champagne tastes on a beer budget

I’m not one of those people, as you’ve probably noticed. But many are. For those of you out there who need variety on a daily basis, here’s a way to do it: I call it batch processing.

Essentially you’re preparing a set of base ingredients, that can be used in a number of different recipes throughout the week. You can do this all at once, say on Sunday, or you can do it one ingredient at a time. As that one is used up, you start another. For example:

One roast chicken: the chicken itself, chicken salad, chicken fajitas, any number of soups, pasta with chicken, salad with chicken.

Black beans: chili, soups, enchiladas, black bean dip.

Red beans: pasta fagioli, red beans and rice, chili, soups.

White beans: chili, soups, minestrone, pasta fagioli.

Flank steak: steak, fajitas, steak salad, beef stew, steak sandwiches.

And so on. Most of the soups I make are vats, designed to feed two people for at least two or three meals. But you can make soup in one-serving batches, too. You can also make large batches and freeze the remainder for those nights you don’t feel like cooking—does freezing count as leftovers?

Here’s another way to look at it, using the contents of my own refrigerator/pantry as an example, putting together only one serving at a time; these are all the possible combinations, yielding much more than a week’s worth of options.

Omelet (using cheese, canned crab, bacon, lunch meat, any number of fresh or dried herbs, spinach or fresh greens) or a one-ramekin baked egg dish such as baked eggs with leeks. You can also poach single eggs in a serving of soup for a quick hit of protein.

Salad (incorporating standard items like croutons, nuts, carrots, meats, cheese, olives, etc., using balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dressing)

Grain salads (using quinoa or barley for the base, then incorporating other vegetables, edamame, cheeses, olives, and oils)

Risotto (can be as plain as cheese risotto; you can incorporate any vegetable—spinach, winter greens, beets, asparagus, mushroom, peas and tomatoes are just a few examples)

Pasta (spaghetti, linguine, penne, etc., with any number of sauces—tomato, meat, pesto, puttanesca, al fredo, etc.) Even for leftover-haters, you can make different spaghetti sauces in batches and freeze them in one-servings amounts.

Pizza (your imagination is the limit) Make personal size pan pizza using pretty much anything. Cheese, tomato sauce, whatever veggies or meat you have on hand. White pizzas, barbecue chicken pizzas, Thai curry pizzas…one batch of pizza dough will make several small pizzas. You can make several different kinds of pizza at once, eating one for each lunch during the week (for example).

Potatoes and sweet potatoes (baked potatoes, fried potatoes, fries, filler for soups, potato soup, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes)

A baguette (toast, garlic bread, French bread pizza, French toast, sandwich bread)

Let’s say you start your week on Sunday with one whole roast chicken, half a bag of dried white beans, two boxes of frozen spinach, a bag of salad greens, some tortillas, a jar of salsa, some cheese, a bag of spaghetti, a bag of potatoes (regular or sweet potatoes), a bag of carrots, three onions, and a dozen eggs, in addition to standard pantry items like spices and flour. From that you can produce this:

On Sunday, do this: roast the chicken. Soak the white beans for at least 8 hours, then cook on low (or in a Crockpot) overnight. In the morning, put them in a Tupperware container in the fridge. Place the spinach in the fridge to thaw.  Slice and cook the onions until very soft or until caramelized, then place in Tupperware in the fridge. After the chicken is done and cool enough to handle, pull off all the meat and place in Tupperware in the fridge. Add the carcass to a big soup pot, fill with water, add some salt, and cook on low overnight to produce chicken broth. In the morning, strain out the carcass and add the broth in Tupperware in the fridge.

Sunday night: roast chicken and green salad with a baked potato

Monday breakfast: breakfast burrito with egg, cheese, spinach and salsa
Monday lunch: Chicken and white bean enchiladas
Monday dinner: BBQ chicken pizza (on one half) and cheese and spinach pizza (on one half). Eat the BBQ chicken half.

