The Rhuby Boomershine

I've invented a cocktail for work.

And look! It's on the menu!

It's 1 oz each of Rhuby (now renamed Rhubarb Tea) and the rhubarb shrub I wrote about a couple of weeks ago--which is equal parts chopped rhubarb, brown sugar, and vinegar, left to sit for a few days. Pour over ice, top with Dry Rhubarb soda, and mix well.

It's light and refreshing, like rhubarb lemonade without the lemons. It makes you want to sit in the sun and drink three of them.

And it's paired with a bite of foie gras wrapped in pastry. What could be more awesome?

New photos at Broke Foodie!

I have some new photos on my other blog, Broke Foodie! Also on Broke Foodie's Facebook page. Courtesy of Alexandra Nunes Photography.

Pretty awesome, huh? I'm in the process of updating my blog.

Vote for me!

On a whim, I entered a Recipe Redesign Contest, and it seems I'm one of 22 finalists. Be sure to check it out and vote for me!

I know my hand-drawn picture looks like kindergarten crap next to the other entries. Seriously, I had no idea professional graphic design would be involved. I took "recipe redesign" literally; looks like everyone else concentrated on the "design" part of that statement, rather than the "recipe" part.

Oh well. Vote for me anyway?

Guest post at Mom-in-a-Million!

Today I have a guest post over at Mom-in-a-Million! Pay no attention to that part where she claims we were all drunk at college and saw various people in their underwear. I certainly had no part in such shenanigans.


Of course, I'll never be able to run for public office, due to certain proofs from that era. But that's another blog post entirely.

Bacon chocolate

Order it here.

Lauren, tell all your friends. ;-)

I'm officially starting the Broke Foodie Cookbook

It'll essentially be a compilation of the blog, but more pulled together and with better stories. Probably it will be available for download off the blog, but for the people I like the best, you can have your very own paper copy. You know who you are--you're probably reading this right now. :-)

Also, everyone is getting my barbecue sauce for Christmas this year. I'm thinking of calling it Brokeass Barbecue Sauce. Thoughts?

I redesigned my food blog!

Check it out!
http://www.brokefoodie.com/

And, you know, tell all your friends.

We interrupt this thread to bring you some shameless self-promotion

Broke Foodie now has a Facebook page! And is on Twitter! If you'll be my fan, I'll be yours.

Announcing my new blog!

www.brokefoodie.com

It's a little rough, graphically speaking, but it's out there. I'll be updating it regularly, and adding pictures/playing around with format. That'll be my cooking/food blog, and this will continue to be my everything else blog.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Broke Foodie: Short rib ragu

OK, short rib ragu is not exactly the most economical choice, given the average cost of short ribs these days. But I discovered that Sam's here carries both short ribs and oxtail in bulk. I used to make this ragu with lamb shanks, but since short ribs are cheaper here than lamb shanks, hence short rib ragu.

Start by searing 2-3 lbs of short ribs on both sides in a little oil in a big cast-iron Dutch oven. You then remove the ribs, and saute a chopped onion, a couple of chopped shallots, and a few diced carrots and celery ribs in the same pot. When soft, deglaze with 1/2 cup or so of ruby port, and then add 2 cups of red wine. Let the wine cook down to about half, and add beef stock, several peeled whole garlic cloves, and seasonings (rosemary, bay leaf, thyme, etc.). Put the short ribs back in, and cook in a 325-degree oven for about three hours. Remove to the stovetop and remove the short ribs, letting them cool. Meanwhile continue cooking the sauce on low. When the ribs are cool enough to handle, strip the meat off the bone and add back to the pot, along with pasta of choice (penne or papardelle works well). When pasta is done, serve with lots of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

It's certainly not a light meal, but it's very filling and you get a lot of entertaining bang for the buck. Depending on how much you pay for the short ribs, you could conceivably get 2-3, possibly 4, quarts of ragu for under $10.

Broke Foodie: Pate

Pate is one of those dishes that sounds impossible to make, but is really pretty easy and inexpensive. I like to make it when I'm entertaining, and when I'm having a particularly bad foie gras jones.

1 container chicken livers, rinsed and patted dry
1 apple, peeled and grated, with all the juice squeezed out of the shavings (I like Granny Smith)
2-3 shallots, diced
2-3 T Calvados
2 T heavy cream
1 stick frozen butter, in pieces

Saute the shallots and apple in a tablespoon or so of butter, until soft. Dump this into a food processor. In the same pan add a little more butter and the chicken livers, cooking til brown on both sides. Add the Calvados and flambe until the fire is gone. Add the chicken livers to the shallot mix in the food processor (pouring off any excess liquid) and add the cream. While pureeing, add the frozen butter a piece at a time, letting it incorporate. Salt to taste. Pour this into a Pyrex loaf pan, cover with plastic wrap so that the plastic wrap touches the top of the pate, and let sit in the fridge for several hours. Serve with crackers or fresh crusty bread.

