MITCH IN THE KITCHEN

food stamp project week

One of the assignments for my community nutrition class is the food stamp challenge. Some 43.5 million people (about 1 in 8) in the U.S. are enrolled in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the week-long experience is meant to be a take-home exploration of what it’s like (a little bit, at least). John (always a good sport) and I spent seven days on a food budget of $60 ($30 per person). To be blunt, I don’t have any earth-shattering revelations or provocative insights to report. Cutting a two-person weekly food bill down to $60 is doable, but not fun. Yes, I got hungry and missed being able to have cheese whenever I want, on whatever I want. But it was entirely possible to eat a reasonably healthy mixed diet. In fact, most of the dinners we had resembled what we normally eat: rice (the brown kind) with beans, rice with tofu and eggs, pasta with sausage and beans. All with vegetables and heavily doused with hot sauce. Breakfast was muesli with milk or yogurt, lunch was peanut butter sandwiches. Very monotonous, but peanut butter and banana slices smooshed between squishy wheat bread and eaten on a subway platform have never tasted so good.

The part that challenged me most wasn’t trying to put together a decent meal for a few bucks or not being able to grab dinner at a restaurant with my friends. It wasn’t about the horror that is 99-cent packs of imitation American pasteurized process cheese food slices or the self-discipline it takes to cross the street to avoid bakery smells, pizza smells, and the mere thought of ice cream on a 60-degree afternoon. The hard part was staying full and cheerful throughout the day, at the risk of not having enough to eat in the coming days. By looking at this blog, you can probably tell that I care an awful lot about food, for better or worse. For a week, it became all about staying as full as possible for as long as possible.

Here’s the first thing we made for dinner. Filling, nutritious, and cheap.

Beans & Greens Stew with Rice
serves 4 (total cost: $3.56, excluding seasonings)

8 oz dried kidney beans ($0.75)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil ($0.10)
1 small onion, chopped ($0.10)
1/2 large carrot, chopped ($0.15)
1 large clove garlic, minced ($0.07)
water
10 oz package frozen chopped collard greens or spinach ($0.99)
2 tablespoons tomato paste ($0.40)
a few shakes of dried oregano
salt, pepper, hot sauce to taste

1 pound long grain brown rice, cooked ($1.00)

Soak beans in cold water overnight or for 8 to 12 hours.

Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add onion and carrot and cook for a few minutes, until soft. Add garlic and cook for another few minutes. Add beans and enough water to fully cover them. Bring to a simmer, then add salt and oregano. Lower heat and continue to simmer until beans are cooked through (40 minutes? something like that… just keep testing them). Stir them every now and then and add more water if necessary.

Stir tomato paste into cooking liquid. Add frozen greens and cook until they are un-frozen. Add more salt if necessary, pepper, and hot sauce to taste. Serve with cooked rice.

jean-georges’ fried rice

This is a French chef’s take on fried rice, that Chinese staple that I rely on to make delicious use of leftover rice and assorted odds and ends.

Yang zhou fried rice is commonly found on restaurant menus, but one of my favorite combinations was (is? it’s been awhile) rice with diced ham, scrambled eggs, corn, tomatoes, and get this, ketchup mixed into the rice during cooking. A blogger named Pei sums it up better than I can. It’s also a little bit like Japanese omurice. Another wacky fried rice I make is with cashews, pineapple chunks, fresh hot peppers, greens, and a squirt of lime. And then there’s my grandmother’s version that starts with a well-seasoned wok and several cloves of crushed garlic in a puddle of hot oil. The garlic infuses the oil (and your clothes and maybe even your home) with that wonderful kicky aroma, which then coats each grain of rice that hits the pan.

Anyway, back to Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s fried rice. Mark Bittman wrote about it a year ago in the New York Times, and I finally got around to trying it. I was a little put off by having to cook everything separately but in the end, I couldn’t complain too much about the result. And since fried rice is a vehicle for improvisation and refrigerator-cleaning, I added some chopped up Chinese sausage that my mom stuffed into my suitcase after my last visit.

winter squash, carrot, and chickpea stew with quinoa

Sometimes I walk into my kitchen and wonder, what the heck am I going to do with all these squash? And carrots? And this cabinet full of precariously stacked spice jars that tumble out sometimes? Then a recipe like this comes along and answers all three of these questions. We followed it, more or less, and added chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans or “hehehe butt beans!” according to me and my cousin Brenda 20 years ago) because I think a little protein is in order, unless you want to be hungry again in like an hour. If you scroll through the hundreds of reader reviews and comments on the Bon Appetit/Epicurious recipe you’ll find other good ideas, like doubling the amount of spices in the stew (necessary), adding currants or raisins to the quinoa, and using broth instead of water.

barley with mushrooms and carrots

Until very recently, my favorite application for barley was beer. Then I gave this humble grain a whirl as a non-alcoholic lunch and loved it. I used hulled (not pearled) barley, which has the germ and bran intact, making it a whole grain. It smells a little malty when you cook it, and the chewy grains combine harmoniously with the earthy flavor of mushrooms and carrots (and beef, as in soup). For a complete lunch, I have it warm with a poached or fried egg (or two) on top.

