The short version is, I made changes to my diet under the direction of my nutritionist neice Anna in order to lower blood sugar and cholesterol. 6 months later I discovered I'd lost 10 pounds, consulted with her again, and was advised to ADD calories to my daily diet. I decided to start with eggs.

In late 2020, we had a little vacation in New Orleans RIGHT BEFORE the holiday COVID-19 spike hit (timed intentionally). There was no restaurant in the hotel Priceline dumped us in and we were guided to the infamous Clover Grill on Bourbon Street, about 2 blocks from from the hotel. I say infamous because IT IS on Bourbon Street, and in happier times open 24/7. You can fill in the blanks.
They didn't offer oatmeal, my normal breakfast, so I opted for an omlet made w onions. Simple enough - but the dish turned out absolutely stunning. No sauce, no spices; just eggs and onions. Done in a couple minutes. So over the course of the week I pointedly observed his tech and realized that once he'd cracked the eggs, he dumped them into the contraption you'd use to whip up a milk shake - and whirred the eggs for a couple seconds before before 'em on the grill. So - here's my home interpretation.

Ingredients:
2 whole eggs
a TBS of chopped or thinly sliced onions
Pam or spray on olive oil
spice of your choosing

Preparation
heat pan at highest heat
break two eggs into a Magic Bullet or any other sort of blender you might have around
chop/slice onions
whir eggs for 20-30 seconds
reduce heat to merely high
spray pan
dump in eggs
sprinkle onions over the surface of the eggs
dust eggs w spices if you so desire
lift edges of eggs to allow uncooked egg to run into pan
fold one edge of egg over
slip out of pan

This all takes 5-10 minutes.

Clearly you can jazz this up in myriad ways, add protein, cheese, other chopped vegetables, hit it with hot sauce, salsa, cheese sauce etc. But the unjazzed version is incredibly light and fluffy, the onions add bite and sweetness and is pretty perfect as it is - and clearly healthy as fuh. And it's what I had at the Clover Grill day after day.

After half a decade, here's something new! When I lived in D.C. and worked at a record stores in Dupont Circle, the Classical Music buyer invited me to dinner. He served what he called "Putanesca" which he explained translate to "Whore Sauce." According to him,when a john would engage a Working Girl, a quick meal was included in the services paid for. So this would be a meal where you could fire up the hot plate, dump prep ingredient, dump them in the pan, cover and... "occupy yourself" for a bit. By the time things, uh wrapped up, the unattended meal would simply be ready for consumption. He actually prepared this by throwing oil, onion and spices into a pot and then emptying a big can of tomato juice into the pot - with the heat on high the whole time. Within 10-15 minutes the juice would have boiled down to sauce consistency. Over the years I've seen this dish on restaurant menus, sometimes primly referred to as Pasta With "Femina" Sauce. But which chunky ingredients. The below is an adaptation which is insanely quick and easy. In fact you prep and cook as you go and it moves along quite nicely. Maybe it takes 15 from start to finish.

Ingredients:
a medium tomato
half a medium onion
4-5 garlic gloves, in the skin
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
6 pitted olives
2 tsp capers
DO NOT ADD SALT - the olives and capers are brined and loaded with salt!
1 cup cooked whole wheat pasta
2 TBS olive oil

Directions:
heat oil in pan, untl it starts smoking, then lower heat to medium
coarsely chop onions and add to pan
put garlic in garlic cooker (or just put in a covered bowl, or on a plate covered with a glass bowl/up and nuke on hi for 30 seconds
peel garlic and add to pan
add oregano and basil - you can add some red pepper flakes if you'd like
coarsley chop tomatoes and add to pan
coarsely chop olives and add to pan
add capers and heat for about three minutes
top w cooked spagehetti and cover for about three minutes

Dump this mess out on your plate. You can add cooked sausages or meatballs or chicken for protein

GUEST POST FROM JERSEY BEAT PUBLISHER JIM TESTA

I've been trying to eat vegetarian as much as possible. I love doing stir fries and quiches, great way to use up leftover veggies and it's fun to work with different flavor combinations. But my favorite recipe is my pantry burritos.

I made these because I had half a can of leftover vegetarian baked beans. I mixed the beans with one package of instant Mexican rice (the pouch you microwave kind) and a bag of shredded Mexican mix cheese. (There are lots of vegan cheeses out there if you dont want to use a milk product.) Microwave the rice, warm the beans, and toss everything together in a bowl. Then stuff burrito size flour tortiallas with the mixture. Brown them gently in a frying pan to crisp the tortilla (it also melts the cheese and helps them stick together) then top with a jarred salsa or mole sauce. Yum yum!

I realize it's been a LONG time since my last post. A lot of the cooking jawns I've rolled with I've had to come up with for various reasons. But things have been useful and satisfactory for a while so I've had no great impetus to invest new recipes.

