Cooking up a storm (after the storm)

Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. You crazy gal. You wiped out our electricity for most of a week, and with it our refrigeration and our electric range. Luckily, the house was so cold that we really didn’t lose much food. I have eaten – and survived eating – shrimp in restaurants that were less fresh than the ones I cooked from our freezer the day after the power returned.

My first official act on the day the power came back was to put up a pot of beef stew. The miscellaneous meats that had been in the freezer were cooked over the next couple of days, including a big pork loin roast. Last night, as another storm raged, I made some delicious old-fashioned Cantonese-style pork chow mein. This is the soupy kind; if you want less sauce, reduce the amounts of chicken broth and cornstarch mixture by half.

Roast pork chow mein

8 oz Cantonese dried egg noodles

Peanut oil

About ½ lb roast pork

1 small onion

1 clove garlic

8 oz mushrooms, rinsed and wiped dry (try to use large ones)

1 small head bok choy

1 can sliced bamboo shoots

1 can low-sodium chicken broth

salt to taste

2 Tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in ¼ cup cold water

Soak noodles briefly in cold water (I don’t know why, but the package said to do this!), then cook them for 2 minutes in boiling salted water. Spread them out on a large plate to cool and dry.

Meanwhile, slice onion in strips. Cut the pork into strips about the same size. Mince the garlic. Remove any coarse stems from the mushrooms, slice them horizonally into disks, then stack the disks and cut them into strips. Wash the head of bok choy, then slice it horizontally. Open the cans.

Heat about 3 tablespoons of peanut oil in a large nonstick frying pan or wok. When the oil is hot, add the noodles. Cook them until they are crispy and golden on one side, then turn to cook the other side. The noodles on the inside should remain soft. Remove the noodles to a plate.

Add a little bit of oil to the pan if needed. Saute the onion briefly, then add the pork, garlic, mushrooms, bok choy, and bamboo shoots. Stir-fry until the vegetables are wilted, then add chicken broth and salt to taste. Stir up the cornstarch mixture, then add it to the pan. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is thickened. Serve it on top of the noodles with soy sauce to taste.

Cheap? Check. Fast? Check. Good? Maybe.

The family and I seem to be parting ways on the Cheap. Fast. Good! Cookbook. I  cooked from it the past two nights, and while I thought the results were very tasty family meals and lived up to the cheap and fast qualification, my daughter rejected both and my husband ate them with no comment, picking out the vegetables. My son, of course, wouldn't go near either.

The first was "Souped-up Chicken Stroganoff," basically just a nice, easy, doctored-up-canned-soup sort of dinner.

Souped-up Chicken Stroganoff, adapted from Cheap. Fast. Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross

1 lb. fettuccine
2 cups cooked chicken, cut in bite-size chunks
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bag (16 oz) frozen broccoli spears or pieces (I used spears)
2 Tbsp. dry sherry, Marsala, Madeira, or port wine (I used port because my husband drank the cooking sherry!)
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1-2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup sour cream (I used reduced-fat)
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Boil water in a large pot and cook fettuccine according to package directions. You can add the frozen broccoli to the pasta after 7 minutes of cooking as per the original recipe and then continue cooking until the fettuccine is done (about 6 minutes). However, I found that the fettuccine didn't cook well that way, so I suggest cooking the broccoli separately, perhaps in the microwave.

Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet on medium heat. Add the onions. When they begin to soften, stir in the mushrooms and garlic. When all the veggies are soft, add the wine and cook for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir in the mushroom soup and Worcestershire sauce, then add the chicken and cook until the mixture is well heated. Stir in the sour cream. If the sour cream is reduced fat, do not let the mixture boil after it is added. Season to taste with salt and a LOT of black pepper. (Trust me on this.)

Drain the pasta and broccoli. Place pasta on each plate, arrange broccoli spears on the pasta, then top it all with chicken and sauce. Alternatively, if the broccoli is in pieces, just mix it in with the chicken and sauce.

