Ahhh, if only we in the northeast were not denied our beach time this year. It's been a rainy and dismal summer here in New England, the break finally coming at the tail end of July, at which time, JR and I - along with JR's entire family - traveled to my brother-in-law's house in Vermont for a surprise-birthday-party-slash-family-reunion. My brother-in-law, whose birthday it was, hosting - unbeknownst to him - until we all emerged from the dark, screaming "surprise!", when he stepped out of his car on that Friday night. At least when it's family, it's generally not considered breaking and entering, which is nice.
JR's niece and her husband supplied the clams for the all-day food fest on that Saturday. The fire pit blazed, sullying her white enamel pot - overflowing with clams, all 15 pounds of them - with soot so thick we were sure it would never come clean. Do not underestimate the ability of enameled pots to come clean or the determination of their owners to scrub them spotless. The clams, the likes of which have not graced my plate in over a year, were plump and sweet - the whole family stood, dripping butter from their fingers - we're a classy lot, we are - and groaning loudly as we polished off all but a handful of clams. Then we all moved slowly - possibly even gingerly so as to not awaken the angry-stomach gods - to our chairs around the fire pit and then groaned when a slew of side dishes appeared on the card table stationed a few feet from the fire.
It is easy to be gluttonous at a family party, particularly when someone aside from this financially embarrassed gal is paying, but the clams left me wanting more seafood, which, you may have noticed, does not make many appearances on this here blog. In fact, the last seafood JR and I had was Maine shrimp, and that was in January - seven long months between the shrimp and the clams.
I do love seafood - if it wasn't clear enough from the face-filling tale of the clams - however, to purchase seafood that is sustainable, you're going to spend a little bit more. And it's important to me that sea creatures abound long after I am gone, so I try to purchase only that which I know is sustainable. Lucky for us, then, that catfish was on sale last week at Whole Foods, and that two filets only weigh in at 12 ounces or so, which means that I was able to score seafood for dinner for a mere $5.34. It was actually hot as well - a surprise, given the way the weather has been to this point - so I made a quick salsa to go with it, and that was that. I'm still dreaming little dreams of clams, and when I see them on sale, clams I shall buy, but the catfish satisfied the non-shellfish craving, for we all know that summer is for seafood. And sun.
4 (5 to 6 ounce) U.S. farmed catfish filets
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
Salsa:
1 mango, peeled, pitted, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 medium Vidalia or sweet onion, approximately 1/2 pound, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1 (15 ounce) can black beans or kidney beans, drained and rinsed
the finely grated peel and juice of one lime
1/4 cup cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil for frying
Rinse and pat the catfish filets dry. Combine the flour and chili powder on a dinner plate or large shallow dish, such as a pie dish, and season with salt and pepper. Coat the filets with the flour mixture and transfer to a 9 by 13-inch rimmed baking sheet until you're ready to fry the bad boys up. If it's going to be a minute or two, place them into the refrigerator until the oil is hot.
Combine the mango, onion, garlic, jalapeno, black beans, lime peel, and lime juice in a large bowl. Add the cilantro, stir to combine, and let sit until serving time. Unless that serving time is tomorrow, in which case, you should cover and refrigerate the salsa immediately.
Heat the oil in a large non-stick sauté pan or well-seasoned cast iron pan. Working in batches, fry the fish until golden brown on each side, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain excess oil. Once all four filets are cooked, serve each one forth with one-quarter of the mango salsa.
Estimated cost for four: $17.20. This dish is a bit of a splurge, but, hey, summer is short, and you deserve a treat every once in a while. The catfish was on sale for $6.99/pound, and you'll use approximately 1 1/2 pounds, so that costs $10.50. The regular price is $8.99, so if you bought them while they were not on sale, they would run you $13.50. The flour costs 6-cents, the chili powder around 10-cents. The mango costs $1.99, the onion approximately 50-cents, the garlic 10-cents, the jalapeno is around 50-cents. The beans cost 99-cents, while the lime cost us 50-cents, and the cilantro would be approximately 1/2 of a supermarket bunch costing $1.99, so that adds another dollar. The olive oil for frying costs 96-cents.
