I consider myself a good cook. At times, I consider myself a very good cook. So I am always annoyed when a dish doesn't come out well at all. I somehow feel like I should be able to see this kind of thing coming.

I made gnocchi last night, using not my normal recipe but the one in the French Laundry Cookbook. Now I am willing to believe that it is very good when prepared by TFL's chefs. Having eaten there once (and once I get re-employed, we'll be going back), I am willing to believe that every dish they make is a paragon of the genre. But they didn't come out very well for me. Maybe I made them too big (they were much bigger than normal), but they were just uninteresting.

I topped them with a lemon-chicken sausage, and grated Capricious cheese, and served braised celery as a side dish. All of that was good, but the gnocchi were just disappointing. We served it with the Ridge 2000 Lytton Springs Grenache, grenaches supposedly going well with things like sausage (or at least ones from the Southern Rhone do). Trying just some sausage and then some wine, I would have to agree; the grenache really amplified the spice of the sausage and made it fuller and more complex.

Costs:
Potatoes: $1
Sausage: $3.84
Cheese: $2.50 (the other half of the chunk I used last night)
Carrots (which I used as garnish after cutting them into tiny dice, or brunois): $.30
Celery and parsley were technically left over from making chicken stock
Total cost (before wine): $7.64
posted by Derrick at 11:55 AM

Last night, Melissa and I were going out, so I had to cook something cheap as well as fast.

I opted for omelettes. Before Melissa got home, I wilted some spinach I bought that day, and grated some Capricious goat cheese, which I also bought that day, in both cases at the Wednesday Civic Center farmer's market in San Francisco. Then, once she got home, I put together the omelettes as quickly as possible. I must say that for all the cooking I have done, I have never mastered omelettes. Oh, sure, I can make one, but the ideal omelette is just a creamy yellow, and mine always have some brown on them. The brown is getting lighter and ligher however, so perhaps one day I will produce the perfect omelette.

Costs:
Eggs in pantry, but at $.20 per egg, we can estimate their cost at $1.20 for 6 eggs
Spinach: $1
Capricious cheese: $2.50 (I bought a $5 chunk, but only used half of it, intending the rest for some point in the near future).
Total: $4.70
posted by Derrick at 10:52 AM

Well, last night I enjoyed the hospitality of friends so didn't have to worry about cooking.

However, if you remember the waffles I made the other day, I had a bunch of batter left over and so went ahead and made waffles and then froze them. In the past I have done this and used a microwave to reheat them. They are edible, but definitely lack something. But Melissa suggested toasting them, so I did that. They come out wonderfully. Thus I've been enjoying mid-day snacks for the last few days with leftovers.
posted by Derrick at 9:54 AM

Last night was the last of the roast chicken meat, this time coming from the wings. Now, the wings do not provide you with a ton of meat, so I had to stretch it a bit. I had a vague memory of once seeing savory baked apples, but I couldn't find the recipe, and didn't feel like experimenting. However, I had some walnuts from the farmer's market last Wednesday, some leftover rosemary from the rosemary sorbet I made, and some apples from that $3 bag I've been working through. These ingredients all pair so nicely that you should just be able to throw everything in the air and come up with a good dish. I also had some puff pastry (this is an inherent problem with me making puff pastry; once I make it, I want to use it, thereby defeating the purpose of having it on hand for last-minute dishes).

So I made beggar's purses stuffed with a chicken, walnut, apple, rosemary filling. Or, rather, I made blobs stuffed with all those things; they didn't shape the way I wanted. Still, Melissa thought they looked pretty. I also caramelized some onions we had around, and wilted some spinach I bought. To plate it, I placed one puff pastry bundle closest to me on the plate, and to its left put the spinach. Above that, I put the caramelized onions. I put the second puff pastry across from the first one, put more wilted spinach to its right, and put caramelized onions below that. I topped the whole thing with a sauce made from my demi-glace (from the last roast chicken) and the juice from one pomegranate. This was pretty good on its own, but got swallowed up by all the fat in the puff pastry.

