I’ve been watching the great doughnut debates on Twitter today with great interest… Top Pot, Mighty O, Doughnut Plant all have their fans and their critics. I say, let them keep their doughnuts! A homemade doughnut is so much more tasty! And once you get the swing of it, it’s much easier than you think (even the scary frying part). Make them filled, or just regular old doughnut shape, and you won’t regret it. Let me tempt you with some photos of today’s batch: rhubarb compote filled and milk chocolate filled (and a few rings for good measure).

PS: On the whole doughnut/donut debate… they are both correct! So feel free to use either one. Donut definitely works better on twitter!

Filled (or not) Yeasty Doughnuts
This recipe is adapted from these luscious looking doughnuts on Australlian Gourmet Traveller. I didn’t have buttermilk, so I substituted whole + a bit of vinegar (champagne citrus for just a hint of lemon). After playing around with a lot of raised doughnut doughs, I’ve also found that they work better with a touch more yeast and a bit less flour, so I’ve adjusted those quantities here.

I fry my doughnuts on the stovetop with canola oil in a Le Creuset Soup Pot. Any cast iron pot will work, but ones lined with enamel will help keep your oil longer. I haven’t yet tried baking this dough, but if you want to try it, roll in another 1/4 cup of butter to the dough as you might if you were making puff pastry after the first rise, and let rest again before rolling out to cut them. You’ll also want to brush them well with a milk/egg wash to help them brown up.

Makes 16-18 doughnuts

10 gm (~1.5 T) dried yeast
250 ml (1 cup) whole milk, at room temperature (plus 1 t for brushing)
1 t vinegar (citrus vinegar if you have it)
55 gm (¼ cup) caster sugar
650 gm (~ 4 cups) plain flour
100 gm unsalted butter, melted
3 eggs
chocolate or a pie filling of your choice
vegetable oil for frying

Stir together the yeast, milk, vinegar, sugar and ¼ cup warm water (105F) in the bowl of an electric mixer and stand for 10 minutes or until foamy.

Add 1/2 of the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until there are no more dry clumps. Then, stir in the butter, eggs and a pinch of salt and mix with a dough hook until smooth. Start adding the remaining flour about 1/4 cup at a time allowing it to completely incorporate before adding more. When the dough starts pulling away from the sides of the bowl, do a quick touch test… the dough will be very soft and moist, but it shouldn’t come off on your fingers. Keep adding flour a little at a time, completely integrating it before adding more, until this happens. You may not use all the flour at this point. Let the mixer knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Test the stickiness again, adding more flour if needed. Then turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for one or two turns. Place in a bowl, cover with plastic, and let rise in a warm spot for about 1 hour. It should double in size.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and roll to a little thinner than 1/2 inch (if making filled doughnuts) or 1/2 inch if making rings. Turn the dough 1/4 of a turn after each roll. Cover the dough with a towel and let it rest for about 3 minutes. Then, cut out the doughnuts with a doughnut cutter, a biscuit cutter or an downturned glass that has been lightly dusted with flour.

If you are filling the doughnuts, lightly brush a round with milk, and place about 1 T of your filling in the center. Top with another round and gently roll out turning 1/4 of a turn with each roll. Turn the round over, and using the same cutter you used before recut the round (this should trim off a small amount and seal the doughnut shut).

Place on a lightly floured, non-terry dish towel and repeat with the remaining dough leaving at least 1 inch between the doughnuts. You may reform and roll any left over dough, but let it rest for about 3 minutes before rolling it out again. Cover with plastic and let rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil to 350F. Place one or two doughnuts in your pot at a time (depending on the size of your pot) and let cook for about 1 minute on each side. You’ll know when to flip them when the frantic bubbling dies down. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain briefly on a paper towel before cooling on a rack. Roll them in sugar while they are still warm, or allow them to cool some and drizzle or brush on a simple glaze (8 oz confectioner sugar + 2 T milk + 1 t vanilla is a good one).

Until then though, my weekly produce delivery is starting to come to life. This week included local organic basil and some beautiful crook neck yellow squash and a recipe for that quiche pictured above. I’ll post my version of it tomorrow. But I wanted to go ahead and share my radishes with you all today!

The garden wakes up (thanks Amy!), we start using our deck again, and enjoying the light late into the evening. Neighbors come out of their winter cocoons to stop by to say hi or to enjoy some pink wine. Friends out for a jog or a ride or a paddle may even make their way by our place. On Friday afternoons, often at the last moment, we hang out a shingle (or just tweet) and announce the deck is open! Last Friday was no exception and neighbors and friends stopped in with little ones in tow. And I had salsa on the brain.