But there's been a confluence of circumstances. My blood pressure started acting up in late 2015 and I had to add fruit to my diet on a daily basis. My metabolism has slowed down so I find myself putting on weight very easily and having a hard time shaking it. And now it's Lent and typically I give up goodies. Rolling econo I grab whatever fruit's cheapest at the grocery store - so that's apples and oranges. Just been thru an oranges phase so back on apples. But I ate the latter so regularly last year -- that I'ma little sick of 'em. One solution was to bake 'em - just cored an apple, added a little sugar, mebbe a splash of red wine, mebbe raisins. And into the toaster oven for about 45 minutes. Which was good enough.

But the coring kinda sucks without a proper coring tool so I tried slicing up the apple and wrapping in foil and making 45 minutes. And actually that cooked worse than the whole apple.

SO I decded to try nuking the sliced apple for 5 minutes in a sealed Pryex dish. That worked GREAT! Cooked thoroughly and was pretty delish. And then I started with add ons and frankly each one was mighty fine. Though at the same time, none was necessary, so I'd count each as a valid and delicious variation to be deployed as yr fancy dictates.

In each case you start with a sliced apple (skin on), nuked for 5 minutes in a covered Pyrex dish. The add on options are:

teaspoon of cinnamon

tablespoon of raisins

teaspoon of butter - diced and sprinkled throughout yr pile of apples

tablespoon of leftover rice (I usually have some cooked brown rice lying around)

I'd also tried sprinkling a tablepoon of bran cereal or Grape Nuts over the cooked apples - and that was OK but frankly I thought they were better with the rice or with no grain products whatsoever.

Beets Squashing 'em!

this one's quick and dirty -- every year squash sprouts out of the compost pile and in the spirit of science, I transplant them around the backyard in any place that'll accomodate the 10 foot long vines the result. by Summer's end we've got a boatload of butternut squash - which is not my favorite vegetable to work with. but after managing to give away a decent amount, I was left with a couple squash and wanting to clear 'em out so as an experiment took my (previously posted) borscht recipe and swapped out beets for squash... and it came out GREAT! While all the other ingredients remained the same, this one substitution yielded a golden soup that more savoury and a tiny bit thicker. This in turn made the spices, especially the cayenne less prominent, more subtle. the final effect was delicious!

Italian cuisine in the raw

OK - so this recipe is NOT comprised of leftovers per se, but for some folks - especially if you live in non-bourg suburbs or rural areas and do a little vegetable gardening, or have friends that do - you're likely to find yourself inundated with the late Summer tomato crop. And there's tons of obvious things you can do with fresh tomoatoes, but one that I'd not considered before is making fresh spaghetti sauce with it.

We were out for drinks and small plates with some friends over the weekend, and our friend Joan berated me for chimping with another friend, Jim Testa, about hot spaghetti sauce option. She was advocating basically a raw sauce. I replied that what she was describing was like a cold putanesca, or putting salsa on spaghetti. Either way, an interesting idea.

So here's a simple way of putting this together on the fly, and assuming that you're doing one serving at a time. And if you wanna serve more -- just multiply!

MUSIC:
Louis Prima Capitol Collector Series - a nicely perverse mix of New Orleans jazzamatazz and ethnic Italian bonhomie.

Ingredients
1 ripe tomato, coarse chopped (and I'd leave the skin on, or you can peel 'em if you'd like)
1 TBSP onion, FINELY chopped (and you can use regular yellow onion if that's what you have around or you could get something fancier like sweet Vidalia if you'd like)
2 cloves garlic - peeled and put in microwave for 30 seconds - to soften and sweeten
2 leaves of basil, coarsely chopped
1 TBSP grated Romano cheese (you could use Parmesan but...at least around here, that always turns out to be incredibly bland)
one serving of freshly cooked pasta (whatever that means for you)

Mix the first 5 ingredients together
toss with hot pasta
top with a shake of red pepper flakes or a couple grindings of black pepper

then go pour yourself a glass of wine, set the table - let it sit for a minute so the hot pasta cooks the other ingredients a little bit, and they get a chance to flavor the pasta. Bon appetito!

Tomayto Tomahto (Du Plenti!)

Jim Testa of Jerseybeat.com just sent me the following query:

"Do you ever make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes? I got a bushel for $3 of bruised tomatoes from a farmers market.
It's simmering now but I'm not sure if I should leave it chunky and rustic or give it a whir with the immersion blender and smooth it out."

Lotsa interesting questions in this.
Folks would recommend that you peel and seed tomatoes before making them into sauce. And while that's valid
1) seeds have important nutrients
2) usually I do this with cherry tomatoes and peeling is impractical - so I don't and I've never had bad results.

As per smoothing out or leaving chunky - literally tomayto, tomahto. Why not split the load between two pots and smooth out one. Or just wait till your done - scoop half into one container and smooth out what's left.

