Barley, a cheap nutricious food

This week I made herb-basted chicken and barley with root vegetable pilaf.  This was hearty fare that we got three meals out of with three (big) chicken breast halves.  Never expected to have it stretch so far for two people. 
I used onion, carrot, parsnips and butternut squash for the veggies and used about 2 cups instead of 1 1/2.  Used fresh thyme from the garden but substituted my own dried rosemary for fresh.  Stuck in a garlic clove for the hell of it.  The bacon really perked the barley up!  Root vegetables are cheap and the chicken breasts were on sale for a good price. 
A one pound bag of barley (did not by the fancy organic)  has a lot of mileage in it, and my next barley meal will be a vegetable beef soup with barley, also cheap with a lean cut of beef, more root vegetables and the barley, of course. 


In case you're salivating already, here is the recipe: Herb Basted Chicken with Pearl Barley, Bacon and Root Vegetable Pilaf



Winter demands hearty fare.  Soup is wonderful.  Eat more soup.

Yummy Hors d'oeuvres - Rum Sausages

For those of you who eat pork,  this recipe is a keeper.  The Brown and Serve Sausages  can often be found on sale, but don't buy the cheapest brand.  Any old rum will do.  Yar!  


Rum Sausages


1 pound package brown and serve sausages
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup soy sauce  ( I use the reduced salt variety)
1/2 cup golden rum ( or any rum) 


Mix sugar, soy sauce and rum.  Brown sausages on one side, turn and cut into thirds.  Cover with rum mixture and summer, turning sausages occasionally so they absorb the sauce.  May be made ahead and reheated.  Serve with toothpicks. 


This recipe is from my mom and is nice around the holidays. 

Christmas Cookies revisited

The Basic Butter Cookie recipe from my mother, a master baker who loved anything with a sugar molecule in it.

Butter Cookies

2 sticks butter (I always use unsalted)

¾ cup sugar

½ teaspoon vinegar

½ teaspoon soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ cups flour

Cream together the sugar abd butter.  Add the other ingredients and mix.  Drop by teaspoonfuls on a cookie sheet and bake for twenty minutes at 300 degrees F.

Chopped nuts (pecans would be good) can be added if you like.

 

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