Sometime around 10am, I just got to thinking about salsa. I was on a salsa tear last fall when I was shooting the Taco cookbook by Scott Wilson that is out later this year (I just noticed, it’s currently on pre-order! Trust me on this one, the recipes are outstanding! Don’t miss it!) but I don’t really get in the mood for that kind of thing until summer rolls around. So, as I was thinking about what we’d throw on the barbecue on Friday, all I could think about was making salsa. It started with a “many chile” salsa, and quickly moved on to a chipotle mayo, a fresh tomatillo (no, it isn’t tomatillo season. bad, bad me), a crema fresca coleslaw and finally a morita corn salsa that is amazing on mushroom tortillas. Then of course, there had to be the appropriate taco accompaniments…. skirt steak, some grilled chicken, fish and portobello mushrooms. I’m pretty sure I whipped up enough food to feed about 3 Seattle blocks. After everyone had left, I realized that I hadn’t even remembered to put out the big pot of pinto beans I had cooked up! But I’m pretty sure no one went away hungry.

But let me step back to that “many chile” salsa.

This is a great little recipe to pull out this time of year, especially if you don’t mind hot stuff. I make it from all dried chiles, which are always easy to have on hand (and very inexpensive) and it comes together in about an hour and tastes like a million bucks. It also keeps just fine in the fridge for a week or two. Which means, of course, the next time the deck is open, there will be plenty of salsa. Come on over!

BTW - if you don’t make it over on Friday, you can catch me, Matthew Amster-Burton, Shauna Ahern and Molly Wizenberg at University Village Barnes & Noble on Saturday at 1pm. I’m not all that interesting to listen to… but you’ll kick yourself if you miss seeing Matthew, Shauna and Molly cracking each other up!

Many Chile Salsa

This is my spin on Scott Wilson’s 7 Chile Salsa recipe. I don’t toast my chiles first, and don’t really depend on particular chiles. You can use any dried chiles you have on hand. The key is to have enough of a variety that you get a little smoky, a little hot, a little nutty and a little fruity in the mix. I just throw in whatever chiles I have on hand… sometimes it’s more than 7, sometimes it’s less. For Friday’s salsa, I had moritas (smoky), chipotle (smoky), ancho (rich and sweet), arbol (hot!), criolla stella (HOT!), guajillo (smooth, sweet and nutty) and puya (fruity and potent). If you are in Seattle, Carniceria Azteca has a good selection of dried chiles and good corn tortillas. Also, stock up at the University Farmer’s market in the fall… they dry a wide variety of their heirloom chiles (that’s where I got the criolla stellas).

A variety of dried chiles, roughly 2-3 cups
boiling water
1 T olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 T cilantro, chopped (optional)
4-5 epazote leaves, chopped (optional)
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup honey or agave nectar
salt to taste

Remove the stems from the dried chiles and shake out as many of the seeds as you can. Don’t worry if there are still some in there. Then, tear the larger chiles into smaller pieces. Dump them all in a bowl and cover with hot water. Let sit for at least 20 minutes. Drain the chiles, but keep the water they have been soaking in.

Heat a good sized skillet with the olive oil, and add the garlic and tomato paste. Cook for about 4 minutes, then add the chiles and the cilantro and epazote if you are using them. Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring to keep anything from burning.

Add the chile mixture to a food processor or blender along with the vinegar and honey. Puree. If the mixture gets too thick, thin it with a bit of the reserved chile water. (You can also use this chile water as a flavoring for other dishes, like a pot of pinto beans… but it may be very spicy, so use it cautiously). Add a little salt and a little more vinegar or honey to taste. You can use the salsa while it is still warm, but I prefer it chilled for at least 30 minutes to let the flavors blend.

So, a whole book of Matthew and Iris stories? Sign me up! And, of course, like a hungry monkey myself, I gobbled it up, delighting in the discovery that both Matthew and Iris shared around food and family.

I’m equally excited to kick off the book’s Virtual Book Tour. Even if I didn’t know Matthew and Iris personally, I’m pretty sure I would have bought Hungry Monkey from the title and the monkey from the barrel on the cover alone (yes, I judge books by their cover and this one wins!). Whether you have young kids, are thinking about having kids, have kids that used to be young, or perhaps were just a kid yourself, these stories will make you laugh until your belly hurts, and maybe feel pretty ok about your experiences with kids and food. With so many “do this, don’t do that” books out there, it’s insanely refreshing to have a book that is simply about the joys of sharing food with your kids.

Now that I’ve finished reading the book, and I’m going to have to start pestering Matthew to get on it and write another one so I can continue to get my Iris fix. But, in the meantime, at least I get to enjoy the recipes in this one, which are more than satisfying for both kids and adults.

