Home Made Stock – saving everything = saving money

Tags

basics, food, home made, ingredients, stock, vegetable scraps, vegetarian

Here’s another installment of my ‘S’ series, with today’s theme being ‘saving,’ meaning that saving every ingredient equals saving your money.

My kitchen DVR is full of cooking shows (and episodes of General Hospital, I think my mom was a soap opera user while I was in the womb, I’m addicted like a crack-baby!) and some of my favorite TV chefs had two really great quotes/ideas on this topic that stuck in my penny-pinching mind.  Perhaps my favorite personality on FoodNetwork is Anne Burrell and on her ‘Secrets of a Restaurant Chef’ show she always mentions that in both her home and her restaurant if she paid for an ingredient, she is going to get every bit of flavor and use out of it before she throws it away.  In concert with Chef Anne’s idea, Melissa D’Arabian once said on ‘Ten Dollar Dinners’ something to the effect of: “The most expensive ingredient is the one you throw away.”  Good food for thought, huh?

Having zero waste in the kitchen is impossible, we all have had our disasters that simply didn’t ‘turn out’ which got thrown out or given to the dog.  I had one particularly bad incident with discount chicken from an Asian market, in which my fireman spent a few bites pretending the meat wasn’t ‘off’ before I tried some then immediately began snatching our plates away and ordering a pizza.  But, failed experiments aside, there’s no excuse for letting perfectly good ingredients go bad; to me it’s like the difference between making a risky investment that doesn’t end up panning out and just flushing your money straight down the toilet, in the first case, at least you tried!  If I have something in the fridge that needs to be utilized in a hurry there are lots of alternatives to tossing it in the garbage.  I would much rather find a way to extend its life by freezing or preserving it, or even going out to buy more groceries to make a dish around it, rather than throw it away.

• Any sort of good vegetable scraps, like onions, carrots or celery, go into a gallon zipper bag in my freezer for making stock and any ‘not so fresh’ looking vegetable scraps go into my compost bin.  Although I do want to do right by the environment, I see all those scraps as money put towards nourishing my next years’ garden.
• Animal bones, cooked or uncooked, can be made into stock with your saved veggies.  Many stock recipes call for browning bones in the oven before using them, and there’s even a fancy French term, ‘remoulage,’ for using an already cooked bone for making stock.
• Any type of bread that is going stale can become croutons, bread pudding or breadcrumbs.
• Coffee grounds also go into the compost, and leftover coffee gets saved until I have enough for coffee ice cream, grown up coffee milkshakes, tirimisu, or red-eye gravy.
• Milk that’s about to expire is great for making yogurt, creamy soups and sauces and an un-ending number of baked goods.
• As for cheese, rinds of hard cheeses add depth and flavor to soups and creamy sauces, just remember to take them out before you serve.  Also the government says that if there’s mold on your cheese it’s absolutely okay to just cut the moldy part off, you better bet that’s what restaurants do.
• See, the list is endless!

Pretty much everything that’s organic is put to use until its bitter end in my kitchen, and I learned from the best.  In Tuscany, my adopted Nonna scolded me many a time for going to throw something away or even into the compost.  Some scraps went to the chickens, who knew that laying hens love watermelon rinds and tomato skins?  Used pasta water was never put down the drain, it went into the pig’s trough!  Sometimes the ‘frugal’ culture feels more disconnected here in the US, since hardly anyone is still alive who struggled through the Great Depression, but in the ‘Old Country’ it is still in living memory the times when Italy was occupied by Nazis and parents were scavenging in the hills for chestnuts and mushrooms so their children wouldn’t starve.  That’s not to say that American’s don’t struggle to put food on the table or have food security issues anymore, there’s a huge current crisis with ever changing government food assistance programs and urban food deserts; it would certainly change my perspective if I had to put my (hypothetical) kids on a bus with me for 45 minutes each way just to get to a store that even sold fresh vegetables.  So, before you put anything that you paid for in the trash, be thankful that you have that option and make damn sure you can’t find some use for it.

Saving money and making sure you aren’t letting good food go to waste doesn’t have to be depressing, or a guilt trip about bad times and the less fortunate, I try and think of it as a game pitting my little dollars and my clever mind against the grocery stores.  And let me tell you, winning that game is freaking great!  To me, it feels like putting someone in checkmate when you only started with a handful of checkers pieces.

Making and Storing Home Made Vegetable Stock – If you save your scraps in the freezer from your daily cooking, this one is $0 F-R-E-E!

Ingredients/Hardware

• One large zipper bag of vegetable scraps and trimmings – good scraps are onions, carrots, celery, bell peppers, mushroom stems, tomato, garlic, leeks… pretty much anything!
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp black peppercorns

• large pot or stock pot
• small sauce pot
• ladle
• fine strainer
• ice cube tray or jars or plastic storage containers.

