an amazingly flexible preserve that works great on everything from meat to ice cream. 

Sweet-Savory Fruit Preserve

Do you love summer sausage? I do. I especially love it with mustard and fruit preserves. Lingonberries work well, but I recently found I wanted something a little sweeter.

So I made up my own sweet-savory fruit preserve. 

As always with me, it's another "clean the fridge" recipe. I initially did it as an experiment, throwing all sorts of shleppy fruit I had around the fridge into it. 

When the fruit mix was ready to come off the stove, I realized it couldn't decide if it was a spread or a fruit butter. I've tried it hot on blintzes, cheese pierogi, and ice cream, and cold on toast, and it's just fine. Today I discovered that cold, and mixed with a little mustard, it's the perfect accompaniment for summer sausage. 

Here's how to make it: 
Pull out your glass or plastic liquid cup measurer. Into it, cut up whatever fruit you've got in the house, until you've got two to four cups. In my mix, I had an apple, a pear, a peach, about half a cup of shleppy red grapes, a handful of dying blueberries, and about an inch or two of finely chopped ginger. Other fruits that can go in there are gooseberries, nectarines, and plums.

Always make sure you've got an apple or a peach in whatever fruit mix you're making—the natural pectin means you won't need Sure-Jell or other commercial jellers. 


Dump the fruit into a bowl (or even into the pot in which you intend to boil the fruit—less cleanup! Just don't use an aluminum pot).  Add an equal amount of sugar. That is, if you've got four cups of fruit, add four cups of sugar. Put in less if the fruit is quite sweet.


Add lemon juice. To four cups of fruit, I generally add the juice of a whole lemon. That's about a tablespoon and a half to two tablespoons. 


This is important: LET IT SIT for two hours. The sugar has to do some digestive work on the fruit. Cover it up and head out of the house or something. When you come back, give it a stir, stick it on the burner, bring it to a boil, and then lower the heat as much as you can. (The sugars mean it can scorch easily, so you really want the heat low.) Cover it, and leave it there for two to three hours. Shorter if you want something more like a sauce, and longer if you want something thick and robust. Come back once in a while and give it a stir, to see how the consistency is maturing. I left mine on the burner for three hours. It came out nice and thick and very tasty, with the ginger giving it a lovely piquancy. 

Next time, I might sliver some of the lemon rind into it, and put in a bit more ginger. 

While your preserve is fone, go slice up some summer sausage, put a few spoonfuls of this on a plate, mix in some mustard, and dip in. Yum!

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.

Peach Cobbler: The Internets to the Rescue

It's been a glorious peach season, but now we're starting to encounter dubious peaches—mushy and mealy despite their exterior perfection. The season is coming to an end. What better time to make peach cobbler, a dish that turns questionable fruit into a wonderful end-of-summer dessert?

We've tried many recipes for cobbler over the years but have always particularly loved a recipe from an old Sunset magazine that used a rolled-out cream-cheese crust. Alas, when we looked for it yesterday, we realized that the recipe had been inadvertently purged during our move last year.

Surely we'd be able to find it online, we thought. But it was nowhere to be found—not even in the Sunset recipe archives. There were lots of cobbler recipes online that mixed cream cheese with the peaches before baking, but that wasn't what we wanted.

Finally, we came upon a recipe with a wacky-sounding crust that featured boiling water in place of  the usual milk or buttermilk. We might have rejected it out of hand, but it was overwhelmingly popular with the readers of AllRecipes.com; in fact, an astonishing 22,000 people had saved it. So we decided to try it.

The resulting cobbler was delicious: fruit-heavy, the way we like it, with a sweet but not cloying crust. We would definitely make it again . . . even though we're still going to search for that elusive recipe for the cream-cheese crust.

Favorite Kitchen Utensils: Rotary Cheese Grater

We love parmesan cheese, but we do not love scraping our knuckles as we try to get every fragment off the rind. But Parmigiano-Reggiano is expensive, even at Costco, and we don't like to waste any of it. 


