Thrifty kitchen: making stock

I have a penchant for doing things myself.

Penchant might be an understatement. Some of you might look at my cheese , my butter, my pizza and jam, and shake your heads. No, Kristina, you'll say, it's not a penchant, it's an obsession. Well, maybe. But for the purposes of me not feeling like a nut, we'll call it a penchant. Bear with me.

I can't explain why I have this penchant, exactly. I'm not particularly distrustful of the government, I have no inklings of impending natural disasters or apocalypses. I'm not a survivalist. Nor am I penny pincher (anyone who's seen my latest credit card bill could tell you that).

All the same, I take great satisfaction in my makings. It's never about saving a buck-- it's about challenging myself, gaining some new perspective on something ordinary, and learning. And having fun.

But, of course, it does save a buck, now, doesn't it? Well. Yes. Maybe even two or three. And given the state of our Union (great reluctant buck-saving nation that we are), I thought it might be apt to start a series: Thrifty Kitchen.

Once a month, there will be a post here with a recipe, and some very easy way to trim a couple bucks. Easy. I promise. No cheese thermometers. No fancy kitchen gadgets. And in the end, there will be something interesting, rewarding, and delicious sitting there on your plate.

Homemade Soup Stock

What you need:

A large-ish pot

Water

A few handfuls of sorry-looking vegetables or kitchen scraps

Some dried herbs or spices, if you wish

Put your vegetables or kitchen scraps in your pot. (Garlic is a must; carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes are good too. Use strongly-flavored vegetables like cabbage, peppers, and broccoli sparingly.) Fill your pot the rest of the way up with water, stopping about an inch before the brim. Add some seasonings-- black pepper, dried thyme, and a bay leaf are a good trio-- and bring to a boil. Let the pot simmer, uncovered, for an hour. Strain your stock through a paper towel and you're done.

I love this for several reasons. One, the bouillion you buy at the store is mostly salt. Who wants to pay $.99 for a can of salt water? Two, stock making is the salvation of withered, sorry-looking vegetables everywhere. It hurts my heart to see food go to waste. Making soup stock gives me a way of using these guys, these vegetables non grata. I also really like the fact that you can make stock with kitchen scraps. I've taken to starting a big pot of water boiling before I even begin making soup, and peeling my carrots and potatoes directly into the pot. By the time I'm ready to make my soup, I have fresh, amazing, free vegetable stock. And into the soup it goes!

Vegetable stock can be frozen, canned (via pressure canning), or stored in the fridge to be used within three days.

Thrifty Kitchen: Pull your weeds (and eat them, too)

Greetings, lamb's quarters, and welcome to my fork. I hope you like it here, because you are tasty. Also, you grow like a weed. In fact, you are a weed. All summerlong, I plan on pulling you out of the cracks in my driveway and eating you in salads. I really hope you don't mind.

This month's Thrifty Kitchen post is about foraging. I'm not talking about hardcore nuts-and-berries roots-and-grubs foraging. No one's sitting here rubbing two sticks together. The foraging I do mostly involves the five minutes before dinnertime, and the aforementioned cracks in my driveway.

Because I'm an oddball with lots of plant knowledge, (that was my obsession at approximately age ten, thank you very much Jean Craighead George) I noticed that quite a few of our unwelcome sidewalk sprouts were weeds of the tasty variety. One night, I took a pinch of this and a touch of that, and threw it into our dinner.

And what happened? Well, we thrilled in our weed salad. Our charmless bagged romaine became instantly hip and exciting. There were interesting new textures and flavors to behold, plus the thrilling bonus of eating weeds for dinner, and liking it. Bear with me, this isn't as crazy as it sounds.

Really. To my way of thinking, this is the perfect salvation for boring grocery-store lettuce. Those fancy bagged mixes with their sprigs of radicchio and endive, who needs 'em? The "mesclun" I can pull from my flower garden is way more fresh and delicious than anything from the store. And, oh yeah, it's free.

Let's meet our dinner guests:

L-R: Dandelion, Lamb's Quarters, Violet, Yellow Wood Sorrel.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinalis)

Flavor: sharp and nutty, not unlike arugala.

When to pick: The smaller the leaves, the milder the flavor. You want to catch the plant before it's flowered, ideally, and take the smallest of the leaves for your salad. When the plant gets bigger, the greens can be sauteed or added to soups.

Lamb's Quarters (Chenopodium album)

Flavor: very mild and spinachy.

When to pick: Again, the smaller the leaves, the more tender they will be. The leaves get less tender throughout the summer, though the flavor is always gentle and agreeable. We use this one a lot.

Violet (Viola spp.)

Flavor: Mild and earthy.

When to pick: All season. The flavor is always good.

Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta)

Flavor: Pleasantly tart and lemony.

When to pick: All season.

In my experience, these weeds are all pretty common on the quarter-acre I call home. Violets grow in the shadier parts of our lawn, dandelions grow in the sunnier spots. The other two I'm pretty sure could grow on the moon-- they spring up everywhere the soil's been turned over recently. For help identifying the edible weeds native to your backyard, pick up a book on the subject. Euell Gibbons' famed Stalking the Wild Asparagus is one of the best, in my opinion.

Read about your weeds, identify them and pull them. And then settle back with a "wildcrafted" mesclun salad, a glass of good wine, and a smug little smile. Eating weeds. Who would've thought?

