Saving money, the saga continues

From our What's Cooking Tonight file:
One-pot Irish Cabbage
This simple dish is more suited to winter, but it will work on a cool, spring night. It's as frugal as a feast can be.
1 head green cabbage, cored and roughly chopped
1 onion, diced
1 slice of bacon, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon of butter
Toss everything in a Dutch oven; cook about 10 over low-medium heat, stirring occasionally to combine everything well and until the cabbage is tender. Cover, add 1/4 cup water, then turn heat to low and let it braise another 20 minutes or so. Adjust seasoning.

Growing herbs, some experts' advice

Our herb garden has been churning along this spring, and the beauty of freshly chopped cilantro cannot be overstated. The flavor is incredible; the dried version is a poor, faded imitator, at best.

For folks not steeped in herb growing (and beyond some sage, rosemary and oregano, I wasn't either), the Old Farmer's Almanac has a list of herbs and how to get started.

Equally important: The nation's foremost and oldest gardening authority has passed along some recipes, as well. Among them:

Herb Olive Bread
Yield: 2 loaves
From The Notchland Inn, Harts Location, NH
Sponge:
2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons dry yeast
2 cups bread flour
1/3 cup chopped herbs
Whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl. Let sponge rise until it has doubled in bulk, about 30 to 60 minutes.
Dough:
3-1/2 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup green and Kalamata olives, drained well
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixer bowl, swirl the ingredients with a dough hook. Add sponge and mix 8 to 10 minutes on very low speed, or knead by hand.
Let dough rise again until it has doubled in bulk, punch it down, and turn out onto a counter or large cutting board.
Grease a cookie sheet. Shape dough into long baguettes the length of your cookie sheet, about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Slash and let rise again, 15 to 30 minutes. Bake about 30 minutes.

Chicken on the cheap

Tightening the family food budget means relying on some unsung heroes of the kitchen. Specifically, ingredients that have been seen as the poor relations of their flashier cousins: chicken thighs and legs.

While the U.S. has been eating chicken breasts at an amazing rate in the past 10 years, consumers haven't figured out the other part of that equation. To get the breasts off a chicken, two thighs and two legs must come off, too. Ergo, the "scraps" from that walking chicken breast -- the thighs and legs -- are sold at a much, much lower cost than the coveted breast meat.

Check out your poultry section at the grocery. Breasts are far more expensive than thighs and legs, which are far more expensive than buying a whole chicken and cutting it up yourself at home (that's another story, though).

Many recipes are better when cooking with thighs and legs. The bones add flavor. The darker meat is less apt to dry out.

And did we mention that they're way cheaper?

Several years ago, a friend and I took a class (maybe two?) at the New Orleans School of Cooking in the French Quarter. It was fun, and the school sent along some recipes this week that use the other parts of the chicken.

Even those who have never had the privilege of visiting New Orleans likely know – and have enjoyed – two of the region’s most celebrated dishes: gumbo and jambalaya. These classic New Orleans dishes are steeped in history, a culmination of a variety of cultures that converged in Louisiana beginning in the 18th century.

While gumbo and jambalaya are distinguishable in their cultural origin – one is Creole, the other Cajun – both are thick, one-pot meals meant to serve a crowd. Gumbo and jambalaya make use of the classic Louisiana cuisine “holy trinity” – a combination of chopped onions, green peppers and celery – that forms the backbone of flavor that distinguishes many traditional New Orleans dishes.

The meals are often thickened with a roux, a combination of a fat and flour cooked to a varying degree of brownness, depending on the dish. However, Cajun and Creole dishes may also be thickened with file powder, made from ground sassafras leaves, or okra, a vegetable of African origin used throughout the South.

