Raw Asparagus and Sweet Pepper Salad

Difficulty: Very Easy

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 4 minutes

Cost per serving: $0.25 to $0.40

Useful leftovers: Yes

This is an unusual side dish that only takes a couple of minutes and tastes fabulous. It's really easy and is very nutritious. It's a good foil for strong flavored savory food like a steak.

For each person

2 stalks Asparagus
1/4 of a  Sweet pepper, red or yellow or orange
1 teaspoon Toasted sesame oil
A few drops of Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Wash the asparagus carefully and dry it. Bend it near the bottom until the tough end breaks off.

Cut the asparagus into 1/4" rounds.

Wash the pepper. Cut it into 1/4" little squares.

Season with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Equipment (and some ingredients) for Beginners

Here is a basic set of products to stock your kitchen, most of which qualify for free shipping.  For a complete kitchen set up buy one of each. (I apologize for the wierd formatting on this page. Blogspot!)







































And some ingredients. Our suggestion is to try one or two.






















For dried mushroom products we recommend Pistol River Mushrooms. Their products are excellent and their prices are fantastic. A simple dried wild mushroom mix or some truffle peelings can turn a humdrum dish into fare fit for a king - or me!

Dried wild mushrooms
Truffles

Truffles

The Simplest and Fastest Tomato Sauce

Spaghetti and meatballs in less than half an hour!

Difficulty: Very Easy

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Cost per serving: $0.25 to $0.40

Useful leftovers: Yes

The Fastest and Tomatoiest!
1 can very good tomatoes.
1 onion
1 rib of celery

A bit of oil

One of the better canned tomatoes from California is fine. Check the label and if you find some without a lot of salt and without calcium chloride pick that.

Chop the onion and celery and saute in a heavy bottomed pot until translucent in a bit of oil. Add the tomatoes and heat through. Let it simmer for a while. Mash up the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

This is surprisingly good and so simple. You can jazz it up by adding garlic, red wine, rosemary, cumin, pesto, basil, sausage, salami, ground beef, cheese, lemon, tiny shrimp or any number of other goodies!

You can use this sauce with pasta of course but you can also use it to cook chicken or fish or as a seasoning for other sauces. You can add it to macaroni and cheese to make it tomatoey or put it on top of a roast or meat loaf. So handy!

The reason we look for tomatoes without calcium chloride is that they add it to keep the tomatoes whole and firm, and we want them to break down into the sauce.

Garlic Flank Steak

Difficulty:  Easy

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Cost per serving: $3.00 to $4.00

Useful leftovers: Yes

Flank steak is a great cut of meat! It has hardly any fat but a lot of flavor and a wonderful texture. It's not fork tender like a tenderloin but has a nicely chewy, beefy texture. It is one of my father's favorite meals. He liked the well done bits on the thin ends.
You can easily alter the recipe but be careful to use a meat that can stand up to strong flavors. The delicate qualities of a veal chop would be lost in this recipe. It would work with salmon but not halibut for the same reason.
Flank steak
A head of garlic
Olive oil
Fresh rosemary
Paprika
Red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Trim the steaks if needed. If there are bits of fat you can usually pull them off with your fingers.

Take the head of garlic and slice off the root end (the non-pointy end). Crush the head with your hand to separate the cloves. Take each clove and smash it and take the skin off. Most cooks do this by laying the flat blade of a chef's knife on the clove then hitting it with your fist, but you can use a meat pounder, small frying pan or if are like me - just your hand.

Put all the peeled garlic in a pile and chop like mad. Don't worry if the pieces aren't all the same size.

Put the garlic on the meat, sprinkle with paprika and rosemary. If you are going to let it marinate then cover it and marinate and add the red wine vinegar and seasonings right before you cook it. If you are going to use it right away add all the ingredients and smoosh it all over the meat.

In any case let the steak come to room temperature before you cook it.

Prepare a charcoal grill and when it is quite hot add a chunk of almond or oak wood if you have it to the side of the coals and replace the grill and cook the steak. You want high heat to cook it quickly and to burn off all the garlic. You can also use a heavy bottomed pan and grill it right on top of the stove or use a broiler.

If your grill is hot the steak will be done in about 7 minutes, more for a thick steak and less for a thin one.

Remove it from the grill and let it rest at least 5 minutes in a warm place before you cut into it. It's ok to let it cool a bit and it's fantastic even at room temperature.

Since this steak has some strong flavors it is best to serve with something that contrasts.  I like to serve it with my Super Sauce with some chopped cucunbers added.

You can make this recipe much easier by buying (the horror!) chopped garlic, cooking it in an indoor broiler or leaving out the almond wood.

Thunder Chicken

Difficulty: Medium

Prep time: 5 minutes for one or two servings

Cooking time: 15 - 25 minutes, then 5 minutes to rest

Cost per serving: $0.50 to $2.00 depending on what chicken pieces you use

Useful leftovers: Yes. This is great cold

 
I created this dish for a fancy dinner I was catering many years ago at a nice house in Los Altos. There was a large komado grill and I asked a friend to get a charcoal fire going in there. He dropped a whole 20 pound bag of charcoal and lit it. That grill was so hot it took all the hair off both my arms and I was using long tongs!

The chicken came out great. And it's so cost effective. That's business talk for 'it makes a cheapskate smile.'

This recipe is for range cooking but it works as well on an outdoor grill.

I have an aversion to burnt garlic and can tell if there is a molecule of it in a red sauce. I hate it on fish. To me garlic should be barely translucent, not brown.

However for this dish the garlic gets really cooked. Browned. Destroyed. Yum!

