Day 9: Smokin' Hot Salmon

I don't go out to eat very often, mainly for budgetary reasons since feeding two teenagers and myself at a restaurant adds up very quickly. When I do go out, my one criteria for choosing a restaurant is that they have to serve something I can't make at home, which usually means we are eating at an Asian hole-in-the-wall or having In-n-Out burgers.

I haven't been out to eat since this experiment started and so I was ecstatic when The Geek offered to take me out for a sushi lunch today (and I only had to drop one hint!). We both love sushi and so it is no small affair when we go to our favorite All-You-Can-Eat sushi bar. That, combined with a late lunch hour, meant neither of us were very hungry at dinner time.

Here's where having a well-stocked pantry and a hot smokin' BFF comes in handy. The Geek hot-smokes salmon. (The smoked salmon that is typically available commercially - the thin fillets that are slimy - is made by a process known as cold smoking.) Hot-smoked salmon has the texture of cooked fish and fantastic smoky flavor. The Geek just happened to have a smoked fillet in his refrigerator along with some cream cheese and Triscuits. Voila! One of our favorite snacks!

I dug around in my freezer and found a wedge of brie and a wedge of Stilton (a mild blue cheese). I spooned some of AB's cranberry sauce (leftover from Thanksgiving) over the brie and microwaved it until just heated. The tangy cranberries and sweet honey  complemented the mild French cheese perfectly. Fuji apple slices rounded out the meal.

Busy Mom Modifications and Tips

• I frequently make a "meal" like this on nights when we're short on time or I am not in the mood to cook. I buy a loaf of crusty Italian bread, warm up some cheese (usually brie plus another, more pungent cheese such as chevré or blue cheese), add some fruit, and a protein such as summer sausage or smoked salmon. My daughter refers to this as our "European Peasant" dinner.
• TGI Friday's, the chain restaurant, used to serve a brie appetizer that I still like to make at home. Put a generous chunk of butter on top of the brie, sprinkle with slivered almonds, and bake in a 350F oven until the butter has melted and the cheese is soft. The melted butter is perfect for dipping fresh bread.
• Other fruit that goes well with this meal include firm pear slices, grapes, and cantaloupe.

My Shopping List

Nothing - we made do with what was on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this month so far: $143 (Thanksgiving was an expensive meal!)

Day 4: Ssssssmokin!

There is something you should know about The Geek: he is a smoker. Not of cigarettes but of hickory, alder, oak and pecan. He smokes seafood, pork, chicken, and beef all to delectable ends and keeps my freezer chocked full of smoked salmon and other smoky delights. It has been raining the last few days so when the sun peeked out this afternoon, The Geek decided to smoke a rib eye roast.

Smoking is all about numbers: The size of the roast, time to cook per pound, the internal temperature, the ambient temperature, the temperature at which the meat is fully cooked but not overly done. Since he is a math wiz, The Geek has smoking down to a science.  The roast came out of the smoker promptly at 5:30 and was a perfect 141F. The combination of oak and pecan gave it a beautiful mahogany color, a heavenly scent and fantastic flavor.

When The Geek smokes the entrée, I make the fixin's. Due to time constraints, it is usually a simple chopped vegetable salad with a loaf of bread from the bakery but on the weekends, I like to try more elaborate dishes. Today I chose one of my favorites, Alton Brown's Roasted Edamame Salad. I also had a butternut squash that needed to be eaten up so I decided to try Ina Garten's Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette.

I'll start with the Roasted Butternut Squash Salad. Peeling and cutting up the squash was a huge effort. Roasting it took a lot longer than the 20 minutes listed in the recipe and the resulting texture was not suited for a salad, in my opinion. The vinaigrette took closer to 20 minutes (more than twice the time listed) to reduce. And unfortunately I did not have many of the key ingredients called for in the recipe. I replaced the arugula with leaf lettuce, pear cider (the carbonated kind) for the apple juice, and left out the cranberries and walnuts since I did not have comparable replacements. Perhaps this is why the salad turned out to be such a bland mess? Even if it had turned out as delicious as the reviewers on the website had raved, I'm not sure I would make this again - it was just way too much effort.