One of the first recipes in Hungry Monkey is for Pad Thai. Now, my daughter loves Pad Thai (although her recent obsession is Pad See Ew), and she ate plenty of it growing up… but it never occurred to me that I could make it at home. Well, that’s not quite true. I did attempt Pad Thai back in my college days from some god-awful recipe that included as the primary sauce ingredient, ketchup. I decided at that point that it was clearly impossible to make at home and the thought never crossed my mind again. Until reading Matthew’s recipe, that is, and realizing that I had a whole block of tamarind in my pantry (left over from a shoot), and that with it I could make the delicious noodles.

Now, I’m feeling quite silly about avoiding home cooked Pad Thai for so long… Matthew’s recipe is delicious, fast and easy. It may even be easier than going out to one of Seattle’s thousands of Thai restaurants even if it is right behind your house. It’s a slurry of palm sugar, tamarind paste, rice vinegar, fish sauce and noodles garnished with lime and peanut. I threw in some age tofu and a bit of cilantro for good measure. And, then I proceeded to eat the whole panful bemoaning the fact that I have all those years of lost Pad Thai time. Don’t make my mistake! Head down to your local bookshop and pick up your very own copy.

PS: When I envisioned this post, it was going to be filled with many of the photos that I took of Matthew and Iris during the writing of this book. There are photos of them at the farmer’s market, at Pike Place Market, making Ants on a Tree and Pizza. They are lovely photos because Matthew and Iris are lovely. Unfortunately, they are also being held captives by evil hard-drive crashing pirates. Hopefully, a daring young swashbuckling chef will free them from their gigabyte prison (or perhaps, I’ll just be able to get the CD back from Matthew) and will be able to post some of them soon.

Except, maybe with margarita doughnuts!

Imagine for a second. Fresh, warm cake doughnuts with the lightest, tenderest crumb and a just enough crispness to the crust scented with just a hint of lime, and then glazed with a tangy zippy Tequila Lime glaze and sprinkled with Fleur de Sel. Or, perhaps, filled with the most wonderful lime curd. Sounded good to me!

I can’t really take credit for this wonderful marriage of cocktail and pastry though. I was completely inspired by T’s post a few weeks ago for Margarita cupcakes. I was one of the lucky recipients of that leftover lime curd she made, and while I didn’t actually try one of the cupcakes, I’ve been dreaming of them ever since.

But instead of making cupcakes, I decided on doughnuts. If you are wondering why, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m working on a new cookbook for Sasquatch Books. This time, I’m not just photographing it, I’m writing it as well. And the subject? Yep, you guessed it: Doughnuts! The whole cookbook will be about doughnuts. There will be raised dough and cake dough, gluten free dough (with help from Shauna) and vegan dough, fried and baked, and even if it kills me, there will be a honey cruller recipe to rival Tim Hortons. So, you can expect to see a few doughnut recipes around here over the next several months.

If you’ve never made doughnuts at home before, I think you’ll find it’s far easier than you think. You don’t need a fancy doughnut making machine, a deep fryer or even a special cutter (although it is always nice to have an excuse to buy new kitchen toys). I’ve spent the past couple of weeks making batch after batch of doughnuts with nothing more than a biscuit cutter, rolling pin, a large pastry tip (turned upside down to punch out the hole), a big pot on the stove and a good thermometer*.

Oh, my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook comes in handy too, but it’s mostly a nice to have, not a necessity. Particularly not for these easy cake doughnuts.

This doughnut dough recipe is based on a recipe from a little book by Dorian Parker, Doughnuts: Over 3 Dozen Crullers, Fritters and Other Treats, that I found while doing research. There are very few cookbooks out there with doughnut recipes, and almost none that are exclusively doughnuts. Although it was copyrighted in 1994, this book looks more like it came from 1449. It is adorable with cute little illustrations (which are sometimes repeated) throughout and quaint, old-fashioned recipes. Ms. Parker postulates that this recipe is very similar to that of the original Dunkin’ Donuts recipe. For the margarita doughnuts, I left out the nutmeg, replacing it with lime zest. The doughnuts themselves cook up a lovely golden brown with a nice crumb. They are a little heavier than I imagined, but they stand up well to the strong flavors of the glaze.

It’s best to make doughnuts in very small batches, because they are really best eaten the day (and the hour) they are made.

Margarita Doughnuts
Makes about 8 doughnuts and their holes

Doughnuts
2 cups pastry flour
1/4 cup rice flour (or, all-purpose if you don’t have rice flour)
2 t baking powder
2 eggs
1/3 c sugar
1 T unsalted butter, softened
a pinch of salt
1 T lime zest
1/3 c milk
canola oil, if frying

Tequila Lime Glaze
1 cup icing sugar
juice from 1 lime
a drizzle of good tequila

Optional Garnish
Lime curd
Lime zest
Fleur de Sel

If you want to make these with the lime curd filling, pop on over to Eating Suburbia for the lemon curd recipe and simply replace the lemons in the recipe with limes.

