Orecchiette a la Vodka

Vodka really brings out the taste of tomato sauces. I especially like tomato-vodka sauces with peas. Traditionally, cream and bacon are also added. (Disclaimer: When I say "traditionally", I mean I've seen it done this way in many restaurants.) We just got back from a week-long conference and had almost no food around, especially no fresh food. This is what I made in that situation.

Ingredients:
Orecchiette pasta--I think I had about 6 or 7 cups cooked
2 small onions, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic, diced
3 canned roma tomatoes + a bit of the juice from the can
1 T tomato paste
A splash of vodka
1 t of sugar
1 c of frozen peas
About 2 T olive oil
A generous pat of butter*

*The butter is optional. Leave it out for a vegan meal. Maybe add a little more olive oil in that case.

Method:
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. When it comes to a rolling boil, you'll add the pasta. While the water is coming to a boil, start the sauce: in a saucepan, melt the butter with the oil. When heated, add the onion and saute until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, saute a minute or two more. Add the tomatoes and juice, chopped, the tomato paste, the sugar and the vodka. Allow to simmer for a couple of minutes. The pasta's probably almost done (you don't want to over cook it). Add about 1/2 c of the pasta water to the sauce, and the peas. Let it simmer on the lowest heat while you wait for the pasta to finish. Season with salt to taste. As soon as the pasta is finished, drain it, add to the saucepan and toss well with the sauce. Serve!

Notes: The pasta water part really is important. It makes the sauce stick to the pasta. I saw it on an old-school Italian cooking show on PBS when I was about 16, and have always remembered it since then. Orecchiette is probably my favorite pasta. I've heard it's traditionally served with broccoli, but I like it with anything. My BF thought it wasn't the best for this dish, he thinks that orecchiette needs a creamier sauce. I think it would go nicely with many different types of pasta, for some reason I think that short ones would be better than long ones (linguine, spaghetti...).

Serving Suggestion: Maybe garnish with a little parsley? I thought it was a very tasty dinner. Since we visited Italy I've been inspired to try and do more interesting things with pasta lately.

Stuffed Tomatoes and Mushrooms

I made these last night for dinner. We needed to eat, and so I just sort of made this up on the spot. It turned out well, though I undersalted the filling (I always end up undersalting things).

Stuffed Tomatoes and Mushrooms

Ingredients:

3 medium round tomatoes
3 large mushrooms
325 g ground beef
1/2 small onion chopped
1 clove garlic minced
1 T dried parsley
1 T dried basil
1 T dried oregano
salt
pepper
1 egg
1 c tomato juice (something tasty enough you'd drink it)
60 g fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced/shredded

Method:

Wash the mushrooms and the tomatoes. Slice their tops off and remove the insides of the tomatoes (a grapefruit spoon is awesome for this) and reserve for some other application (soup, salads, whatever). Remove the mushroom stems, chop them (just the stems) and place the pieces in a bowl. Arrange the tomatoes and mushrooms in a shallow baking pan or dish. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper. In the bowl with the mushroom pieces, prepare the filling. Add to the mushrooms the ground beef, garlic, onion, egg (beaten), herbs and generous amounts of salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly. Stuff an equal amount of the mixture into each tomato and mushroom cap. You can stuff them with less and make more mushrooms/tomatoes if you want. Pour the tomato juice over everything. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Cover each tomato/mushroom with cheese (you can use a different kind if you like) and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Notes and Serving Suggestions: I cooked mine for 10 minutes more than is listed here, and they were just the tiniest bit dry. I think that the times I've written here are better. We ate this with a big green salad (romaine, olives stuffed with garlic, onion, apple cider vinegar dressing) and spaghetti. You could use bell peppers, too, or some other vegetable. If you want to use less meat, add some rice to the mixture. For a vegetarian stuffing, I'd use rice, mushrooms, onion and maybe some kidney beans.

I know that tomatoes with spaghetti sounds very Italian, but I've never seen Italian stuffed tomatoes. I have seen them in Russian and Balkan cuisine, and in French, too. However, I have seen Italian stuffed mushrooms. I dunno. I'm putting them in the "Russian", "Italian", and "French" categories.