Tuesday breakfast: baked eggs with onions
Tuesday lunch: cheese and spinach pizza half
Tuesday dinner: spaghetti with cheese sauce or tomato sauce with salad

Wednesday breakfast: chicken and potato hash (maybe with a fried egg on top) with salsa
Wednesday lunch: white bean puree with spinach
Wednesday dinner: scalloped potatoes with spinach, glazed carrots

Thursday breakfast: cheese and egg omelet
Thursday lunch: baked potato with salad
Thursday dinner: chicken noodle soup with white beans, spinach, carrots, onions, and spaghetti (broken into pieces)

Friday breakfast: scrambled eggs
Friday lunch: potato soup with garlic
Friday dinner: white bean and chicken chili with spinach

Saturday breakfast: pancakes with hash browns
Saturday lunch: carrot salad with spinach soufflé
Saturday dinner: pasta fagioli with the remaining beans, spinach and carrots

Of course, there are a billion other possible dishes. Chicken salad, chicken tettrazini, frittatas, fajitas, other kinds of pizza. You could use some of the onions to make a batch of caramelized onion-jalapeno waffles, then serve those with the leftover chicken and some BBQ sauce, for an upscale version of chicken n' waffles. The more you have in your pantry, the more you can vary what comes out of it.

Because we're saving for a wedding, this month I'll be shopping from the pantry. I won't buy any groceries at all, all month long. Between the fully stocked pantry and the box of fresh fruits and vegetables I get every two weeks, this isn't nearly as much of a challenge as it sounds. It's good to use that stuff in the back of the freezer sometimes.

In keeping with the Pantry Challenge, last night I made chickpea soup. I used dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and then cooked in the Crockpot for a while before being added to the soup. Despite being cooked twice, they were wonderfully firm and flavorful, not slimy and mushy like canned chickpeas. Nevertheless, you can use canned in this.

Saute one chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil until soft. Add 3 cans (or the equivalent) of chickpeas, 1 can of tomatoes, 3 cups or so of chicken or vegetable broth, and seasonings. I used fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, smoked paprika, and a little cumin. Let this simmer down on low, covered, for about 30 minutes. Puree part with your stick blender (or remove about half, puree in a food processor, and return to the soup). Serve with more salt and a little fresh parmesan.

Cost: using dried chickpeas purchased in bulk, 3 cans' worth was about...45 cents? Another 50 cents for the can of tomatoes and maybe another 15 cents for the onion. The broth was homemade. Total cost: a little over $1, for 4-6 adult servings, at around 20 cents each. When your soup costs twenty cents, you can afford to drink the good wine with it.

I use the term "collection" loosely, as it is really just "several boxes of whatever was on sale." I have about a case left from the various wines I bought on last summer's road trip, plus another four or five cases of assorted miscellaneous, thanks to BevMo's buy 1, get 1 for 5 cents sale. Woo hoo!

Anyway. Last night I decided to pull something from the road trip case, and thought I would start sharing what I'm drinking with all of you. First up: Eden Vale 2003 Claret, purchased at a wine shop in Ashland, Oregon last July. It's 67% Merlot, 18% Cab Franc, 11% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 4% Malbec, and retails for $29. (Okay, not the cheapest wine in my collection, but what's left of the road trip wines are going to be the high-end purchases.) Very silky, very fruity, aged in new/neutral French oak. It went surprisingly well with my leftover mac and cheese (made with stinky cheese, of course!).

This turned out to be one of my favorite new recipes. This is definitely going into high rotation.

2 tablespoons butter
1 pound chicken (I used four whole bone-in thighs, but any sort of chicken, cut up or not, will do)
1 medium onion, chopped
3 medium or 5 small leeks, sliced
2-3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2 bay leaves
seasonings: I used salt and pepper, Italian (combo of rosemary, parsley, sage, thyme) and smoked paprika
1 cup whole milk

Melt the butter and cook the chicken for about two minutes on each side, until lightly golden (it will definitely not be cooked all the way through, don't worry about that). Remove the chicken and saute the onion and leeks until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the sweet potatoes and cook for another three minutes. Return the chicken to the pan, and add the broth and seasonings. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat until the potatoes and chicken are cooked all the way through (10-25 minutes, depending on what kind of chicken and how many sweet potatoes).

Using a nifty stick blender, puree part of the soup (or remove about half to a food processor, puree, and stir back in). Add the milk and reseason to taste. Serve.

