Just Hungry

my fiancee and i always seem to fall back on our turkey and cabbage dish. its a kind of stirfry of ground turkey (not turkey breast…the fatty stuff), regular green cabbage, red onions, and a sauce of soy sauce and sometimes hoisin…
it ends up being really inexpensive.
I buy the turkey on sale for $2 US, cabbage is usually around 50 cents a pound, a small amount of red onion…a big scoop of rice…
and we always have leftovers for lunch.

For me making pasta or noodle dishes are the easiest to make. Or I dont have time to cook, I just fix myself a bowl of salad.

I cook a roast chicken (with roast veg) nearly every week. It’s cheap (I pay less than $2/lb for local free-range chicken) and can be used for multiple meals (at least with only 2 people eating it). We also make a lot of miso donburi and Japanese-style curry; the miso donburi is onions, carrots, green peppers, and ground meat sauteed with a miso-sake sauce and served over rice. I often make double or triple batches to save for lunch or later meals. If I find stew meat (or beef that can be made into stew meat), I made chili or Indian curry. I guess it all depends on what’s on sale at the meat counter or farmers’ market.

Quick and easy pastas, with ingredients I almost always have on hand. The past year, it’s been spaghetti all’ amatriciana, and before that it was penne vodka and penne all’ arrabbiata. I’ve been doing a lot of baked pastas lately, too - they’re an easy way to use up leftover veggies (mince, sautee, add tomatoes, mix with pasta, cover with cheese, and bake).

When I’m not in the mood for cooking, plain bruschetta and some fruit. Or sliced potatoes layered with garlic, jalapenos (or crushed red pepper), and pancetta (or bacon, or optional) and roasted in the oven for an hour.

Speaking of Jamie Oliver, I’ve noticed a trend in the US over the last few years, on one “food network” in particular, to focus more on reality style competition cooking shows, and shows that cater to those who have no basic knowledge of cooking or are just learning how to. I grew up in a family where Sunday was “cooking day”. Roast a whole chicken, and then use the leftovers during the week. That said, I can do a lot with a store bought rotisserie chicken. Salmon is another favorite also. Buy a “value pack” at the market then portion it out and freeze the rest. I have a great little machine by Reynolds called the “Handi-Vac”. You hook it up to the plastic bag and it sucks all of the air out. The “food adds” in the local newspaper are a great way to check out what’s on sale. Grilled salmon one night can become a great Nicoise Salad the next, a croquette, or the highlight of a little Bento.

I know your post wasn’t necessarily inviting comments about the Ministry of Food show, but I have to voice my opinion about Jamie’s latest crazy endeavour somewhere…

The man is ridiculous. He has become a parody of Gordon Ramsay, effing and jeffing left right and centre, and, frankly, embarrassed himself with his latest venture which is flawed in so many ways.

I take issue firstly with the fact that in order to solve the ‘obesity problem’ in the UK, he has targeted the North, as every body always does. Falling literacy rates! Single teen mothers! Fat people who can’t cook for themselves! It’s always the Northerners who get labelled.

Well, I am a Northerner, and guess what? I’m not fat. And I can cook. So can all the other people I know from home (for what it’s worth, none of us were teen parents either, and we all read). OK, I am from Manchester, not Rotherham. But I know people who are. And they can cook too. How dare he paint such a ridiculously flawed and biased picture of a town he has never been to?

Secondly, the show is not about food (though I say this as someoe who only saw the first episode by chance, and vowed not to sit through another). It is merely a collection of video clips designed to allow the better off to laugh at low-income families and what they eat. Just because you choose to eat chicken breast fried with Parmesan cheese and proscuitto does not make you better than people who eat doner kebab meat and chips (though I don’t do that either. Well, not habitually.). This voyeuristic aspect of the programme is exactly what made ‘You Are What You Eat’ such a hateful TV show. I don’t deny that the people in Jamie’s show perhaps need a few lessons, but humiliating them? I don’t think that’s very helpful. (And you are NOT ‘what you eat’).

Thirdly, Jamie is, at the end of the day, more interested in his own book sales and TV fees than his ‘mission’ to help people in ‘unhealthy, Northern towns’ learn to cook healthy (read ‘imported from Italy, and popular in London’) food. His approach is flawed on so many levels. If he really cared, he wouldn’t bother filming his endeavours. The show isn’t for people who want to learn to cook - he’s making it for ‘foodies’ who like looking down on others.

By the way, you get fat people in the South too. Look at Jamie Oliver for starters!