Sift the flours and baking powder together. Set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and butter. Add about 1/2 of the flour mixture to the egg mixture, along with the lime zest and salt. Then, add the milk and stir with a wooden spoon until the flour is absorbed. Add the remaining flour and continue to stir until you have a soft dough. Add a little more flour if the dough is too sticky. Shape into a ball, and cover with plastic wrap (or seal the dough in a ziplock bag) and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Place a fine-weave (not terry) towel on a baking sheet and dust lightly with flour (You can also use parchment, but I’ve found cloth works slightly better). When the dough is done resting, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to 1/2 inch thick, or about the width of one of my fingers (I don’t know what size hands you have!) Cut out the doughnuts with a lightly floured cutter. You can use a biscuit cutter or even a glass, but they should be about 3 inches in diameter. If you are making regularly shaped doughnuts, use a smaller cutter (1 inch) or the back-side of a large pastry tip to punch out the hole. If you are going to fill the doughnut with the lime curd, just press down the center until it is as thin as you can make it without actually breaking through (it’s going to rise up a lot when you cook it). Set each doughnut and its hole on the floured towel, and cover. Once you are done cutting them all out, let them rest for about 15 minutes.

Now is a good time to make the glaze. Sift the icing sugar to break up any big chunks, and then add the lime juice. Stir a little to moisten, and then add the tequila a teany-tiny bit at a time, stirring until you get the right consistency for the glaze. It should be fairly thick, but just pourable.

Start to heat your oil to 375F (or your oven to 375F**). You need about 2 inches of oil in the pot. I like to use a small dutch oven… while I can only fry one (two at the most) doughnuts at a time, it uses less oil and is easier to clean up. And, since I’m only making a few doughnuts in a batch, a few extra minutes to do batches isn’t really a problem. When the oil is hot enough, carefully drop in a doughnut and let it cook about 1 minute on each side. The dough should turn a light golden brown… if it is dark, your oil is probably too hot. Flip the doughnut over and cook for another minute. (Doughnut holes may take a little less time, but follow the same procedure) Use a slotted spoon to lift the doughnut from the pot, let it drain off the oil, and then place on a paper towel to absorb any remaining oil. Repeat. Let the doughnuts cool for about 5 minutes.

To glaze, you can either dip the tops or use a pastry brush to lightly coat the tops. If you are using the lemon curd, fill the little indentation that you made. Then, add the lime zest and Fleur de Sel as desired. These are best if served immediately.

*A good thermometer is critical to get the best results for any deep frying. You need one that is fast, and you need one that is very accurate. You may have a candy thermometer on hand already. If you do, it’s a good idea to do a quick check to make sure it is reading correctly. After a few batches of doughnuts that were browning far to quickly, I realized that mine was off badly… somewhere in the neighborhood of 100F. To test your thermometer, bring a pot of water to a boil and see what reading you get. It’s a good idea to go from very cold (a glass of ice water, for example) to the boiling water as well, as that will give you a good sense how long it will take your thermometer to read. I quickly came to the realization that I needed a new one, and after a little research broke down and spent the $90 on a Thermapen. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I did that. It may seem crazy when you can buy a new Taylor candy thermometer for about $15, but the one I was using that was 100F off? It is less than 1 month old. If you are doing any temperature sensitive cooking, it is well worth it to invest in a great thermometer. That said, if you don’t have one, you can get a good guess at the temperature by dropping in a small piece of bread… you want it to sizzle and brown in about a minute. Be sure to pull the bread out of the oil though before adding your doughnuts or it will burn and give your oil an off-taste.

**These doughnuts can be baked for about 15 minutes at 375F, but you’ll want to keep an eye on them as it is very easy to over cook them and then they aren’t particularly good. The crust won’t be quite as nice baked as fried (I’m still working on a way to remedy that problem) and the bottoms are flat, but once you glaze them you’ll hardly notice.

I’ve already been a big fan of programs like FareStart, a group that does a miraculous job of blending education, aid and delicious dining. But, now I’m thinking about other things I can do. And, I’m getting started by donating what I would have spent on meals last week (but saved by the $7 per day budget) to help fight local hunger. Rough guess is that on a typical week, I spend $25 to $30 per day. So, for the week, that’s about $100 that I saved, which can buy 180 pounds of rice or 240 cans of oj or groceries delivered to a couple of homebound people. It’s not a lot, but it’s a start.

