Cooking an Old Hen, with Knefles

When we slaughtered the last of our broiler chickens towards the end of September, we also dispatched our two Cuckoo Marans hens at the same time. The Cuckoo Maran is a dual-purpose chicken, which means it divides its energies between laying eggs and putting meat on its bones. We found the legs on the Cuckoos quite sizable, though the breasts weren't all that much to write home about.  After butchering the birds into cuts, I put the carcasses into the freezer to save for making stock and rendered all the fat into schmaltz to use for sumptuous roasted potatoes and other vegetables. Given my penchant for frugality and the amount of meat the two Cuckoos yielded, I decided to try again to make old hen meat palatable.

I had tried the time-honored coq au vin recipe with a previous batch of hens to no avail.  Still, to buy myself some time, I let the cut up legs, wings, and breasts marinate in some cheap white wine in the fridge for three days.  Maybe this was excessively long for marinating, but I was hedging my bets as well as simply being too busy to get to it sooner.

I had ambitions for experimenting with several different methods for cooking the meat, but as it happened the one that I managed to execute worked out pretty well.  So I'll outline what did work.  I started with a few diced onions cooked in olive oil just until they were softened and then lightly seared the chicken parts in the same pan.  The onions and chicken went into a bowl with some of the white wine marinade (enough to come about halfway up the meat in the bowl) and then were cooked in my pressure cooker for 45 minutes, at about 10 pounds of pressure.  When that was done, the meat was reasonably tender, so I gave some thought to how I might use it.  And here we come knefles and to what I can only hope is a worthy divagation.

Chicken and dumplings is a time-honored American dish for good reason, and I felt like going in that direction.  But it was cold outside, and I wanted something a little denser than the light biscuits that feature in the classic southern supper.  So I thought of knefles, a culinary guilty pleasure of mine.  I found the recipe in a fortuitous reprint of a delightful old cookbook, Cooking With Pomiane.  The book is genteelly dated and well worth the read, more of a tour through a charming bit of culinary history than a cookbook for our times.  But the recipe for knefles has proved an exception and earned a place in my kitchen repertoire.  They're a sort of Gallo-Germanic pasta that would be considered an abomination by the Italians, which, I grant you, isn't saying much.  The Italians think that any deviation from the particular pasta of their own particular region results in something fit only for barbarians.  Knefles, which hail from the Alsace region, would be distinguished then by the unanimity with which Italians of every region would heap scorn upon them.

So what are knefles?  Just a rough dough made with flour, milk, and egg, then scooped up by the teaspoonful.  You knock the scoops of dough into boiling salted water as you make them one by one and cook for ten minutes.  That's it.  Sort of like gnocchi, or schupfnudeln, or spaetzle, but not really any of those things.  Knefles are easier to make and less refined.  You can sauce them when they're cooked, or add a little butter and cheese and bake them, or you can play around with them like I do.  I like to add lots of finely minced fresh herbs from the garden to the dough.  I'm fairly certain that it's incorrect, but I pronounce the K in knefles.  It reminds me of Roald Dahl's vermicious knids.  And how likely am I to run across anyone who could authoritatively correct my pronunciation?

To get back to my harvest meal, in this case I used knefles as replacements for the dumplings in chicken'n dumplings.  So I put some chicken stock on to boil with the remaining white wine from the marinade, threw in the onions that had pressure-cooked with the chicken cuts, added some thyme and made a batch of knefles with chives and garlic chives in them.  Here's the recipe, which can easily be doubled:


Knefles

1/2 pound (~230 g) flour (1 1/2 generous cups)
finely minced fresh herbs to taste (optional)
1 egg
about 1/2 cup (~24 cl) of milk

Combine the flour with the herbs if you are using them.  Mix in the egg and then enough of the milk to make a thick, shaggy dough that is just a shade too sticky to knead by hand.  Work the dough with a sturdy spoon for a few minutes in the bowl to develop texture.  Bring salted water or another cooking liquid to a brisk simmer just shy of full boiling and begin to shape the knefles.  Using the tip of a teaspoon scoop up a small hunk of the dough, only enough to cover about half the spoon.  Dip the spoon into the boiling water and knock it firmly against the rim of your pot.  The dough will fall into the water.  (Avoid the urge to scoop more dough and make bigger knefles.  The dough will expand anyway when cooked, and bite-sized knefles cook through better than large ones.)  Repeat until all the dough has been shaped and put into the water.  Stir the contents of the pot once very gently to detach the knefles from the bottom of the pan.  Cover the pan and adjust the heat so that the knefles cook at a steady simmer for ten minutes.  The knefles should have doubled in size and all be floating. Test for doneness the first time you make them, just in case you made them too big.  Then drain and sauce to your liking. Serve hot.

