Cheat's Green Bean Casserole

After all my whining about the weather, it is confirmed that I am correct. It has been the hottest October EVER. Well, for five years. But it has felt like forever. It looks like we may have survived, and won't have to wear swimsuits for Halloween, though, with cooler weather forcasted for the next five days.

But all the hot weather has made cooking in my wonderful kitchen very challenging. My wonderful house holds heat like nothing you can believe and if I boil a cup of water for tea we need the AC until mid-night. Therefore, I have become a combatant. My cooking has been very creative and has led to some wonderful discoveries.

One of the main dinners I have been cooking off and on has been variations on chicken roasted outside on the gas bbq - my "outdoor" kitchen. The free-range chicken is popped into a disposable roasting pan, set in the middle of the Q, with the burners on to both sides (but not directly under the pan), with the lid closed. This gives a reliable cooking temp of 400F and you have a wonderful and juicy, perfectly roasted chicken in just over an hour. I usually roast Frankenchickens of around 6 lbs, so that takes closer to 90 minutes. But cook in the usual way, until the juices run clear, and make sure to let it rest a good ten minutes before you carve.

My discovery last night was the result of wanting green beans (gorgeous creatures I found at the chinese market for 59 cents a pound - while they are $2 a lb at Vons/Ralphs) to go with said chicken. But I didn't want to boil a huge pot of water, in or out of the kitchen, and I really didn't want to cook these beautiful beans to a mush, which is how the philistines I feed prefer them.

Therefore, out came the handy-dandy electric skillet, which can cook an absolutely amazing array of dishes without heating the kitchen. It is incongruous to see my $9 electric skillet sitting on my divine 4-burner gas Viking, but it's HOT, and I'm not going to use my precious until it's not.

I turned the skillet on full blast - 400F and added a coarsely chopped onion. Once that was going I tossed in a couple of pounds of cleaned beans and then added a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a scattering of sea salt and several grinds of pepper. I came back several times to shake the skillet (hold the lid on firmly with pot holders) to make sure everything got its turn on the direct heat end of the business. I continued cooking until the onions and the beans were more or less carmelized.

They were a huge hit - and everyone noted how they tasted like a new and improved version of the dreaded green bean casserole. With no dubious chemicals, and probably one-quarter the calories. So, out of the belly of the horrible weather has come something good, a side dish I know I will make many, many times. Try it, you'll like it!

The picture is from Sue Steiner Gallery, link below. She also does great sunflowers.

www.suesteiner.com/gallery/4129/Florals,%20St...

The Quest Continues

With two children home sick, a pot of chicken & rice soup started and two days' full of school assignments ahead of me, I realized I needed to run away from it all and blog. And since I have neglected reporting on the Quest (to not buy anything I could possibly avoid from "BIG BOX" stores like Von's, Ralph's, Albertson's and the like, and to buy as much as possible from ethnic and alternate stores) I thought this would be a good time to catch up.

(The picture doesn't have anything to do with soup and everything to do with avoiding homework. This is a gorgeous painting of the south of France done by Jennifer Young http://www.jenniferyoung.com/blog/2007/05/11/rose-garden-in-provence/ and I really love it and wanted to share it, and even more, I want to BE there. )

I find it shocking in today's economy that these stores are so mindlessly patronized! Seriously. I went to Von's this morning to get some paper products and a loaf of bread (too early to catch anything else open, and I like a chance to check out their prices). What an eye-ful. Paradise tea for $5.89 for a four bag pack! You can get it at Fresh & Easy for $1.99. Green beans for $1.99 a lb - while you can find them for 59 cents a lb at 99 Ranch Market. Leaf lettuce - $1.99 a head, and you can get it for 33 cents at 99 Ranch Market. Compari tomatoes - $4.99 for a one pound box - I got 2 pound boxes of ruby-red Comparis at 99 Ranch Market for $1 each. Boneless New York Steaks for $2.99 at 99 Ranch, $5.89 a pound at Von's. It is insane!

But wait, there's more! Chicken breasts (bone-in) for 79 cents a lb at Maxi Foods - the Hispanic store down the street, while you can get them for a mere $2.29 a pound at Von's and Ralph's. Brown cage free eggs in the $5 a dozen range at Von's and Ralph's - a steal at Fresh & Easy for $2.39. Yoplait yogurt for 59 cents each - 85 cents!!! at Ralph's. I am feeling very evangelical. Please, go to your local ethnic stores, look at their beautiful fresh produce and see the incredible prices. Why would anyone throw their good money away, and in my opinion, get much lower overall food quality? And the bonus is that you will see people from different cultures, which is something that I think is very important.