I’ve also been thinking how much I really hate to waste food (not digging in to my CSA box last week killed me!). So, a few nights ago, after making a little bit of broccoli blasted, I decided rather than chucking the left-over broccoli stems, I’d make them into a little soup. Chopped up into small, evenly sized pieces, slowly simmered in some chicken broth, along with a potato to give it some thickness, this soup came together beautifully (so beautifully, I couldn’t resist grabbing a few kale blossoms from the bolted kale in my garden). What a waste if I had thrown away those stems!

Speaking of garden… help! My chervil is taking over! Friends living near me be warned… I may be bringing big bags of it over to your house very, very soon!

And speaking of friends… If you didn’t get a chance to attend the amazing talk last night at the Palace Ballroom, where Shauna, Matthew, Molly, Kathleen, Erica and Maggie all chatted about writing about food, I thought I’d share a few of the photos. I quickly learned to have my camera up whenever Matthew said anything, because there were sure to be big smiles and laughs all around. If you ever get a chance to hear these folks do a reading… go! (And, of course… buy their books!) I said it on Twitter already, but bravo all you guys… and thanks Kim Ricketts for pulling together such a fun event.

Finally, here’s a little sneak of things to come:

I’m lucky to live in this world of so much wonderful food. Not everyone is, and I that’s why I decided to participate in the Hunger Challenge this week. Between thinking about what food I will make, reading the comments here and watching the discussion on other participating blogs, I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time thinking about the cost of food.

It has reminded me of when I was growing up and my family did think a lot about how much money we had to go around for the month. And it’s funny to me how much has changed in the way we think about splurges then and now. It’s entirely possible that this is just me, but when I was a kid, craving the latest in junk food as most kids do, I always believed that we couldn’t afford it. The junk food and fast food was the expensive stuff. Now, I’m wondering if it was just a ruse… a very good one… played on me by my mother. As a child, it’s easier to accept “we can’t afford it” than it is “no, that’s bad for you.” So, we never had pop or chips or frozen pizza around the house (we did, however, have Kraft dinner… the one junk food staple that seems has always been cheap. We’d mix it with tuna and mushroom soup or eat it on its own, usually with ketchup). A big dinner out for me was going to Pizza Hut. That was a huge splurge, only warranted by straight A’s on my report card.

But we did eat well at home. Food was mostly made from scratch and we used fresh herbs (usually grown in big pots on the patio) and olive oil. When our house allowed it, we raised rabbits for their meat, and Rabbit Cacciatore was one of my favorite dishes. My father and step-mother even pulled together all of their recipes for the kids as we went off to college… they called it the HOG cookbook… for “Hard times, Old times, Good times.” It’s a collection of recipes that are good but frugal. My dad (who is a bit of a geek like me), recently pulled the whole thing together into a website which you can check out if you are so inclined.

Maybe food costs just really are different now than when I was growing up. Today, it seems that people tend to think it’s a splurge to buy spices or fresh produce or good cooking oil. And it is hard to argue with that. Making food from scratch takes time and investment. It’s a choice that someone has to intentionally take because it’s harder than just grabbing the frozen dinner or the can of soup. To get the bigger payoff, you have to go without some thing in the short term. There are ways around some of the big upfront costs of stocking a pantry… Madison Market has an incredible bulk food section where you can buy small quantities of things like olive oil, flour and spices at reasonable prices and it is always possible to find deals on produce, especially when it is produced locally and in abundance.

But, to take advantage of that, first you have to know about it, second you have to take the time to get to the store fairly regularly and third you have to have the time to plan and cook. None of the recipes I’ve made this week are particularly challenging, costly or even time consuming in and of themselves. But it would be much harder to eat the way that I have this week if I were working full time or had a whole family of kids around to feed. I might be able to stick to the budget for the week or a month or even longer and feel like I’m eating well. But, I have more time, more equipment, more resources that support me than most people out there, even those not on a limited budget.

Now, I’ve rambled on quite a while here about a few of the questions and thoughts that have been going through my head this week… and I think that stirring up those thoughts, and asking ourselves what we can do to help, is really the point of this challenge. Please keep up the great comments! They’ve given me a lot to think about!

Now, onto the food accounting…

Tuesday, I was semi-planning to make a risotto to have along with a nice little tilapia fillet that I found at Metropolitan Market. But, I got hungry in the afternoon, and made a big bowl of popcorn (my favorite junk food) which filled me up a bit longer than I thought it would. So dinner started late, and I decided to make it a bit simpler. I pan fried the tilapia with just a bit of salt, pepper in a tiny bit of organic olive oil (picked up in the bulk section at Madison Market… $1.56 for more than enough for the week which will replace oil I used earlier to hopefully be more in the spirit of the challenge) along with a quick medley of red pepper, onion and zucchini on a bowl of rice ($3.67 for the meal). It was simple, quick and delicious.