Chicken livers run about $2 for a container, another 80 cents or so for the apple, and the other ingredients I always have on hand. So for $3 or a little less, you too can have delish homemade pate. It makes a particularly decadent breakfast.

Broke foodie: Zucchini "crab cakes"

I found zucchini on sale last week, so I bought a few. This week I realized I still had the zucchini, so it was time to eat them. Broke Foodie Tip #12: Don't throw food away. Try to use it up before it goes bad.

So I decided to try a new recipe--essentially I was making crab cakes, but substituting shredded zucchini for the crab. They were much better than I thought they would be--and except for the obvious green of the shredded zucchini, I may have been hard-pressed to know these weren't crab cakes at all. Proof positive that if you add enough Old Bay to anything, it will taste like crab.

Start with 2 cups shredded zucchini, with all the water squeezed out. Add 1 cup breadcrumbs, and mix together. In another bowl, mix together 1 egg, 1 T Dijon mustard, 1 T plain yogurt or mayo, 2 t Old Bay (I added more, I like Old Bay), 1/3 cup milk (I substituted slightly diluted cream, as I was out of milk), and chopped parsley (I used cilantro instead, I use cilantro in regular crab cakes and also I was out of parsley). Stir into the zucchini mix, form into patties, and fry just like you would crab cakes. Which is to say over medium heat, 3-4 minutes per side, in olive oil and butter.

Total cost: I doubled the recipe, to use up all the zucchini, and it yielded 8 big patties. $1.50 for all the zucchini, 13 cents each for the eggs, pennies for the additional ingredients...let's say $2.00 for everything. That's 25 cents each for the fake crab cakes. I served them plain, though you could serve with a variety of sauces or salsa, with a pear cobbler for dessert (to use up all the pears I got on sale).

Broke Foodie: Roast chicken, and resulting chicken broth

I consider a whole roasted chicken one of the easiest things to cook, with the most bang for my buck. It's versatile; it's cheap; the carcass yields plenty of homemade broth; and it invariably impresses guests. Usually I get something like, "You cooked a whole chicken for me?" I try to refrain from telling them just how easy it really is.

Between shopping at Sam's and working the sales, I can usually get a whole chicken for $2 or $3. Compare that with the usual price of boneless skinless chicken breasts here: $6.99/lb. Keep in mind these are chicken breasts that have been pumped full of water, and harvested off Frankenstein genetically-modified factory farm chickens, to make them seem bigger and more impressive than they actually are. Whole chickens at least are not pumped full of water, and I think they're easier to cook than chicken breasts. Really. When was the last time you cooked a chicken breast that didn't taste at least a little dry? (It's because all that water they pump in evaporates during cooking.)

So, here's my standard recipe. First, put the chicken breast-side-up in a roasting pan. Stuff the inside of the (thawed) chicken with half an onion and half a citrus fruit (lemon, lime, orange). Save the other half of the onion for something else, and squeeze the other half of the lemon/lime/whatever over the top of the chicken. Next, add some liquid, maybe 3/4 cup or so, to the pan. The liquid can be white wine, red wine, any kind of juice, red/white wine/cider vinegar, vodka, rum, beer, whatever. The possibilities are endless. Essentially it's whatever you have on hand. Then add some seasonings to the top of the chicken. Again, it's whatever you have on hand. It can be some combination of green herbs--parsley, basil, oregano--or spicy herbs--paprika, chili powder, cayenne pepper--or a prepared mix, like steak or Thai seasoning. Whatever. Don't scrimp.

Throw the chicken into a preheated 375-degree oven. In an hour, flip the whole bird over in the pan, so the breast is now soaking in the liquid. In another hour, flip the bird back over. Wait 15 min or so, long enough for the breast to re-crunchify, and take it out. Let it sit for another 15 min or so before carving. Eat.

That's it--maybe 3 minutes of prep work, and 1 minute's worth of doing something to the bird while it cooks. Total cost: $3, or however much you paid for the chicken, since the other ingredients can be cobbled together from what you already have. After you cook it, you can serve it whole; or pull the meat off and use it in any number of other things (chicken salad, soup, gumbo, etc.).

Be sure to save all the bones, and the liquid inside the roasting pan, for chicken broth. To make the broth, just throw the carcass (and the onion from inside the chicken) into a large stew pot. Add bay leaves and salt. At this point you can cook on low for several hours until the broth is a pleasant medium-brown color. You can also add vegetable leavings (peels, onion ends, celery leaves, pepper insides) for a more full-flavored broth. I keep a Ziploc bag in the freezer for the vegetable leavings--you can throw everything into the broth frozen, and you don't have to worry about your trash can smelling like onions. When the broth is appropriately brothy, strain out the chicken bones and pour the broth into something. I save old jars, but you can also use Tupperware or Ziploc bags. The added bonus of Tupperware/Ziploc is that you can freeze the broth until you need it, freeing up room in your fridge. The broth tastes so much better than ready-made versions, and it doesn't have all the sodium/preservatives.

It occurs to me that these entries would be much more helpful with pictures. I'll start taking some when I cook.