Gumbo, a stew or soup made with chicken and/or shellfish, is often classified as a Creole dish, a distinctive cuisine developed in New Orleans with European and African roots. The French cooking techniques are strongest in Creole cooking, but the flavors of the dishes are often an indiscernible mix of cultural influences from Africa and Native and Latin America. Creole food stands out for its rich sauces, use of local herbs, tomatoes and other indigenous ingredients. The cuisine also uses butter and cream – giving it the reputation of being more elegant and served in City restaurants and hotels.

By contrast, jambalaya is often classified as Cajun (while there is a Creole-style version that makes use of tomatoes and offered as an option in this version). Cajun cuisine is often distinguished by its robust and hearty one-pot meals that are often served over rice. Cajun food is a combination of French and Southern cuisines and is a more “down-home” or “country-style” of cooking.

Cajuns are the descendents of French-speaking inhabitants who came to Louisiana from Acadia – what we now call Nova Scotia. These immigrants absorbed the culture of Native and African Americans combining them with their own – creating a distinctive Cajun culture. Jambalaya is, essentially, a New World version of paella.

A combination of chicken parts is browned in oil with sausage. Then the classic “holy trinity” of vegetables, also used to make gumbo and many other New Orleans dishes, is sautéed until tender and full of flavor. Unlike gumbo, rice and liquid are added directly to the pot and cooked much like Spanish paella. The dish is finished with chopped tomatoes and green onions, if desired.

In New Orleans, it is tradition to welcome friends with good food and drink. Add these classic Creole and Cajun dishes to your repertoire, and you’ll have two great meals for an intimate gathering or for a crowd. For more information, contact:

New Orleans School of Cooking
524 St. Louis Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
(800) 237-4841

Chicken Gumbo

Serves 4

2 pounds chicken parts, cut up

4 TBLS vegetable oil for sautéing
6 ounces Andouille sausage
Roux:
4 TBLS vegetable oil
4 TBLS flour
Trinity:
1 cup diced onion
½ cup diced celery
½ cup diced green pepper
1 tsp chopped garlic
2 cups chicken stock
1 TBS each fresh thyme, parsley

½ tsp salt, or to taste
½ tsp fresh ground pepper, or to taste
½ cup chopped green onions
For Serving:
File**
4-6 cups cooked rice

Warm oil in a large shallow pan or Dutch oven. Add chicken and brown over medium heat. Add sausage to pot and sauté with chicken. Remove both from pot and reserve.

In same pan, heat oil for roux. Add flour and cook over medium low heat until flour is desired color – the darker the roux, the darker the sauce. Add onions, celery, and green pepper. Add garlic to the mixture; stir continuously. When vegetables reach desired tenderness, about 7-8 minutes, return chicken and sausage to pot and cook with vegetables, continuing to stir frequently. Gradually stir in liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for an hour or more. Season with Cajun seasoning, adding 1 teaspoon at a time to taste. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Approximately 10 minutes before serving, add green onions. Serve gumbo over rice or without rice, accompanied by French bread.

Chicken Jambalaya

Serves 4-6

1 – 1 1/2 pounds chicken parts, cut up
2 TBSP vegetable oil
¾ pound sweet Italian link sausage, sliced in ¼ inch rounds
Trinity:
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
2 tsps chopped garlic
2 ½ cups chicken stock

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 TBS each fresh thyme and parsley

2 cups long grain rice
½ tsp salt, or to taste
½ tsp fresh ground pepper, or to taste
1 cup chopped green onions and/or tomatoes (optional)

In large Dutch oven, warm oil. Add chicken and sauté over medium high heat until browned. Add sausage to pot; sauté with chicken. Remove both from pot.

Add onions, celery, green pepper and garlic; sauté until tender, about 9-10 minutes. If making red jambalaya, add paprika. Return chicken and sausage to pot. Add stock (or stock and tomato juice, or Bloody Mary mix if making red jambalaya) and Cajun seasoning and bring to a boil.