That is my rant for the day, and now unfortunately I must catch up on my school work. With 16 units this quarter I am constantly in danger of missing an assignment, so no more blogging for me for a few days.

Crab Cakes and More HOT weather

Well, the title says it all - and we are still under seige here in Riverside with temps in the high nineties, day after day.

But rather than whine, I will blog away about a subject dear to my heart (and Eddy's and Alex's and... and...), Crabcakes. Delicious, delicate, slightly spicy, very savory, wonderful crabcakes.

We had two Dungeness crabs from last week's trip to the 99 Ranch Market (more about that in a minute) which we steamed up on Saturday. The kids only eat the claws, so I always shell out the lump meat (which is not really that much work, considering the reward) and make crab cakes a day or two later.

For the meat from two large crabs I used 2 eggs, about 2 cups of soft bread crumbs (I made mine from english muffins), 1/4 cup grated onion, 1/4 cup fine-chopped celery, dashes of tobasco and worcester sauce, about a teaspoon of cajun-style seasoning (Old Bay works very well, too), and about 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper, and finally, about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of mayo and some good squeezes of fresh lemon juice.

You mix everything but the crab together first to avoid over-mixing when you add the crab. Then you gently fold in the crab. Next form patties with about 1/4 c. mixture each, and gently press them in more bread crumbs on each side. Put on a wax-lined cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.

When you are ready to serve heat up some butter in a skillet - I've been using the electric skillet because it's so darn hot and that doesn't heat up the kitchen like the viking - and when it gets close to nut-brown start adding the crab cakes in. They will cook for about 3-4 minutes per side - until the crust is golden. Don't crowd them in the pan. Serve with lemon wedges and any other sauce you think you might like. I make a tartar sauce just like my Mom used to make - mayo, chopped onion, chopped dill pickles, garlic salt, a little dill-pickle juice and a little lemon juice. I try to make it ahead a little so that it has time to sit and let the flavors blend together.

I saw lots of interesting sauces on the internet - creamy mustard, spicy avacado, caper and mayo, but we keep coming back to the tried and true. Crab cakes are a bit of work, so we like to stick to what we know we're going to like. Eddy loves these leftover (when that happens) for breakfast the next day.

Potatoes au gratin - happy once, happy twice

Van Gogh, The Potato Harvest.

Dad and Linda got into town yesterday, on their way down to snowbird in El Centro, so I had an excuse to roast a huge chicken (the remains of which are now gently bubbling in ambrosial broth on the viking), and since it was cool - halleluja - I wanted a nice fall sort of dish to go with.

Enter potatoes au gratin - definitely party food, and not the sort of thing sane people would eat every day! I made a large casserole dish and since we have almost half of it left, we will be happy twice when we have them for a drool-delishous lunch today with a green salad and some french bread (the better to mop up the sauce, my dear).

I am also taking them to my beloved 99 Ranch Market to buy lobsters for a lobster feast tonight that I've been promising Linda since June when she wasn't able to make it to the joint graduation lobster mayhem. Lobbies are $11 a pound right now - get out the butter and cover the table with newspaper!

99 also has boneless new york steaks on sale for $2.99 a pound and I will be putting plenty of those into my long-suffering freezer, and who knows what else wonderful we will find today. The best part is getting the folks to go somewere REALLY different than the sort of place they would usually go. Wonder if I can get them to eat sweet and sour squid in the cafeteria????

To make the potatoes I sliced up one onion, thin, and mixed it with about 6 large peeled russets also sliced thin. I don't like to peel potatoes as a rule because that is where most of the potassium is, but it does seem to make a difference for this dish. Butter a large casserole dish, layer in the potatoes and onions. Make a roux in a sauce pan with half butter, half flour, in the usual way, in an amount that will cover all of the potatoes nicely. Add milk and whisk until bubbling nicely. Add several cups of grated cheddar, several good grinds of pepper and kosher or sea salt to taste. Pour over the potatoes, cook in a 400 degree oven for about an hour and fifteen minutes. You will need to filch a potato or two near the end to check for doneness. This is essential.