Oven Dies at Inopportune Moment, or Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs

Actually, "Gas runs out at inopportune moment" is more correct. So no oven or stove. And we don't have a microwave. All we have is an electric teapot and a toaster. AND it happens as we have two things in the oven: My Boyfriend's Roasted Chicken, and a new recipe I'm trying, Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs (Russian site). We noticed just shortly after putting them in, so no food-safety issues, simply disappointing. We put the things in the fridge to prepare tomorrow. We were going to ask our colleague/friend/neighbor upstairs if we could use her oven, but she was out rock climbing. She lives a more exciting life than we do. :-D

I'll post the recipe for the tomatoes here, for any who don't speak Russian. I made a couple of small additions, but unfortunately I can't yet tell you how this recipe tastes! I'll update it tomorrow, after we buy a new gas bottle from the store. Of course, as of 7:45, every place selling these things was closed. That's France for you.

Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs
original recipe at: http://gotovim-doma.ru/view.php?r=571-recept-IAichnitsa-v-pomidorakh

Ingredients:
X medium-large tomatoes (where X is the number of tomatoes you want to make)
X smallish eggs (I buy large eggs, so I just picked the smallest ones from the carton)
X tablespoons ricotta cheese
X tablespoons chopped onion
X raw eggs in their shells
Salt and pepper

It's the first ingredient list that looks like a high-school algebra lesson! Yay! As for the tomatoes, you don't need like beefsteak tomato large ones, just a normal round tomato will do quite nicely.

Method:
Wash tomatoes and slice a thin slice off the top. Take out the seeds and inner flesh of each tomato. Using a grapefruit spoon works great. Don't discard the insides, use them in soup, a salad, eat them, whatever. Place tomatoes in a shallow baking dish, sprinkle all over with salt and pepper. Place the chopped onion and ricotta cheese at the bottom of each tomato, then crack a whole egg into each tomato. You can salt and pepper again, and then pop into the oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). From the picture on the site, the yolks will be runny and the whites set.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: To serve, plate and sprinkle over with chopped green herbs of your choice. I'm going to do dill and parsley, but basil, green onion, maybe coriander and mint, would all work beautifully. About egg size: assuming you use normally sized tomatoes, if you make a lot of these it may be worth it to buy a carton of small/medium eggs. I used large, and there was a little spillage over the edge, but since I only made 4 and since it was the first time trying it, I didn't buy any special eggs. I think this would be a good addition to a dinner (main course, with pasta, rice, or a big salad in the summer) or a nice little appetizer. Or even a breakfast.

The Original Recipe: What a great site! I look forward to trying many more from there. I spent a good hour and a half today just reading recipes on that site. I counted it as "practicing Russian" and not "shamelessly ogling tasty food." The recipe is for two tomatoes, but I don't think cooking time will change much. It also notes that you can add the greens before baking, to make them softer, and that you can add things other than eggs (as I did). It suggests ham, sausage or fried mushrooms (yummy!).

Cheap but Good: Explore your pantry, freezer and fridge

I don't know about you, but I somehow always end up with half used quantities of food in my freezer and fridge. Usually this happens when I buy a food item, planning to use it to make a certain dish, and I don't end up using all of it. It also happens that sometimes I stock my pantry too well, and forget just what canned or dried foods I have in there. I got to thinking about this, and came to the conclusion that I would probably save a lot of money if I tried more often to cook from what I already have in my kitchen. To test how well this could work out, I examined my pantry, freezer and fridge with the goal of creating something delicious without making a trip to the store for anything.

Here's what happened:

Today I had a few mushrooms and 200 g of ground beef left from pirozhki making. I definitely wanted to use the beef, because there wasn't room in the (tiny French) freezer to freeze it. And I'm always a fan of mushrooms, so I decided to use those too. Besides, if I didn't they'd get mushy soon. So I put the beef and the mushrooms on my kitchen table. Looked around some more, but it seemed that everything else would keep pretty well (random cheese, cabbage, pickles) or was already assigned to be eaten for lunch (lettuce, green onions). Ok, moving on to the freezer.

There I found a bag of chopped frozen spinach left from making palaak paneer. It had started out as a 1 kilo bag and there was only 250 g left or so. The lump of spinach was taking up precious freezer space, especially due to the awkward shape. I put it on the table to use. Things were interesting in the freezer. That's because my BF is a total carnivore and buys random meat when there's a good deal. Or when he thinks it just looks tasty. Which brings me to the 500 g of Italian sausage that was sitting in there. I took it out, placed it on the table, and examined my ingredients.

Beef, sausage, mushrooms, spinach. I thought I'd go with something Italian due to the sausage, which I planned on taking out of it's casing and mixing with the beef. Ok, if we're going Italian, let's look in the pantry and see what's available in the way of pasta.

The pantry expedition was the deciding factor in what I'd make. There I spotted, shoved towards the back, a box of never-opened no-pre-cooking-needed lasagna noodles. Interesting. I didn't remember buying them. I asked BF, "Did you buy these?" It turns out he did ... before we even started dating (we're going on two years). :-D But I checked the expiration date, and it was fine. Besides, they'd never been opened.

