Weekend of Cheap

Two weeks ago my roommates and I decided we needed to get our spending in check.  We’re not outrageous, but each of us had our own reason to try and conserve, at least for one weekend.  And thus, the weekend of cheap was born.  The goal was not to exceed $40 all weekend.  Could we do it?

This idea quickly turned into an obsessive frenzy.  We’re not so far away from college that this notion is unfamiliar.  We just haven’t needed to do it.  It was fresh.  Addicting.  Throughout the week we were sending emails about grocery store flyers.  Ribs are on sale.  Whole chickens for 69 cents/ lb.  Cucumbers for next to nothing.  It was time to feast.  For cheap.

In the end, we realized that planning an elaborate dinner was not the way to stay in and save money, regardless of all the sale items we incorporated.  But we ate well and drank a lot, and were merry.  I think it was really the booze that jacked the night up.  Long Island Iced Teas, no matter the quality of the alcohol you buy (we got the really gross stuff), still adds up.

Here’s what was on the menu.  Andrew made 6 racks of ribs that he rubbed down Friday night, letting them sit in glory all night and day.  He also prepared a very fresh Cucumber Salad that I remember absolutely loving.  Sadly, by that point in the evening I was already too many drinks in, and can’t for the life of me tell you what else was in that salad.  Then there was the Macaroni and Cheese.  This was my personal favorite, as it really took me back to my poor days at Emerson.  Boxed mac and cheese was my jam.  I was always adding broccoli or spinach or even beans– whatever I had in the house to throw in and make some sort of meal out of.  This is the ultimate cheap eat.  Lucky for us, Randy had 3 boxes of it just sitting in his cabinet yearning to be used.  The real low quality no name brand.  We weren’t going to be blessed with the blue box or Velveeta.  We were messing with Ralph’s brand.  We needed to enhance this.  So Andrew took said low grade mac and cheese and added a pound of bacon, substituted half the required butter with bacon fat, and sprinkled the top with panko and sliced tomatoes.  It was this gorgeous little gem that didn’t make any sense.  The additions cost more than the base, and for that I loved it.

My contribution to this decadent meal was chicken.  I had just recently learned about spatchcocking, which is just a dirty way of butterflying a whole chicken.  It’s a simple process where you take a pair of scissors and remove the back bone, thus allowing the chicken to fall open.  It’s great for grilling and I was dying to try it.  With super cheap chicken on sale, I was ready.  Friday night I cleaned and prepared my bird.  I decided on a tangy lemon marinade that I let her sit in for 24 hours.  Below is the recipe for the marinade.  It was awesome!

P.D.T’s Sourpuss Lemon Chicken Marinade

• 1 large lemon
• 9 stick of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1  jalapeno pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Soak and roll the lemon.  Cut crosswise into 1/4 inch slices.  Remove any seeds.  Place remainder of ingredients in a saucepan and simmer until sugar is dissolved for about 3-5 minutes.  Pour mixture into the bowl of lemons and stir.  Cool to room temperature.  Use marinade within the hour.  Makes 2 cups, enough for 1 whole chicken.

Butterflied chicken is also really easy to grill.  It’s very low maintenance.  When the time comes to use heat, prepare your bird by making sure she sits breast side up.  Apply pressure to the sides, in an effort to make it as flat as possible.  Then take a long wooden skewer and insert it in the leg, going diagonal through the breast, all the way to the opposite wing.  Do this on the opposite side as well.  This will ensure the bird stays flat on the grill.  We have a gas grill which makes it easy to control the temperature.  You want to keep it between 325 and 350 degrees.  Butterflied birds cook best under indirect heat, which simply means that there shouldn’t be a flame right underneath.  For this I lit the burner that runs on the outside perimeter and placed the chicken right in the middle.

I’m very paranoid about undercooking chicken.  I have a vivid memory that will never leave me of biting into a chicken leg that was supposedly ready to eat, and it was in fact raw.  Raw chicken in my mouth.  If only I had a picture of the horrific look on my face that night.  So because of this I am very careful about my chicken.  You want the internal temperature to be at 180 degrees.  Recipes always say ‘cook until juices run clear,’ but I’m always cooking at night outside on the grill.  This doesn’t help me.  So I poke and prod all over with a meat thermometer.  It is important with a butterflied chicken to check to bottom of the breast, closest to the bone.  When we took this darling off the grill Saturday night, we though she was done, but one slice in told us the bottom of the breasts were raw and needed more time.  I can’t even give you a timeline because it went much longer than I had anticipated.  So long, in fact, that we had already finished dinner before the chicken was done.  So I ate it for dinner the next night instead.  It is important to note, however, that this bird is going to get crispy.  Don’t get huffy.  Remember the bottom part that is facing the heat is all bone.  If that gets charred it doesn’t matter.  The juicy delicious meaty goodness is safe.  And who doesn’t like crispy skin?!