Dinner tonight: Honey Mustard-Cider Marinated Pork Spare Ribs, More Coleslaw, and Potatoes from the Garden. Estimated cost for two: $6.15. The pork ribs cost $3.99 per pound. We'll use close to a pound, as JR can eat the leftovers for work lunch on Monday. The marinade costs $1.56, and the brown sugar costs 16-cents, so that's $5.71, but we'll cut the price in half because we have those lunch leftovers we discussed, so that's $2.86. The coleslaw costs $1.79, with the second half of the 75-cent head of cabbage from the neighbor's front yard being used, and half of the two-dollar-and-eighty-two-cent dressing I made two days ago. I really want to call the potatoes free, and, as this is my blog, I think that's what I'll do. I found the potato seed starts - this is what I am going to call them, not "the long-forgotten farm stand potatoes that had developed eyes and long, shooting sprouts over the winter", which is what some others might have called them - and planted them this spring. The rainy weather hasn't done the crop all that many favors, and some of the potatoes are bit waterlogged and rotten, but others are just gorgeous. Of course, we don't discriminate, for we are eating on a budget over here, we are. We simply cut the nasty bits off of the water-weary potatoes and use the remainder, and we are so in love with our potato crop that we have dedicated ourselves to planting more potatoes next year. Only they will live outside the garden as potatoes suck the life out of the soil and cannot be planted in the same location for 3 to 4 years after they are harvested. Oh, but so much fun to dig up potatoes for dinner. And we don't even have children - children would love it, I'm sure. In any case, I highly recommend a potato patch - it's like digging for fresh, starchy treasure each night. After writing all of that, I feel a bit guilty about calling them free, and I suppose it's only fair for me to add in the price of purchased potatoes, so we'll add in one pound, plus some olive oil for coating before roasting those potatoes, so that's going to cost us around $1.50. When you dig the potatoes up out of your yard yourself, the total cost of this meal drops to $5.15.
During the summer following my kindergarten year, I walked the half-block from my house to the public library as frequently as my little 5-year old legs could manage, carrying piles of books to and fro. The library's children's room put on a reading challenge every summer - fill in the body of the centipede with the titles of the books you had read, and get a sparkly star for each completed centipede. I remember something about an ice cream cone gift certificate as well, and while that would have been quite the draw unto itself, I read for the sheer joy of it. Well, okay, also for the sparkly stars and the accolades from the librarian. And, perhaps, also for the ice cream cone gift certificate.
Since the time of sparkly stars, centipedes, and ice cream prizes, I have been enamored of books, and had always hoped to one day write one of my own. During my early 20s, I had a working title - and not much else, save for the horrifying oral history of my nascent television career - "The Malcontents". There was a subtitle as well, something along the lines of "Or The Life and Times of Disgruntled Young Professionals" or something similar. I think it was more clever than that, actually. At least, I'd like to hope so, seeing as that's all I had come up with. In any case, I'm sure you can guess the premise of said book.
Years passed by, and I busied myself with work - still a malcontent, but too busy to pull myself out of it long enough to write - and, lo, no book materialized on its own.
And then - quite suddenly, really - I found myself with so much less television work - um, like none - in October of 2008, that it seemed like it was finally time to start this blog. I had once, almost precisely two years earlier, when television work had also slowed down for me, thought that it would be a good idea to do a budget cooking blog, based around the tenets of cucina povera - the poor kitchen. Though the friends that I posed this idea to had all eaten at my house, and had all also purportedly enjoyed the food I made, the consensus was pretty much that no one was going to bother worrying about a food budget. Pshaw, silly television producer. And before I knew it, I was back to work, busier than ever, and this time, no blog magically appeared on its own. Until, of course, everyone else started having to worry about their food budget, too.
In November of 2008, I emailed my friends at Grub Street in Boston where I had taken a food writing class a few years earlier and let them know that I had started a food blog. This was something that the food writing instructor there had recommended to our class as something - a commitment - to get us writing more regularly. At the time, I could barely fathom writing down any of the recipes I made, so pressed was I for time. After receiving the email about my whoops-I-have-no-job-and-therefore-all-the-time-in-the-world-to-write-and-cook blog, Grub Street was kind enough to mention it in their newsletter. On the day after the newsletter had been sent, I received an email from a literary agent asking if we could discuss the potential for a book based on my blog.
