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.

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.

Chicken Stuffed Under the Skin

The secret to this dish is to put something flavorful under the skin then get the skin crisp. In this version I use bacon but you can use butter, sauteed mushrooms or onions or carrots or just about anything. I will admit that when I made this for the blog I ate both portions one after the other. As I write this I am stuffed but it’s a good kind of stuffed. I’ll eat light tomorrow.

Oh man Oh man Oh man Oh man

If you don’t want the extra fat in the skin just take it off after cooking. It will help to keep the meat from drying out. Cooking with the bones adds a lot of flavor.


I know this looks long and difficult but it really isn't.

For 2 people:

2  Chicken breasts, bone in and skin on. You want a lot of skin.
1 slice of bacon (of course I used my home made bacon for extra incredibleness)
Hartman House Spice Mix or your favorite spice blend or rub
Olive oil
4 lemons

Put some olive oil in a bowl and add the spice rub. Add salt if you wish but don’t use pepper until after it’s cooked.

Slice the bacon in half width wise. Trim any extra fat or bones off the chicken.

Take each chicken breast and loosen the skin at the top and the bottom so you can slide the bacon right in there. Make sure it lays flat.

Dip the skin of the chicken into the spiced olive oil or rub it on the chicken with a spoon.

Heat a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. You want the skin to brown and sizzle but you don’t want to burn the spices.

Put the chicken skin side down in the skillet. If the sides get hot lean the chicken against them so the most skin is touching the hot surface as possible.

Wash the lemons and cut them in half. Throw them in the bowl with the spiced oil and swish them around. Put them cut side down if possible in the skillet.

Turn the oven on to 375°.

When the chicken is brown put the pan in the oven in the middle rack or higher. Roast for 10 minutes then turn the chicken skin side up. Baste with juices from the pan. If there aren’t enough then add a tablespoon of water and swirl it around.

Bake for another 5 minutes and check to see if they are done. This is where experience helps because the best way to tell is by touching the chicken. When it is raw it feels mushy and soft, when it is overdone it feels hard. When it is just right it feels firm but springy.

When they are done take them out of the pan, blot them to dry the surface and let them rest for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with a grinding or two of black pepper.

Meanwhile squeeze all the juices from the lemons (a big spoon works well) and if you need to add a little water and scrape up all the brown bits on the bottom and pour this sauce into a bowl. Add salt and pepper and a bit of fresh lemon juice if you want. This is a dipping sauce for the chicken.

If all has gone well the skin will be flat and crisp and will have a smokey flavor from the bacon. The spice rub will add a lot of flavor and the sweet and sour lemon sauce is a great foil.