 

Put the veggies, bay leaves and peppercorns in the pot and fill to cover with water.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, continue to simmer uncovered for 30 -45 minutes, the liquid will be brown and smell lovely.  Now you have regular vegetable stock that will be good for 1-2 weeks.

Stock is liquid gold!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have room to store 12 cups of stock in my fridge and I might not use it all within a few weeks.  For me, the next step is turning the stock into concentrated stock, which you can store much easier in jars in your fridge or freezer, or in cubes in the freezer for easy portioning.

Put the small sauce pot on another burner on medium heat and ladle scoops of hot vegetable stock though the strainer and into the small sauce pot.  Let the small pot come to a boil.  As the level of liquid in the pot drops, keep straining in stock into the small pot until your full large pot of stock fits entirely into the smaller pot, approximately 2 cups.  Let the concentrated stock cool a bit then pour into the ice cube tray or into jars, then put in the fridge or freezer.  If you use the ice cube method, when the cubes of stock are frozen pop them out of the tray and put the cubes in a labeled container in the freezer, ready to go whenever you need them!

Stock cubes, all ready to go!

One cube (about 2 Tbs, if you’re keeping the concentrated stock in the fridge) equals the flavor of 1 cup of regular strength stock.

If you want to make meat stock, you can use the exact same procedure, just add your bones.  Chicken stock will need to simmer for 1-2 hours.  Beef or ham stock will need to simmer for 2-4 hours.  If you don’t have the time, you can simmer your stock in the slow cooker while you’re out and about too.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread – summer’s end

Tags

chocolate, food, freezing, preserving, quick breads, summer, vegetarian, zucchini bread

During my first few years of college, I worked seasonally in a small but busy bakery in my parents’ home town who needed extra help around most of the major holidays.  Although getting to work at 2:30 am and scooping out hundred pound batches of uncooperative dough was challenging, we had a lot of fun too; I particularly enjoyed listening to reggaeton (Spanish language rap) and silly pop music from Spain with my awesome early-morning co-worker before we opened.  We made a ton of amazing breads, but my favorite that I saw there was definitely this chocolate zucchini bread. What I enjoy the most, aside from the delicious flavor of course, is how unique the idea is!

I tend to make this zucchini bread more frequently in the summer when zucchini are cheap and friends and neighbors are trying to get rid of the stuff. I wasn’t able to have a garden this year, with moving up to Tahoe and its challenging climate for vegetable growing, but I did get a few pounds on sale at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago and shredded it and froze it in 2 cup portions in zipper bags.  Actually, freezing is the strategy that I use for almost all of the summer produce I can’t can or pickle.  For things that I want to have not in one big clump I freeze them on a sheet tray then transfer to a zip top bag.  For ingredients that I will use in small portions, like hot peppers, I freeze them in an ice cube tray so that I have approximately 2 Tbs portions.  Lastly, if I’m lucky enough to get a good deal on meat or have a good day fishing I’ll bust out my food sealer.

Some items got a little photo shoot while I was ‘playing tetris,’ i.e. trying to fit everything in my tiny freezer that I have to share with the other residents of the house…

Currently hanging out in my very full freezer are bags of sweet corn, cubes of jalapenos, blackberries ready for pie and cobbler, mixed fruit for sangrias, and a jar or two of pesto.  Canned up in my pantry are roasted peppers, Mexican escabeche pickled veggies, blackberry jelly and preserves, pears in lavender syrup, preserved strawberries, strawberry syrup, a little applesauce (hopefully more to come as my fireman promised me a fall time date to Apple Hill!!!) and spicy tomatillo salsa.  I love preserving summer’s yummy flavors to brighten up the chilly winter months, and since this will be my first winter in the snow, I think I’m going to need it…

While the sun is still shining, soak it up, enjoy the last few days at the beach, and make yourself a loaf of this sweet and chocolatey zucchini bread!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

One loaf costs approx $2.09

(*note, I weighed out a cup of flour to be approximately 5 oz and a cup of sugar to weigh approximately 7 oz, but it’s just a guess because measuring by weight is always more accurate, so use the scale if you have one!!!*)

Ingredients

• 7oz or 1 1/4 cups All Purpose flour ($.24)
• 1/2 oz 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• pinch cinnamon
• pinch nutmeg
• 2 large eggs ($.20)
• 1 1/4 cup sugar, plus 1/4 more for coating the pan ($.35)
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil ($.50)
• 1 cup shredded zucchini ($.30)
• 1 tsp vanilla flavoring – extract or imitation, whatever you have on hand
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips ($.25)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Mix all the first six ingredients.  Mix all the remaining ingredients separately.  Combine the two sets of ingredients just until incorporated.  Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray (or maybe save your butter wrapper papers and rub it down with that.  Thrifty cooks are always thinking!) and pour in the reserved 1/4 cup of sugar and coat the entire surface of the pan.  This gives your quickbreads a crunchy and sweet outer crust.  Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  *Remember, I live at 6,500 ft elevation so your baking time might be different from mine!*

Trout with brown rice pilaf and broccoli slaw

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barbecue for life, broccoli, brown rice, coleslaw, fishing, food, trout

A great thing to be knowledgeable about in order to improve both your life and this big ol’ world we all share is to keep your meals ‘seasonal.’  I’m not kidding, the more I think about it the more I think I’m saving the world by cooking seasonally, not to mention that it’s healthier and cheaper!