It would be an understatement to say that I was excited. I called JR, but couldn't reach him. I called my youngest brother, but couldn't reach him. I called Ian, technically my nephew-in-law, for we had also discussed the possibility of a book based on the blog at the onset. I was nearly hyperventilating.
We discussed whether I did, in fact, need a paper bag, or if I could possibly just go for a walk and settle down before calling the agent. As it turns out, the walk worked out well - I didn't break into a sprint on the return portion - and I maintained my composure on the phone with the agent. I think, anyway.
Eventually, the agent became my agent. But only after I put together a book proposal between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Not having much of a clue about book proposals, I did the best I was able, soliciting advice from two author friends - now, that, I have to say, is a huge bit of luck, to have two author friends - and then submitted it to my not-yet-agent. She reviewed it with her editorial board, they decided to take it on, and then she submitted it to multiple publishers. We held conference calls with editors who were interested, and, finally, the book was bid upon by those editors.
During the pitch process, we had determined that four months would be a reasonable amount of time for me to write the book. In the end, it was just a smidge over four months, as I delivered the manuscript this past Monday. By the time I wrap up the photography, it will be exactly five months from the time the deal was made through final delivery, which is August 20. The book is due out next spring - May 2010. I'll be sure to keep you posted.
So, for the past four-ish months, I have been concocting budget recipes - 82, in fact. I start by thinking about flavors that I like, or an ingredient that I'd like to use, and then I build the dish around that flavor or ingredient. I'm not sure how other people do it, but this is my process, and while it may be boring to some, I'm guessing that there are one or two of you who might be interested. I then test the recipe, writing it down in my spiral notebook - that's it up above in that there picture - and if it works, I test it again. If it doesn't work, but shows promise, I tweak it, make it again, and then, if it is improved by the changes, test it again. As you might imagine, it's been a very busy spring and summer at my house, and I am thrilled to have finally written a book. Though perhaps not as dark and brooding a book as "The Malcontents", as food is quite a happy thing - especially when you can make high-quality food for not so much money.
Now that I'm back - to blogging, that is - I'll be sharing recipes for the late-summer bounty. JR and I are going as hyperlocavore as possible. As in, we're eating that which grows in our yard - which is about as local as it can get - as often as we are able. We have a decent-sized garden, and if I've managed to stave off the late blight on my tomatoes, there will be many a tomato dish to share. Last week, in the middle of the push to finish the manuscript, I stopped down to harvest over 130 green tomatoes, then stemmed them, and washed them all by hand to get rid of the late blight spores. Now they are ripening - I sure as heck hope so, anyway - in brown paper bags in my living room. It's quite the pretty picture - JR and me resting on the couch, scores of brown paper bags on top of our wood stove. We have also raised eleven meat chickens, which we will begin slaughtering this week - I'm right there with you, yikes - though I do intend to kill one myself. You can expect that I will then write about it, but, if chicken-gore doesn't pique your interest, I will also be making meals with garden-fresh food as well as preserving fruits and vegetables. I'm looking forward to it - maybe not the chicken-killing as much as the preserves and the garden-fresh food - and hope you are, too.
Dinner tonight: I've been craving a burger. And it's almost 90 degress out, so burgers it will be. Estimated cost for two: $8.56. I bought ground Black Angus for $5.45 - that's about 1 and 1/4 pounds. We will only use 1/2 pound of that, which is approximately $2.25. I'll freeze the rest for future burger cravings. I bought day-old Bolos Levedos - oh, how I love those sweet rolls - and being day-old rolls, they were discounted, so they cost $1.64 for 6. That's about 55-cents for 2 rolls. We are having bacon on these burgers, as well as avocado. The bacon cost $6.99/pound, two slices is approximately 2 ounces, so that's around 87-cents. The avocado cost $2.00. It would be a joke to say that there will be any avocado left after we snack on it while the burgers cook - with lime juice and kosher salt, of course. I guess I should add in the lime juice, then, and that's 50-cents. We will also have some cheese on these burgers, and that was on sale for $2.00 for 8 ounces, so we'll figure on an ounce of cheese each, so that's 50-cents. I am also making a coleslaw, and was fortunate enough to find a head of cabbage at my neighbor's farm stand for 75-cents. The dressing will cost $2.82. So, then, the coleslaw costs $3.57. We won't be able to eat even half of that, but we'll call it $1.79 just the same.