In the end, I really enjoyed how this came out.  The marinade was perfect, adding a zesty afterthought.  This would have been a great contrast to intensity of the ribs we were eating, but se la vie.  It was not meant to be.  And now I’m officially obsessed with ‘spatchcocking.’  More on my bird adventures to come.  And apologies for not having pictures of all the glorious food we ate that night.

Marinating My Summer Away

If summer is good for nothing else, it is perfect grill weather.  There’s nothing better than a warm Saturday afternoon, a cold beer, and the smoky smell of meat charring on your grill.  Of course, I take this to the next level, and make it my business to grill as much during the week as I do on the weekend.  Dinner takes on a whole new level, with endless combinations of meats and marinades.  Their easy, fresh, and delicious.

I love having variety in my life, but I also have a busy schedule that doesn’t allow me to spend as much time in the kitchen (or on my balcony) as I’d like.  So I try to create a protein that I can morph throughout the week, keeping my meals different without the effort of cooking something entirely new.  This week I decided on a kick ass wet rub.  These have actually been my true passion this summer.  I still fear the dry rub to a certain extent because they’re so potent; I have definitely over seasoned and ruined meals with them.  The wet rub is a perfect middle child.  It’s just a more intense marinade, usually with fresh herbs and ingredients the step up the flavor impact.

When I was sick and miserable for many months this past winter and decided to make soup my new obsession, I ended up picking up a grill guide to everything saucy at the same time.  I have yet to try a recipe from this book that I didn’t like– Barbecue Bible: Sauces Rubs and Marinades by Steven Raichlen.  There’s a sweet picture of the guy on the cover with a pair of very 90s sunglasses and a long sleeve denim shirt.  If that doesn’t scream grill guide, I don’t know what does.  Oddly enough, I saw this same book in my parents’ house last time I was home.  It was at that point I knew these recipes would be gold.  My father has a black belt in Tai Kwon Do and grilling the shit out of meat.  All I’ll say is that when he got his new gigantic beautiful grill for our backyard years back, he transformed our old one into a smoker, and bought a sidekick to attach to it.  The man knows his way around a side of beef.

So two Sundays ago, as I was laying on the beach, half asleep listening to the lapping of the waves, I had a sudden serious desire for fresh chicken tacos.  In true K fashion, I rode my bike home, found a recipe, and realized I had 1 hour to get everything done before having to meet some friends for a play.  There’s a whole other story regarding being locked out of my apartment and my own idiocy that I don’t need to get into here.  Let’s just say I just barely made it to this show on time.  Regardless of how easy a marinade or a rub is to make, always leave yourself at least 15- 20 minutes to get it down.  Not 10 minutes.  Never 10.  Any other normal person would have just waited until later, but this chicken needed to marinate for 2 hours, and I wanted my effing tacos when I got home.  With that, here is the recipe for the Tex- Mex Tequila- Jalapeno Wet Rub:

• 1 large bunch cilantro, washed and stemmed
• 4-6 jalapeno chillies, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1/2 small onion, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbs tequila
• 1 tsp coarse salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin

Basically you’re going to blend all these ingredients together in a food processor.  It is recommended that you use this within 2 hours because it’s so fresh.  The result of this is enough to marinate 2 lbs of meat.  When I’m just cooking for myself, I usually cut the recipe in half, as I rarely need that much.  Like a tool, however, I often have a time management issue so while I’m rushing around, about halfway through I forget I cut it in half.  In this scenario, it happened when I added the salt and cumin.  Some cursing and scraping later, I managed to salvage the rub.  I covered my chicken and took off.

Later that night, I grilled my chicken and created two small tacos.  I wanted to create a cilantro avocado lime sauce to put over them, to compliment the marinade.  My avocado, however, went rogue and I was left to improvise.  I found some guacamole in our fridge and added lime and cilantro to that, with some olive oil to make it more of dressing.  It was perfect.  The marinade had soaked into the chicken, creating a light cilantro flavor with a touch of heat from the jalapenos.  The avocado dressing wasn’t enough to overpower the chicken, but added a little extra fresh cilantro to the mix.