Serves 4. (I hate when a recipe says 4 servings and it only means 4 servings for not very hungry people or 4 servings if something else is on the menu. This will serve 4 hungry people. I have a lot left in my fridge.)

If you want to try this one, I think wide egg noodles would work better than the fettuccine. Also, I would just throw it all together and not have to worry about the noodles sticking together. I think the amount of broccoli is a little high; a 10 oz box should be fine. The amount of chicken and everything else is flexible, of course.

Last night, I made "Fisherman's Seafood Creole" from the same book. It doesn't have the depth of flavor of Emeril's Shrimp Creole, which is pure heaven - I made it myself for my birthday this year - but it doesn't have the stick of butter either. (I don't think that's a coincidence.) It would also be better with shrimp, but my husband is allergic.

Fisherman's Seafood Creole, adapted from Cheap. Fast. Good!

1 1/3 cups rice
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
2 celery ribs, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (I used red, because I had it)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp finely chopped cooked bacon
1 bay leaf
1-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 (14 oz) can stewed tomatoes (I used diced + a little sugar)
1 (8oz) can tomato sauce
12 oz firm fish fillets, boned and skinned
1 cup frozen sliced okra (optional; I used more like 2 cups because it was what was left in a bag in the freezer)
Tabasco sauce to taste

Bring 2 2/3 cups lightly salted water to a boil; stir in rice, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and green pepper, and cook until the onions are translucent and the veggies are beginning to soften. Stir in garlic, bacon, bay leaf, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper, then tomatoes and tomato sauce. Heat to a boil.

Cut the fish (I used frozen individually-wrapped tilapia fillets from BJ's) into chunks. Add the fish (and okra, if using) to the skillet, cover it, and cook about 4 minutes, or until the fish is nearly opaque. Season with Tabasco to taste, then reduce heat to low and simmer until the rice is done.

Spoon rice into large shallow bowls and top with the seafood mixture. Those who like more heat can add Tabasco at the table.

Serves 4, but not if they really like it and are hungry. You'll have to give them a big dessert. :-)  See, isn't that more helpful? Actually, I would suggest adding more fish; the amount fairly skimpy as written.


As I said, I thought both these meals fit the bill of cheap (even the one with fish was probably less than $10 total), fast (neither took more than half an hour) and good. As for my family, maybe I just have to go back to expensive, slow, and only so-so.

Menu planning

This is something I am supposed to do.

Every so often, I get efficient and plan a week's menus, but most of the time my menu planning is a haphazard, last-minute affair jumbled out of whatever is in the fridge and pantry, recipes I have seen and food I have eaten, energy and time costs, and the all important question of whether my family will eat the food. Sadly, this last is the biggest problem. My husband can't eat seafood, can't or won't eat beans, won't eat anything spicy, and prefers not to eat anything outside his comfort zone. My son will eat plain pasta, pizza, fried chicken, steak, burgers, and peanut butter sandwiches. I don't think I left anything out of that list. My daughter is pretty easy; she will try most things and enjoy many. However, she has a strong bias against soup, my absolute favorite food to cook and eat. Me, I like everything except lima beans and cottage cheese, and I'm not sure about the lima beans.

However, if Flo is to be thrifty, she must plan menus. Here's what's up for the next few days:

Tonight (my children's half birthday): Steak, baked potatoes, salad, and probably half a cake. :-)

Tomorrow: Chicken Stroganoff with fetuccine (from the Cheap, Fast, Good! cookbook), using up the on-sale split chicken breasts I poached on Saturday (the broth was used in a cauliflower-cheese soup)

Next: Fish Creole with rice, same cookbook, using up some of the tilapia that has been in the freezer a while

Saturday: Beef goulash (using up some frozen beef cubes), noodles, green beans

Sunday: Seashells with tuna and Dijon cream from the Cheap...! cookbook again

My son will eat only the steak and plain fetuccine from this list, so I will give him hamburgers or peanut butter sandwiches on the other nights. :-(

I will let you, my millions of loyal fans, know how all these things turn out and whether I have the stamina to keep planning.

