Frittata Italian

I hope you have been enjoying the Thanksgiving Holiday while watching your budget.  Turkey is cheap, as are potatoes, onions, root vegetables, pumpkin and many of our holiday faves.  Stuffing or dressing can be made out of stale bread, onion, celery and seasonings.  No crown roast of pork or prime rib roast is necessary. If you do your own cooking, that helps immeasurably.  


This morning for guests I made an Italian Frittata which was a recipe in the old New York Times cookbook.  When they issued a revised version, the frittata was gone!  I saved it, of course.  A big frittata is a good way to serve breakfast to a whole table without the tedious business of pancakes or waffles, and more festive than bacon or sausage and eggs.  Of course, a strata is good to, but I am very fond of this frittata.  Many are made with veggies and some with leftover pasta.  It is versatile, cheap and tasty.  Can go up and down the calorie scale depending on ingredients.

Italian Fritata in a cast iron skillet

The ingredients are mushrooms, ham, eggs of course, Parmesan cheese, butter, mozzarella cheese, parsley, heavy cream and salt and pepper.  First it's cooked over low heat on the stovetop, then baked and put under the broiler at the last minute.  This served 5 generously out of a 10 inch skillet.  For a bigger crowd, use a 12 inch skillet and more of everything. 


For dessert last night, after a 2nd Thanksgiving dinner, we had a tart made of mascarpone cheese and oranges garnished with pistachios and honey.  It was very special, serves 9, and looks beautiful.  Oranges are Christmasy as are pistachios. 

Mascarpone and Orange Tart with Honey and Pistachios 

The recipe is from Bon Appetit and even calls for a dairy case pie crust.  How easy is that?

Soon I will be posting my mom's special sugar cookie recipe.  She devised it, and none are better,  Happy Holidays from the Cheeseparer

Seasonal Meals with Pork and Cranberries

Autumn in New England cries for pork.  We made this recipe last night, and it was yummy.  I had originally bought port wine (not the finest, but not the cheapest, either) for some Port Wine Ice Cream that was out of this world, a very sophisticated dessert.  We tend not to sip port after dinner, dunno why.
 Anyway, the port sat around and I ran across this recipe in my clippings. Tried it last night.  Walmart had canned cranberries on sale, the sauce, not the jelly, and I served it with green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.  Very satisfying now that it's dark before five and the nights and long and cold.

Pork Chops with Cranberry, Port and Rosemary Sauce

I bring the rosemary in from the garden in the fall and snip it all winter until it goes out in the spring or dies indoors.  It likes to be snipped.  The garden chores are never ending.  Yesterday it was pull up the frost-dead annuals and scrub out the pots.  I have to replant my 2 thymes, plant garlic and daffodils.  Oh, why did I get so ambitious and order stuff.  Now it's cold and damp and only the orange cat likes to be outside, and he isn't gonna plant nothing. 


Our supermarket has pork chops on sale, nice thick boneless ones, that cost about a dollar each.  Personally, I like a bone in mine for added flavor, but bone-in chops are getting hard to find.  How lazy is that? 

Raisin Bread Strata

Here is a recipe.  Something a little different.  Our store had a BOGO on the bread. 

Raisin-Bread Strata with Sausage and Dried Plums

8 – 10  servings

1 pound bulk breakfast sausage

8 large eggs

4 cups whole milk

1 ½ t. salt

¾ t. ground black pepper

1 16 ounce loaf sliced raisin-cinnamon swirl bread, each slice halved on the diagonal.  (Pepperidge Farm makes a good raisin cinnamon swirl).

18 dried pitted plums (prunes) each cut into 3 pieces

Pure Maple Syrup

Sauté sausage in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until brown and cooked through, breaking up with back of fork, about 6 minutes.  Using slotted spoon, remove sausage to bowl; cool. 

Butter a 13 x 9 x 2 inch glass baking dish. 

Whisk eggs, milk, salt and pepper in medium bowl.  Arrange half of bread in bottom of prepared dish with bases of triangles facing in same direction.  Scatter half of sausage, then half of plums over bread.  Arrange remaining bread in dish with triangles facing in opposite direction.  Scatter remaining sausage and plums over.  Pour milk mixture over; press on bread to submerge.  Cover and chill overnight.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.  Place strata on rimmed baking sheet.  Bake uncovered until strata is pulled and golden and knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Cut strata into squares and serve with maple syrup. 

If you don't want is so sweet, forego the maple syrup.  Serves more like 10.  I have a photo someplace. 

From Bon Appetit

I Squandered on Swordfish

Sometimes you just have to buy something wonderful that just ain't cheap.  Last week, at our house, it was fresh swordfish cooked up with three pepper butter.  The swordfish was lurking there in the Whole Foods Fish counter, looking to tasty, so meaty, all the while screaming "buy me!  buy me!" and so I did.  $25.00 worth!  Eeek! An issue of my eyes being bigger than our combined stomachs. 


So I cooked it up, and served it forth and it was truly delicious.  We had baked tomatoes and a bit of rice from the bowels of the freezer.  the sauce was toothsome, and there were two pieces of fish left, enough for a dinner of fish tacos the following night. 


I made a salsa from fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic and cilantro, and a "crema" of sour cream, garlic and Mexican seasonings.  Yum!  Had no cabbage but some past-prime iceberg, sliced fine, worked just as well.  We made two meals from the sword fish and I didn't feel nearly so guilty.  