Thrifty Kitchen: Fresh herbs

So, let's talk about fresh herbs for a minute. Frankly, they're amazing. A little pinch of finely chopped this or minced that, and a lackluster dish is transformed into cuisine. Instantly, you're classy and cultured, the type who could discourse articulately about anything from post-colonial economics to existentialist baseball. (I made that last one up.) But you know what I'm talking about: you get a meal that's practically gourmet, for all the effort of running a sharp knife through some nice green leaves.


All right, now, who's encountered a puddle of viscous cilantro, a lump of The Herb Formerly Known as Dill in the bottom of their produce drawer? Raise your hands! I would say that, among all the produce we buy in a year, fresh herbs are the ones most likely to get forgotten-about and wasted. You never need a whole bunch of herbs. Grocery stores only sell them in the bundle, though, and so you either plan in a week's worth of herb-laden meals, or you let that bundle (minus the 2 minced tablespoons you actually needed) go bad. I'd long accepted it as one of the sorry realities of modern kitchen economics.

Then, I discovered my freezer.

One day, in a mad fit of waste-not-want-not fervor, I hacked up the whole bristling bunch of parsley, in one fell swoop. I set aside the bit I needed for my recipe-of-the-moment, and herded the rest into a freezer bag.

Now, I have a special compartment of my freezer set aside for little tightly-rolled bags of frozen chopped herbs. It's embarrassingly well-stocked: parsley, dill, thyme, sage, oregano, tarragon, basil, mint, cilantro. (It should be clear now who's become a little too fond of adding a little frou-frou gourmet touch to her cooking!)

The bonuses are many. I've come to love always having these herbs at the ready when a soup needs a fresh little kick. Parsley can perk up anything, basil (naturally) finds its way into anything bubbling and tomatoey on our stove. As a result of the convenience, we're eating more herbs, too. Aside from tasting good, they are loaded with vitamins and antioxidants. Did you know an ounce of cilantro has more vitamin A than a carrot?

The best part is the economy of it all. Those fresh herbs are not cheap, at the grocery store. Freezing them this way, each bundle of herbs can last for months. You get your money's worth, and there's no slimy green stuff in your produce drawer.

Recipes Featuring Fresh Herbs:

Pasta Pomodoro
Transylvanian Eggplant Casserole
Homemade Vegetable Stock
Chickpea Crepes
Potato Pancakes
Three Sisters Stew
Rosemary Cornmeal Scones
Ratatouille
Enchiladas

Thrifty Kitchen: Eat your stems! (and tops, and greens...)

Buy three pounds of broccoli, and get a full pound of stems.

Stems. No one likes 'em. They're tough. And stringy. Full of fiber, sure, maybe, but the bottom line is: they're not what you wanted when you bought that broccoli. You didn't want a bundle of unsexy, woody things skulking on your countertop, flavorless as firewood. But, like it or not, there they are. What to do, what to do.

Broccoli stems. Lettuce stalks. Beet greens. So many vegetables come with baggage, unwanted parts you can either throw away (waste your money!) or find a use for. As I've said before, wasting food (no matter how unsexy) makes my heart hurt, so predictably I tend towards the latter.

Lettuce stalks, I've decided, are the perfect faux bok choy. After stripping all the leafy green parts from a head of romaine, I save the crispy white innards for a date with soy sauce, sesame oil, sliced carrots and bamboo shoots. Broccoli stems get turned into little green coin-shaped slices and thrown into the pot a few minutes before the florets go in. The extra cooking time is enough to soften them up, and they taste great. I've also been known to substitute broccoli stems for asparagus in stir fries.

Beet greens are one bonus vegetable product I never have trouble eating. Whether I've purchased them or grown them, I love them almost as much as the beets they precede. Garlic, oil, and vinegar is really all they need, but last night we were feeling a little lavish.


Just a little.

The combination of pecans, blue cheese, sherry vinegar and chopped tomato is one we stole from a local restaurant, (Just a Taste) but there's no need to stick with it exactly. Parmesan or feta cheese would be tasty as well, toasted breadcrumbs or any other nut or seed would work in place of pecans, and if you don't have sherry vinegar, don't sweat it. A splash of white wine vinegar or lemon would be fine, too.

Garlic Braised Beet Greens with Creamy Polenta

The Polenta

4 cups good-quality vegetable broth (homemade, if that's your penchant)
1 cup medium grind cornmeal (I used Bob's Red Mill brand)
2 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt (or more to taste)

Bring the broth to a boil in a large sauce pan. Holding a whisk in one hand and the cornmeal in the other, sprinkle the cornmeal into the broth, whisking all the while. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer, and cook, stirring constantly, for about fifteen minutes. This is a drag, but so worth it. Mix in the salt, cream, and butter, taste and adjust, and call it done. Set the polenta aside.

The Greens

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb good-looking beet greens, in bite-size pieces
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
1 tomato from a can of whole tomatoes in water, chopped (don't use fresh)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese

Warm the oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic, stirring over medium heat until lightly browned. Lower the heat and add the greens, cooking another minute more until wilted but not mushy. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vinegar, tomato, and pecans. Sprinkle in the blue cheese and give it one last stir.

Eaten alone, the polenta would be too bland (and the greens too tangy), but eaten together they are just right. The polenta is sweet and nutty, the blue cheese, vinegar, and tomato juices mingle to make this pinkish sauce that floods over everything... oh man, it was good.

So good.