Although microplanes work well on larger pieces of cheese, they can wreak havoc on your hands when you get down to the rind—one slip of the wrist, and you're running for the Band-Aid box.  


Fortunately, we invested years ago in a rotary cheese grinder, which with a few turns produces mounds of snowy grated cheese. Even though it's made of plastic, it's endured heavy use for at least a decade now and withstood many trips through the dishwasher.


(For some reason, we can't delete the Amazon link to the left, but it does provide a good view of this marvelous invention.) 


Now we can scrape every parmesan rind down to the very bottom before we toss it into the freezer for future batches of soup. 

Too Much Zucchini? Try This Brownie Recipe!

Zucchini growers are always looking for new recipes, for obvious reasons (see photo). Most of you probably have a reliable recipe for zucchini bread, but did you know that you can make zucchini brownies? Ro Ann Redlin once more comes to the rescue of Eat Well, Eat Cheap readers, with a delicious suggestion for using up extra squash.

Ro Ann notes, "I feel guilty about this not being healthier! But if your readers need something to do with all those zucchinis pouring in from their gardens, here is a perfect baking recipe. (Another way to use up the squash and make your spaghetti healthier: grate two cups of unpeeled zucchini into your favorite spaghetti sauce recipe. It cooks down right away and adds no taste other than as a complement to the tomato.)"

Zucchini Brownies

1/2 c. margarine or butter
1/2 c. oil
1 3/4 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. sour cream
1/4 c. cocoa
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
2 c. grated zucchini
1/2 c. chocolate chips

1. Cream margarine/butter, oil, and sugar. 

2. Add eggs, vanilla, sour cream, cocoa, flour, baking power, baking soda, and salt. Stir in zucchini.

3.  Pour into a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. 

4. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool before cutting. 

If anybody else has good suggestions for using up zucchini—particularly those club-size vegetables that too often end up in the compost bin—please send them along!

A Veggie Stir-fry That Will Please Meat Eaters

Today we welcome guest blogger Amy Friedman, who combines a love of cooking, a flair for frugality, and a talent for writing. She offers this yummy-sounding stir-fry recipe designed to satisfy both meat eaters and vegetarians:


My husband and I are both meat eaters, but we do enjoy vegetarian dishes. For my husband, veggie dishes have two requirements: hearty and tasty. By “tasty,” he generally means “spicy,” so my many jars of peppers and pepper sauces get quite the workout!

I also like hearty and tasty (although not quite as spicy as my husband), and am also a biiiiiiiig fan of “clean the refrigerator” dishes. You know . . . the last few little cherry tomatoes that are about to die, the half bulb of fennel forgotten in the veggie crisper, etc. 


Here’s a lovely tofu stir-fry I invented one evening that fits several bills: It’s hearty and tasty, vegan, cleans the fridge, and makes my hubby the carnivore happy. He generally asks for it every week to ten days, and always takes seconds (and sometimes thirds). 

The recipe looks complicated, but it really isn’t. You can be a purist and mince your own ginger and garlic, but I generally use the preminced stuff. Also, once you’ve made it a few times and are comfortable with the proportions, you can throw it together right in the frying pan, if you’re so inclined. Saves on cleanup!

Hearty and Tasty Tofu Stir-Fry


1 14-ounce package extra-firm tofu, drained and cubed
 4 or 5 dried tree ear mushrooms, soaked in a bowl of water
1 green pepper
4 ounces fresh mushrooms 
1 large or 2 medium onions
Optional: half a zucchini or yellow squash, diced; thinly sliced fennel or celery; sliced or diced broccoli stem (not florets!) 
1 T. olive oil
1 c. fresh spinach leaves
About 15 grape tomatoes, or an equal amount of Roma tomatoes, sliced
3 or 4 scallions, sliced


Marinade:
¼ c. soy sauce (shoyu or tamari OK)
About 1 T.  mirin 
1 to 2 t. pureed ginger (or 1 t. minced fresh ginger)
1 to 2 t. minced garlic (2 garlic cloves, mince, or about 1½ t. garlic powder)
1 to 2 T. peanut butter (I like the crunchy stuff, but also sometimes just use peanut sauce)
1 dollop honey (optional)
1 to 2 T. sriracha sauce, or ½ t. black pepper, ½ t. red pepper, ¼ t. white pepper (you may want it less spicy—experiment with smaller proportions, but don’t substitute Tabasco!)