If you've got tomatoes left you can always make a putaneso which is, um like hot salsa. You just chop up the ingredients, throw 'em into a hot pan with a little olive oil and cook a couple minutes and voila! reputedly prostitutes would greet a customer, set a pan cooking and when "business" was done, so was the sauce!

here's an article on the possible health benefits of eating tomoatoes -- tho no mention of which part of tomato provides which benefit: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273031.php

Guest Recipe from Jim Testa - slow cooked, expired, blade steaks

Jim Testa - longtime (35 years and counting!) editor of the NJ/NY undie music bible Jerseybeat.com is my oldest living friend. We went to Rutgers College together when Springsteen was playing the Commuter Student Center for 50 cents. He's my son's godfather, has been to all my weddings (was best man at the first!) etc. He's been a supporter of this blog all along, has hit me with various challenges I've posted and now here's a recipe of his:

"I went to the supermarket and they had packages of blade steak on sale, plus a few were about to expire so they were an additional $2 off. So I got a couple pounds of steak (not really a staple on my current budget) for about two bucks.

I go home and google it, and read that blade steak is super tough and really only good if slow braised. But I didn't want to go back to the store, and I was out of celery and carrots.
I had a half bulb of fennel, an onion that was about to go south, and some leftover sundried tomatoes.
So I whizzed that into a paste in the food processor.
Browned the meat well with Salt & Pepper, then took the meat out and browned the paste. Added a little tomato paste
put the meat back in, added a couple of bay leaves, and let the thing cook low and slow for 3 hours.

The result was a delicious pot roast that was soft as butter. The sun drieds added a piquant umami flavor to the sauce. Not bad! And great served with horseradish mashed potatoes.

Devolving A Classy Roman Pasta Concept

Sorry for the absence. Life's been happening. Also, just haven't been hit with the inspiration for anything especially useful, tasty or novel...until now.

I was reading the New York Times Magazine (3/22/15 issue) and came across an intriguing piece on Roman pasta + sauce preparation. The basic premise was that the author assumed that the indigenous paste/sauce custom was for quickly made, very thin sauces. But he got schooled by a local chef.

It turns out that while he got the ingredients right, he got their USE wrong.

The actual tech in question called for taking VERY al dente paste, mixing it with a slightly watery sauce, or taking solid ingredients (grated cheese, pepperocini, proscuitto, etc) and actually adding water and then stirring them vigorously over medium heat for several minutes. What happens is that the pasta cooks further, absorbing water out of the sauce while dissolving a bit and emulsifying the sauce. So you wind up with nicely cooked pasta, dressed in a thick and silky sauce that adheres to and coats the pasta thoroughly.

All this is cool enough and I recommend that you look up the full recipes at the NY Times. BUT what struck me is how easily this adapted to the use of leftover pasta and either leftover sauce or thus ennobled store bought sauce.

THE MUSIC - I'd go with "Louis Prima: Collectors Series" coz - it's kinda wierd how he can pull off doing "Buena Sera" as unctuously as Dean Martin and "Basin Street Blues" with the same gruff charm as Louis Armstrong. While you're at it, you might wanna check out Gary Krist's book "Empire Of Sin" which studies the history of the vice business in New Orleans (Prima's hometown) but also homes in how the lives of Italian immigrants and their descendants and African Americans intertwined during the period that gave rise to Jazz (which is why you find musicians of both ethnic groups laying claim to its "invention") So here's a couple strategies:
* say you have restaurant leftovers including pasta already in sauce; and let's say for argument's sake that it comes with meat balls.
you separate the meat from the pasta, putting the former aside - perhaps throwing it right into a toaster oven to heat, or to wait for nuking
heat up either a non-stick pan or a heavy iron pan coated with a hint of olive oil, then throw in the pasta with a quarter cup of water
stir vigorously with a big wooden or metal spoon for about 5 minutes
dump on plate, and add warmed up meat, or nuke meat for two minutes and add.
In this case while you're just reheating this dish, you're also adding depth to the dish, taking it up a notch quality wise

* or you might have some plain pasta without sauce you're looking to use
IF you have no red sauce, you could buy a jar of the most economical sort (they're all kinda sweet and vile anyway); finely chop one onion - saute till carmelized and add to sauce along with a table spoon each of dried oregano and basil; mix well and let that sit over night - or at least for a couple hours to infuse that store bought muck with some more pronounced, non-sugary notes; I'd tend to add some hot pepper flakes as well to give it some zing
again, you heat up an appropriate pot or pan, add the sauce, then pasta and stir vigorously for 5 minutes or so
I'd add two ladles of sauce for every adult helping of pasta
Here you're taking a very pedestrian dish and making it something kinda special with this simple bit of tech in the process of heating it up

* finally - if you're working with leftover pasta, and nothing but kitchen staples
I'd heat up your pot or pan, add a hint of olive oil, then dump in your pasta
for each adult helping of pasta add
2 TBS of grated cheese (Italian preferred, but honestly you could shred up ANYTHING you have in the fridge)
2 TBS of carmelized onions
1 TBS of crumbled basil OR 1 tps of red pepper flakes (I wouldn't mix these coz in this dish you want one or the other taste to pop)
1/4 cup of pitted olive (chopped or whole as you prefer) OR de-stemmed pepperocini (chopped or whole - tho I think you'd want 'em chopped so they can get distributed nicely through the dish) or finely chopped tomoatoes (these can be fresh or canned
1/4 cup water
stir vigorously for 5 minutes or more