Add rice and return to boil. Cover and reduce heat to simmer. Cook 25 minutes. After 10 minutes of cooking, remove cover and quickly turn rice from top to bottom completely. Continue cooking for remaining time. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add green onions and chopped tomatoes, if desired.

Recipe may be adjusted depending on how many you plan on serving. But, keep these points in mind:

1 cup raw long grain rice will feed three people
1 cup rice to 1 cup of onion, ½ cup celery and ½ cup green pepper
1 cup raw rice to 1¼ cups liquid
Be sure to over season to compensate for the rice
Cook for a total of 25 minutes, turning completely after 10 minutes. However, if using an electric stove, reduce cooking time by 3-4 minutes

***For Red Jambalaya (see instructions in recipe body): add 1 TBSP paprika and substitute tomato juice, a good Bloody Mary mix, or vegetable juice for ½ of stock.

Coming in Wednesday's Your Table

A new, expanded food section comes to The Star tomorrow. We've gotten lots of questions from readers about how they can do more of their own cooking, as well as requests on how they can save money.

The result: The Community page that had been running on Wednesday has been turned into an expanded community news section on Saturday. That leaves more room for the world's most common denominator -- food.

In Wednesday's Your Table, there are more than a dozen recipes, ranging from salads to sweets. Prudence Hilburn dishes on strawberries, while Todd South's Check, Please column looks at the art of tipping at a buffet. Pat Kettles explains the finer points of wine un Uncorked. Restaurant inspections and Mother's Day gifts wrap up the section nicely.

Enjoy. And remember that life's too short to eat bad food.

Plastic bag anniversary

The folks of Modbury, on the Devonshire coast in England, have just finished their first year of banning plastic grocery bags in their town. The result: The village hopes to turn the rest of the world away from the bags that clog waterways, end up in the stomachs of sea creatures and create a blight on any landscape they're used in.

The campaign started with a BBC producer's trip to Midway Atoll, where thousands of birds had died from ingesting bits of plastic. She went home, to her home village, and convinced the merchants to give plastic the heave-ho.

A year later, the reports from Modbury are good and available online at plasticbagfree.com While most storeowners switched to compostable-biodegradable bags made from cornstarch, even more shoppers decided they'd just take their own re-usable canvas bags to the stores with them.

This bag-free revolution was joined recently by Whole Foods and Wild Oats market.

Mr. Robbins of Baskin-Robbins dies

The man who helped build the 31-flavor craze at ice cream store Baskin-Robbins has died at age 90.

Irvine Robbins died Monday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Daughter Marsha Veit says he had been in ill for some time.Generations of kids trooped to Baskin-Robbins stores to buy ice cream flavors like Pralines ’n Cream, Daiquiri Ice and Pink Bubblegum.

Robbins opened his first ice cream store in Glendale, Calif., in December 1945, following his discharge from the Army.Robbins offered 21 flavors at that store. His brother-in-law, the late Burton Baskin, opened his own ice cream store in neighboring Pasadena a year later. The two eventually joined forces.

-- Thanks, AP

Don't have a cow, man?

Food contests sprout like mushrooms after the rain. Here's another one -- and it's got legs.

La Cense grass-fed beef is looking for the best slogan to talk about, well, grass-fed beef. The contest, Win a Grass-Fed Cow, is online now. (Yes, technically we'd call them 'steers,' but you get the picture.) Prizes range from a beef and a freezer down to premium cuts for whoever turns in the best slogan.

The contest runs through May 31. Grand prize: 50 pounds of beef and a new freezer to hold it all.

La Cense is based on a monster (88,000-acre) ranch in southwest Montana, in business since 2002. The land has been used as a ranch since the 1860s. The beef is grass fed (meaning the animals haven't been raised on a feedlot). The animals have received no hormones, antibiotics or other artificial treatments. Even their drinking water is from a spring.

Need an ice cream sojourn?

Just an hour on the other side of Chattanooga, the folks in Athens, Tenn., are getting ready for their first run at a National Dairy Festival.