We had some Pilsner Urquell beer, a Czech beer. It was quite good. Everyone always says that the Czechs make great beer, and this definitely had a lot of flavor and character.

Costs:
Chicken and rosemary left over. Most of the veggies below I had lying around, but I didn't buy them for other purposes, so I'll include their costs here.
Spinach: $2.55
Chives (for tying off the beggar's purses, which did not, incidentally, work): $.98
Apple: $.40
Onions: $.70 (I'm guessing)
Pomegranate: $.75
Walnuts: $.75 (roughly)
Puff pastry: $2 (I used a full sheet's worth, and it costs me $4 to make two sheets)
Total cost: $8.13
posted by Derrick at 9:21 AM

Sunday was quite the eating day chez nous. Frequent readers of this blog will note that I don't mention breakfast. This is because I don't usually eat it. Yes, yes. I know this is bad, but it's the truth. In fact, Melissa has noted that I have a distinct advantage when eating cheaply because I don't eat a lot. One meal a day is usually sufficient.

Nonetheless, I decided to make breakfast on Sunday. I've been developing a sourdough starter (my experience with said starter can be read in my other blog), and the cookbook I've been using to develop the starter has a recipe for sourdough waffles. It just took some pantry ingredients (flour, eggs, milk), and a little time. The batter is started the night before to let it ferment.

The waffles were quite yummy, and definitely worth making again, especially since they're so cheap. To top it, I made an apple compote. Apples, being in season, are very cheap; the two apples which went into the compote probably cost me $.75 or something like that (I bought a bag for about $3). Compotes are very easy to make. You bring 2 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar to a boil (stirring to dissolve the sugar as the water heats up). I also added cinnamon sticks. Then you dump in your diced fruit and keep boiling until tender. The time for this will vary depending on the fruit and how big your pieces are. For my large-diced Fuji apples, it took about 2-3 minutes. Once they're tender, strain out the fruit and put the liquid back over the heat (I re-added the cinnamon sticks, since they got strained out as well). Boil until reduced to about 1/2 cup. Pour that over the fruit. You'll have a thick syrup, well on its way to caramel. Spoon over whatever you want (ice cream is another good candidate). You can serve it warm or room temperature, but I always like it warm. It can be made a day in advance of when you want to use it (I threw it together that morning). I also heated up some honey to drizzle over the waffles.

So that was breakfast. But we're still working our way through the roast chicken from the other night. I decided to make a salad. Specifically, I wanted to make a bread salad (which has some Italian name), since I had the sourdough loaf leftover from Friday night. So I bought some greens at the Jack London Square farmer's market, and Melissa bought some carrots (she also bought tomatoes for herself). I took a page from the Zuni Café Cookbook, first toasting the bread cubes in the broiler and then letting them absorb some extra dressing I made for just this purpose. Then I cut the remaining half of the chicken breast crosswise to form neat little slices (except for the fact that the tenderloin--I think that's what it is--separated from the rest of the breast, so not as neat as they could have been), and then sautéed those just enough to get them heated through with a little color in them. Not enough to dry them out like last night.

I tossed the greens with the rest of the dressing (just a basic shallot vinaigrette), and then threw in some slices of dried apricots and tossed those. For plating the salad, I laid down the greens/apricots in the center of the plate, surrounded them with the toasted marinated bread cubes (around the edge of the plate), laid a few slices of the chicken breast on the top, and then scattered julienned carrots over the top. It looked very pretty, and it was one of those occasions where everything came together. All the flavors were in balance, and it was just a really good salad. Melissa also had some sautéed potato wedges and some salted tomato slices.

For dessert, I made an apple tart in puff pastry. Very easy. Cut out a circle from a sheet of puff pastry, roll it out nice and thin, and then lay apple slices in in some pretty spiral pattern (or not-so-pretty spiral pattern, if you're me). Fold the edges of the puff pastry over the edges of the apples, and then pinch in some decorative way. Then stick them in the freezer until they're ready to cook, well-wrapped in plastic wrap. Cook them at 425 for about 20-30 minutes (until they're done).