This morning when I started to make blueberry muffins to take to a writing event with brunch, there were no frozen blueberries and no buttermilk.  I substituted mixed berry yogurt for the buttermilk, and frozen mixed berries for the blueberries and the result was moist and tasty and the extras came home to the freezer.   I've no idea what a dozen muffins would cost if one bought them, but surely more than that half hour of baking prep, probably less.  In the early a.m. (or even not-so-early a.m. I am not too swift.  

Apropos the three pepper butter.  You can buy black, green and red peppercorns in a grinder for $2.98, and it's not a bad deal.   Sometimes it is good to survey the supermarket spice shelves.  And now to put dinner on the table, a dinner I scrounged from today's brunch when no one wanted to carry her food offering home.  Someone even provided sealable bags for the leftovers.  Now that was a thoughtful gesture.  


Onward, 


The Cheese Parer

Chicken With Forty Cloves of Garlic revisted

The sweet garlicy sauce was totally to die for.  Yum!  Although the chicken was small, we  kept enough for a second meal.  I served it with onions roasted in olive oil and fresh thyme from the garden, and cooked up the other half of cabbage I had used earlier for some slaw.  I put some bacon fat in the cabbage along with more thyme!  All the dishes had a hint (just a hint) of thyme, the unifying presence.  
recipe

I can't tell you how much fresh herbs from the garden will spice up (!) your meals. 
We also had two more small helpings from the pear tart.  All I will have to cook tonight are some mashed potatoes out of the box (we like Hungry Jack, which I find sometimes at the Ocean State Job Lot), and  some baby carrots to supplement the left over cabbage.  We gobbled down the roasted onions.  Another super-cheap side dish, along with the cabbage.  
Eating well does not HAVE to depend on spending a lot.  Be creative.  Oh boy, was that garlic sauce good.  I used the last bit of a bottle of white wine and made my own chicken stock out of the back and neck.  To repeat:  be creative. 


Speaking of which, crepes stuffed with whatever can be a delicious, elegant meal at little cost.  I will post my recipe soon.  Remind me if I forget.  You will, won't you? 

I found  a pasta recipe for Italian sausage and chicken thighs, both always on sale around these parts. 
Do not neglect your fruits and veggies.  Delicious squash (we're partial to acorn) will be on sale in the stores soon.  It keeps if cold, so stock up.  


The Cheeseparer

Chicken With Forty Cloves of Garlic

Tonight we're feasting on a braised chicken, actually with only twenty cloves of garlic, because forty is for two chickens.  Home grown garlic, home grown oregano and rosemary, a good quality chicken, now defrosting on the kitchen counter. 


Last night we shared a steak that was on sale, and we shared a baked potato (a big one) and we shared a pear tart I made for dessert.  All this sharing has nothing to do with frugality but more to do with keeping one's weight in check.  Also shared a long walk through the woods.   Walking is a great activity, and it's free. 


When I got out my walking stick, the orange cat (a new cat to the household) took one look and raced upstairs.  He has perhaps an interesting story about sticks which he can't tell us.   Many years ago my father was visiting us, and he took it upon himself to sharpen all the dull kitchen knives.  My god, the cat freaked and took off at fifty miles an hour.  Another interesting story.  Animals can talk in their own way. 
The garden is just about gone except for the herbs and a couple grape tomatoes.  I only have two bulbs of garlic left, having eaten ((or almost eaten) nine and gave one away.  It was great garlic.  There is a lot of bang for the buck with herbs, too.  


The nasturtiums are still blooming, and for some reason, the aphids left them alone this year.  We had a big hawk sitting NEXT TO the bird feeder yesterday.  My husband wanted to take a picture, but I chased him before he could eat any of my birdies.  Wish the hummingbirds would migrate.  I'll worry about them until they show up again in May. 


With the cooler weather, one begins to think pot roast,  chili, beef stew, chicken pot pie and spaghetti and meatballs, the heartier fares.  Shop the sales.  Eat seasonally.  Clip those coupons!  Make out your menus for the week from the specials.  You do make out menus and a food plan, don't you?  Shopping willy-nilly is not paring any cheese. 


Yours in thriftiness, 

The Cheeseparer




Italian prune plum tart.  Found all over Germany in late summer, made with either with a crusty dough somewhat like shortbread  (muerberteig) or a yeast dough (hefeteig).  I sprinkle a few sliced almonds on top.  Tastes as good as it looks.

Betty Crocker and the Taco Pie

 My favorite Bisquick recipe is Poppyseed Onion Cheese Supper Bread, a real winner.  We always buy the lo-cal Bisquick because, unlike 95% of reduced fat products, we can't tell any difference.  For heaven's sake use real butter instead of margarine.  Remember how  you were fooled into thinking margarine was healthier and then we discovered all those icky transfats that were worse than butter.  

  Onion Cheese Supper Bread

Another Bisquick recipe, this one using canned chili. A recipe which Betty Crocker emailed me.  Not the real Betty Crocker. The dough was hard to  handle.  I think some more kneading and then a rigorous rolling would have solved the problem. 

I liked that it had fresh lettuce and tomatoes on top.  I also added sauteed onion and jalapeno and got the "spicey" chili con carne because I feared it might be a little bland.  A clove of garlic would not have been amiss.  If you get the regular chili add a little extra seasoning. Chopped avocado on top takes it to a new level.  But then avocado takes most things to a new level.  And all those good healthy-for-you oils!  Yum!  


 Paring away, 


The Cheeseparer

here is the link. 

California Taco Chili Bake