I had made a week’s supply of chicken and decided to make a pseudo taco salad for lunch for the week.  So I mixed the chicken into some greens, a handful of black beans, a sprinkle of cheddar, topped with some taco shells I had baked and crumbled on top.  The avocado dressing served as my salad dressing, adding the exact amount of flavor the bare parts of this salad were missing.

I had successfully made a couple different meals out of this chicken, specifically inspired by this marinade.  And once again cilantro completely took over my palette.

Cilantro: The PG13 Take on It

Last summer as my friends and I were lazily floating on rafts and sipping on cocktails in a giant pool in the valley, the conversation of herbs came up.  I’ll give Andrew all the credit, as this kid knows how to inspire the most ridiculous of conversations.  If you had to be one kind of herb what would you be?  “Cilantro dick”, Andrew yelled.  I don’t remember anyone else’s answer because honestly, how do you top that?  And it has stuck with us.  Mostly because Andrew talks about dicks a lot.  If something tastes really fantastic, he describes it as ‘getting his dick kicked in.’  Or it will ‘make his dick itch.’  Oddly enough, these phrases are also used when negative things happen.  Getting your bike stolen is also like getting your dick kicked in.  You really need to pay attention to the context clues.

Living in LA means we use a lot of cilantro in our cooking.  It’s readily available, fresh, and we’re in a place that inspires its use.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in another room while Andrew is throwing together something delicious and heard him yell out, “CILANTRO DIIIIIICK.”  Obviously, I had a clue what was in store.  It’s an herb I have come to love and use constantly.  A staple if you will.

But cilantro and I didn’t always have this co-dependent relationship.  Growing up in Jersey, it was an herb my mother couldn’t stand.  “It tastes like soap,” she’d say with disgust.  Because of that, we never really ate cilantro heavy foods.  I bet I didn’t like it just based on her opinion.  And it wasn’t until I moved to LA that it really became prominent in my cooking.  And that is probably due to Andrew.  I don’t have a story about the first time I realized I liked it or anything life changing like that.  I just know that I constantly buy it or usually am hopefully searching for it in my fridge.  It adds that touch of flare when basil or parsley just won’t cut it.

This week, when I planned my menu, I searched the internet looking for appealing things to jump out at me and work themselves together.  It wasn’t until I was at home Monday night, starting all of these recipes that I realized cilantro was my common ingredient tying all of these things together.  I’m a huge dork.  I definitely get giddy about things like that.  I’m obsessed with balanced meals and sides complimenting their protein.  (The barbecued chicken with pasta on the side meals that Randy used to make are forever horrifically burned into my memory.)  I’ll often sit, meditating, with my eyes glazed over, smacking my lips together, in hopes of tasting the perfect addition to the meal in my mind.  I take my eating seriously.  And this week, apparently, it was all about getting my nonexistent cilantro dick kicked in.

The first recipe I went for can be found on The Mija Chronicles blog.  This, like the rest of the recipes I’m going to list, were featured on foodpress.com, my favorite site for finding unusual yet tasty recipes.  It is a green bean and chayote salad with queso cotijo.  This salad popped out at me because of the chayote.  I had used this a while back in a soup I had made.  I think it was the spicy Mexican soup from my sister.  I haven’t used it much, but it’s pear like texture and taste is something I’d like to incorporate more.  And who can say no to blanched green beans?  The salad sounded so fresh and crisp, that I knew it had the power to rejuvenate and balance the craziness of my day.  The only problem, I realized was that I couldn’t find cotija cheese.  Or it wasn’t at that man Ralph’s grocery store.  And I was there post gym, sweating and starving.  So traveling around for this cheese was not happening.  With a quick google search on my phone, I learned that cotija is very similar to parmesan cheese.