I make my own puff pastry because for the same price as those Pepperidge Farm sheets, I can end up with approximately the same amount of puff pastry, but better. Even the "quick" puff I usually make is pretty time-consuming, about a 2 1/2 hour process (though you're only working for about 30 minutes of that), but hey, it's not like I have to rush off to work. Then you just keep it in the freezer until you need it. With all the butter in it, it becomes pretty malleable pretty fast in a normal kitchen. And keep any scraps; they can be turned into palmiers at the very least.

Finally, I topped the apple tart with a rosemary sorbet. This was in Bon Appetit this month, and it caught my eye because it's a cheap froo-froo dish. I tried it and it's quite good. I wanted to add a little liquor, but all I had was creme de menthe. This worked fine flavor-wise, but it made the sorbet a vibrant pale green which was a little off-putting. One should use a more neutral, colorless liquor like vodka, but I didn't have around the house (you would think every unemployed person should have it in his/her pantry, but I don't). I might make some improvements on it; I'd like a deeper green color (not neon, mind you). Without the creme de menthe, it was a nice olive-green. With the creme de menthe, it looked like lime Jell-O.

A lot of food without buying a whole lot of stuff:

Waffles

Mostly pantry ingredients for the batter. Milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, butter.
Apples: $.75. Sugar for compote was in pantry.

Dinner

Chicken, bread, shallots, olive oil, vinegar and apricots all leftover or in the pantry.
Salad greens: $1.25
Carrots: $.50

Dessert

Sugar, creme de menthe in pantry
Apple for tart: $.40
Puff pastry: $1 (two sheets costs me about $4 when I make it, and I used half a sheet).
Rosemary: $1.39
Total new costs for the day: $5.29
posted by Derrick at 12:22 PM

After our dinner of roast chicken, we still had the full breast and wings to eat, so last night I made flatbreads bedecked with a salad of frisée, breast meat, and ginger and lime. The flatbreads were fairly easy, using only pantry ingredients (granted I had some plain yogurt in my refrigerator, which wouldn't normally be there but it was leftover from a dip I made on Halloween). For the chicken, I shredded half the breast and sautéed it to heat it up a little and caramelize it a bit. Unfortunately, this dried it out as well, but I had brined the chicken before I roasted it, so they were still good. I used frisée just because it looks so pretty; it's easy to do good presentation with it. The ginger and lime combination I recently had at a Thai restaurant. I'm sure I've had it before, but this time I really noticed it. Raw ginger cut into medium-size dice and small chunks of lime pair beautifully, and I've been eager to use them since I had it a week ago.

To present the dish, I laid down a flatbread, then the frisée, then the chicken, and then sprinkled lime and ginger on top. While everything was well-seasoned on its own, the entire assembly still needed some salt. Melissa and I both agreed that it also could have used some sort of sauce or other moisture. Peanut sauce is sort of obvious given the lime and ginger, but others might have worked as well. Given that the flatbread sat squarely (roundly?) in the middle of the plate, you could drizzle the sauce around it, over it, or make a pool of it, depending on your tastes.

For an appetizer, I sauteed chicken livers (I asked for the giblets on the roast chicken this time) with some garlic and spread it on some of the leftover bread, which I first toasted. I garnished the "bruschetta" with a bit of frisée for some color. It came out pretty well, especially given that I've never cooked any sort of liver before, though I have come to love various liver preparations in the last few years (foie gras, primarily). One sort of wants to know if they freeze well; one chicken liver does not give you very much, just enough for two people to enjoy as a small bite. And of course the chicken doesn't come with more than that.

Costs:
Mostly everything was in my pantry, but that includes yogurt, flour, milk and yeast.
The chicken and bread were leftover from the previous night. So that leaves:
Ginger, lime, and frisée: $1.91
posted by Derrick at 2:55 PM