Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 7:00 am Eastern (and sometimes earlier!). Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or just once in awhile. With the Auto Publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometimes the diarist du jour shows up much later: that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Volunteer in the comment threads.
Click on the MOT - Morning Open Thread ♥ if you'd like us to show up in your stream.
So having seen how many comments were generated by the recipes in yesterday's diary, I have decided to complete a draft that has been sitting there for a couple of months.
Having been once part of ( or close to) the 1%, and now living on a more meager fixed income, I thought it might be a good idea to share a few ideas on healthy eating at low cost. Now my recipes and ideas are based on German costs, so your mileage might vary, but the principles are sound.
Locally, I have 2 supermarkets - one - Rewe - which is " high quality" and Aldi which is "a discounter". If I want fresh meat, deli meat or cheese, good coffee, etc I go to Rewe. If I want flour, oil, sugar, tinned goods, dry pasta or fruits and vegetables for immediate consumption I go to Aldi. Learning what each of these suppliers offers is a key to sensible shopping.
Now, I live in Germany - which is very pork centric (I have never seen that phrase before). One of the regular offers at the quality supermarket is Krustenbraten - which is pork shoulder with the skin on. Now this is a) really tasty and b) very cheap - we are talking about $2/lb.
Krustenbraten, with oven Baked veggies
OK, so take your pork shoulder of 2 to 4 lbs, and score the skin down to the flesh in a 1 inch criss cross pattern. If you like strong flavors, rub a ground garlic and parsley mash into the cuts, otherwise just dry off with a kitchen towel, and liberally sprinkle salt all over the skin.
For the veggies, take some medium sized potatoes (between a golf ball and and a baseball, wash and cut into segments like an orange (usually 6 per potato), and boil until soft to a pointed knife.
Take the potato wedges and mix them with a little oil, a teaspoon of ground coriander and a teaspoon of hot paprika until they are well coated. Add them to a an oven tray. Next to the potatoes add sliced Zucchini, sliced tomato and sliced onion. Tilting the tray away from the potatoes, sprinkle Balsamico vinegar and Olive oil over the other veggies.
Salt and pepper to taste.
The meat will need around 2 hours medium oven for 2lbs, and maybe 20 minutes for every extra pound. The veggies need 30 to 40 minutes. When cooking the veggies, maintain the tilt so that onions are caramelized in the juice, and the potato wedges become crisp.
Total cost for 4 people - maybe $8, or the price of a Bigmac menu in NYC
For more basic recipes - Spaghetti meatballs (my version) and penne (or steak when you have got overtime) with a simple delicious blue cheese sauce jump over the lopsided orange croissant
Spaghetti (or any other pasta) with meatballs.
OK, so everybody does this, but there are 100's of different versions, so here is mine.
You will need the following ingredients, with my costs in brackets, and this for 4 servings.
1.2 pnds Hamburger/ miced beef ( around $3.50)
1 X 16 oz (400 gm) of minced tomatoes (around $0.5)
2 medium sized onions (10 cts?)
2 cloves of garlic ( ?)
a Splash of soya sauce
half a pint of beef stock
1 egg
half a cup of breadcrumbs
half a teaspoon of oregano.
A squeeze of tomato puree from a tube
A handful of fresh basil leaves ( I buy the pots for around 2 bucks and they last 6 to 8 weeks on the kitchen window sill)
Some freshly grated parmesan for serving.
Ok peel the onions,garlic and the fresh basil leavesand throw them into a blender or chopper ( I use my stab mixer chopper function) and blitz until nicely chopped and mixed.
Take half of the mix from the blender and sling into a bowl, add the minced beef, the egg the soy sauce, and the bread crumbs and mix until they are all combined.
Take the remainder of the onion garlic etc mix, and place in a heavy bottomed frying pan with a little oil - sunflower is better than olive, because of the higher burn temperature- and cook until the onion is translucent.
While this is going on, take some plain flower, rub it on your hands and mould the meatballs. I use something about a golf ball size, but you can do bigger or smaller.
With the onions translucent add, the meat balls to the frying pan/skillet and brown the exterior lightly. you will need to turn them 2 or 3 times.
When lightly browned, add the can/pack of tomatoes, the puree, oregano and the beef stock so that the meatballs should be more than halfway covered.
Cook for a minimum of 30 minutes, or up to 2 hours on a low heat ( you will need to roll the meatballs over from time to time to ensure even cooking). If the sauce starts to dry out just add water. (The longer the cooking time the better the flavor)
Serve with spaghetti, tagliatelle or your favorite pasta.
Total cost around $1.50 a serving.
Really Easy Blue Cheese sauce
Ok, I use this both on pasta and on steaks. It is incredibly quick, inexpensive and tasty
Simply take a pack of oily blue cheese (like roquefort or gorgonzola) which my local discounter sells a generic for under $2 for 150.gms (around 6 ounces).
Break up the cheese into small pieces and put them in a small skillet or sauce pan. Add a couple of teaspoons of milk to prevent burning, and gently heat up the cheese until it melts. When the cheese is melted add a pot of creme fraiche and bring to a simmer.
If you want additional bite, grate some parmesan into the sauce, and grind some black pepper. Let it very gently cook for 5 minutes or so, and then pour over pasta or steak.
For Penne with blue cheese sauce, you are looking at less than 75 cts per serving.