The gratin should be nice and bubbly, slightly browned and smell ambrosial. Let it sit for a couple of minutes before serving with the roasted chicken, baby peas and onions, and a nice green salad. Groan repeatedly for a half an hour after eating, and then follow with apple pie - ala mode, of course.

Roasted Chicken & Shallots with Herbs de Provence

This picture is from a site called JLG designs (http://jlgdesigns.net/index.html). They have beautiful art for sale, including lots of great roosters and such. I particularly like this one and it is perfect for my post.

First of all, the quest to stay out of big box stores is going very well. I'm really down to the few things on rare occasions - milk is one I seem to still be doing, for example. I really like to get milk at Fresh & Easy, but it is quite a drive from here, so in the interest of saving gas (unless I've already got the trip there planned) I am still buying that at Von's or Ralph's. Other than that I've been shopping Maxi Foods (Hispanic), 99 Ranch Market (Asian), and Trader Joe's for almost everything for several weeks now.

Last week at 99 Ranch I got almost 20 lbs of shallots for forty-nine cents a pound, fresh baby bok choy for forty-nine cents a pound, chinese eggplant for thirty-nine cents a pound. At Maxi Foods I got tomatoes for twenty cents a pound and onions for - if you can believe it - ten cents a pound. The tomatoes at Ralph's and Von's are $1.50 a pound - at the height of harvest season - the nerve - and the onions are $1 a pound. Ridiculous!

Any way - I've decided to be like the missionaries who went to Hawaii - they put on their long underwear on the first of October. They did this because that was what they did on the first of October on the East Coast, from whence they came. They did not care that it was a beautiful and balmy 80 degrees in Hawaii in October. October 1 meant long underwear and that was that.

And so it is for me. It is OCTOBER for crying out loud! My biological clock is demanding, no screaming, for Fall weather and Fall food. Therefore, I have decided to ignore the fact that it was 103 degrees here yesterday and cook what we are all craving. This means I have to be creative, because air conditioning costs the earth.

Which is why I made Roasted Chicken & shallots Herbs de Provence even though it was over 100 degrees. I used a free range from Trader Joe's - no money left for AC after that anyway, but the flavor is worth it and I don't feel bad about eating a chicken raised in a cage where it can't even turn around.

To pull off this feat I used the gas bbq outside. I put the chicken and about three pounds of shallots - trimmed and rinsed, but still in their peels, like you would roast garlic, in a disposable aluminum roasting pan. I tossed the shallots with olive oil, coated the chicken very lightly with same, sprinkled everything with sea salt and freshly ground pepper and gave the chicken a coating of herbs de provence - lovely stuff.

I just like to say the name, but the flavor is truly wonderful on a roasted bird. It is a mix thyme, marjoram, bay leaf and lavender and I am lucky enough to have a constant stream of friends and relatives who go to France, so every bit I've ever used has actually come from there. Alan just brought me a new jar last week which he actually went into a real French grocery store to buy, just like a French housewife. Well, sort of, you get the idea.

So I turned all four burners on the bbq to get the heat up really high and popped the chicken and shallots into the direct middle, turning off the two burners in the middle. This way the chicken roasted with high indirect heat (lid down the whole time) without burning on the bottom. I let it go for about an hour and a half, which is just right for a four-five pound chicken at 400 degrees.

Half way into the cooking time for the chicken I shredded a head of red cabbage (just thin slices) and tossed it into a wide frying pan with some olive oil and salt and pepper. This went onto the bbq's side burner at a medium heat for about 45 minutes, stirring frequently. The trick is to get about a third of it to carmelize. Wonderful stuff to serve with anything roasted.

A quick leafy green salad with olive oil and sherry vinegar and we had a feast. To eat the shallots you just push on them with a fork and the roasted insides ooze out - delicious with one bite of shallot to one bite of juicy chicken. And it didn't heat up the kitchen, and since it is getting dark sooner, it felt like Fall, and I was glad I stuck to my guns and made cold-weather food.

Soup Beautiful Soup

It's still really hot going into the second week of October. Sigh. What global warming??? But I feel better because I have a new secret weapon - an induction cookplate. It uses magnets somehow to cook the food without getting the kitchen hot. Something to do with making the pan the cooking source, not fire under the pan. At any rate, I love it, and now we can have soup to make us feel a little less pitiful.