1. Mix marinade and pour over tofu. Let it sit while prepping the rest of the meal.

2. Dice green pepper (or halves of two colors – looks pretty!), mushrooms 
(you can also use presliced for a chunkier dish), onion, and the optional veggies, if you're using them. 

3. Heat olive oil in a 12-inch frying pan. 


4. Pour marinated tofu plus all the marinade into the  pan and spread in a single layer.
Let cook about 5 minutes.

5. While the tofu is cooking, slice up the tree ear mushrooms, then add to the pan, along with the green pepper, mushrooms, onions and optional veggies. Stir-fry for about five minutes,  then let simmer for another five minutes.

6. Add the spinach to the pan and stir until it wilts. 


7. Stir the tomatoes and scallions into the mix. Cover, and let simmer for about five minutes.

Serve spooned over hot white sushi rice or brown rice. 

NOTE: if you don’t have the rice already made, start the rice BEFORE you start this dish!


Note: the Tofuzilla photo is from a poster for the Los Angeles Tofu Festival. We wish we could have attended! 

The Future of Cookbooks?

Given that just about everybody has a video camera, access to a blog on the Internet, and a creative itch, why wouldn't cookbooks and recipes go beyond the half-hour TV cooking show to something more sensual and inviting?

Eat Well, Eat Cheap posted John Ross's wonderful little self-shot video of himself baking eggplant, complete with recipe instructions and illuminating video. We forgot about another, equally sensual recipe video that we'd seen earlier on National Public Radio's website. This one by William Hereford is a complete meal featuring duck breast, fingerling potatoes and a butter lettuce salad. If you want to read the accompanying story that NPR did on the video, titled "Is This The Future of Cookbooks," click here. If you merely want to watch the video, go straight to the screen below.

Both of these recipe videos are accompanied by splendid music. Even if you hate eggplant or never eat duck breast, these two videos are worth watching, just for the pleasure they convey about how much fun it is to cook a great plate of food at home.


Cooking Dinner Vol. I from William Hereford on Vimeo.

Easy Baked Eggplant Video

Our friend John Ross has made a smashing video of how to bake an eggplant with five other ingredients for 30 minutes to make an fairly healthy, and certainly enticing, vegetable side.
In addition to giving you everything you need to know to make and bake the dish, he's made a food video that has no voiceover, is easy to follow, and is just a joy to watch.


Roasted Eggplant from John Craig Ross on Vimeo.

Bargain Wine of the Week: Sonoma Acres

Remember when you bent the rules just a bit, because you knew it wouldn't really hurt anybody? And, besides, it probably came as an opportunity that would not present itself again — and it was too good to pass up.

Rules are made to be bent, if not broken, right? We're going to bend our rules one time to tell you about an amazing winery that is getting amazing ratings from Jonathan Newman, one of America's premier wine raters.

The broken rule? The two wines (from the same winery) that we're about to tell you about cost more than $10, and that's our rule here: All wines are good to great and they're all under $10. So, just listen, and see if it's not worth a moving the fences a little. Just this once.

We recently purchased, on Jonathan Newman's recommendation, two 2008 Sonoma Acres wines. The first was a Sauvignon Blanc that Newman rated a 90+. It cost us $10.99. The wine is made from grapes grown all over Sonoma County. The cooler vineyards add a little lemongrass and gooseberry to the nose; the warmer vineyards add tropical nuances.

Here's what Newman said about this wine:

This is an outstanding value 08 Sauvignon Blanc with a nice QPR. Grapefruit, honeysuckle and hints of exotic fruit on the nose. A good core of intensity with key lime, honeydew and candied pineapple. Balanced with nice round tropical fruit creaminess with a pleasant, refreshing finish.