I cooked the chivey knefles in the chicken stock and wine, adding chopped garden carrots when they were halfway done.  While that cooked I took the chicken meat off the bones and tore it all into bite-sized pieces.  When the knefles were finished cooking I added the shredded chicken meat, some frozen peas and chopped parsley to the pot and let those ingredients just heat through.  This was all served up in a thoroughly non-photogenic mess.  What can I say?  The light in my kitchen sucks.  But the mess went down very nicely, very tastily indeed.  Since my childhood didn't equip me with nostalgia for chicken'n dumplings, I have to say that old hen'n knefles is a superior dish in my book.  This definitely counts as a harvest meal for us.  On our sub-acre lot we produced the hen, chicken stock, eggs, carrots, and all the herbs that went into the dish.  I happened to use purchased onions for the dish, but it could just as easily have been made with homegrown leeks.

An illicit glee invariably accompanies the preparation and consumption of a dish so comfortingly barbaric.  At least for me.  We always have the ingredients on hand, so it's sort of surprising that we don't indulge in them more often.  Knefles are about as cheap as anything you could possibly prepare at home.  Even a single batch makes more than two adults will eat as a side dish.  I sometimes save half the dough in the refrigerator and make the rest the next day.  The dough won't keep much longer than that, though surplus cooked knefles can be held in the fridge for a few days.  Put a little oil or melted butter on extras while they're still hot if you want to hold them; it will prevent them sticking to each other.  Cooked knefles can be pan-fried, but if you've refrigerated them try to bring them to room temperature first and cook them slowly and gently so they heat through without burning.  If you want to pan-fry freshly cooked knefles, spread them out to air dry for a few minutes so they'll brown a bit better.

If you make any similar sort of dumpling-y, comforting dish from flour, potatoes, or other starchy ingredients, I'd love to hear about it.  In detail, of course.

Autumn Harvest Meal: Philippine Rice & Egg

Rather a hectic day today. Contractors at work in the house. Husband needing a ride to the airport. A warmish day after the first frost of the season, and gardening tasks beckoning. I topped the Brussels sprouts today, which apparently will convince them to get busy building what sprouts they have set. I hope it works. The sprouts out there are mostly nubbins so far. This is what happens the first time you try to grow something.

But those tops I cut off...they look ever so much like cabbage leaves - no surprises there as they're all one big happy family. I brought them in and wondered what to do with them and the last two tomatoes I found hidden on a trailing tomato vine on the ground. There was sushi rice leftover from packing my husband some lunch to travel with. And of course there are always eggs from the girls.

So I decided to make a dish that is either traditional in the Philippines or else invented entirely by me on the basis of rumor and innuendo. I've never been to the Philippines, nor studied their cuisine, nor even known anyone of Philippine origin beyond the most cursory acquaintance. But I seem to remember hearing that they like to eat fried eggs over fried rice with garlic and red chili pepper flakes. This may be a figment of my imagination, or a misinterpretation, a mis-remembering, or whathaveyou. But nonetheless I adopted this dish and added quick cooked greens as a very easy dinner when the stars are all aligned. I've made it with beet greens and mustard greens. It's all good, as were these Brussels sprout tops. The tomatoes tonight were a novel addition.

