cheap food

Meatless Monday Eight!

February 23, 2010

Lowly Potato Soup.

I could almost call this Stone Soup. It’s practically the same thing.

Wait, no. That sounds bad. This really is good soup. It’s seems to make a lot of something out of practically nothing. So, in that way it is like stone soup.

It is a very old family recipe.

Actually, like most things I say, I don’t even know if that is true. It seems like a very old family recipe to me, probably because we don’t have one of those families with a rich tradition of cooking — passing recipes from generation to generation — like some. I remember eating this as a kid. And it wasn’t my mom’s recipe. It was my aunt’s. And my aunt couldn’t cook. So how this recipe came to be a success is a complete mystery, unless it was never hers to begin with. Hence the lore that is is an “old family recipe.”

How’s that sound?

Anyway, this was yet another Meatless Monday where we were not together for dinner. I had my monthly bookclub meeting. It was being held at the best cook in the club and I wasn’t going to miss it for anything. Not even if swedish meatballs were on her menu. Oh my gosh. Those swedish meatballs…

…are fodder for another post….as soon as I wrangle the recipe away from her.

I will be eating meatless today (Tuesday) to make up for my Meatball Monday transgressions and will be looking forward to the potato soup. I should mention that Dave was leaving town again Tuesday, so I couldn’t just push Meatless off until today, because — by God, he was not missing another Meatless Monday, I was going to see to that. So I made them the soup before I left for bookclub. Simple as that.

So the soup. What can I say about it? It is very plain. It is very smooth. It is very plain and smooth.

And also, it is very cheap.

And for some reason, every body seems to love it.

Oh, and it is very, very easy. It must be, because, like I said, my aunt was able to make it without burning it.

But there is nothing spectacular about it. It is just creamy potato goodness.

Oh I forgot another thing: it is very healthy, too. Barely a fat-gram to its name. (Assuming you are not one of the non-carbohydrate freaks of nature.)

So here it is:

Aunt Rita’s Potato Soup (for lack of a better name)

Russet potatoes, any size
cold water to cover
3T flour
3T butter
salt & pepper to taste
cheese for garnish
bacon bits if you are not partaking in Meatless Monday!
fried homemade durkee onions if you ARE partaking in Meatless Monday*

* which I will post if anyone is interested. They were so good!

Put unpeeled, whole cleaned potatoes in a large dutch oven or saucepan with a lid. (for 4 people with left overs, I used 4 baker-sized potatoes) Cover potatoes with cold water by about 1/2″ – 1″. Bring to a simmer and partially cover. Cook until potatoes are tender. DO NOT THROW OUT THE BOILING WATER. Drain the potatoes, reserving the water.

Let potatoes slightly cool and peel. Put the potatoes back into the pot and mash. You can put them thru a ricer or food mill first, for perfectly smooth potatoes, or you can use a hand masher. The idea for this soup is to get it mostly smooth.

For the roux, put 3 tablespoons of flour and 3 tablespoons of butter in a small skillet, stirring together as the butter melts. Cook, bubbling, over low to medium low heat about 5 minutes — just until the mixture barely turns a shade darker. (If you are making soup for less than 4 or 5, cut the flour and butter to 2T each.)

Over low to medium heat, add the cooking water back to the mashed potatoes, stirring until smooth, then add the roux stirring well. Simmer 10 minutes or so, adding more water if soup is too thick. Salt and pepper to taste. (it will need salt!)

My cousins insisted that you had to put the shredded cheese into the bottom of the bowl, so of course we do, using cojack or cheddar or whatever else green-sided hunk of cheese we find in the fridge. Then, add the soup and top with garnish of your choice. The garnish being a Menke addition.

Here is the picture Morgan took of her bowl, with the fried onion crisps, which were my attempt to combat the yearning for bacon. They scarfed them up so fast there were hardly enough for the garnish. Lord knows there weren’t any left for me today, so I can’t say one way or the other if the idea worked.

And here was my bowl that I had for lunch today. I added some chopped frozen chives for a little kick:

OK, I lied. I couldn’t take it:

So shoot me. It wasn’t Monday.

Weeding 101

July 16, 2009

My Friend Recently Asked Me (and I quote): “How Do You Keep the Weeds Down in Your Garden?”

After staring at her for a few seconds to see if she was kidding, or if I had misunderstood her, I finally said, “I pull them.” She tossed her head back laughing (so she was kidding?) and said “No, no, no, no. I mean a lot of weeds!” And I stared at her again and said “What, are you kidding? I pull them.”

Clearly we were not on the same wave length. She kept trying to tell me it was impossible to pull the amount of weeds she was talking about — surely I didn’t understand what she was dealing with.

Oh no?

How about this?

If you look closely you will see there are some wee plants tucked in among the weeds. Crab grass? Barn grass? Who cares grass. It’s a pain-in-my-ass grass and it has to come out.