Best sandwich

My son loves to watch Man vs. Food (even though he only eats about 4 different foods himself) and we recently saw that the show had named the roast pork sandwich from DiNic's at Reading Terminal Market the best sandwich in America. I haven't had a chance to try the original yet, but I used some leftover roast pork to do a quickie approximation of it last night.

I mixed up a packet of Knorr Roasted Pork Flavor Gravy (that I bought on purpose for the occasion) and added generous shakes of Italian seasoning and garlic powder. While the meat heated in the gravy, I sauteed some chopped broccoli rabe with garlic in olive oil. Because broccoli rabe is a dry vegetable, I added some water after the initial saute, then covered the pan for a few minutes.

Finally, I warmed a "steak" roll (a long roll used for cheesesteaks, for those outside the region) and filled it with pork and gravy, broccoli rabe, more gravy, and provolone cheese. It was heavenly. I can easily understand how a serious version of it won the Best Sandwich title.

Flo's back, and she's getting thrifty

OK. As soon as I decided that I would blog every day, I realized that I couldn't possibly do that and stopped blogging altogether. Makes perfect sense, right?

However, my convoluted thinking and neuroses have deprived the world of my culinary insights for nearly a year, and I owe it to my legions of fans (or at least to the two or three people who might read this) to make a comeback. I'll be signing autographs after the blog.

Because our financial situation has not been great, we recently made the long-overdue decision not to eat out at all -- not that we did it very much or at very expensive places, but still, that's an obvious way to cut expenses.

So my new bible has become an excellent cookbook called Cheap, Fast, Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross, who are also known for Desperation Dinners! I've been starting to plan meals more effectively, going through my favorite supermarket's sale circular along with the cookbook for ideas. I'm also trying to use up odds and ends that have been hanging around the refrigerator and pantry for a while.

Last week I bought a huge piece of pork loin on sale and made the cookbook's Savory Pork Pot Roast. This gave me a delicious broth with which to make Super-Saver Tortilla Soup and Twice-Cooked Pork Stir-Fry from the cookbook.

The pot roast itself was a mixed success. The meat was delicious, but even after 12 hours in the slow cooker, the veggies were just barely done and didn't taste very good. Next time, I will do it without veggies and serve the pork with rice on the side. And there will definitely be a next time. These meals worked out so well that before the sale ended, I picked up another roast for the freezer.

Savory Pork Pot Roast (adapted from Cheap, Fast, Good!)
About 4 lb. pork loin roast (I had a 5.5 lb loin end roast, from which I cut off the bony flap, saving it in the freezer; the original recipe specifies a 3 to 3.5 lb boneless pork loin roast)
(4 medium red potatoes)
(2 medium onions)
(2 ribs celery)
(3 carrots)
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup dry white wine (or apple juice)
1/4 cup ketchup
Juice of 1 lime (I used about 2 tbsp. from a squeeze bottle)
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt

Trim excess fat from meat and place the roast in a large slow cooker. Peel and cut up veggies, if using (no need to peel potatoes if they look good). Add veggies to the pot.

Whisk together all the other ingredients and pour the mixture over the meat. Cover the slow cooker and cook on low all day (10 hours for a bone-in roast, less for boneless. Slice half the roast to serve; reserve the rest for another recipe. Save the broth for soup.

Super-Saver Tortilla Soup (adapted from Cheap, Fast, Good!)
About 3/4 lb. boneless, skinless, chicken thighs (or breasts)
2 tsp. olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
3 cups broth from Savory Pork Pot Roast
1 can (14 oz.) low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup bottled salsa of choice
Tortilla chips
Sour cream (reduced fat is fine)
Shredded cheese (I used a bagged reduced-fat Mexican blend)

Heat oil in a 4-quart soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute, stirring occasionally. While onion cooks, cut chicken into bite-size chunks and add them to the pan. Cook until the chicken is nearly done. Stir in cumin.

Add pork broth, chicken broth, and salsa. Cover pot and cook 5-10 minutes more, until soup is very hot and chicken is completely done.

Ladle soup into bowls and top with crushed tortilla chips, sour cream, and cheese.