Philippine(?) Fried Rice, Eggs, and Greens

Start with a clove or two of garlic, some chili pepper flakes, leftover rice and a generous bit of neutral cooking oil. Thinly slice the garlic and saute it for a minute or two in the oil over medium-high heat. Let the garlic begin to brown, but don't allow it to burn. Add a pinch of chili pepper flakes and then almost immediately the rice. Stir the rice around until it heats through, adding a dribble or two of water if the leftover rice is dried out. When it's warm, portion it out on the plates. Add a bit more oil to the pan and add some tender greens. Cook over medium-high heat, adding a bit of water if necessary to help them wilt. Sprinkle with salt or a dash of soy sauce. If the greens are from the cabbage family you may want to cover with a lid and let them wilt properly for a minute or two. When warm and wilted, add the greens to the plates alongside the rice. Finally, reduce the heat to medium and add just a touch more oil, if needed, to the pan. Fry one egg per person, adding a smidgen of chili pepper flakes and salt to the eggs as they cook sunny side up. When the eggs are cooked to your liking, add them over the greens and rice. Garnish with finely chopped scallions or chives if you have any.

I particularly like using leftover sushi rice for this dish as it adds a nice vinegar tang to the flavor profile. This isn't high brow food. It isn't food from my upbringing. But this is quintessential soul food on a chill autumn evening. The tops from the Brussels sprouts provided the perfect amount to serve just one tonight, and only one dirty pan. It hit the spot.

P.S. If you know anything about the Philippines' cuisine, please enlighten me.

Sour Milk Potato Biscuit-Muffins

We returned from Thanksgiving travels to find nearly a half gallon of milk had gone sour in our fridge. Over the summer I wrote about using up sour milk in a chocolate zucchini cake. Remember: sour milk won't make you sick, and it's a great baking ingredient. I have shredded zucchini in the freezer, but I didn't feel like making chocolate cake yesterday morning. I was more in the mood for something savory. So I whipped up a batch of impromptu sour milk biscuit-muffins.

I'm a scavenger in the kitchen, in terms of both recipes and ingredients. Besides the sour milk, I had two items I wanted to use up: leftover mashed potatoes and an abundance of cheese in the fridge. So I looked at two different biscuit recipes, one using sour milk, the other using mashed potatoes and cheese, and combined them willy-nilly. Then I doubled the recipes since I had a lot of sour milk to use up. Here's what I came up with.

Sour Milk Potato Biscuit-Muffins

4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons cold butter (shortening would also work)
1 cup leftover mashed potatoes
1 ounce (about 1/4 cup) sharply flavored cheese, shredded or crumbled
2 cups soured milk (buttermilk would also work)

In a large mixing bowl I combined the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt until well blended. Then I worked in the cold butter with my fingertips until the pieces were very small. Next the leftover mashed potatoes and the crumbled cheese were stirred in with a spoon, and finally the sour milk was stirred in to bring the dough together. (My mashed potatoes had been made with cream and accented with scallions.)

This produced a soft dough that didn't look like it would roll out very well. One of the recipes called for cooking the biscuits in muffin tins, so that's what I decided to do. I greased two muffin tins and added scoops of dough with a large soup spoon. It was enough dough for almost two dozen biscuit-muffins. I put a few ice cubes in the one empty space of the muffin tin so that the grease in that one wouldn't burn. I think I could just as easily have scooped them with an ice cream scoop and baked them on baker's parchment on an open baking tray. I also think I could have added a good deal more cheese.

These were baked for 20 minutes in a 400F oven. Their irregularly textured tops browned up beautifully. I probably could have encouraged even better browning had I brushed the tops with a little extra sour milk before baking them.

They were very tasty just slightly cooled and eaten with an extra pat of butter! We each had to have two, and were tempted to have a third, with our morning cuppa. I now have another recipe in my arsenal to deal with sour milk, something which I simply threw out in my pre-frugality days. Incidentally, this would also be a good post-Thanksgiving recipe for using up excess leftover mashed potatoes.

Harvest Meal: Fusilli with Tuscan Kale in a Creamy Tomato Sauce

It's well into autumn here. We've had a little snow already. That only makes it more satisfying to still be eating out of our garden.

It was a little melancholy yesterday afternoon, to wander out to the garden, picking up a few stray groundfall apples from way high up in the tree, farther than our ladders would reach, and then to catch sight of the empty chicken pen. Our girls have gone to their winter home. We no longer have an imperative that drives us outside twice a day whether we feel like it or no. But there is still Tuscan kale in the garden, looking for all the world like miniature palm trees, clearly enjoying the chilly weather, and next to them the colorful rainbow chard. A little ways away the leeks stand, green bits akimbo, in a disheveled looking row. I tucked a good bit of hay around them yesterday, to keep the worst of the chill away from them. They'll be fine in their hay blanket for several weeks more at least. I counted 14 of them, and picked a fat one out for our dinner. I also snipped off a generous bunch of only lightly munched upon Tuscan kale leaves.