If you have a yard, a garden, dirt in a bucket then you battle weeds. I’m not above using Round-Up, or even Weed-B-Gone in some areas of the yard. I try not to, but sometimes I do. But in my garden, well, isn’t that the whole point of growing your own stuff? To not have it laced with chemicals? So I pull them, dig them, hoe them, mow them. And I try really hard not to let them go to seed. Which is just about effing impossible.

When it is weeding day, I get my garden gloves and my iPod. I play several back-to-back Good Food or MacBreak Weekly podcasts, or listen to a good (and sometime bad) Audible book. And the hours pass. If you are looking for an escape from family life, it’s a great activity, because no sane child or husband will come looking for you while you are weeding, lest they be given a bucket and put to work. And, in the end the Weeds B Gone with no bad chemicals. Plus, Fatty got some exercise.

And if this is all just too confusing and technical for you, I’ve made a simple, easy-to-follow how-to video:

Need to Feed the Masses but Don’t Have the Cashes?

July 14, 2009

I’m not going to really use that headline. Or am I…

Anyway. This is one super easy, super cheap, super good way to feed a crowd. I’m not going to belabor the point with witty prose. Let’s get to the meat of it.

Buy lots ‘O pork shoulder from your local butcher. Yes, your local butcher. Costco carried it last time I was there and you can get it from them, but you will have to live with the guilt of supporting mass feed lot economics and all that goes with it. When I started making this on a regular basis, Costco didn’t carry it, or I probably would have bought it there. So I had to find large quantities of it elsewhere. And I’m glad I did, because buying local helps me to feel superior and better than you. I can’t remember what Costco sells it for, but my local meat market (Reider Meat Market in Delano, MN) sells it to me for $1.36/lb. You can’t even buy bones for that anymore! So it makes me very happy to buy it there.

Three shoulders (about 27lb) fits very nicely inside my very inexpensive roaster oven, and costs roughly $36 (the pork, not the roaster oven).

You rub the meat with seasoning. I use a mix that a friend made for me, or I use pork producers (is that a local thing, or does everyone know what pork producers is?), or Chef Paul Blackened Redfish Magic (yes, you read that right. it’s awesome on just about everything), or just salt and pepper. But here’s the thing: BE GENEROUS with the rub. Slap the seasoned pork into the roaster, cover it and cook at about 225 degree F until the meat falls apart when you stab it with a fork. I like to cook it outside on our screen porch overnight. I turn it on around 10pm and Dave turns it off when he leaves for work around 6am. The point is this: this recipe is like “give or take an hour or more.” It’s pretty hard to mess up. (Tell that to my dad, who wants exact times, quantities, etc. He was using a meat thermometer and obsessing. Hear me on this: do not use a meat thermometer. Simply cook it on a low temp until it falls apart when you stab it with a fork.)

After it cools a bit, you strain the juices off into a separator.

And then start pulling the pork. I don’t know how the experts do it, but I do it with my hands. Or in this case, with Charlie’s hands. It’s always nice to force your kids to help. I take a hunk of meat, get the fat off and hand it to Charlie to shred. There is a fair amount of fat, and as much as I love the stuff (I really do), this gelatinous goo needs to be culled. Your guests will thank you.

Once that’s done, you can serve it as is with BBQ sauce on the side or, as I have found works better, toss it with the sauce beforehand and serve warm in a crockpot. Let me explain: I love shredded pork in my freezer for lots of stuff: tacos, pozole, etc. And while I love BBQ Pork sandwiches, I don’t love them nearly as much as the other stuff I make with the pork. So I am always a little reluctant to add the sauce to all that precious pork we just pulled. But, if you really have the masses coming to eat, chances are you will eat it up anyway. So: I make enough to fit in my large crockpot. The rest I store in the refrigerator (and hope I won’t have to serve) until the party is over and then freeze, for my own personal use later. I have found that when I have selfishly served the BBQ sauce on the side (the better to have the untainted leftovers, should that miraculously happen) people either didn’t use it, or didn’t use enough and the result was less than spectacular sandwiches. And since the only reason I entertain in the first place is to be fawned over and praised, that was a losing deal for everyone concerned. So I mix the damn sauce into the pork.

I don’t have a set recipe for the sauce. But here is it in a nutshell: For one large crockpot, I use one bottle of store-bought BBQ sauce, lots of the defatted broth, apple cider vinegar, some honey, some worcehstershire sauce and anything else within arms reach that sounds good at the time.

I like it tangy and maybe a little spicy. But here’s the important thing: IT NEEDS TO BE THIN! If you use the BBQ sauce out of the bottle, your pulled pork will be thick and gooey. And it will make sick noises when you spoon it onto your bun. It’s gross, so don’t do it.

Add more sauce than you think you need. Serve with cole slaw (on the bun is best!) and chips on the side. How else can you feed 80 people generously on $36?