Yard Dog

Yeah it's gotten cold in North America right quick! 7 feet of snow in Buffalo. YIPES. Even in the balmier parts of the country, temperatures are below freezing and veggies, etc. that are still outside are...toast (figuratively). Green tomatoes not brought in have frozen and if thawed will go pulpy and never ripen. Parsely is solid, brittle and set to wilt into mush. Great compost of course. Or prime candidates for your bag of future veggie broth makings yes. BUT DON'T BE SO HASTY TO WRITE THIS STUFF OFF for more primary use. These are perfect prime ingredients for a batch of Salsa Verde! And this is the easiest of peasiest recipes to put together!

Music: Los Texas Tornados, eponymous debut, Spanish language version - back when Austin was still Austin with a funky downtown fulla cheesey bars (still got those) cheap eateries the great clubs like the sadly long defunct Liberty Lunch, it birthed this roots supergroup of Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jiminez

Ingredients 7 cups of green tomatoes roughly cubed 5 - 10 jalepeno peppers - stems cut off 2 cups onion finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1/2 cup vinegar 1/2 cup parsley leaves; cilantro would be nice but cilantro is South American parsley; if ya got 'em smoke 'em but if you don't have cilantro around and you wanna clean up the parsley, use the latter 2 tsp cumin 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp salt 1 tsp black pepper Preparation * throw tomatoes into blender or food processor 1 cup at a time and run at high speed until they break down but not utterly liquify - 20 seconds perhaps; pour processed tomatoes into a big bowl * add parsley to the last cup of tomatoes and blend 'em together * throw all jalapenos into blender and run at high speed till it's chopped up pretty good - 20 seconds is likely good; dump into bowl with tomatoes and parsley * add all other ingredients to bowl of tomatoes, jalapenos and parsely and mix well with big spoon etc. * YOU'RE GOOD TO GO!

Whore Sauce

I'm told that "Putanesca" means "whore sauce." Reputedly in Italy if one was engaging a sex worker for a session, a meal afterwards was part of the deal and that meal would be something you could throw into a pot, go off and

"do your business" and 20 minutes later the chow would be ready to serve, be eaten and clear the deck for the next engagement.

A gay opera singer in Washington DC made this for me by chopping up an onion, throwing it into a very hot pot with mebbe 2-3 TBS olive oil until it started to carmelize, then throw in a full large can of tomato juice and let it reduce for 20 minutes. We had a lovely, lively conversation in that space of time. Ahem!

Over the years I've noted restaurants having a variety of much more elaborate versions of this. Typically called "Spaghetti Putanesca" but Osteria LaVechia in Newtown PA calls it "feminina" -- this eatery having many paintings and photos of Padre Pio adorning its walls. So I can dig where they're coming from with this more genteel name for the selfsame dish.

The version I'ma run down recognizes the fact that a lot of folks in the midAtlantic states have had to bring in the last of the tomato crops in their home gardens - many more than they can eat before they go funky. And YES, you could can 'em, make sauce out of 'em and put that up. When I retire I may do that in myself. But for folks who still work full time, here's a quick and easy way of utilizing tomatoes and making a delicious and somewhat offbeat dish - that you may not want to explain if you've got youngsters in yr household. Or dowdy relatives/friends.

MUSIC: Afterhours "I milanesi ammazzano il sabato" (the Milanese kill Saturday - meaning, party it on down!) Ingredients *1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes, or diced regular tomatoes *1/2 cup sliced or diced onions *1/4 cup diced olives (dealing with the pits if they gots pits) *1 TBS capers *1/2 head garlic *3 TBS olive oil *spaghetti *1 TBS oregano *1 tsp basil

Preparation *start heating water for spaghetti *add olive oil to cast iron pan, pot, whatever you got and head over medium high heat *chop and add tomatoes (the time it takes to prep tomatoes is enough for oil to heat up nicely) *chop and add onions (again, the timing works out nice coz you want tomatoes to cook the longest); give the whole mess a good stirring *put half head of garlic in microwave for 1 minute, then you can normally squeeze each clove right into pan with other ingredients; stir thoroughly into the other ingredients *chop and add olives; stir thoroughly into other ingredients *add capers stir thoroughly into other ingredients *if you're cooking spaghetti up fresh, add spaghetti to (by now) boiling water; if you're using leftover spaghetti just heap it on top of the sauteing vegetables, turn heat down to medium; spaghetti with heat via steaming *let cook for another 5 minutes *use tongs to serve spaghetti, then spoon sauteed vegetables over it. FIN!

A Cheesey, Cheese-less trick

This is a quickie -- since Summer I've been eating a lot of rice cakes for snack food (dealing with a bit of a gut). And being a cheap bastard I buy the store brand of cheddar cheese flavored rice cakes. 44 calories each! And of course you chase one of these with a big glass of water, very filling!