Inside, I blanched the kale to remove a few caterpillars and detritus, and rinsed it well. Then I began a pasta sauce based on sliced garlic sauteed in a little olive oil along with that fat leek, finely sliced up. While those softened in the oil, I finely diced the kale. That was then added to the garlic and leek with a jar of the roasted tomato sauce I canned this summer. -Four homegrown ingredients at the heart of our meal. When all sauce ingredients were warmed through, I added white pepper, salt, and about a cup of heavy cream. That simmered and reduced slightly as the pasta cooked. Once the fusilli were at the al dente point, and sauced with this vegetarian sauce, I added a generous handful of grated parmesan cheese.

It tasted quite good. As always, even better than a tasty meal is a tasty meal produced in large part from our own labors. We didn't produce all the ingredients ourselves, but we know we cut our food miles significantly by growing what we eat and eating what we grow.

Other harvest meals:
Saag Paneer
Garden Pizza
Pyttipanna
Peanut Noodles with Garden Vegetables
Egg & Chard Curry
Pumpkin-Sage Penne Pasta
Kale & Barley Soup
Colcannon
Vegetable Soup with Lamb Stock
Carrot and Chili Pepper Escabeche
Arugula Noodles
Garlic Scape Carbonara
Vegetarian Futomaki

Oatmeal: Cheap, Filling, Healthy, Yummy Breakfast

Now that the weather's turned cold, I'm returning to wintry ways with breakfast. Hot breakfasts are so welcome at this time of year. After an indispensable large cup of tea, I'm eating oatmeal again these days. Even with rising food prices, rolled oats are still an excellent value, and they're a good way to incorporate whole grains into your diet. Steel-cut oats are good as well, but they tend to be more expensive, and I've found that I get hungry sooner after eating steel-cut oats as compared with plain old rolled oats.

I appreciate oatmeal because it can be accessorized in so many delicious ways. I grew up on the sugar bomb instant oatmeal packets, while my husband's family favored rolled oats garnished with salt and butter. Both of us retain those preferences. I still like maple syrup on my oatmeal; he still likes it savory. Right now we have apples coming in from our apple tree. So I've been cutting one up each morning to add to our oats. I used to add sliced bananas before we began trying to eat more locally. Dried fruits are great too. I'm particularly fond of golden raisins, but just about any dried fruit will work nicely.

We're not afraid of fat in our household, so we often add some of that to our oatmeal. I used to favor a tablespoon of heavy cream drizzled over my bowl of oats in the past. More recently, inspired by that wicked idea of Mark Bittman's, I've started adding a tablespoon of cream cheese paired with a small shot of maple syrup.

There are dozens of ways of customizing your bowl of oatmeal or other rolled grains. Here are some of my favorite combinations of ingredients:

banana, walnut, raisin
maple syrup, chopped apple, cream cheese
chopped pear, pomegranate molasses
honey, dried cranberry, a little lemon zest
mixed berry jam, heavy cream, pinch of cardamom
dried cherries, vanilla sugar

Old fashioned rolled oats cook so quickly that there's really no justification for quick oats. Five minutes is all it takes. If you really want to, feel free to cook it for 20 minutes to produce a mushy porridge. The nearly al dente version appeals more to me. I usually add the smallest pinch of salt to the water when cooking the oats, and any other powdered spices I want to flavor it with. The rest of the ingredients can be added after the oats have cooked.

Home cooked oatmeal is a much better choice than breakfast cereal, in my opinion. It's usually cheaper per serving, even if you jazz it up with nuts or fruit. At bulk prices, the organic oatmeal in the photo above cost me 21 cents. True, the additional ingredients cost me something, though the apples came from our tree. But how much could a few raisins and a dollop of maple syrup really add up to? Certainly well under a dollar all together. Additionally, by preparing your own food, you avoid the chemical additives and refined corn sugar that are nearly universal in breakfast cereals. You can control precisely the sweetness and the amount of fat in your food. There's less packaging to throw away. And you get a warm breakfast that delivers sustained energy for several hours. What could be better than that?