Chicken
Garlic, for each piece of chicken figure 2 whole cloves of garlic
Toasted sesame oil, figure a teaspoon per piece of chicken and one more tablespoon for cooking
Salt
Pepper

Cut your chicken into serving size pieces. You can leave the skin on or take it off. Put the chicken in a bowl.

Chop the garlic. You don't have to make all the pieces the same size, just chop away. Dump it in the bowl with the chicken.

Sprinkle on some sesame oil.

You can marinate the chicken overnight to get a deeper sesame flavor in the chicken but it works well if you cook it right away too.


If you cook it on the stove put a small amount of sesame oil in a cold, heavy bottomed pan and add the chicken. Turn the heat on and bring it up to medium. You want the garlic to brown but not burn. It is going to cook for a long time so it's critical you get the pan the right temperature. If it is sizzling hard it is too hot. If it is not sizzling then it is too cool.


You can cook the chicken completely in the pan or you can brown it in the pan then put the pan in a hot oven (400°) until it is done. You'll get crisper skin if you cook it all on the stove top but you will get more tender chicken if you finish it in the stove. You can also finish it in the stove then crisp the skin in the pan.

When the chicken is completely cooked let it rest for 5 minutes before eating. The best way to know if it's done is to touch the chicken. Chicken that is still raw in the middle feels squishy and when it is overdone it feels hard. This is the only tricky part of this recipe; getting the chicken cooked properly and the skin crispy. It takes a little experience.

You can garnish the chicken with sesame seeds or chopped raw tomato and basil or cilantro. This dish goes well with mashed, roasted or baked potatoes, a cooling green salad and some sauteed veggies.

Pan Gravies

Beef with red-eye gravy. Coffee and beef!

Difficulty: Easy

Prep time: up to ten minutes

Cooking time: 1 to 5 minutes

Cost per serving: $0.50 to $2.00 or more if you use fancy ingredients like expensive mushrooms

Useful leftovers: Depends

Making a pan sauce or gravy is easy and delicious. It has a bad name because of some bad practices but we'll avoid those.

The idea of a pan gravy is to make a fast, tasty sauce using the caramelized brown bits left in the bottom of the pan and a flavorful liquid. It's the cheapskate's perfect way to add flavor to sauteed meats or vegetables.

Some caveats:

- If the stuff in the bottom of the pan is burned it won't make a tasty sauce. It will taste burned.
- In traditional French cooking your pan sauce would have lots of butter in it. We'll avoid that.
- The liquids and seasoning used in the gravy must be flavorful and complement the food to be sauced.

The general rules for making a pan gravy are:

- Take the sauteed or roasted items out of the pan and keep warm
- Cook aromatics in the pan
- Add liquids and reduce
- Season

Pork tenderloin with gravy made from water!

Let's say you wanted to make pork chops and country gravy. You would saute the chops in a heavy bottomed frying pan. When they are done you remove them and keep them warm, drain the fat out of the pan and add a bit of coffee.  Turn the heat to high and scrape up all the goodness on the bottom of a pan. Pour it over the chops.

To make chicken with mushroom gravy cook the chicken in a heavy bottomed pan. Remove it and keep it warm and add some minced onion and sliced mushrooms and cook quickly. When they are cooked and brown add a bit of dried thyme, a touch of milk or cream and scrape up the bottom of the pan. Pour it over the chicken.

To make a steak with red wine gravy cook the steak in the pan, take it out and keep it warm. Follow the directions for the chicken above but instead of milk or cream add some red wine and reduce. Then at the last minute add a touch of butter, or milk or cream or sour cream and swirl.

You can use all sorts of liquids to make the gravy. You can use apple juice or tomato juice, water, milk, cream, liquors, etc. Just make sure it complements the principal ingredients and use a good tasting liquid. An over the hill or sour wine will make bland or off-putting gravy. You don't have to use Lafite to make gravy but if you use crappy wine you'll get crappy gravy.

Season the gravy with salt and pepper at the last minute.

Mushroom Rice

Difficulty: Easy

Prep time: 1 minute or less

Cooking time: 15 to 35 minutes plus 10 minutes to rest

Cost per serving: $0.50 to $2.00 depending on what dried mushrooms you use

Useful leftovers: Yes. Throw in soup or use to make fried rice.


Dried mushrooms are a great ingredient. So useful for making stocks here it creates a stock as the rice cooks.

It's important to use mushrooms that will be tender enough to eat. Some dried mushrooms can be really tough. To check put a few dried mushrooms in a cup of hot water and wait ten minutes then taste them.

If they are tough then you can use them to make stock but don't add them to the dish. Just heat two cups of water and add the mushrooms, wait ten minutes or until the stock is dark brown then drain and use the water in the recipe instead of using the mushrooms.

2 tablespoons dried mushrooms
2 cups of rice (I like brown basmati but you can use virtually any kind of rice)
Water to cover

Put the dried mushrooms in a pot. Add the rice. Cook according to the directions on the rice. I always use my mom's rule - put enough water in to cover the rice and one thumbnail. I put in two thumbnails for brown rice because it takes longer to cook.

This is a hearty dish and you can garnish it in many ways. You can use walnut or almond or peanut pieces, smoke salmon, pork, bits of chicken, green herbs, etc.

This recipe is not only a great accompaniment it is a great leftover. A tablespoon in a veggie soup packs a lot of flavor. It reheats beautifully. You can use it to stuff vegetables or a chicken. You can saute onions, carrots, parsnips, etc. in the pan before you make this recipe in it. You can add curry, cumin, saffron, etc.