But I have tried the Quaker Oats version and, naturally they ARE tastier, mainly cheesier and more expensive.

So I've been making due. But one day, as an experiment, I decided to sprinkle on a tiny bit of Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning - to give it a little heat. And it did that AND somehow ratcheted up the quotient of cheese flavor! I'm not sure how; perhaps it's the salt and the garlic powder buttressing related components of the basic cheese taste medley. BUT IT DOES WORK.

Squashed for Time

This is gonna be quick coz it's a work day and I busted this recipe out spontaneously

MUSIC: You Ain't Good For Nuthin - mixtape created by David Wyckoof esq of Nashville TN

If you follow my FB page you'll have noted that we've got a wealth of huge butternut squashes growing out of a vine that sprouted out of our compost pile. And the pile keeps growing despite giving these away to various folks at a decent rate. And there's one that's been sitting and getting funky looking on the outside so I've been thinking about taking it on for a couple days now, to use it before it goes bad.

So I started by peeling it (a mistake as there're lovely enzymes in the peel and flesh that basically acts like a chemical peel on your skin - nothing painful or especially unsightly, but WEIRD), cutting it into 3/4 inch slices, laying them out on a lightly oiled pan and baking at 350* F for 45 minutes (in several batches in this case). Amy likes to just cut the squash in half and baking it with the skin on, and then scooping the flesh out which is cool, but I pointedly wanted to scorch it a bit.

Next I pureed the cooked squash (adding vegetable broth to help it mash up nice and smooth), adding two fresh jalapeno (picked off a plant we rescued from my mother-in-law's backyard), and then dumped it all into a pot of vegetable broth (in this case I prepped that -- as per a previous installment of Garbage Gourmet -- and had a fresh batch to work with.

Then I chopped and browned some onions (to carmelize a bit and bolster the carmelization on the squash) and added that.

Chopped and added a stalk of celery (just because)

added 2 Tablespoons of salt

a Tablespoon of nutmeg

a Tablespoon of allspice

AND THEN -- I had a creamless cream soup in mind and this was looking a little thin, so I grabbed some french fries left over from a weekend dinner out, pureed them (adding some soup to add in the process) and added that to the pot.

VOILA - it's very hearty, has a slight sweetness, the kinda earthy spiciness of the nutmeg and allspice

The Virtue of Parsimony

This is not my recipe at all. I'm posting it as an object lesson in the virtue of holding onto scraps and leftovers even if you can't readily imagine their use and

detailing methods of preserving them at length for possible future use. Some of this will no doubt horrify germ-o-phobes. When I was a kid I didn't get snack money for school - I got a sandwich in a paper bag. And I was walking around and saw someone had dropped potato chips or Cheez Doodles on the pavement and they looked clean, I et 'em, never having any negative reactions; probably building up my immune system to frightening levels of resistance.

The recipe comes from John Gros keyboardist of the quasi-recently disbanded New Orleans funk band Papa Grows Funk (an, uh, "enthusiatic" judger of wares offered at the annual Po' Boy Fest on Oak Street).

INGREDIENTS
3-4 lb. chuck roast
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
seasoning salt
pepper
I was recently cleaning the basement in preparation for plumbers replacing some pipes an found a box of spices from the 60's. I looked 'em over, gave each jar lookover and a sniff and if nothing seemed amiss, mixed them in with more recently purchased spices. Dunno if I'd sprinkle these on top a salad or some mashed 'taters, but used in casseroles, soups etc. they're doing me just fine.
1 onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
I don't use celery THAT often and frankly one bag lasts me for perhaps 10 recipes or more and getting thru it could take 3 months or more, a length of time which SHOULD far exceed the fridge life of a bunch of celery, BUT I've found (tipped by my mother-in-law) that if you wrap the bunch in a piece of paper towel that you then wet, and periodically re-wet, this stuff CAN last 3 months looking totally fine. It's good to seal the plastic bag it likely came in with a paper clips, rubber band, etc. It seems that it's dehydration that brings on spoilage in this case.
10-12 garlic cloves, chopped
OF COURSE I save all the onion and garlic skins, pepper seed balls, celery leaves etc, freeze 'em and save for making vegetable broth.
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup flour
2 cups beef stock

This is the part I'm especially proud of. We went out for dinner when Amy came home from doing the Tough Mudder Obstacle race in Ohio and the specials included beef ribs. Now, I LOVE ribs, but I don't eat pork for quirky ethical reasons, so I jumped at the this offering. They were tasty too! And when the waitress came to clear the table Amy asked -- "are you gonna take those bones home?" which I would automatically do if it were chicken; and I thought - WHY NOT! So these ribs have been sitting in my freezer ever since, slated for inclusion in veggie broth when I start making borscht again. BUT I note that ya use beef stock here and grabbed the bones, a stalk of 2 mo. old celery and a 3 mo. old carrot (likewise preserved with the wet paper towel method). And VOILA!
2 cups red wine
I assume everyone gets well intentioned gifts of relatively undrinkable wine at holidays. This is the perfect way to use em other than giving them out to needy winos; and there's no shame in that neither.
2 TBSP worchestershire sauce
1 bay leaf

MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT: anything by Papa Grows Funk or perhaps Larry Williams' Bad Boy collection (you'll note how many of his songs were covered by The Beatles - probably more than of any other artist - excepting Arthur Alexander) preheat oven to 300 degrees
pat roast dry and season with all spices

chop all vegetables
dust meat with flour and reserve all leftover flour
heat oil in Dutch oven (i.e. heavy iron pot with lid; any pot with handles that can stand being in an oven will do; over safe Correll or Corning Ware is fine too; key points are: that it can go into a hot oven and it has a lid)
brown meat on all sides, then remove from pot
saute vegetables, excepting garlic until they're translucent

add garlic and saute another 3 minutes
add all leftover flour
add some beef stock and deglaze pot
return meat (and any juices that have run out of it) to pot
add wine and enough beef stock to cover the top of the roast
add worchestershire sauce and bay leaf
cover pot and bake in oven for 90 minutes
flip roast and bake another 60 minutes

if you're making a pot roast, add some peeled carrots and potatoes for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

if youre making po'boys, flip roast again and bake another 45 minutes
carefully remove meat from pot
blend gravy with a hand blender (or toss it in a food processor) until it's entirely smooth
break up meat and mix with gravy
serve on French bread, baguette or toasted hoagie roll.

Mashed Potato Challenge

Hi! Here's another challenge I'd received and responded to a while ago and I post challenge and response for your further edification.

Dear Garbage Gourmet
What can I do with used mashed potatoes?

Dear Challenger:
Oh geez! like a bazillion different things!
1) Make em into patties, dip em in bread crumbs and pan fry em
If you find that your potatoes don't hold together well, you can beat up an egg, mix about 2/3 of it into your potatoes and mix together thoroughly. You can then dip each patty into the egg before dipping into bread crumbs.
I'd fry these in oil (just put in about a Tablespoon and swirl it around before you put in each patty or set of patties. If you save your bacon grease you can use that as well to add flavor.

You can also chop up about have an onion very fine and add that to your potatoes before forming them into patties. 2) Make a shepherd's pie
get yourself a pie pan
take a cup or two of leftover meat and chop up
mix with a cup of either frozen or already cooked vegetables - green peas, or chopped up carrots, etc.
add a can of some sorta creamed soup (whatever ya like: cream of mushroom, cream of onion, cheddar cheese)
pour all this into your pie pan
top with your mashed potatoes, spreading them out as evenly as you can manage
sprinkle with paprika to make it pretty

3) mix with 1 cup green peas, 1 Tablespoon curry powder and 1 cup sauteed onions and wrap in flour tortilla for a vague approximation of a Masala Dosai
4) mix with broth to make cream of potato soup, using 2 cups broth to 1 of potatoes
you can used canned broth, or bullion cubes and water
as potatoes are kinda bland be careful about your choice of broth as it's going to predominate in the final product.
SO - homemade vegetable broth which is good for making gazpacho or beet borsht as it's paired with other very strong flavors, might taste kinda green and yucky in potato soup.
Oh yeah, and you wanna make sure to make this absolutely smooth, so I'd suggest you beat the soup with a wire whisk or put it through a food processor.

Mango Salsa Challenge

Sorry for my long absence. Been really, really busy living life.
For now I'd like to post a couple challenges that have come my way of late.

Dear Garbage Gourmet

I have a challenge for the Garbage Gourmet. I made a big bowl of mango salsa for a party yesterday, then wound up not going to the party. This stuff is delicious but way too much for me to eat on chips. Any ideas?

Dear Challenger

Can ye tell me what ingredients you used in this salsa?
Most salsas have the same basic ingredients as: sauces and soups and final results depend on things like
1) do you then cook 'em and let 'em thicken?
2) add some more liquid and make it a cold OR hot soup

Dear Garbage Gourmet

It's mangoes, red onion, a little tomato, jalapeno, lime juice.
If it were a tomato salsa, I'd make tomato soup but this is very fruity and sweet.
I'm thinking it would taste good over vanilla ice cream or mango sorbet.
I might just try freezing some of it.

Dear Challenger
I've been to places that serve fruit salsas as part of a hot meal i.e. you'd serve it with sauteed or roasted chicken alongside rice. It'd likely work well with pork as well or fish, but I don't think the flavors harmonize with beef.
I'd suggest you freeze batches of it in smaller containers and use it up when it strikes you to rather than feeling forced to use it all up asap.
The ice cream idea is good - but ice cream is not something you wanna eat every night past a certain age.
Also if you cut it with vegetable broth (I'd think even parts). It'd make a nice gazpacho. Because it's fruity and sweet I think you'd want to eat this by the cup and not a big old bowl, but I think it'd be good.