Yesterday, I was light on food day during the day… I had a photoshoot to do on location in the middle of the day, which lead me to skimp some on breakfast (espresso, toast) and lunch (an apple). The photoshoot was for Edible Seattle (always a great time), but I had to say no to the homemade chicken karaage that was being made! Sad! (but… the recipe will be a great budget recipe when it comes out in a few months… keep your eyes out for it!). For dinner, I made a recipe from a cookbook I recently picked up, “Beaneaters and Bread Soup” (Lori de Mori; Jason Lowe). This is a fantastic cookbook. It’s packed with beautiful stories about Italian artisan’s, and even more beautiful photos. I just want to live in this book.

I knew there would be a great, frugal recipe in there that would be perfect for this week. There are many, but I decided on a white bean with tomato sauce recipe… the original recipe includes Italian sausage, but I used a couple of slices of bacon instead (I love that you can buy bacon by the piece… I never make it through a whole package).

Again, the recipe is super simple. I used a can of Northern White beans because I hadn’t planned far enough in advance to use dried ones. Toss in a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary, cover, and bake for about 20 minutes. While that is heating, toss the bacon (chopped in narrow strips) into a hot pan and cook for about 3 minutes. Add a bit (1/4 cup for the 2 slices of bacon I used) of canned tomatoes (ideally San Marzano’s… my normal San Marzano’s run about $6.99 for a 32 oz can… but I found some for only $2.99 which were still very good) and a splash of olive oil. Season to taste with salt, black pepper and chile flakes if desired. Once the beans are hot, gently stir in the tomato sauce.

On the side, I made some steamed asparagus with a bechamel sauce on toast. This sauce is absolutely luxurious without being at all pricey. It’s simply milk, butter and flour (with a bit of seasoning). Warm the milk (about a 1/2 cup) and set aside. In another pan, make a roux of butter and flour (equal portions of each… a little less than 1 tablespoon for the amount of milk I used). Cook on low for a few minutes stirring constantly. You don’t want it to brown like you would a roux for a gumbo. Then, add in the warmed milk and stir until smooth (you can stir in more milk, a little at a time, if you want it to be thinner). It should be like velvet. Add salt and pepper to taste (a little nutmeg is a nice addition too).

This amount was far more sauce than I needed for my 6 pieces of asparagus ($1.99 per pound right now!). In fact, I really made far too much food for this dinner entirely… and Cam got to eat the left over 1/2 of beans when he got home from his trip late last night. Not bad for $2.80.
Adding everything up, plus this morning’s breakfast of Oatmeal ala Philip (except with nutmeg in place of the cinnamon and a half pear instead of the raisins), I’m currently at $20.53 for the week, just a few cents below my budget. Tonight’s dinner is posole, which looks like it might push my budget some, but I’m making it for 2 of us and I’m expecting there will still be left-overs that I can polish of for Friday’s lunch.

Coincidentally, as I was leaving Madison Market yesterday getting bulk stuff to replace the stuff I had been using from my pantry, I picked up a copy of Real Change. The story on the front cover? “A bigger slice of the pie: Activiest Joel Bert on food snobbery, class bias and the persistence of hunger in America” If you get a chance, help someone out by picking up one of these papers, and take a read of that article which I found particularly relevant this week… and has given me even more to think about.

Roasted chicken with a herby-salt rub ($1.09 for free range drumsticks), parsnips ($0.75) and creamy polenta ($0.71) with a smidgen of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that I licked the plate clean, and although it would have nice if there were something green on there, I think it was quite a lovely dinner for $2.55. It is also crazy easy to make… rinse and dry the chicken well, then dust with the herbed salt. I have a little tin of it that I keep by the stove whenever I need a little sprinkle, and it only comes to $0.07 per teaspoon (I used less than that on these two drumsticks). The parsnips just get thrown into the pan you use for the chicken along with a tiny drizzle of oil (I used grapeseed this time, but usually would use olive oil). Start roasting the parsnips at 400F about 15 minutes before you add the chicken to the dish. Then, add the chicken (sitting on top of the parsnips is fine) and roast until the juices run clear, about 30 minutes depending on the size of your chicken pieces. This is basically the same technique I use for roasting a whole chicken which I would have done this time too except I’m eating on my own this week. The benefit of the whole chicken (beyond being a bit cheaper) is that I also can just turn the carcass into stock.

For lunch today, I decided on an egg salad sandwich… a simple one with a vinaigrette instead of a mayo based dressing. In fact, it’s pretty much the same dressing that I had on yesterday’s salad… a bit of shallot, grapeseed oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. But this time I also added about 1/16th teaspoon of dried mustard and a few chili threads. Chili threads, if you haven’t seen them before, are amazing. They look quite a bit like saffron and pack a tiny little punch. A whole bag of them is only around $1, and that contains some crazy number of threads (somewhere around 2000 I’m guessing). I used about 5 in my egg salad.