The he really popped our cork when he gave the 2008 Sonoma Acres Pinot Noir a 92/93 rating. The wine was a bit more expensive — $13.99 — but we splurged and bought four. What a bargain for a pinot, especially a Russian River Pinot Noir. Because of the popularity of this varietal — the scourge of "Sideways"— it is very difficult to find a great pinot for less than $30. Here is Newman's review of this wine.

Good bright red ruby color. Inspiring aromas of strawberries, bing cherry,and red plum. Well structured, bright, pleasant acidity and medium bodied. A silky lush mouth feel with raspberries, pomegranates, cherries and touchesof cinnamon and plum. Aged in french oak for ten months which is nicely integrated with a very pleasant and clean finish. This is a small production100% Pinot Noir that is all grown in Sonoma's Russian River Valley and has a great quality/price ratio. Enjoy now or over the next several years and pair with roast duckling in a bing cherry sauce, bouillabaisse or seared salmon.

We've posted the two labels here, so if you see them in a wine store, please do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle of each.

Fried Parmesan Crisps—Great Garnish, Great Appetizer

Known in the foodie world as frico, these delicate cheese crisps dress up salads and pasta dishes and make excellent quick appetizers. And they could not be easier to make. All you need are a chunk of parmesan, a grater, and a nonstick pan.

Once you've grated your cheese, turn the heat under your pan up fairly high, then sprinkle the cheese in thin circles on the nonstick surface. Be careful not to pile up the cheese, or the crisps won't be very crispy—a light, lacy pattern is best. Admittedly, the cheese in this photo doesn't follow any particular pattern; if we were showing off for guests, we would make more of an effort to keep the crisps round:

Within a couple of minutes, the cheese will be melted and starting to brown. Turn down the heat to medium and let the cheese cook for just a few minutes more, until it is golden throughout. Then set the pan aside to cool; don't try lifting the cheese off it when it's still hot, or it will smoosh.

After a few minutes, your parmesan crisps will be ready. If you want to use them in a salad or as a garnish, you may want to set them where nobody can find them; they have a tendency to be scarfed up as soon as they're done.

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.

How to Make Ice Cream Without a Machine

No, you don't need one of those old-fashioned crank things, either. According to this article in today's Washington Post (hold your nose and submit to the registration process; it's worth it), all you need are a couple of plastic bags and some ice. Even though we have a machine, we hardly use it, and the simplicity of this process appeals to us. We'll try it soon and report back  . . .

The Frugal Pantry: Walnut Oil

Like most people, we tend to reach for the olive oil out of habit. Indeed, it's the perfect all-purpose oil, good for cooking, salads, marinades, and just about anything short of Asian dishes. But because we use olive oil so often, we tend to take its flavor for granted.

To keep this from happening—and to keep surprising our taste buds—we deploy our can of walnut oil. Combined with a little lemon juice or rice-wine vinegar and a pinch of salt and pepper, walnut oil makes the best simple dressing we know: rich, deep, and fancy-tasting. Because it's expensive, we only use it for salads.

For walnut oil lovers, price is one problem—an eight-ounce can or bottle can easily run to double digits. Another problem is perishability: several times we've bought rancid oil from expensive stores.

Fortunately, we've discovered an economical solution: discount stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Marshalls. These stores not only sell walnut oil at a deep discount—a 17-ounce can of our favorite brand, La Tourangelle, costs $6.99—but they pride themselves on selling fresh oil, so they're safe places to shop. Your can of walnut oil may be slightly dented, but that won't stop it from giving you dozens of wonderful salads.

Cool Off with Cucumber Mint Soup

Temperatures are rising again after a fairly cool weekend, and we're looking for recipes that will help us beat the heat. Snooping around online this morning, we stumbled across this great-sounding recipe for Cucumber Mint Soup, which makes use of two items that many of us currently have in abundance. (We are always looking for mint recipes.)

This would make a perfect dinner on a day that's so hot you can't bear the thought of using the stove or even the grill. Add some bread and wine—and maybe some cheese and a green salad, if you're feeling ambitious—and those miserable temperatures might suddenly be a lot more tolerable.