In my opinion, fresh, local produce is the key to unlocking all these benefits.  If you’re buying in season, your money is going to the farmer and not towards the cost of transporting the veggies from a hot house three states away or from another country.  When you spend your hard earned scratch at a farmers market or a store that supports local producers, you help to support your local economy and reduce the amount of evil released into the environment by the trucks and planes shipping produce around the world.  Also, when your fruits and veggies don’t have to travel so far, they are picked riper and their wonderful nutritional qualities are much closer to their natural peak, rather than an apple that was picked a month ago and gassed into maturity in a hot house.  If you’re interested in learning more, go check out Slow Food International, they’re my heroes.

I always try to spread my budget around, spending my money on dry goods and staples at a discount grocery store and using the leftover for something seasonal at farmer’s market.  Because you’re not paying for the $4 per gallon gas it took to drive it across the country, when produce is in season is when its the cheapest!  So, stock up when the getting is good; can tomatoes when your garden explodes in the summer, go berry picking in the late summer, buy citrus in the early spring, and look forward to seeing root veggies at farmers markets in the fall.  I’ve been having so much fun preserving the summer’s bounty, including jars of pickled and roasted peppers, home made jams and jellies, canned fruits in syrup, and a freezer full of nature’s goodies.

We had good luck blackberry picking earlier this summer 🙂

Living in the mountains, like I do, isn’t so easy for local produce, but we’re happy to pay a little bit more at our farmer’s market that producers from the Sacramento valley come to.  But one thing we do have locally is some good fishing!  After a season of getting largely skunked, I finally had a bit of luck.

(Later in the week, as an additional nod to seasonal ingredients, I’m going to put up my recipe for chocolate zucchini bread!)

For this dinner, I seasoned my trout with Spanish paprika, salt and black pepper then seared them on a hot griddle.  I paired it with a filling and nutty brown rice pilaf and a fresh broccoli coleslaw, based on a recipe that I absolutely loved from my friend who has an awesome barbeque blog.  (the original recipe: http://barbecueforlife.com/simple-broccoli-salad-great-and-affordable-side-dish-for-parties-picnics/)  I got a great deal this week on a bunch of broccoli, and after using the florets for other meals I wanted to use the the stems, and the flavors in my friend’s recipe are killer.

Since I got the trout for free, the total meal cost only approximately $1.03 per serving.

So colorful! It’s like confetti in your mouth!

Broccoli Slaw

Serves 2 – costs approx $.67 per serving

Ingredients

• 7 oz broccoli stems, peeled and cut into matchsticks ( $.33)
• 1 lg carrot, peeled and cut into matchsticks ($.16)
• 3 scallions – sliced thin ($.20)
• 2 Tbs raisins – ($.10)
• 2 Tbs dried cranberries – ($.10)
• 2 Tbs mixed nuts – I had a bag of mixed sunflower seeds, pinenuts and almonds on hand, but any would be great on their own ($.20)
• 1 Tbs apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 tsp lime zest – Optional, you could substitute any citrus juice or zest, remember that the rest of that lime is good for salsa, margaritas, gin and tonics, whatever…
• salt/pepper – to taste

Directions: mix everything together, taste and adjust seasonings.  Easy and yummy, can’t be beat!

Lavender Pork Loin – with garlic parmesan mashed potatoes

Tags

bacon grease, braise, dinner, food, lavender, pork, south lake tahoe

Have you ever had that moment when you taste something and it’s so new and so good that it makes your world stop for a few moments?  Well, I was lucky enough to experience that yesterday at work; which for me is the Riva Grill in South Lake Tahoe.  (It’s an amazing place and you should go there if you’re in the mood to treat yourself really well.)  Chef Rob was preparing a dish for an off-site local ‘Iron Chef’ style event (in which he kicked some serious ass, by the way) and it was that was so good it defied words: slow cooked lavender pork belly.  The smell had been making me drool all day, and as he was shredding up the pork some of us were lucky enough to get a taste.  Mind = blown.  I was instantly elated that I had taken out some pork loin to cook for dinner earlier that morning and could try my hand at the ‘pork and lavender’ combination.