about 4 cups cooked barley
olive oil
a dab of butter (optional)
15 cremini mushrooms, quartered
1 carrot, diced
1/2 small onion, chopped
fresh herbs (I used parsley and thyme)
salt and pepper
1/2 cup broth
2 tablespoons creme fraiche (optional)

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add butter if using. Add mushrooms and let them brown, undisturbed, for several minutes (10 maybe? I lost track). Add carrots and onion. Saute for a few more minutes. Add herbs, salt and pepper to taste, and broth. Lower heat and stir in creme fraiche. Combine with cooked barley.

quinoa with apples and walnuts

Apples apples apples, all through fall and winter. That’s all the fruit I’m getting. Honey-sweet gold supreme apples, loudly crisp Macoun apples, and my personal favorite: the winesap. New York Magazine has a feature on locally grown apple varieties found at the greenmarket (John and I are huge fans of visual aids like this… I think I squealed a little when I saw it). Though the descriptions probably won’t help you figure out which among these varieties you like, eating them will. And I’ve seen prices drop to something like $1 a pound in mid-winter.

My new thing this season is grain salads with apples and warm spices. Make a vinaigrette with shallots or red onion, whatever vinegar you’d like (I used apple cider vinegar), and oil. Spike it with a little bit of cinnamon (or garam masala even). Add cooked quinoa, chopped apples, dried cherries (or cranberries or raisins), toasted walnuts and/or pecans, and chopped parsley. Also good with a little yogurt in the dressing, and/or with wheatberries instead of quinoa.

polenta with greens and eggs

This is one of our favorite go-to dinners here in the T-L household. John gets the (“corn grits also known as”) polenta going with his patient stirring (or handy shortcut methods) while I cobble together whatever chard, cabbage, spinach, kale, collard greens, bok choy, etc. we have with some onions, garlic, and whatever leftover meat and/or beans (or even seitan) we have. Sausages, bacon, ham, etc. are good in this too. We brown the meat in a big pan, then add the vegetables and simmer the mixture with some tomato paste, red chile flakes, and broth. At the end of it, I make little wells and crack eggs into them. Delicious. Sometimes John gets crazy with butter and cheese in the polenta, but the important thing is to make sure there’s enough salt in it. The congealed leftovers are good sliced and fried (though I have never done this successfully) or grilled, or baked with sauce and cheese and an egg on top.

roasted radishes and summer squash with creamy farro

Last week I dug out a bag of farro from the back of my pantry to make this recipe from the always-inspiring 101 Cookbooks blog. This week, I tried a roasted vegetable version of it using some of the leftover cooked farro I had. Instead of the usual light and crunchy summer fare, I was craving something with a bit more cool-weather appeal (since it’s so gray and breezy in New York this week… I know, I’m not ready for sleeves either). Roasting the squash and radishes (yeah, roasted radishes) gave them that nutty brown-roasted-vegetable-flavor (pardon my lack of vocabulary on this one) that is good on almost anything. A bowl of this stuff was perfect as a single-serving quick bite to eat. I had it as a side item to go with a sandwich, but it could also be a good one-bowl meal with some beans, shredded chicken, or fried or poached eggs on top.

Farro
Bring farro and water to a boil, then lower heat and cook, partially covered, until tender. It can take as long as an hour, depending on whether or not the grains are semi-pearled (have had some of the outer bran removed). Farro that isn’t pearled can also be soaked in water overnight to cut down on the cooking time. Add salt toward the last 10 minutes or so of cooking.

Roasted Radishes and Summer Squash (fennel would’ve been good too)
Cut vegetables into bite size pieces and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I like to do this directly on a foil-lined toaster oven tray. Roast at 425 degrees until soft and lightly browned (about 20 minutes).

Creamy Dressing
I used a spoonful of homemade crème fraîche (easy instructions here) to make the dressing, but yogurt or buttermilk or sour cream (or no dairy at all) could also be good. Combine a small dollop of crème fraîche with minced onion, salt, pepper, white wine vinegar, and olive oil. Again, I like to do this directly in the bowl I’m eating out of.

Add farro to dressing and toss to coat. Top with roasted vegetables and chopped fresh herbs.

wheatberries

Here’s my latest in grain exploration. Wheatberries aren’t actually berries the way, say, blueberries are berries. Wheatberries are entire kernels of wheat: bran, germ, and all. They’re kind of like round, chewy grains of rice. To prepare them, all you have to do is drop them in some boiling water for about 1 hour to 90 minutes, then drain them. They’re great for salads (e.g. with cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, scallions, lemon juice, olive oil, and feta cheese) or even breakfast (scooped on top of yogurt with honey and fruit).

vegetable paella

Because you know, Spain, World Cup, had some escarole, found some arborio rice in the pantry. Recipe from Epicurious.