What do you like in your oatmeal?

Another Harvest Meal: Peanut Noodles with Garden Vegetables

On Saturday night I whipped up a delicious dish of peanut noodles from garden produce, pantry items, and some of that free jar of peanut butter, following a recipe left in the comments. I used up some of this rainbow chard, part of an oversized zucchini, and a generous handful of cherry tomatoes. The veggies were stir-fried and then mixed with rice noodles and a peanutty sauce made with creamy peanut butter.

Here's how I went about it.

Place 8 ounces of dried rice noodles in a pot and cover with tepid water. Let them soak for at least 30 minutes, and up to a few hours.  If you need them in a hurry, gently warm the water until they soften significantly, but do not boil them.  When soft enough to bend easily they are ready, and you can achieve this with a long soak at room temperature.  Then drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, mix the following: 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar, 1 Tbsp. dark roasted sesame oil, 3-4 tsp. ancho chili powder (or other chili powder). Stir to combine and then thin with a little water if the sauce is very thick.

Large dice about 3-4 cups of vegetables. I used chard, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini. But other vegetables would work well too. Also mince a few cloves of garlic and a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger. Finely slice the white parts of several scallions. Cut the green parts into larger pieces. Mix the garlic, ginger and scallion whites together in a bowl.

Pre-heat a large cast iron skillet (the larger the better) for 10-12 minutes on high heat. The pan will be smokin' hot. Add a generous amount of cooking oil and tilt the skillet quickly to coat evenly. Add the ginger, garlic, and scallion whites and quickly stir for just a few seconds. Add the vegetables very quickly so the seasoning ingredients do not burn. Stir the vegetables as they sizzle in the oil, until they are softened and/or slightly wilted. (If you are using vegetables that require very different cooking times, add them sequentially, in order of longest cooking time to shortest.) The vegetables should not need more than a few minutes to cook at such a high temperature.

Add the noodles and scallion greens to the skillet and add the peanut sauce on top of them. (You may want to hold back some of the sauce, depending on how heavily dressed you like your noodles.) Toss the ingredients with cooking tongs, as you would a salad, to distribute the sauce and heat the noodles through. Serve hot, garnished with a wedge of lemon or cilantro if you like.

It occurred to me that this is a vegan recipe, though I'm far from vegetarian, let alone vegan. This dish will serve 2-4, depending on appetites. We had plenty to eat and a fair amount of leftovers, which were pretty good eaten cold the next day.

I love pulling together dishes like this that taste great and cost us nearly nothing. Garden produce, pantry items, and a freebie ingredient. The rice noodles cost 50 cents, and the rest of the ingredients that we paid for probably came to less than $1. $1.50 for four hearty and healthy meals is a good deal, wouldn't you say?


Other harvest meals:
Saag Paneer
Garden Pizza
Pyttipanna
Egg & Chard Curry
Fusilli with Tuscan Kale in a Creamy Tomato Sauce
Pumpkin-Sage Penne Pasta
Kale & Barley Soup
Colcannon
Vegetable Soup with Lamb Stock
Carrot and Chili Pepper Escabeche
Arugula Noodles
Garlic Scape Carbonara
Vegetarian Futomaki

Four Cornerstone Meals for Frugal Living, Plus Two Bonus Desserts

Recently, I posted about my $50 per month grocery challenge. It's a personal challenge to myself to cut our grocery budget right down to the bone. I've been following this challenge for three months now, and I didn't make it in either May, or June, or July. But I came somewhat close each month. I know that may sound completely infeasible to many people, so I thought I would offer a few of the recipes I often fall back on for extremely cheap but tasty meals. Let's be clear: I like saving money, but there's no question of us going without wholesome, healthy, and tasty meals. We like to eat far too much, and I take too much pleasure in cooking. We may have ramen noodles once in a while, but we don't subsist on them.

So here are four recipes for cheap, filling, and yummy meals. All of them are flexible, in that they can accommodate a huge variety of ingredients. Each one of these recipes is easily tailored to your own tastes, to what you happen to have on hand, and they can all be made suitable for vegetarians. Most importantly, they're complete meals that are easy to make.