Getting Up in Yr Grill

With the warm weather in full effect, an old man's fancy often turns to some sorta BBQing/grilling sort of deal-io. And honestly, there's not a lot of great ways to involve leftovers in such fare BUT there are some neat tricks to make the work easier and guarantee great results.

You'll probably be doing this on a weekend, so you wanna amp up the aspect of PARTY from the git go, so I'd recommend you add soundtrack right from the outset and I think that The Beach Boys' Today and Summer Days & Summer Nights is pretty reet. Lotta folks ballyhoo Pet Sounds but actually Brian Wilson already turned the corner from catchy but disposable surf pop into more sophisticated composing and ambitious (Phil Spector influenced) production on these two releases which preceded Pet Sounds PS these two albums had been re-issued on a single disc at one point and that's VERY MUCH RECOMMENDED.

ANYWAY - we're not big on salt, processed foods,etc. and this is our version of backyard cuisine:

*start with steaks - pick a cut where the budget vs. quality ratio is acceptable to yr pocketbook and tastebuds
Mrs. W. says that an average REASONABLE serving should be about the size of the palm of your hand
thickness can vary from 3/4" to 1 1/2" but if yr width is palm sized, these directions will work fine; if width is significantly larger, you'll have to adjust cooking time
fatty cuts ain't so good for yr cholesterol but are yummy; lean cuts clearly are somewhat healthier and have a more uniform texture
you start by covering your steaks in beer - I think dark beer adds an interesting hint of sweetness; we copped this concept from some pirated Outback recipe; they use Guiness, we use Yuengling - and let it marinate 4 hours or so. Do NOT marinate overnight! We did this by accident once and all the blood leached out and the steaks wound up tasting kinda bland
when you're ready to throw 'em on the grill, remove 'em from marinade, pat dry and you might dry-rub 'em. I use a Cajun Prime Rib rub taken from Paul Prudhomme: mix up 6 tsp salt, 6 tsp white pepper, 6 tsp ground fennel seeds, 5 tsp black pepper, 2 1/2 tsp dry mustard, 2 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper. This makes a nice sized batch that will last a number of grilling sessions. The beer tenderizes the meat nicely. If you DO get an especially gnarly cut you can also whack it with a meat tenderizing mallet (a couple bucks at most grocery stores)- I'd beat up both sides but WITHOUT flattening and spreading out the meat as you'd do with prepping for Southern Fried Steak.

About a half hour before you're ready to start grilling:
take a sweet potato for each person, prick multiple times on two sides; heat uncovered in microwave 7 minutes, flip over, giving 'em a squeeze to see if they're getting squishy - if they ARE, then nuke another 3 minutes, if NOT squishy, give em five; renuke further to get em squeezeable. DEFINITELY PUT EM ON A PLATE, coz they will ooze sticky juices; then put aside
take fresh corn on the cob and either:
nuke all you're going to grill for 7 minutes IN THE HUSK or
clean the corn, wrap the stack up in plastic (I kinda like using a plastic grocery that you fill and then tie up tight) and nuke the same amount of time
the difference is, when you wanna clean the corn - which crisp husk or soggy husk

When you're ready to start grilling, put the steaks, corn and potatoes all on at once,
for well done steaks you cook em 10 minutes on one side and 5 minutes on the other
for rare, you cook 'em 5 minutes on both sides

Remove steaks, turn all the vegetables. Eat steaks, savoring 'em at a leisurely pace.

Remove corn, turn potatoes. Eat corn -- which should be roasted, slightly charred, yet tender. Eat 'em up.

Remove potatoes - which are definitely going to be charred on the outside and creamy on the inside.

The idea here is that you're kinda recreating a restaurant eating experience and eating each course in turn, yakking, taking in libations and getting to appreciate each dish on its own terms rather than addressing a whole plate of varied foods all at once - which is cool but essentially a different experience. The actual WORK involved runs to the minutes. The amount of time the ritual is stretched out over should run a couple hours at least even without coffee and dessert tacked on the end.

So, this isn't actually garbage/i.e. leftovers but -- a couple pieces of meat, a can of beer, a couple yams, a couple ears of corn and something to grill on (our grill of choice is some little Weber kettle I lifted out of someone's garbage), a little strategic prep and you got yrself a fine Summer partay!

P.S. while we're talking lazy-boy cop-outs -- try mixing a shot of tecquila into a tumbler of pink lemonade or limeade -- I think you'll be shocked at how acceptable this tastes for something so effortless. And frankly such juicifications made from frozen store brand versions work pretty damned good. I KNOW gourmand snobs will turn up their noses...I'm glad you got the time and money to spare - but 'round here we got plenty weeding to do and pipes to be replaced in the basement!

Summer Means Fun-k

Sorry for the absence...life got in the way. But everything led to happy endings.