The other thing you’ll probably notice here is the punch. I LOVE this punch and it’s one of the cheapest and simplest things you can make. It’s simply steeped dried hibiscus. You can set out a pitcher with the hibiscus petals in water and let it steep like you would sun tea (or, you can put the kettle on and start it off with hot water). If you like it sweetened, you can add a bit of sugar and lime like Matt does, but also I like it just as it is. It reminds me a bit of cranberry juice and is a lovely way to take a break from water.

My dinner plans tonight are still up in the air… but I did manage to find a lovely piece of Tilapia for a little less than $2 and I’m thinking about that with a simple risotto.

For those curious, here’s my running total so far:

Monday $7.12 Total
Macchiato $0.19
Bread (for the day) $0.72
Salad $2.19
Dressing $0.73
Apple $0.75
Polenta $0.71
Parsnips $0.75
Roast Chicken $1.08

Tuesday $2.44 Total
Macchiato $0.19
Bread (for the day) $0.72
Egg salad $1.23
Hibiscus Punch $0.30

As I started this challenge, I had high hopes of planning out each meal and meticulously documenting each step of the way. Well, it’s now Monday evening, and I’m afraid I’ve already blown that part. Although I have a rough idea of what I’ll be eating the rest of the week, I certainly don’t have what you’d call a plan. Not like many of the other participants. But, I do feel like I’m well on track for eating basically like I normally eat within the budget.

The day started out with my normal West Coast macchiato. I know, it’s a luxury, but it’s one that I can actually fit in the budget. Because I roast my own beans, my espresso only comes to about 20 cents and I only use about 2 tablespoons of milk. Don’t worry… I’m not fooling myself. I can only afford to make coffee that inexpensively because I have a crazy number of home appliances. I do have a nice espresso machine, burr grinder and even a coffee roaster that I would be very unlikely to have if I had been living below the poverty line for a significant period of time. Rules-wise within the challenge, using any home appliances is ok, although Cam and I have had several discussions about whether that’s truly living up to the spirit of the week. Finally, we agreed it was my one luxury item and called it good at that.

The other thing I should point out is that one of the rules was to not use any food you already had in your house. To me, this rule made no sense because one of the things that you’d have to do to make a budget like $7 per day work is to buy things like bags of flour and decent sized bottles of oil and vinegar (or bags of green coffee beans). Things that would be hard to go through entirely during the week of the challenge. I posted a comment to the UW hunger challenge blog asking if it was ok to use things that were already in your house if you accounted for them appropriately. The good news that came back was yes, it was fine to do that as long as you assigned everything a fair value. So, unlike some of the other participants, I’m not going to be showing a big pile of groceries that I bought for my $35. Instead, I’ll account for everything dish by dish in the portions used. Of course, I’ll also say that for me, I have a whole arsenal of bulk products that could make for a very diverse week of food… I’ll try to stick to the basics to keep within the spirit.

For breakfast, besides the macchiato I also baked up a 1lb loaf of bread and ate a couple of slices. Plain, no butter or jam. Just the bread… and you know what? It was awesome. I had picked up the “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” cookbook the other day and I have to say, despite my first cynical inclination to poo-poo it (it’s not really 5 minutes a day), I am now a huge fan. Although I do actually like to knead my bread, I also love the idea of always having bread dough at the ready in the fridge, building flavor, and ready to go at a minutes hours notice. Yes, it’s true. You do need at least an hour to go from the refrigerated dough to the lovely, crisp crust and custard center… but really, that’s not asking for much. The bread is really good and I still have dough for somewhere between 4 and 5 loaves humming away nicely that can wait up to about 14 days. The thing I really like about the bread (which is basically the same as the no knead bread recipe that has been around the net for forever now) is it is something that anyone can do. It doesn’t take much fancy equipment (a pizza stone of a cast iron pot is nice, but not a requirement) or special ingredients or even very much active time (most of the time is spent just waiting around for the dough to do it’s thing). The author’s have a blog so you can get even more insights to their recipes.

One thing I’ll say as I was baking up the bread… bread baking can be a tricky thing. And, on a budget, that can be rather intimidating. What if something went wrong and the bread was just a big hard lump? I don’t get to just “do over” without giving up something else. Living on a tight budget means being careful of risks, something that I realized I have a luxury of whenever I cook. If the dough doesn’t rise or the veggies get burned or the dog eats the chicken… well, I just start over.

OK. On to lunch. (really, you are still reading! Thanks!!!) I don’t normally eat lunch (or breakfast beyond my coffee for that matter) but instead just nibble away at things as I pass in and out of the kitchen. A bag of nuts on the counter. A piece of fruit or cheese. A leaf or two of arugula as I pass it in the garden.

