Category: In the Kitchen

easy, healthy, cheap

I made something last night to use up the last bit of cornmeal mix that I bought in NC, and it reminded me of the yummier 1970s random-ingredient casseroles of my youth. It’s easy, and cheap, and full of veggies, so y’all might like it.

Dice up a red bell pepper and half an onion, saute. When it starts to sweat, add a pound of ground beef and brown it with a bunch of mexican spice mix or chili powder or what have you. Be generous, this tends to be bland once it’s finished — I wished I had jacked up the flavor more in mine.

When the meat is almost done, add a drained can of corn and a drained can of pinto beans. Add some hot sauce if you feel like it. Add a can of diced or whole tomatoes cut up and their juice. Add salt to taste and more spice mix if you think it needs it.

Pour all this into a glass baking dish. Top with some grated cheese — I only had a tiny bit left, so perhaps more cheese would have made it more savory. Top that with prepared cornbread batter, and bake according to the cornbread directions.

cold weather cookery: Korean

I am on a massive Korean food jag. Has something to do with the deep freeze temps outside, and something more to do with the cold I am fighting off. And perhaps a little bit to do with the side trip I made to the H-Mart on the way home from a certification test I had to take for work, heh heh. But the craving was there before the H-Mart trip; that was just enabling.

The refrigerator case at H-Mart had a little tub of pre-seasoned various greens and mushrooms that one can mix in with rice to make bibimbap. I added a grated carrot that cooked in the heat of the rice, and a bit of hamburger scrambled with minced garlic and soy sauce, plus of course the fried egg on top. And ssamjang made by mixing commercial ssamjang with some “sauce for soup” that is a bit spicier, plus a touch of agave syrup and a couple tablespoons of sherry vinegar (thank you, David Chang, you studmuffin you).

I pillaged the pan chan selection in that refrigerator case, too, making away with a seasoned nori, a cucumber pickle with sesame, a sliced omelet, and a pickled whole garlic in spicy sauce that I have been macking down with abandon in hopes of killing the bug I’m fighting. It’s quite strong but I gotta say, that sauce is nom.

I also got a tub of the young radish kimchi with greens, which is really excellent — I’ve had it before and it is a delightful mix of fresh and fermenty. Radishes and their greens are supposed to be chockablock with vitamins too and very good for you.

And then I hauled off and made a kimchi stew. Fried a bit of sidemeat (pork fat with pepper, basically) with an onion, then dumped in kimchi, a bottle of clam juice, 2 bottles of water, and a spoonful of that spicy sauce for soup, a 1/2 tsp of sugar b/c the sauce had a bit of sugar in it too, and a tablespoon of coarse Korean red pepper powder. Simmered half an hour then dropped in a half package of tofu, sliced, and some Trader Joe’s frozen shrimp. Drizzled a little sesame oil over to serve. Based on Maangchi’s recipe on her site. There are not words for how good this is on a cold winter night, with some hot rice and pickley bits on the side.

I also did a congee with some of the leftover vegetables and some Japanese sweet potato that came out pretty awesome. I love hot congee with lots of stuff in it when I am feeling poorly.

I took a break for a Chinese-style chicken and oyster mushroom stir fry because they had adorable packets of oyster mushrooms on sale for $2.99. And we’ll probably eat the leftovers of that next week as a pan-fried noodle because they also had packets of pre-cooked yellow noodle that were irresistible to a foodwhore magpie.

Sushi tonight, most likely, as part of Nerd Date Night. (Wooo, Tron Legacy!) But then back to more kimchi stew, I think.

winter salad

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for a green or green-like vegetable after a long stretch of not grocery shopping, I did the following:

Mix shredded green cabbage (bagged from Trader Joe’s works fine) with a grated carrot, some diced kosher dill pickle, ground black pepper and a drizzle of the pickle brine.

Let it sit 15 mins or more and it makes a pretty decent tangy side for whatever you happen to be eating, in my case broiled chicken thigh and rice.

weirdly bracing

Craving something a little extra after lunch today, I put two spoonfuls of cocoa into a mug; added generous dashes of cinnamon, clove and chipotle; and maybe two tablespoons of agave syrup. Then I stirred it up — the resulting paste was better than most truffles, but I resisted the urge to just eat it that way — and filled the mug with hot water.

The resulting drink was more spicy than anything, with the sweetness diluted down by the water, but it was warming and energizing and sharp. I feel great, without any of the creamy sluggishness that sometimes comes with a cocoa treat made with milk. Yum!

cook’s treat

I have been making pots of chicken soup for tallasiandude, who is feeling poorly this week. And since I have been buying whole chickens for that, I have had access to small amounts of chicken liver.

Normally what I do is just fry it up and glaze it with a little balsamic vinegar, which is lovely. But this time, since I’d just done that YESTERDAY (tallasiandude eats a LOT of soup when he’s sick), I decided I’d make some chopped liver, Jewish-deli-style.

So I fried some finely diced onion in a tablespoon of butter, put in 3 pieces of chicken liver once it was starting to brown, sprinkled in salt, and fried it till the onion was just about to burn, at which point I tipped in a little bit of sherry and let it cook till the liver was done and the liquid was syrupy. Then I put it into a bowl, ground on a little black pepper, and smushed it into a paste.

I just put some of that on a cracker just now, and it is HEAVEN.

full-blown obsession

is what I am having with the combination of corn cut off the cob plus pimenton de la vera, usually in a salad-ish mixture with other vegetables like peppers or onions and perhaps some cheese. HOLY COW. I mix up the veggies, then put on a sprinkle of sea salt and an undignified amount of pimenton, and it is so very, very delicious.

possibly best salad ever

my lunch today was a bowlful of:

Trader Joe’s ready to eat butter lettuce
sliced radishes
crumbled feta
sliced green onion
diced spicy-garlic carrot pickles
Trader Joe’s chipotle hummus
half an avocado
drizzle of white wine vinegar

The feta, hummus and avocado served as dressing. It was tangy, spicy, savory and crunchy. YUM.