Cost: Sweet potatoes run about 79 cents a pound; I had three large ones, which I'll estimate at two pounds for $1.58. Estimate another $1.25 for the chicken (bought in bulk) and another $1.50 for everything else (the broth was homemade, but I also threw in about a cup of white wine to deglaze). $4.33 total, and I'll get at least 8 adult servings out of the batch, for 54 cents per serving.

I'll admit you can't really expect culinary greatness from a Crockpot. But on a rainy day, when you don't feel like cooking, this is a great way to get a good, hot meal on the table using standard pantry ingredients.

Saute one chopped onion and a few minced cloves of garlic in a little olive oil until soft. Add that to the Crockpot, along with three cans of tomatoes, a couple of bay leaves, a couple cups of chicken or vegetable broth, and a handful of the grain or pasta of your choice. I used Israeli couscous (that's the big kind), but you could use rice, regular couscous, pasta, barley, you name it. Set on low for 6 to 8 hours or high for around 4 hours.

The couscous/pasta/rice/whatever will soak up all the liquid, so add more about halfway through the cooking process (if you like a soupy soup) or leave it alone for more of a stew. Season to taste when it's done—I added salt and pepper and fresh rosemary, parsley and oregano.

Cost: three cans of tomatoes in bulk run about 50 cents each. Add another 50 cents for the onion and the couscous. $2.00 for 4-6 adult servings.

When the world economy finally implodes and/or as soon as the zombie apocalypse is over, I'm moving to Argentina. It remains my most favorite of all the places I've ever visited (Warm? Check. Cheap? Check. Good food and wine? Check.), and has become my retirement dream. One day I'll drop off the grid completely, and go raise pigs on the pampas or something.

In that vein, here's a great post about the excellent wines of Argentina from the awesome folks at BrokeAss Gourmet.

My cast-iron skillet is one of my most useful—and most used—kitchen implements. In fact, I only ever use two skillets—my cast-iron one, and a ginormous 14-inch All-Clad Copper-Core Professional. (Breathy sigh of admiration.) My cast-iron skillet is a hand-me-down, as the best ones are, but you can find new ones very easily. In fact, it's also very easy to find one at the Salvation Army or a yard sale, since most people aren't sure what to do with them. A good cast-iron skillet, properly cared for, will last for several generations.

You know it's a good one when it's a glossy black and food just sliiiiides off it. That's the beauty of cast-iron—it's a natural nonstick non-fat surface, so you never have to worry about a) chemical Teflon residue in your food, b) using fats to cook with (unless you want to), or c) your food sticking. It can go from stove to oven and back again, and it heats very evenly and strongly, which is why you should never fry anything in a pan that ISN'T cast-iron.

The downsides of cast-iron: because it heats very evenly and strongly, it will stay hot for a long time. I've pushed it to the back of the stove before, forgotten about it, and then burned myself on it twenty minutes later. And (here's the sticking point for most people) you can never, ever, ever put it in the dishwasher. That will ruin it.

Fortunately, cleaning a cast-iron pan is a snap. If there's extra grease/residue in the bottom, wipe it out with a paper towel or cloth towel. Then wipe it down with a damp sponge. That's it. Make sure you never leave it wet—wipe it down with a dry towel, or put it back on the warm stovetop to dry. Some people will use a very small amount of dish soap while wiping it down, but the whole point of a cast-iron pan is to absorb all the grease and fat from the food you cook in it—that's what creates the nonstick coating. The grease fills in all the ridges of the pan and gradually cooks in, creating that shiny black coating. Soap will remove the grease, and if you're not careful, will make the next thing you cook taste faintly of soap. Over time, all the leftover bacon fat/butter/olive oil/whatever will bake into the pan, creating the nonstick qualities. (In fact, back in the day, many people had a cast-iron skillet they NEVER cleaned, at all. If you use it every day, you don't have to worry about the leftover fats turning rancid, and the best cornbread I've ever had was baked in a never-cleaned, bacon-fat-laden cast-iron pan.)