MooFest will be May 31 and is an all-day event (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.) set to glorify ice cream (oddly enough, Mayfield Dairy is a prime, prime sponsor).

In additon to food, music and standard Southern festival happenings, there are recipe contests (go online for entry information) ice cream scoop stacking contests, tours of the ice cream plant and a slew of other things. Not to be missed is the chance to be named the best milker of MooFest.

Athens is on I-75, exits 49 and 52, about an hour on the other side of Chattanooga, making it a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour (sorry), from Calhoun County.

New twist on singles cheese

The idea of food products as dietary supplement delivery devices gets another evangelist this spring: BordenEssentials is among the first packaged cheese to provide consumers with asource of antioxidants.

The products were introduced by Dairy Farmers ofAmerica, Inc., which represents more than 18,000 dairy farmers.

Antioxidants are molecules that protect cells from the damage caused byfree radicals, which are formed through a process called oxidation.Antioxidants, such as beta-carotene, lycopene, and vitamins A, C and E,interact with and stabilize free radicals.Borden Essentials contains vitamins A and E. One serving of BordenEssentials contains 20 percent of the recommended daily value of eachvitamin based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Two varieties of Borden Essentialsare distributed nationally:• 2% milk singles – 16 individually wrapped slices in a 10 2/3-ouncepackage• Mozzarella string cheese – 12 individually wrapped sticks, low-fatpart-skim, in a 10-ounce package.

Recipes and a list of stores where Borden cheese products are sold can be found online.

Super Apple-Ham-n-Cheese Melt

Makes 1 sandwich

2 slices whole-grain bread

Butter

Honey-mustard

2 Borden Essentials singles

2 slices deli ham

Thinly cut apple slices

SPREAD 1 side of each slice of bread with butter. Spread other side of eachslice of bread with honey-mustard.

LAYER cheese, ham and apple on honey-mustard side of bread. Top withremaining slice of bread, honey-mustard side down.

COOK in skillet over medium heat, turning once, until golden brown andcheese is melted.

Per sandwich:• 17g protein• 46% DV vitamin A• 40% DV vitamin E• 110% DV calcium

Guide to Hispanic Cheeses

We're starting to see a larger variety of Mexican/Hispanic cheeses available locally. Here's a guide, compliments of the California Milk Board:

The Fresh Cheeses:
Hispanic-style cheeses fall into two general categories – fresh and aged. Fresh, or unripened, cheeses are very young cheeses that have not been allowed to age. Typically, the fresh Hispanic-style cheeses are soft, moist and white or off-white in color and have the delicious flavor of fresh milk. Like milk, these fresh cheeses must be kept in the refrigerator until used. They have a shorter shelf life than aged cheeses and carry a freshness date on the package. (Unlike aged cheeses, such as Jack or Cheddar, it’s better to discard them if you have left them sitting out for an hour or two, rather than rewrapping them for later use.)

A special characteristic of many of the fresh types of Hispanic-style cheeses is that they hold their shape during cooking. When heated, they soften but do not melt. For this reason they are often used as fillings or toppings in recipes. Most also serve as a seasoning because they have a salty flavor that ranges from mild to pronounced. This must be considered when adding salt and seasonings to recipes. Following are descriptions of several popular fresh Hispanic-style cheeses, or queso (keh-so):

Queso Fresco (Keh-so Fres-co) – The most popular Hispanic-style cheese. It is soft and quite moist with a mild, slightly salty flavor similar to Farmers cheese. It does not melt and is often used as a topping or filling in cooked dishes. Queso Fresco may be called Adobera when sold in very large pieces.

Queso Blanco Fresco (Keh-so Blan-co Fres-co) – Also called Queso Para Freir (Keh-so Pa-ra Fre-eer), or cheese for frying. A firm, moist cheese used in cooked dishes. As its name implies, it is often fried because it holds its shape under heat. It is also good crumbled onto fruit, beans and salads. And, like the following cheese, Panela, it is a delicious snacking cheese.