Beautiful Blanched Beans

I was about to get Italian on this Mexican salad.  I ended up adding some basil to it, just to balance everything out, and have it make more sense in my head.  Of course, cilantro was the main herb.  The chayote I used weren’t the best looking I’ve seen, and therefore didn’t have much flavor.  There were slim pickins, so I just picked through to find the best options.  Fresh green beans were added, that had been blanched, as well as 2 fresh tomatoes.  As Lesley says, this salad is good enough on its own without the dressing.  It is a perfect summer salad that lets the cheese enhance all the other flavors.  I can’t wait to make this again when I can get some ripe chayote and the proper cheese, as I’m sure that will completely change the flavor combinations here.  I also forgot to take a picture of the final salad, because well, I was effing ravenous by the time I was done making it and it slipped my mind ok?  Cut me a break here.

Oh wait, I found it.

Next was a peach and tomato salsa, found on the Channeling Contessa blog.  This was the dish I chose to use up all those peaches I wrote about in my last post.  The peaches that haunted my every move!  Clara’s post and recipe cracks me up because she talks about how her peach salad can easily be a salsa.  This is exactly what happened to me.  I created this as a salad, which was delicious.  But then it kind of just morphed into a salsa that I put over chicken, which also worked surprisingly well.  I’m a big fan of peaches and chicken.  I don’t know why.  They just don’t seem like two things that you would normally put together, but they really compliment each other well.  The recipe is really easy, and just as the last salad, the name of the game is fresh.  It’s all ripe and available fruit that you’re putting together to enhance the other ingredients with minimal dressings.  I cut up 4 peaches, 5 tomatoes, 1/2 of a red onion, a generous handful of cilantro.  The dressing is just one juiced lime and a heavy pour of olive oil, with salt and pepper to taste.  Another great summer salad that really makes you appreciate good produce and the season you’re in.  As I briefly mentioned, I had paired this with a piece of grilled chicken that I marinaded in a quick pour of olive oil, aged balsamic vinegar, and rosemary.  The syrupy sweet hint of the balsamic floated gently into the puffs of peaches and tomatoes.  It was such a subtle combination of all these really explosive tastes.  Definitely something I’ll be making again.

Isn't it just asking to be seductively draped over chicken?

And for lunch I made a huge batch of the Moroccan Chicken Soup with Curry.  It’s posted on this blog of mine somewhere.  It was my favorite soup from this year so far, inspiring a whole curry run on my part.  The difference, this time, was that I actually had coriander.  AND I USED ISRAELI COUSCOUS.  I’m not sure why, but I freakin love Israeli couscous.  Well it’s pasta, so that’s why I love it, but they are like these little orbs filled with wonders I couldn’t even imagine.  I always think of that scene from The Neverending Story where the little girl princess is holding “the last grain of sand,” which is just sitting in the palm of her hand sparkling- nothing could be more important than that awe-inspiring grain of sand at that moment.  Yup.  That’s what I’m thinking of when I pour Israeli couscous.  Every time.  And then my brain jumps into hyperdrive and I hear her scream “Bastian SAY MY NAME,” and I laugh at my nerd-dom and the world realigns itself.  Apparently, I have a serious connection with the couscous, this blog post has helped me realize.  So, soup, right.  It’s a great addition, which I enjoyed much more than the regular cous.  I will note, that I didn’t put as much salt in as the recipe demanded, because I’m terrified of over salting things, but this recipe instructs you correctly.  A couple days later, and I’m craving those crystals like woah.  I have no pictures of this.  Come on people, I’ve already done it and written about it here.  I have gotten surprisingly decent at butchering a whole chicken though, but more on that at a later juncture.

So it’s been a cilantro full week.  I actually used the entire bunch I bought, which is the first time that’s ever happened.  The last bit went into the soup, to be stirred in at the last moment- the last magical piece to dance around beckoning all the other elements to come hither.  I was very happy with my medley fresh mouth- popping salads too.  And perhaps it will help inspire you, like these posts did for me, to get your cilantro dick kicked in.

The Sisters Karmol Get Peachy

I’m struggling with this introduction.  I haven’t had a new post for some time, and I’ll be honest.  It’s been an insomnia issue.  It sucks all the creativity right out of me.  I’m sitting here in a sort of glazed fog trying desperately to cling onto something witty regarding the word peach and how versatile it is.  Peaches just have this adorable, plump, perfect connotation that go with them.  I want to be surrounded by them always; bathe in their glory.

Anyway, my dramatic imagination aside, peaches are all up in my life these days.  They are crazy cheap at the store, and with my sister in town, we decided to bake.  I ran to the store for dinner fixings and stopped to pick 10 peaches for our pies.  Sadly, none of them were that really bruised ripe consistency you want for a pie.  So I just picked the softest I could find and called it a day.  We put them in a brown paper bag, said a tiny prayer, and hoped that the next day they’d be ripe enough for us.  They were not.