Today, I decided to stick with the rules of the challenge and make a simple salad. I had a head of butter lettuce from my CSA (btw - anyone need anything from a CSA this week? Because I can’t eat most of it within budget… tweet me and let me know) and used about 1/2 of it, along with some shredded carrot and a simple vinaigrette of shallot, lemon juice, salt, pepper and grapeseed oil. Another slice of bread rounded it out, and I enjoyed it all while sitting in the sun on this beautiful day in Seattle. Yum! Maybe I’ll have to try this whole eating lunch thing more often. I got so excited about the whole sitting down and eating lunch thing, I decided to make a dessert of lunch as well… simple caramelized apples.

Simply cut an apple in half, scoop out the seeds and dust it lightly with sugar. Normally, I’d use a bit of cinnamon too, but that starts to make the budget math even harder so I left it out this time. Heat up about 1 teaspoon of butter in a small frying pan and place the apple cut side down and place it in a preheated 350F oven. Cook for about 10 minutes in the oven, and then move it to the stove top. Cook on medium high until the cut side is a lovely and caramelized. I left it off this time, but I like these with a little squeeze of lemon juice.

Of course, I still have dinner ahead of me. I’ll post about that (along with total $ of everything from Day 1) tomorrow. It’s also not too late to join in! Even if you can’t do the whole week, trying for a day or two to help raise awareness is great.

What’s going on is a freezer that is still somehow full of frozen berries, and a spring that will soon be turning to summer bringing a whole new crop. The berries have held up really well, but we also just ran out of jam, and well, those berries really do need to be used.

To start with, I made a batch of blackberry orange scones to help my friend Lorna with her upcoming cookbook. Yum! Anything that Lorna touches is delicious. I’m lucky enough to get to photograph her for Seattle Magazine every month or two and get a sneak peak to her upcoming recipes (like this farro soup), and I’m quite jealous of her photographer, Kathyrn Barnard, for her cookbook! (Kathyrn’s work is absolutely stunning)

Anyway, back to that jam. The other thing I’ve had in a cool spot in my kitchen for no particularly good reason is a lovely kabocha and a plump acorn squash. I had a friend visit the other day and she remarked “hey, you always seem to have squash!” It’s true. I buy them, usually with the intent to photograph them. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes they just sit there. Today, along with my freezer cleaning, I decided to do something with that squash.

Luckily I knew just the thing. Late last summer, Cam came home from a trip raving about this raspberry pumpkin butter our friend’s mother had made. Now winter squash and raspberries sounded like a pretty odd combination to me, but I was willing to give it a try when for Cam’s birthday, our friend made him two jars, also included the recipe which she translated from German. The jam, which was actually translated into “marmalade” in the recipe, but which I have since dubbed “butter”, gets a rich creamy, and, well, buttery, sumptuousness from the squash and a lovely sweet-tart from the raspberries (and a touch of lemon). We pretty quickly ate our way through those two jars, and we’ve been pining for it since.

So today, the procrastination ended, and I finally got around to making my own batch.

This jam comes together amazingly quickly, thanks to the thickness of the pumpkin. You can use any sweet winter squash (I wouldn’t make it entirely with acorn since it isn’t all that sweet… but it was quite nice blended along with the kabocha). The recipe directs you to peel the squash first. But I really hate peeling squash. So, instead, I cut them into quarter slices, scrapped out the seeds and steamed them for about 15 minutes until they were soft. Then, it’s super easy to simply scoop out the flesh.

Beyond that, there isn’t much to this recipe. Put everything (bits of pumpkin, raspberries, lemon juice) in a pot and let it stew. Add a bit of water if it seems to dry. Until when? oh, til it’s done. That’s about as specific as the original recipe gets! I cooked mine until the squash and raspberries just barely had a shape. Then whir it all up with a hand-blender until it’s nice and smooth (you don’t want any squashy stringy bits), and then add sugar to taste. I also added just a little bit of vanilla extract. Stick it back on the stove, stirring, until it is the desired thickness (it probably will only be about 5 minutes).

Then, jar it up! Or, if you are like me, just start spreading the warm gooey stuff right on a piece of handily waiting toast.

Now that the jamming is out of the way, I’m starting to plan my meals for next week. I don’t usually plan that far ahead, but The United Way of King County is challenging us to think about hunger locally by participating in Hunger Action Week by spending 5 days eating on $7 per day, the amount a single person can receive on basic food subsidies (food stamps). As someone who is surrounded by food almost all the time, it’s going to be an interesting challenge for me (esp since food you already have in the house is not to be included… no jam for me!), but one that I’m committed to doing.

You can find out more about the challenge on the United Way site.