Incidentally, our kitchen fall back recipes are mainly Japanese (sakana no shioyaki, tofu, curry rice), as I spend so much time in Japan and we have a rice cooker. It’s amazing how quick dinner can be made when the rice is a no brainer.

Thank you for the forum; that has been bugging me for weeks! ;)

I’m always trying to expand my cheap go-to dinner list, esp since this economy has left us broke broke broke!

Taco night
Well I guess they’re more burritos than tacos, but we get high quality wraps from a Hispanic friend of ours when he goes to visit his family every couple weeks. We freeze most of them and for the rest we make a healthy burrito with cheddar (we keep a big block in the fridge), rice, refried or black beans mixed with el pato, tomato, and spinach or avocado (depending on the seasons). Sometimes we put a little meat in there too but it’s always ground turkey instead of beef. The rest of the meat is used for:

Meaty pasta sauce
.75lb ground turkey, can of diced tomatoes, small can of paste, can of tomato sauce, worchestire sauce, spices, and simmer! This with a full lb of linguine is heavenly leftovers for a week!

a new easy favorite which tastes great with rice is

Spinach Noodle Soup (horenso to harusame soup)
All the ingredients (chicken stock, sake, soy sauce, and sesame oil) you already have around the house. Just need to pick up a package of harusame noodles and (the most expensive part) a bag of spinach.

Lately, my fall-back meals have been:

steamed vegetables w/rice or couscous
frittata w/vegetables
fried rice
pasta w/veggies & sauce
stir-fried tempeh w/veggies

I guess there’s a pattern there. I cook meats and fish when I can, but it hasn’t been often.

Tofu with ground pork in a yummy sauce. So easy, not very expensive and an all around crowd pleaser. Here’s a link to a version of it that I love (and the recipe works): http://danseats.blogspot.com/2008/05/mapo-tofu.html

I often make couscous with beans or tuna and whatever veg we have laying around (usually mushrooms, eggplant, broccoli and or some of the frozen peas/corn we tend to keep in the freezer). It is tasty.

Since I feed a large household we always look for an economic dinner, so usually it some type of butterflied chicken breast (usually a quick teriyaki, some balsamic mixture, herbs, or miso) thats been pan fried and a green salad and occasionally rice (I stock Calrose, since its my favorite) Those are quick and easy and everyone loves it.

Occasional I will also make a soap containing white kidney beans, can tomatoes, and carrots/ onion. Everything we have in stock, just buy the meat. This also seems like a winner.

Hmm… Now that I think about that, I really tend to cook a lot of different dishes (with Japanese of Korean touch). But I suppose, what I cook most often would be rice, after all. And then maybe pasta? I’m also making soups quite often.

I love cooking, but I’m in my early twenties and live alone, so a lot of people ask me how I can enjoy cooking or how I can cook with a lot of variety when I’m only cooking for one.

My go-to dishes are easy to make in large quantities and I keep the leftovers. I usually cook for 4-6 and then freeze all the other portions individually. And because cooking allows me to stock up my freezer, I don’t mind making a huge mess in my kitchen once or twice a week. :)

Anyway—the dishes:
1) Sauce bolognese… by far the easiest. I let the ingredients do the talking. Make sure to use red wine! I just made this two nights ago and I’ve got 5 individual portions in my freezer.

2) Quiche. I buy the pie crusts already frozen for about $2.50 for 2 crusts, then I use a mixture of 3 eggs and a 1/2 cup of milk for the base, and throw in whatever else I want. Top with cheese, stick it in the oven. If the quiche is for everyday, I put in carrots and onions. If you want to make it fancy, you can always buy a package of smoked salmon ($4/5) and throw that in with some asparagus. It’s always a hit!

3) Shiitake risotto/Chinese lo mein (noodles). Risotto can be tricky if you’ve never done it before, but it’s just a lot of stirring. I mention the shiitake because people always tell me that shiitakes cost so much—well not if you buy them dried at your local Chinese grocer’s for $5.99. I have an ENORMOUS bag with more shiitake then I can eat in 3 months. And because it’s dried, it keeps well. For the risotto, I usually pair shiitake with pancetta, shallots, and white wine. (I never measure, just throw it all in there.) And for the lo mein, I just put sliced shiitakes in the pan with green onions, top with spaghetti and mix with sesame oil and soy sauce.

Other things I like to make: shepherd’s pie, lasagna (use your sauce bolognese!), roasted eggplant, chicken piccata, homemade hamburgers.