We went back to the store and bought new bruised peaches.  And thus, my days of peaches was born.  We only used about 6 peaches for the pies, which left me with about 10.  And the problem here for me, is that I never quite get to all the fresh fruit I buy.  I love the concept of it.  Healthy, natural carbs.  Clean food.  But it just doesn’t happen.  I’m not meant to eat fresh fruit every day.  I just don’t roll that way.  So 10 peaches is a daunting task.  But I also hate waste, so challenge accepted.

We set to work on the pies.  Well, my sister set to work.  I kind of danced around the kitchen drinking iced coffee and eating ice cream while she did everything.  She kind of went for it, zeroed in on the task at hand, and I let her run wild.  She made 2 different crusts, experimenting with butter in the second one.  I’ve posted our family’s crust recipe on here before, so you can back track to find it if you’re curious.  The buttered one rolled out a lot easier, for obvious reasons.  The butter greased it up real nice.  But the fact that she made 2 batches of crust completely blew my mind.  I always split the one I make, but this seemed so much easier.  The rolling process was simple, with much less cursing, and the crust was thick and easy to manipulate.

It was interesting to see how we do things differently.  It’s the same recipe, with such few ingredients, but I have a very specific way of making my crust, whereas my sister does it differently.  I won’t get all new age on you, but I think it has to do with your hands and your energy.  The dough comes together differently for both of us.  That’s kind of neat.

Anyways, it was time to make the filling.  We half remembered/ have looked up on the internet, that the best way to peel the peaches was to blanch them.  You cut a soft ‘x’ into the bottom of each and put them into boiling water for 2 minutes.

 

 

Then transfer them to an ice bath so they stop cooking.  The skin becomes so soft that you can easily peel it off with your fingers.  It’s incredible and a trick I wish I had known about last summer when I was cursing peaches as I peeled them.  You just have to be sure that the peaches are ripe.  We did an experiment with one of the harder ones I had bought, and it didn’t take.  So make sure your fruit is bruised and ready to roll.

After that it was all slicing, adding sugar, cornstarch and flour.  I think she used a 1/4 c of each.  I really like to have a heavy hand when it comes to cornstarch.  I enjoy my pie fillings to be more gelatinous than runny, but these came out just fine.  Oh and a pinch of cardamom.  Steph loves the cardamom and it has totally rubbed off on me.

And then the top!  Steph had just recently created a crumble that she fell in love with and that I was super curious about.  It consists of oats, brown sugar, and almonds.  Am I missing anything here Steph?  It’s a nice change to a traditional crust on top.  It adds some crunch, with a subtle sweetness.  I just wonder if those flavors would be enhanced if they were toasted first.  Or perhaps, at the very end of the baking process, to place the pie under a broiler for a few minutes.  I bet if that brown sugar melted a bit and those almonds toasted, there would be a mouth explosion involved.

I digress.  The pies went into the oven for about an hour and 20 minutes.  When I asked my sister how long we should put them in for, my fingers hovering patiently over our timer, she looked at me and simply said “Oh I don’t know.  We’ll smell them.”  I didn’t quite know how to react to that.  I rely deeply on timers.  Never for an exact science, but more as a reminder.  Like, ‘oh hey, don’t forget there’s something in your oven that needs attention from time to time.’  It also helps me keep track of how long it’s been in there.

These pies were a delight.  Not too sweet, but the peaches really shined.  Great flavor.  Then I had to say goodbye to my sister and Wes, sadly.  And say hello to 10 fu@king peaches and what to do with them before they go bad.  So this is what happened.

I made peach and goat cheese salads for lunch all week.  Super simple.  With almonds and aged balsamic vinegar.  Added grilled chicken would have made this spectacular.  Noted for next time.

I grilled peaches and put them over ice cream.  Thanks for this suggestion Steph!  Super delicious.  Grilling them really caramelizes the exposed parts and mmm.  I want more, smothered all over my face.

And somehow, these peaches rolled over into this week, where I made a peach and tomato salad to be paired with chicken and to be eaten before I head to the gym in the early evenings.  There will be more on that in my next post, which revolves around cilantro!

All in all, I only had to throw out 1 peach.  That my friends, is a victory.