I've been reading Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, which is wonderful, and I was waiting for a cool day to make Beef Barley soup, but with my new toy I didn't need to wait and we didn't need to break the bank to have airconditioning to cool off the kitchen after the soup was made.

Beef Barley Soup

2 lb beef short ribs
2 chopped onions
3 chopped carrots
2 cups roasted tomatoes, or one large can tomatoes
1 cup barley
water to cover
sea salt
fresh pepper

It couldn't be easier - put everything but the tomatoes in to cook for two hours (the same on a regular stove if you are lucky enough to be in Maine or Vermont or Canada). Add the tomatoes after you rough chop them and cook one more hour. Take out the meat and chop it and add it back in. Skim off the fat. Adjust the seasoning. Serve to happy people. This makes a wonderful and healthy after school snack for the kids. I made a huge pot yesterday and it was gone by the time I got back from night class, and I hear there was considerably less grumpiness here while I was gone than usual.

Change in the Weather

Finally! It is going to be cool today. We have been suffering, sweltering, and just generally melting into pools of self-pity here with our hundred plus degrees weather for the last two weeks.

But this morning it is overcast and we aren't supposed to go over seventy!!! That means soup, more roasted tomatoes and garlic for my freezer and probably something baked.

Cooking has been pretty low key because of the weather, although Gus requested broccoli beef and dim sum dumplings for his birthday last week. I had five bags of different kinds of potstickers in the freezer from trips to my wonderful 99 Ranch Market (huge Asian store). I boiled half of them and did the potsticker treatment for the other half (electric skillet, a little oil, fry them on one side until they are nice and brown and then add some water to steam them for a while), all served with a nice dipping sauce made with soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, sweet soy sauce, ponzu (citrus flavor soy sauce), some grated garlic, some grated ginger, some chili sauce and chopped chives. We ate and ate and finished it off with brownies. I couldn't find any birthday candles so we put a big taper in the middle of the brownies, lit it and sang Happy Birthday at the top of our lungs. I think Gus had a very happy birthday, all in all.

I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love, which is wonderful. I love the section where she is in Italy, and if you don't know what food porn is, read the page describing eating pizza in Naples - mercy me. I'm also starting in on Laurie Colwin's "Home Cooking" which is a wonderful flashback in time to the eighties when I first started learning to cook. It's a sweet and homey book and I know it is going to divert me from what I should be reading, which is Human Resource Management in the Public Sector, Public Finance and Budget and Public Policy Analysis. If I didn't have my cookbooks to break that lot up once in a while there would be trouble in Dodge.

I bought my first pumpkin yesterday. I am amazed at how my sense of restraint has grown on this subject over the years. I used to buy every pumpkin I could afford, big ones, little ones, orange ones, white ones, turban squash and gourds of every shape and color. It made me feel so happy to come home and see the jumble stretched up and down my porch steps and spilling out of baskets by my door, and lined up seductively on my fireplace. Now I have ONE orange pumpkin sitting at the porch column. I'm not quite sure what to make of this turning my back on one of the greatest loves of my life. I may be trying to simplify, or maybe I just overwhelmed myself and needed a break.

At any rate, I do know that ripe luscious tomatoes are practically being given away (5 lb for a dollar) at the hispanic market down the street and I am going to go down there with a wheelbarrow today and then load up the viking until it begs for mercy. Those delicious roasted morsels will go into the freezer and I will feel extremely smug all winter long (such as it is here in So-Cal) when I put them into soups, stews, on pizzas and in casseroles. Even if we don't get any kind of proper winter here that even remotely threatens scurvy, the tomatoes at the market do become exceedingly vile unless you're willing to pay up to five dollars a pound, which I am NOT.

The freezer is going to need a bit of a go-through, too. I made the mistake of freezing alot of corn last year when it was cheap. For some reason, even though I blanched everything according to all the instructions I could find on the internet, it still turned out rather nasty. It's hard to throw all of that packaged work away, especially because the corn LOOKS beautiful. But that freezer jewelry has to go, it's tomato time, and room has to be made for the queen!

It has been a very successful week in my quest. Only bread, some top sirloin, a bag of potatoes, and some sour cream were bought at a "big box" store, with everything else coming from alternate or ethnic stores. Today is the day I always go to the Chinese supermarket, can't wait to see what wonderful things will be there to cook through the week!