Alton, or 'AB' as we his devotees call him, never lets me down. I follow his Roasted Edamame recipe to the letter, with two exceptions. First I use frozen corn that has been thawed. And second, I like to roast the soybeans and corn until they are shriveled down to wrinkled, brown shadows of their fomer selves. I realize this does not sound at all appetizing but the beans and corn take on a chewy texture and the flavor really concentrates down. The catch is that it takes almost an hour of roasting time at 450F to achieve this effect but it is well worth it.

Busy Mom Modifications

• The substitutions in the Squash salad were probably to the salad's detriment. If I make this again (which is not likely), I will invest in the recommended ingredients.
• I'm not sure why The Barefoot Contessa has you peel and cut up the squash before roasting. I suspect the idea is that you can coat the pieces of squash before roasting and that somehow improves the flavor. In the past when I have roasted squash, I quarter it, scoop out the seeds and fiber, and slather the exposed surfaces with the maple syrup/butter/brown sugar/whatever and it has always been delicious. And you have the bonus of being able to easily scoop the flesh out of the skin. If you're going to try this recipe, you may want to quarter instead of chopping up/peeling the raw squash.
• AB has you cutting the corn fresh off the cob. I use frozen corn that has been thawed.
• The Edamame salad is quick and easy, and if you roast for the recommended 10 minutes, this is very do-able for a weeknight dinner.
• Line the baking sheet with aluminum foil before putting in the beans and corn. This will make it easier to transfer to the serving bowl (lift off the foil and pour into the bowl) and simplifies clean-up.  

The Results

• Of course the roast was the star of the meal. If you don't have a friend with mad smoking skills, then you should go out and find one.
• I've said enough about the squash salad.
• The edamame salad is always a hit.

Ratings for the Edamame Salad

• From The Geek: "Wow! This salad has a lot more flavor than you would think it would have from looking at it. It is really good." 
• Difficulty: Easy.
• Time to prepare:  20 minutes up to 1 hr 10 minutes, depending on how long you roast the soybeans and corn and assuming you use frozen corn
• Prognosis:  A favorite that I love to serve to guests

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

The day's tally: $0
Total this week so far: $7.77

Day 3: Enjoying the Bounties of Someone Else's Pantry

Today I was invited to join some friends for a chili dinner.  When the cook heard about my blog, he laughed and said that that was how he decided what to put in the pot. He scrounged around in his refrigerator and pantry and added the things that needed to be used up. The end result was a delicious turkey chili loaded with beans and vegetables.

My contribution to dinner was Double-Corn Cornbread, a recipe from one of my favorite cooking sites, http://www.cookscountry.com/.  

The recipe calls for 1 cup of sour cream and I was out. Since it was raining and I wasn't in the mood to go to the grocery store (what can I say, I live in Southern California!), I decided to make-do with what I could find in my fridge. I will frequently use yogurt as a substitute for sour cream in cooking but was out of that too. So I combined half a cup of mayonnaise with half a cup of cream cheese. While not quite as sour as sour cream, the texture and fat content was about equivalent and seemed to work out just fine.

To round out the meal, The Geek made bananas flambé, a delicious concoction of sugar, butter, three types of alcohol, and lemon and orange zest  and juice reduced to a tangy, flavorful sauce in which bananas are then simmered. For a guy who is "not licensed to cook indoors," he knows how to finish out a meal.

Busy Mom Modifications and Tips

• As I mentioned above, I substituted 1/2 cup Mayo + 1/2 c cream cheese for the sour cream.
• I was running late for dinner and so I decided to take a shower while the cornbread was baking. Unfortunately, the bread over-baked in the fifteen minutes I was away. (The recipe lists 25 minutes as the baking time.) You'll definitely want to keep an eye on this the first few times you make it.
• The cornbread turned out a bit dry and crumbly. While it could have been because I baked it too long, I suspect I also stirred it too much. Cornbread is a "quick bread" and like muffin batter, should only be mixed until the ingredients are just combined.This recipe calls for two rounds of stirring. Next time I will fold in the wet ingredients until they are just barely mixed and then swirl in (as opposed to mixing in) the melted butter.

The Results

Depending on where you live, cornbread recipes tend to be sweet or savory. This recipe falls right in the middle - just a hint of sweetness while being hearty. Dryness aside, the flavor of the cornbread was delicious. Very flavorful and "corn-y." The dry, crumbly texture worked to our advantage when we crumbled it into the chili.