Fine, it looked like I was gonna make lasagna. Beef, sausage, mushrooms, spinach, noodles. Well, can't really have a lasagna without cheese (or tofu), so I went back to the fridge to see what was available. There was an unopened tub of ricotta. Aw, I had wanted to eat that with canned peaches (I love ricotta with fruit)! But, now I was kind of set on lasagna, so I put it on the table too. But what about mozzarella to go on top? We didn't have any. But I did spot nearly 250 g of chaource cheese. I thought to myself, "If they can put reblachon on pizza, I can use that to top a lasagna." I also grabbed an egg to mix with the ricotta, 2 cloves of garlic and got a 800 g can of peeled Roma tomatoes from the pantry (we always have a few cans of those around).

Lasagna

Ingredients:

500 g Italian sausage, removed from casing
200 g ground beef
1 800 g can peeled Roma tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
250 g frozen chopped spinach
3 medium white mushrooms, chopped
1 egg
1 250 g tub of ricotta cheese
20 no-cooking-needed lasagna noodles
Salt to taste
1 T dried parsley
1 T dried oregano
1 T dried basil
About 250 g chaource cheese

Method:

Mix the beef and the sausage. Brown, then mix in the tomatoes (chopped), with their juice. Reserve a bit of the juice (about 1/2 cup). Salt the mixture to taste. In a saucepan, warm the spinach and the mushrooms until the spinach is completely thawed. Cool slightly, and mix with ricotta cheese and chopped garlic. Salt to taste, then mix with beaten egg. Spread the bottom of a large baking dish with the reserved tomato juice. Place a layer of 4 noodles over this. Cover noodles with 1/3 meat mixture. Layer 4 noodles again. Cover noodles with 1/2 spinach mixture. Repeat: noodles, meat, noodles, spinach, noodles, meat. Sprinkle top meat layer with the dried herbs. Cut chaource into 8 even wedges; reserve for later. Place lasagna into oven preheated to 350 degrees F (gas mark 6 in France). Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and top with chaource wedges arranged in a 2x4 matrix. Put lasagna back into oven and bake for another 15 minutes. Remove and allow to cool slightly before slicing.

Notes: Placing sauce/juice before the first layer of noodles is important if you don't want the lasagna to stick. When you remove it from the oven, there will be a lot of liquid around the lasagna. If you let it rest, that won't be a problem. This will form sort of a sauce (just the right amount). For vegetarian lasagna, make a marinara sauce and cut zucchini or eggplant into slices. Instead of the meat layer, put a little sauce, then arrange the veg slices, then top with some more sauce.

Serving Suggestion: Technically I'm going to say that this makes 8 servings, although they are large servings. I think that 1/16 of the lasagna with a nice green salad would be enough for me on most days!

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UPDATE: I just did a calorie calculation for this dish, and it is NOT a light-weight. One eighth of it has 575 calories. Yikes!
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Cheap but Good: Getting Experimental with Pasta Sauces

Even though it definitely falls under the category of "cheap but good," I don't cook a lot of pasta, and not a lot of pasta sauce either. Not because I can't whip up something tasty, but because it's my boyfriend's "job." We have this sort of unspoken understanding that there are certain things that he cooks. Here's the list: fried eggs, mashed potatoes, pasta and associated sauces, pork. There are things that are "mine", too: soups, anything else done with eggs, beef, Indian food. Often I branch out and try to cook things that aren't on my list, but he knows what he is good at and sticks to it. I can honestly say that he does everything on his list much, much better than I do, even though I have more cooking experience.

Part of why his pasta sauces end up better than mine comes from his willingness to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. I tend to take a more cautious approach, selecting a few ingredients that I know will go well together. My result is always good, but strangely enough his is too. I keep waiting for one of his random sauces to fail and it hasn't happened yet.

His approach to making pasta sauce leads to a highly economical and tasty dinner, because what he does is take various odds and ends from the fridge--that may not have otherwise been used--and incorporates them into our meal. A few artichoke hearts left in a jar, likewise for some lonely green olives, the last splash of wine from the bottle on the table, the last tablespoon of cream in the tub, mixed with parsley that's just starting to wilt and that bacon that'll go bad if we don't use it the next couple of days. He usually throws in a dash of a couple spices too; sometimes unusual things, like cumin or coriander.

All these odds and ends combined with a can of diced tomatoes (or when we have them, a chopped fresh one) make a huge panful of sauce that we eat with whatever dried pasta we have on hand. All it needs is a tiny sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese to be perfect.