Gotta admit that warm weather leads me want to head out as much as possible and the prospect of standing in a hot kitchen is not especially motivating so I've been just going with my standard recipes by and large and making a point to utilize leftovers strategically - with the least processing possible but still with an eye towards maximizing the quality of results. So, some basics here:

with chicken, turkey and fish (main dead beast et 'round here)
*if they're Southern fried/battered, ALWAYS heat up in a toaster oven at 350* (or regular oven if you don't mind burning up the watts for such a small job) and leave unwrapped so the breading crisps up - mebbe 20 minutes. The downside to this is that it dries things out a bit - ergo 20 minute cooking time
*if NOT battered, best to wrap in aluminum foil to keep moisture in - in which case I'd cook a full 30 minutes
NEVER REHEAT IN A MICROWAVE - it almost always does something weird to the texture
*I tend to save French fries for various reasons - I've used them in soups, either by themselves or mixed in with beans; when the cooking's done you wanna puree them to create a creamy base (without having to use dairy); I recent chopped up a handful and threw that into a pot of borscht, AFTER things were cooked coz if you cooked 'em with the raw vegetables - they'd be mush, which is not the point of borscht (I gotta say I was conferring with a Polish friend and she agrees that this stuff would be termed goulash by Pollacks)

I recent experimenting reheating fries and found that if you defrost 'em, lay em out in a single layer (don't add oil as they've already been deep fried and still contain oil), and sprinkle 'em with something savory like Tony Chachere's Cajun seasoning or Sittin' Bayou Cajun seasoning (a present from my niece Anna), or yr own concoction (equal parts paprika, garlic powder and half as much salt should do - or add an equal part cayenne if ya likes the heat), and heat at 350* in toaster oven for 30 minutes they come out pretty damned reet -- NOT like fresh out of the fryer but good on their own terms.

serve some of the above with baby spinach, chopped green pepper, sliced tomato - yr eatin' pretty with little or no effort.

There's really no prep time, so it's silly to recommend music to cook with, but while yr chowin' you could well listen to SOUTHEAST SOUNDS' B Street.

Borscht in Theory and Practice

Well, you read about the theory of borscht production. You've read a simplified formula for borscht production. Well, here' how it actually looks:

BACK below the borscht belt

I realize that Sophia's great recipe does give ALOT of options - perhaps more than a Neophyte would be comfortable with. So I'm giving a streamlined version. Pros should roll withe original and newbies - can master this, then upgrade.

Making the Broth [perfect as is]
"I toss every scrap into a container that lives in my freezer. (Skip stuff in the cabbage/broccoli family though). Onion skins, ginger peel, potato peelings, carrot ends, bell pepper stems and cores, bones and animal organs (obviously omit the animal bits if yr a vegetarian) until you collect about a quart (or one full sized plastic freezer bag),
dump the collected bits into big soup pop and add water to cover and then have about 2 inches of water on top

I also add cumin/fennel seeds, a few peppercorns, dried mushrooms and dried lemongrass.
Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer about 2 hours and strain all that, retaining the liquid, composting the rest

Making the Borscht
Suggested Music: I'm sure my sainted mother would be appalled but the only stuff I've got in my CD collection of Polish derivation would be Frankie Yankovic's The All Time Great Polkas and Greatest Hits -- which is cool enough in a certain sense; a more high brow selection could be The Music of Armenia: Volume 2; Sharakan, Mediaeval Music.
Now this dish is coming from someone of Ukranian descent and ain't Polish or Armenian. Within folks of Eastern European descent the cultural differences are pronounced enough and guarded jealously. But realistically, we do realize to you honkies we all look the same and eat the same shiz (boiled cabbage, root vegetables and flesh) -- so don't sweat playing Pollack music while ya make Ukranian-oriented chowzers.

Ingredients:,
2 cups cubed raw peeled beats
2 cups cubed raw carrots (leave the peels on)
2 cups peeled raw potatoes or yams
1 stalk celery
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb cubed mammal flesh
1 Tablespon paprika,
2 teaspoons cayenne,
2 teaspoons cumin,
1 Tablespoon salt,
2 teapspoons thyme
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 Tablespoon tomato paste 3 Tablespoons vinegar

To start the borscht saute veggies + flesh in a big soup pot in 2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil (olive would be nice)
Then add the broth you made, (you'll want to have enough to fill yr soup pot up 75%)
add all your spices
Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer until meat is tender (say, 2 hours).
Add a tablespoon tomato paste or some tomato sauce (in a pinch you CAN use ketchup - actually there are Indian restaurants that make just this substitution),
a few tablespoons vinegar (I suggest red wine or apple cider,

DUMPLINGS
throw 1 cup of flour into a bowl
add 1 tsp salt, 1 egg and some water (I'd start with a quarter cup and add drizzles till you get the consistency you favor)
and mix up thoroughly (I use a big wood or steel spoon but if wanna use some fancy mechanical shiz, feel free - more clean up tho!)
basically you want this to be the consistency of cookie dough, all though it's fine to make it a bit wetter which just give you a different final product
then you drop this by the spoonful into the borsht; when it floats to the top, it's done
[if yr dough was the consistency of cookie dough, the dumplings will be firm and dry-ish - sorta like baked potatoes; if you made the dough wetter it'll come out more like thick pasta i.e fettucini or shells]