While it’s not so odd that inspiration would come to me while working around delicious food and talented cooks all day, I think it’s important to always keep my eyes open for new ideas to try.  Whether it’s from a friend’s vacation story, or reading a menu, or (my personal addiction) cooking t.v. shows, if you see something that intrigues you, plan ahead in your budget and give it a go!  Every now and then it’s good to remember that it’s just food, it’s not ‘rocket surgery’, and the occasional dud usually paves the way for something outstanding.  Although, as far as experiments go, I thought this one was pretty freaking awesome!

Lavender Pork Loin – with garlic parmesan mashed potatoes

Serves 2 – approx $1.48 per serving

Ingredients

• 8 oz pork loin, cut into medallions – or pork chops, cutlets, use whatever is on sale!
• Salt/pepper – to taste
• 1 tsp culinary lavender
• 1 Tbs bacon grease – vegetable oil is fine too
• 2 onions, sliced
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 2 lb russet potatoes
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 oz butter
• garlic salt – to taste
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• pinch green onions, sliced – for garnish

Heat the bacon grease or oil in a saute pan over medium heat.  Season the pork with salt, pepper and lavender then sear.  When the meat is nicely browned, remove it from the heat and saute the onions.  When the onions are translucent, add the wine and stock, bring to a simmer and return the pork.  Simmer covered for half an hour and uncovered for another half hour.  (my pork was about 1/2 inch thick, if yours is thicker or thinner it may require more or less time cooking, respectively)

While the meat is simmering, begin the mashed potatoes using the remaining ingredients.  I trust in your abilities as a cook to make it work out…

I hope you enjoy eating this dish as much as I did!  Yum!

Trout in Cartocio

Tags

food

This week I caught my first trout all on my lonesome!  I grew up going trout fishing every summer with my Daddy and my Papa (my maternal Grandpa) in the Donner Lake area.  When I was a little girl, I didn’t eat fish and I would just eat the marshmallows that Papa brought for bait and when I got a bit older I mostly liked having somewhere new and beautiful to read a good book.  Lately, my interest in fishing has been re-sparked as my palate has matured to include more things that swim.

My birthday present from my Daddy this year was an awesome fishing backpack, stuffed full of powerbait and tackle.  I’ve been trying out the smaller lakes around Tahoe this summer with no luck, as I seem to lack the decades of experience that my tutors have.  On the recommendation of a co-worker, this week I went to Indian Creek Reservoir and caught the aforementioned trout.  Getting my first kill made how lost I got getting there totally worth it.  I’m sure that the look on my face when I put the little guy on the stringer was a lot like what our cat looks like when she is sitting on an injured mouse and planning where to leave us her trophy.

So, here is the ‘before and after’ of my trout.  The recipe comes from a combination of baked fish in parchment that I learned how to do from Chef Stefano on my internship in Tuscany and a lunch special of ‘Trout with Caper Beurre Blanc’ that Chef Rob ran at the Riva Grill this summer.  It’s lucky my sweetheart is off being an American hero (he’s a wildland firefighter), because this lonely little fish made a perfect dinner for just one.  If you have better luck out on the lake than I did, this recipe is easily doubled to feed more people.

Before

Trout In Cartocio – served with brown rice pilaf and roasted runner beans

Serves one – cost approx $1.75 per person

Ingredients

• parchment paper
• trout
• salt
• black pepper
• 1 oz. white wine
• 1 inch rosemary sprig
• 1 garlic clove, smashed
• 1/4 lemon
• 1 tsp capers
• 1 oz butter, divided
• 1/2 cup brown rice
• 1/4 onion, small dice
• bay leaf
• 1 cup vegetable stock or water
• 6 oz runner beans (a small handful) any sort of green beans would be a good substitute

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Start with the pilaf by melting half the butter in a small sauce pot.  Sweat the onions, season to taste with salt.  When the onions are translucent, add the rice and saute the rice one minute.  Add the stock or water, when it comes to a simmer add the bay leaf and cover the pot.  Let it simmer on low for 30 minutes while you work on the fish.

Tear off the parchment paper so that it is a few inches longer than your fish.  Salt and pepper the cavity and stuff with the garlic, rosemary and lemon.  Put the parchment on a baking sheet, then put the fish on the parchment, then pour the wine over the fish (that way if it spills, it’s on the baking sheet and not your counters!).  Put the remaining butter and the capers over the fish and fold the parchment into a delicious little fishy envelope.

Baked ‘Trout in Cartiocio’

Trim the beans and season them with salt and pepper and add them to the baking sheet with the parchment wrapped fish (why dirty another pan?) and bake for approximately 15 minutes.  If your a lucky schmuck who caught a bigger fish you may need to bake it for about 5-10 minutes longer, if so check on the beans in about 15 minutes.

Hopefully, everything will be done around the same time and you’ll be ready to dive in, enjoy!

After