Cheap but Good: Tomato Soup

This is easy, fast, cheap and good. It was the first thing I made for my boyfriend on my mission to prove that many American foods can be tasty, AND not make you die of heart disease. What's more American than tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich (which doesn't have to be unhealthy)?

Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

1 small to medium sized onion
1 medium carrot
2 T oil
3 T tomato paste
1 800 g can of peeled whole tomatoes (corresponds to US 15 oz can, I think)
2 cans of water
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
about 1 T dried parsley
about 1 T dried basil
about 1 T dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Chop the onion, begin to sautee it in the oil. Peel and grate the carrot, add it to the onion. Remove the whole tomatoes from the can and chop them, saving the juice. When onion is soft and translucent, stir in the tomato paste, the chopped tomatoes, and the juice from the can. Also add two canfuls of water, the bay leaf, the peeled and minced clove of garlic. Salt and pepper and herbs to taste. (I add about a T of each herb, but mostly parsley, second most oregano, least basil.) Let it come to a boil and then simmer it until the carrots are soft enough for your taste. For me this can be as little as 10 minutes if I'm in a rush, but it's best if you simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think this soup is best with a little sour cream or creme fraiche. I either stir it into the pot at the very end, or let each person put a little on their bowl. I don't sautee the garlic because I like the sharper taste; if you want it more mild, simply add it in when you add the carrots. This is very good even with just bread. I've also tried it with grilled cheese, which was great. Once I added noodles, and that was good, but the soup was much thicker. You could also try adding rice (cooked, or cook it in the soup).

***Cost Analysis***
Can of tomatoes: 82 cents
Carrot: 15 cents
Onion: 10 cents
Tomato paste: 50 cents
Garlic clove: 5 cents
Herbs:
I have large jars of parsley, basil and oregano that each cost about 2 euro and have probably 70 one T servings inside. So those three together cost 9 cents approximately.
The bay leaves came in a bag with like 100 leaves inside, and was also about 2 euro. So one leaf is about 2 cents.

Total cost of soup recipe: 1.73 euro, about $2.33 today

The recipe makes about 5.5 bowls, so that is 31 euro cents ($.42) per small serving (1 bowl), and 62 euro cents ($.83) per larger serving (2 bowls). Small serving is usually enough for me, with a bit of bread and a little sour cream.

Nutritional Info: Each bowl has approx. 110 calories (calculated using www.calorieking.com).

Cheap but Good: Canned Tomatoes

This post is early because I'll be very busy with work the next couple days, but I have some time now.

Let's start by acknowledging this: I love a delicious, fresh tomato--in the summertime. They never taste as good in the winter, that's my main complaint, but they're also (usually) much more expensive! This July I was paying 2.95 euro a kilo for some of the most gorgeous tomatoes I've ever seen in a store, in a bounty of varieties. Now the price is closer to 5 euros a kilo, and for tasteless, dull, homogeneous light red orbs.

That's in France: I'm back in the states for a week, and I noticed that here the price is more consistent. I haven't actually tried one of these winter tomatoes yet, but I remember from my time living here that they were not good.

So what to do? Many recipes that may otherwise be cost-efficient, like pastas with sauces, and various soups, require some amount of tomato, and are perfect for wintertime.

My solution is to substitute canned tomato products. Tomato juice, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, whole peeled tomatoes--all these have been starring in my winter cooking. If you keep your eyes open for them, you can sometimes find a really good deal, too. I bought recently about five 765 g cans of peeled whole Italian tomatoes; they were on sale for 82 euro cents a piece! I use these in the following dishes on the site:

Sweet and Sour Schi
Golubtsy
Eggplant Dhal
Cheese Fondue (They're not in the posted recipe, but adding one or two chopped tomatoes to cheese fondue can be very tasty.)
Borsch (Uses tomato paste, in the recipe I posted. I've before used chopped canned tomato or crushed tomato when I didn't have paste. Or you can use a combo of both.)

Some other applications that I haven't posted (yet):

-Many other soups, including plain, simple and tasty tomato soup
-Meat curries
-Tomato Sauce for Pasta

I would say that you can safely replace fresh tomato for canned in any recipe that will actually cook the tomato. Some things, which call for the fruit to be eaten raw, are better saved for summer. It leaves something to look forward to, don't you think?

Simple Tomato Salad

This is one of my favorite salads. My boyfriend made it for me when we first started dating, and I was surprised by how delicious, yet simple, it is. In the summer when fresh tomatoes are at their peak, this salad is also inexpensive. Right now tomato prices are higher, and the tomatoes aren't as tasty, but it's still a nice recipe.