Strata - I think of this dish as a more homely, crustless version of quiche. I like it because we tend to have the basic ingredients on hand nearly all the time. It's easy to make, and can be served for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. If you have access to day-old bread at a reduced price, this is a great way to use it up. Leftovers are decent, but not my favorite.

Toast enough slices of bread to make at least one complete layer in your casserole dish. Slightly stale bread is fine to use. If you wish, rub the toasted bread with a clove of garlic. Spray your casserole dish with cooking spray, or butter it. Layer in the toast and any leftover cooked vegetables or cooked meat that you have. If you have an onion, it's especially nice to slice it up and caramelize it, adding the cooked slices over the bread. Add some shredded cheese and stewed tomatoes if you have some. Grind some pepper over the ingredients. Beat two eggs and add a cup of milk. If this is obviously not enough liquid to cover the ingredients you have, add more eggs and milk in roughly this proportion. But if you have only one cup of milk and three eggs, that'll work just fine. I've made this with milk mixed up from dry milk powder and it's fine so long as there are whole eggs in the mix. Add some salt to the egg mixture and pour it into the casserole dish so that it mostly or completely covers the ingredients. Top it with any fresh herbs you have around that need to be used up. Bake it in a 350 degree oven for at least 45 minutes, until cooked through.

Make ahead option: You can assemble strata up to 24 hours before cooking it. Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate. If the bread is floating in the egg mixture, weight the top of the plastic wrap with another casserole dish or a plate to keep everything submerged. When ready to cook, proceed as above. I think strata actually benefits from sitting in the fridge for at least a few hours before being cooked.


Stir-fried rice - If you've already got leftover rice, this dish can be prepared very quickly. You can make it taste very good with the simplest ingredients, including frozen vegetables. So this dish is good to make year round, or whenever the budget is tight. Leftovers are great.

You'll need soy sauce, a beaten egg or two, frozen peas and/or other vegetables, freshly ground pepper (preferably white). If you have hoisin sauce or oyster sauce, and ginger, garlic and scallions, you're in for a treat. Small quantities of fresh or leftover cooked meat can be added, but it's not necessary. If you want to add raw meat, make sure that it is cut into very thin slices or small cubes. If you've made rice freshly for this dish, put it in a bowl and spread it out to cool and lose some moisture for at least an hour. Leftover rice is actually preferable. The best thing to cook in is a large cast iron skillet. Non-stick pans aren't great, because they can't take the pre-heating.

Heat your largest skillet over high heat for 8-10 minutes before you begin to cook. You want the skillet very, very hot in order to simulate the heat of a wok. When the skillet is smokin' hot, add some cooking oil and swirl the pan to coat the cooking surface. Add whatever seasoning vegetables you have, such as onion, garlic, ginger or scallions. Stir them only for a few seconds and then immediately add any uncooked meat you want in the dish. If adding raw meat, stir it only until it begins to lose its raw color and then add the cooked rice. Stir the rice around so that it heats through, scattering the ground pepper over it liberally. If you have cooked meat to add, add it now along with the vegetables. Continue stirring until the ingredients are warmed. Then make a well in the center of the pan, pushing the ingredients to the edge of the pan. Pour the beaten egg into the middle and allow it to sit for about 10-15 seconds undisturbed. It will begin to set. While the egg is cooking, pour soy sauce and hoisin sauce or oyster sauce (if you have some) over the ring of rice and other ingredients. Then stir all the ingredients back into the egg, mixing in the added sauces and continue cooking for about 1 or 2 more minutes. Serve warm.

Make ahead option: See to it that you already have leftover rice on the night you want to prepare this dish. If you're still ordering take-out or eating in restaurants, you'll often get far more rice than you need. If you're practicing more frugal dining habits, just put the rice on to cook the night before you plan to eat stir-fried rice.