Ratings

• Crowd Comments: Everyone said the cornbread was good, that it went well with the chili
• I rate this medium difficulty because it requires a practiced eye for determining when you have mixed enough and it is easy to over-bake. The recipe also calls for a food processor.
• Time to prepare: 35 minutes plus 20 minutes of cooling time.
• Prognosis: Not sure it's worth the effort; will give it one more try

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

The day's tally: $0
Total this week so far: $7.77

Day 2: Pizza and The Geek

The kids are with their dad this weekend and so I am having dinner with one of my BFFs tonight, a person I affectionately refer to as "The Geek" due to his expertise in computer programming and internet security. It's a gastronomic symbiosis - I love to cook and he loves to eat. One of our favorite meals is pizza with anchovies and since I exceeded my daily shopping limit yesterday by $2.77, I decided this was a good meal for today since I had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I recently bought the cookbook, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day and I think the recipes result in some of the best bread I have ever tasted. A little flour, warm water, salt and yeast is all it takes. I always keep some dough in my refrigerator so that I can have homemade pizza (or calzone) in 20 minutes whenever the urge strikes me. The dough is super easy (no kneading required!) and keeps up to two weeks in the fridge, although it never lasts that long in my house. If you want to try it without buying the cookbook, check out the authors' youtube page or blog for videos with complete recipes and instructions.

Two tools that are absolutely essential for making pizza at home are a peel and a baking stone. The peel is the easiest way to transfer the dough into and out of the oven and the stone provides a hot, evenly heated surface to ensure a crispy crust. To learn more about these tools, go to youtube.com and search on "Good Eats" and "Flat is Beautiful." There are lots of clips with tips and demonstrations.

The Geek LOVES anchovies and so I brushed the dough with the oil that the anchovies were packed in. WOW! Talk about INTENSE flavor. (I do not advise this for the faint of heart.)

To finish, I layered sauce, toppings (thinly sliced onions and anchovies) and cheese and baked in a pre-heated 450F oven for 20 minutes (until the cheese was bubbly and the crust had browned).

Busy Mom Modifications

• The "5 Minute" crust does not brown very well on its own. I brush olive oil on the outer part of the crust (the part not covered by sauce and toppings) before baking so that it will brown.
• For the sauce, I use spaghetti sauce (HORROR OF HORRORS) because I always have a bottle on hand.
• The cheese is whatever I have in the freezer at the moment, which for the kids is usually a combination of shredded mozzarella, monterey jack, and cheddar. But I have made pizza with brie, havarti, even goat cheese. All are yummy.
• And then toppings: thinly sliced or julienned fruit or vegetables, sliced deli meat, canned chicken, etc. all work.
• When it comes to layering toppings, I like to put dry ingredients directly on the sauce (under the cheese) so they will moisten as the sauce heats up. Wetter ingredients such as pineapple or tomato are better on top of the cheese so the dough does not get too wet and the vegetables dry out in the heat.
• You may be tempted to assemble your pizza on the peel in order to save time or to keep from flouring a second surface. Resist the urge. The "5 Minute" dough is very wet and the longer it sits, the more it absorbs the surface flour. It only takes a few seconds before the dough will start sticking to the peel and then you'll have a huge mess when you try to transfer it to the oven. Assemble the pizza on a well-floured surface then transfer to the well-floured peel and transfer immediately to the hot oven. The dough should slide right off the peel with quick jerking movements.

The Results

My favorite part of this pizza is the crust. It is chewy and crusty with fantastic flavor. The Geek loved the way the intense fish flavor was infused throughout the pizza, thanks to the anchovy oil.

Ratings

• The Geek says: This is the best pizza I've ever had!
• Easy to make
• Time to prepare: 30 min. if the "5 Minute" dough has already been prepared
• Prognosis: This one's a keeper!

My Shopping List

Nothing - I used ingredients I already had in my pantry

The day's tally: $0
Total spending this week so far: $7.77

P.S.
The Geek, who jokes that he is not licensed for indoor cooking, supplied dessert: Grown-up Ice Cream Sodas. This cold and sweet treat was the perfect chaser for the salty, fishy pizza.