Such salads are traditional in many parts of Europe. This particular rendition is a common summer recipe in Russia and Ukraine. There are variations adding more stuff; mozzarella cheese, olive oil, garlic, cucumber, different herbs, apple ... but I prefer this most simple version.

Simple Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

3 medium sized tomatoes
1 small onion
1/2 c cream (we have creme fraiche easily available and inexpensive here in France, but you can also use sour cream. Some people use mayo. I think you could use thick Greek yogurt with excellent results.)
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Dice the onion very fine and place them in your serving bowl. Chop the tomatoes and add them, making sure that you add the juice to the bowl too. Mix the cream into the mixture thoroughly.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: This salad is best eaten the same day, because fresh tomatoes change consistency dramatically if you refrigerate them (which you shouldn't do!). It is, however, tastiest not immediately after preparation, but after it sits for maybe 20-30 minutes. This allows it to come to room temperature (assuming your cream was cold), and the salt extracts juices from the vegetables. These juices combine with the cream to make a delicious sauce that you can dip nice bread into! In the summer, I think this is a perfect accompaniment to burgers. The rest of the year, I like to eat it for dinner or lunch with a few other salads. It's great for parties, too.

Cheap but Good: Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

This soup is delicious, low fat/calorie, and full of vitamins! It reminds me of the sweet and sour cabbage soup I used to get at a Jewish Deli style restaurant (Ella's Deli in Madison, WI) when I was a kid, but without the meat. Actually, this recipe came from an attempt to recreate that taste. I use a 3 quart pot to make this.

Sweet and Sour Schi

Ingredients:

1/2 medium head cabbage (I used what was leftover after making Golubtsy)
1 small onion
1 medium carrot
1 T oil
2/3 of a 765 g can of peeled roma tomatoes packed in juice + juice from can
3 T balsamic vinegar
3 T sugar
water
bay leaf
sprinkling of caraway seeds
salt to taste

Method:

Warm the oil in a pot. When it shimmers, you're ready to sautee veggies. First add the onion, sliced thinly in semi-rings, and sprinkle some salt. When it is soft, add the carrot, peeled and diced, and sprinkle salt. While it's cooking you can cut the cabbage. Add the cabbage sliced into thin strips about a handful at a time. Sprinkle salt after each addition, and don't add the next handful until the one in the pot is soft. I do this because I have a small pot; if I put it all in at once, it would be too much. At this point, the salt has caused the vegetables to release their juices, and the veggies are stewing. When the cabbage starts to become soft and translucent, add tomatoes chopped and their juice. Add about a can and a half (using the can from the tomatoes) of water, the caraway and a bay leaf (basically, I add enough to fill the entire 3 quart pot). Bring to a boil and simmer until the cabbage is soft enough to your liking. Stir in the vinegar and the sugar. You can add more sugar if you want it sweeter, less if you like it more sour. Likewise with the vinegar; more if you like it more sour, less if you like it sweeter. Add salt to taste. Serve hot. You can serve it with sour cream (I prefer it without), a lemon wedge, or chopped herbs like parsley or dill. Приятного Аппетита!

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think that this soup is filling enough that 1-2 bowls is a complete dinner. My boyfriend needs a couple of slices of bread with it. We had this last night for dinner with black (rye) bread. For dessert (and tea today) we had pancakes, the thick kind Russians call oladi. Americans will recognize them as silver-dollar pancakes. Было очень вкусно! You can also serve this with crusty bread or grilled cheese sandwiches.

***Cost Analysis***
Cabbage: 1 head = 1.30 euros. 1/2 = .65 euros
Carrot: 8 carrots = 1 euro. 1 carrot = .125 euro
Onion: ~100 onions = 5 euros. 1 onions = .025 euro
Oil: 500 mL = 5.67 euro. 1 T = 14.79 mL = .168 euro
Tomatoes: 1 can = .82 euro. 2/3 can = .547 euro
Balsamic vinegar: 1 bottle= 250 mL = 1.70 euro. 3 T = 44.36 mL = .302 euro.
Sugar: 1000 g = 1.80 euro. 2 T = 24 grams = .043 euro.
Water: 0 euro
Bay Leaf: ~50 leaves = 2 euro. 1 leaf = .04 euro
Salt: cost negligible

Number of Servings: 8 bowls

Total cost of recipe: 1.90 euro = $2.40 at today's currency exchange
Cost per Serving: .24 euro = $.30

Nutritional Info:
Calories per Serving (calculated using info at www.calorieking.com):70
Calories in Recipe: 559