Panela (Pah-neh-la) – Mild and moist with a sweet, fresh milk flavor. It has a firm texture similar to a fresh Mozzarella and does not melt, so it is often used in cooked foods. It is also good in sandwiches and salads, as well as with fruit. Its distinctive uneven surface texture results from the round basket in which the cheese is drained while it is being made.

Queso Blanco (Keh-so Blan-co) – A white, mild, creamy cheese similar to a mild Cheddar or Jack and used in much the same way. It also melts like those cheeses.

Oaxaca (Wa-ha-ka) – A mild, firm white cheese with a sweet milk taste and an appearance similar to Mozzarella. It looks like a braided or rolled ball and is said to reflect the braided silver crafted in the town of Oaxaca, Mexico, from which this cheese originates. It is used as is or in cooked foods, as you would Mozzarella.

Asadero (Ah-sah-deh-ro) – A mild, firm cheese molded into a log and sold sliced. It has a slightly tangy taste like Provolone. It melts well and is used in such dishes as quesadillas and nachos. It also is a wonderful cheese on hamburgers and sandwiches. Note that Asadero comes in processed, as well as natural, cheese versions.

Requeson – Similar to Ricotta in that it has a soft, grainy texture and a fresh milk taste. It is used much the same way – in salads, dips, cooked foods and desserts.

The Aged Cheeses:
California cheesemakers produce a number of aged, semi-firm and firm Hispanic-style cheeses. All are at least slightly aged, and some are aged quite a while to make them hard and crumbly. A few of these, like the fresh cheeses, will soften but not melt when heated or used in cooked dishes. But others are excellent melting cheeses noted for the rich, creamy taste and texture they add to cooked foods. The aged cheeses can be stored in the refrigerator much longer than the fresh varieties. You should handle and store like Jack or Cheddar or like Dry Jack in the case of the very dry types. Following are some popular types of aged cheese:

Menonita (Me-non-ita) – A mild, smooth white cheese that is similar in taste and uses to Gruyère or Gouda. It is a good snacking cheese and can also be used just like Gouda in recipes.

Manchego (Mahn-cheh-go) – Derived from the famous cheese of La Mancha, Spain, where it is traditionally made from sheep’s milk, the California version is made from cow’s milk. This firm golden cheese has a mellow flavor similar to a slightly aged Jack but is nuttier. It is delicious as a snacking or sandwich cheese or to serve to guests with fruit and wine. It melts well in cooking.

Cotija (Ko-tee-hah) – Named after the town of Cotija in Mexico, this firm, very salty cheese is similar to Feta in many respects. Moisture content will vary by manufacturer, ranging from semi-firm to very firm, although all versions are crumbly. It can be used in a similar way to Feta – in cooked foods, especially crumbled and sprinkled over soups, salads and beans.

Cotija Añejo (Ko-tee-hah An-ye-ho) – A version of Cotija that has been aged longer (Añejo means aged). Some manufacturers call it Queso Añejo, or simply, Añejo. As the name implies, it is fairly hard and dry and is a mainstay of Mexican cooking, often crumbled over dishes. It has a salty flavor and can be grated and used like Parmesan or Dry Jack on salads and cooked foods.

Enchilado (En-chee-la-do) – Also called Enchilado Añejo, this dry, crumbly white cheese is similar to Cotija Añejo but distinguished by its colorful reddish appearance, the result of a coating of mild red chili or paprika which adds a slightly spicy flavor. Crumble or slice onto Mexican foods, soups and salads. In cooked dishes, it softens but does not melt.

Note: The names given here are the most common names for these cheeses. However, it is not uncommon for a Hispanic-style cheese to be called by more than one name. Also, some cheesemakers may sell a cheese under a proprietary name that is different from that commonly used. In most cases, however, the names given here will be included on the package.