Broke Foodie: Beef stew

Are you sensing a theme yet? It's "soup." Even though it's 75 degrees here, I'm still craving winter foods. I guess it's that time of year.

Prep work for beef stew involved taking some frozen stew meat out of the freezer. (Stew beef, bought in bulk at Sam's Club and broken down into roughly 3/4 lb pkgs for easy freezing) Standard soup procedure, I threw an onion and some garlic in bacon fat and let that cook down. Then I added the thawed beef and let that sear a little while I added seasonings (BBQ rub, salt, pepper, chili powder, cayenne, dried red pepper flakes, cumin, etc.). Add one big can of tomatoes and some broth. I also added about 3/4 cup of dried mushrooms, reconstituted in some Long Island red wine (I threw the wine in, as well). Let cook maybe twenty minutes. Add about three handfuls of frozen peas and half a box of orzo. When the orzo is done, so is the soup!

I could also have added carrots and celery to the first step, but I didn't have any. They're nice additions to soup if you have them on hand, but if not, I usually find the soups don't suffer.

Broke Foodie: Black bean soup

Last night this was actually black bean soup with venison, thanks to a packet of venison from my mom. Thanks Mom!

A local grocery store here, Henry's, sells a lot of bulk drygoods. I can get quinoa and dried beans there in bulk, which is nice. I usually start a bean soup a couple days in advance. Day 1: soak the beans overnight. Day 2: rinse beans, cook them all day in a Crock Pot on low. Just add water, no seasonings. If you cook them twice, it cooks out all of the, shall we say, undesirable side effects of beans. Two days of prep sounds like a lot, but really it involved about three minutes over two days, two minutes of which were getting the Crock Pot down.

So, Day 3: standard soup preparation. I sauteed an onion and some garlic in bacon fat, added a jar of canned tomatoes and the venison, and all the beans. Add stock and seasonings (in this case, chili powder, cumin, red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika). Let cook on low for, oh, let's say, 20 minutes. Serve with sour cream. Total prep time: about 30 minutes. I've also made this same soup with ground beef or sausage; just add the meat to the onion and garlic and let cook before adding the tomatoes and beans.

Total cost: tomatoes and venison were free. Black beans: maybe 75 cents worth? Pennies for the onion, garlic and seasonings, all bought in bulk. Broth: homemade. Sour cream: actually also free, as it was leftover from an office lunch meeting (burritos). So total cost of soup, being generous: maybe $1.00. At least six servings' worth.

Broke Foodie: Refrigerator soup

I've had a lot of people ask me how, knowing my tastes and proclivities for things like fine wine and foie gras, I can feed myself on less than $100 a month. First, you have to have a fully stocked pantry; my food costs right now are higher than that, because I'm in the process of building the pantry. Oh, and because I'm feeding two people instead of one. Second, you have to eat your leftovers, all your leftovers, and not be afraid of things like beans and soup. Third, no liquid calories (other than alcohol). I'm continuously amazed at how much people spend on soda, juice, Red Bull, Gatorade, etc., and also amazed at how these same people usually wonder about how much weight they've gained/how much their dentistry costs. I'd rather save my calories for the food. Fourth, and most important, you have to know how to cook.

Which is usually the sticking point for most of the people I know. But it's easy, it really is. The human race survived for millenia without convenience foods, and in the amount of time it takes a Lean Cuisine meal to heat in the microwave (5-7 minutes), I can throw some things into a pan on the stove and serve up a hot, fresh, homecooked meal. Without a lot of preservatives and chemicals I can't pronounce. So I'm starting a new thread on this blog, called Broke Foodie, in which I'll share all my favorite (cheap) recipes.

So, one of my standby recipes: Refrigerator Soup. This is a catch-all term for "a soup which uses up all those random, seemingly unrelated things hanging out in your fridge." I call it minestrone for other people. Obviously, what goes into it will vary, but the basic shape remains the same. Saute a chopped onion and some garlic (maybe some carrots and celery if you have them on hand) in olive oil or bacon fat. Then add a can of tomatoes, a can of beans (any kind), a package of frozen spinach, and whatever else you have handy. Last night I threw in some leftover spaghetti sauce, a handful of dried fusilli, and a handful of quinoa. Any vegetables you have that are in danger of going bad can be added. Then add broth to the pot, about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches above the food line, and whatever seasonings seem reasonable. (Sam's makes an all-purpose Italian seasoning mix that I like to use for soups. I put in that, plus bay leaves and salt, last night.) Cook till everything's heated through and the pasta's done, maybe 15-20 minutes.

There! You've made soup. Easy as pie and very cheap and filling. Serve with freshly shredded parmesan on top. I guarantee it tastes far better than anything Campbell's or Progresso ever made.

Total cost: Let's see...maybe .50 each for the cans of tomatoes and beans (bought in bulk), pennies for the onion and garlic, about $1.00 for the frozen spinach. Call it another $1.00 for everything else (handful of pasta, spices, etc.). The broth was homemade. So $4.00, max, for eight servings of soup. That's fifty cents per serving.