Occasionally, even I don't clean it properly and a rust spot will form. If you see a rust spot, or your food is sticking to the pan, it needs to be reseasoned. You can use Crisco for this (or lard, if you want to be really authentic). Simply coat the pan, inside and out, with a good quarter-inch layer of Crisco. Spread some foil inside your oven and lay the pan upside-down on top of the skillet. Set the oven to 300 and leave the pan in there for an hour. Turn the oven off after an hour, but leave the pan in there until it's cooled to room temperature. When you pull it out, it will have that primo glossy black coating. Repeat as necessary.

I L-O-V-E love plaintains. For those of you unfamiliar with plaintains, they're those big black banana-looking things. They are in fact closely related to the banana, but need to be cooked to be edible. They manage to be sweet and savory at the same time, and can do double duty both as breakfast and as a side dish.

Fortunately, frying up a mess of plaintains is quick, simple, and super-yummy. You want the outside to be black all over and soft. If they're mostly yellow when you buy them, just let them sit out on top of your microwave for a couple of weeks until they ripen. When they're ripe, they'll peel like a banana. Cut them into slices and fry in about half olive oil and half butter, until golden-brown on both sides. Sprinkle a little sea salt on top and enjoy.

I've always had a troubled relationship with beets. My mother used to make me eat pickled beets as punishment, so for most of my life, I loathed beets. (For good reason—pickled beets are gross.) I veeeeeerrry sloooooooowwwwly came around to non-pickled beets. For fellow beet-haters, I recommend starting with golden beets. They're less, you know, beet-y, and they're a lovely golden color that doesn't stain nearly as much as regular beets.

Yes, beets stain. Therefore I also recommend peeling them before you roast them—unroasted beets won't stain your hands, your knife, and the rest of your kitchen bright red. (But fun fact—if you eat too many beets, you'll pee purple. There's a dye in beets that your body can't process.) There are many fun things you can do with roasted beets—add them to a salad with a little goat cheese, or mash some up with your potatoes to produce pink mashed potatoes, or turn them into a risotto, as here. I added the beet greens along with the beets, because the bitter greens help cut the beet-y sweetness of this dish. That, and the three handfuls of parmesan cheese.

Saute one chopped onion in a little olive oil, then add a cup to a cup and a half of arborio rice when the onion is soft. Let the rice toast for a minute, then deglaze with a couple cups of white wine. Keep stirring. When the wine is absorbed, start adding chicken or vegetable broth, a cup or so at a time, and let each addition mostly absorb before adding the next. About ten minutes into this process, add the chopped roasted beets (I had four small ones) and the chopped beet greens. Another ten minutes should produce soft, tender rice. Add three handfuls or so of parmesan cheese and stir in. (That's FRESH grated parmesan, not the cheese-flavored dandruff that comes in the green Kraft can. Cheese is too good to eat fake cheese.) Add a healthy dollop of freshly grated pepper and sea salt.

Cost: a bunch of beets will run maybe $1.50. Arborio rice is around $6.00 for a large box, and the good parmesan in bulk is about $12.00 a pound. The amount of rice used would be about $1.00, and maybe another $2.00 worth of cheese. The broth was homemade, and the onion (bought in a twenty-pound bag, in bulk) would be another, what, 10 cents? Around $4.50 total, and this will easily feed four adults as a main course, at $1.13 per serving.

Unfamiliar vegetable? Cover it with cheese and breadcrumbs. Mmm...cheese.

1/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup Parmesan
1 bunch kale, roughly chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup grated gruyere or Swiss
salt and pepper to taste

Boil the kale until bright green (about 1 minute) and drain. When cool enough to handle, squeeze out all the extra water and add to a mixing bowl with the cheeses. Mix loosely. Meanwhile, bring the cup of cream to a boil and then reduce to low immediately. Let reduce for a minute or two. Add the salt and pepper and garlic to this and remove from the heat. Add the kale mixture to a shallow casserole dish and pour the cream mixture over it. Distribute the breadcrumbs over the top and bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes.

Cost: A bunch of kale runs approximately $1.50 at the supermarket. The cream and cheese I purchased in bulk, so around $1.50 for those. $3.00 total, will serve two as a main dish or four as a side dish.