Soup - This has got to be the ultimate frugal meal. Soup leftovers are generally better than the first servings. There are so very many soups that can be made with so many different ingredients, that I'm not going to bother to give an example here. Chances are high that just about any ingredient you have on hand, cooked or raw, can be made into a soup. Dry pantry goods (like rice and beans) and long storing vegetables (like potatoes, cabbage, and parsnips) are excellent foundations for soup. If you have any leftover ingredient, whatever it may be, try entering its name along with the words "soup" and "recipe" into google to get some ideas. It would be the rare ingredient that didn't return some results.

Plan ahead ideas: Keep your pantry stocked with liquid broths and bouillon cubes, as well as a variety of beans and grains. I especially like whole spelt in vegetable soups. It gives a lovely nutty, chewy quality to thin broth-based soups. In Italy, many simple vegetable soups are garnished with extra virgin olive oil and a little bit of grated parmesan cheese.


Korean Vegetable Pancakes - Of the four recipes I'm listing here, Korean pancakes are not the fastest to make. But they're fantastic when you have a lot of fresh vegetables coming in from the garden. The batter is incredibly quick to mix up, but they take a little time to cook on the stovetop. I include them here especially because this is an easy recipe that would be ideal for training a child who is of age just to start learning how to cook. Also, their versatility is a godsend to gardeners coping with an overflowing garden.

You can buy a mix at a Korean grocery store, or make up your own mix at home. Use just about any vegetable you enjoy, and incorporate some of those spicy condiments you have lying around in the fridge. You can add meat if you want it or have it on hand, but it's really not necessary. All you need is the pancake batter and some cut up or shredded vegetables to make a complete meal. Panfry the batter and you've got a hot and filling lunch or dinner. Leftovers are best if eaten within about 24 hours.

To make your own mix, combine 1 cup of flour, 1 well-beaten egg, and 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder. Next add in your sliced or shredded vegetables. I like to add ginger, garlic and some sort of onion. Cabbage and other thick greens are best when blanched with a little boiling water before being added to the batter. Zucchini and carrots can be grated in. Corn cut right off the cob is nice too. If you like spicy foods you can add some hot sauce directly to the batter, or plan to serve that as a condiment with the pancakes. If the mixture looks too thick, thin it with a tablespoon of water at a time until it looks right. It should be at least as thick as normal pancake batter. When the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, heat a skillet over medium heat for two minutes. Add a little bit of vegetable oil, and scoop about 1/2 cup of the batter into the oil, flattening it to a disk no more than 1/2" high if it mounds up in the center. Cook it for 5 minutes on one side, then flip it and cook for an additional 5 minutes on the other side. You may need to add more oil when you flip it.

Minding the pancakes while they cook is an ideal task for a responsible child, say age 9-10 and up. They only need to set a timer, flip the pancake, and possess a little common sense. Serve warm with any condiment: soy sauce, Thai spicy-sweet dipping sauce, ketchup, or anything else you enjoy.

Make Ahead Option: The pancakes are acceptable as leftovers, and will keep for up to three days, fully cooked, in the refrigerator. But they will lose their crisp exterior texture. To speed up last minute preparation, keep the prepped vegetables you'll use for the pancakes in a grab bag in your refrigerator. Buy the packaged mix to make things go faster.


Bonus Round: Easy and Economical Desserts

Bread pudding - This is basically a sweet version of the strata recipe given above. If you have some jam, you can make butter and jam sandwiches and fit those into your casserole dish. Otherwise, just use the bread on its own. Add some dried fruits like raisins, apricots, or whatever you have on hand. Add a couple tablespoons of sugar, and a small amount of cinnamon to the egg and milk mixture. Then assemble and cook as directed in the strata recipe.

Kheer - This is an exotic sounding but simple dessert that I like to prepare when I have too much leftover rice. It hails from India, where it is usually made with basmati rice, but any rice will work. All you need to do is heat milk gently in a pot and add the cooked rice. Stir in some sugar and powdered cardamom if you have any. If you want, you can add raisins. The consistency is usually quite soupy, so it's okay to dilute the milk with a little water. The starch from the rice will add body to the liquid. Just let everything warm up together and the sugar dissolve, and the cooking is done. In India they often include toasted almonds or pistachios in this dish. I omit them just because nuts are pricey, and I don't miss them. Kheer is commonly served cold as a refreshment on hot days. Hot or cold, this simple dessert pleases just about everyone. I've made it with condensed milk, well diluted, and that works fine.