OMG so much cooking

[jlh]

Allow me to be nerdy about feeding myself for a moment. As some of you know I am totally addicted to Everyday Food and a lot of what I cook for myself comes from that magazine. It has a wide variety of inexpensive, easy, fast recipes with not a pile of ingredients that feed four, so I can eat off them for four days. Also, FreshDirect, where I order my groceries, has lowered its delivery minimum to $30, and since I have a reserved delivery time and I've prepaid my delivery charge for the year, it makes it easier for me to order a small number of groceries every week. Anyway, this weekend I decided to cook a lot of things and put some things up in the freezer, so I made:

• Marinara sauce, which I froze. It's my own quick recipe, with canned crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, red wine, garlic, crushed red pepper, and the leftover purple basil from last week's tomato salad.
  
• Bolognese sauce, which is a double batch. I froze half and made the other half into this great biscuit-topped bolognese pie that used up the zucchini leftover from the barbeque chicken pizza I made last week. The bolognese also used up more of the carrots I bought last week for thai steak salads.
  
• Lemon-horseradish fish cakes, which is a double batch and instead of parsley I used the cilantro leftover from the mango chicken salad I made last week. I'll put half in the freezer and eat the other half this week with broccoli that I'll drizzle with sherry-shallot vinaigrette that I make.
  
• I put together my kit for my breakfast hash. I cooked sweet potatoes, diced them, then put them into individual servings in tiny snack baggies. I put those baggies plus one baggie holding the chicken-apple sausage links and one holding diced shallot that had been hanging out in my freezer (great tip from calloocallay to dice up the whole bag of shallots when I get them) into one tupperware container so it's all together when I want to make the hash, and the container is right next to the bowl of eggs, so I can just grab one of those to fry over-easy to put on top. It makes it practical to have the hash on a weekday, as it takes just five minutes to fix.
  
• Two meat loaves. The valupak of ground beef is 5 lb, so I used one pound (plus a pound of ground pork) for the bolognese and the remaining 4 lb in two meat loaves that each make 8 servings, so now I'll have 16 slices of meat loaf that I'll freeze in individual baggies and can pull out of the freezer whenever I have veg around but no protein.
  
• A rhubarb crisp that used up some rhubarb that was in the freezer and some crisp topping that was floating around the fridge.
  
• And I'll make some more chex mix at some point.

Now all I have leftover in the fridge is three carrots and a bit of mint (also for the thai steak salad). Perhaps I should make some iced tea and put the mint in that. Hmm.

And now, I need to eat lunch (the last bit of the last freezer pack of eggplant black bean chili, with hominy and green salsa and cheese) and then write some lectures.

Comments

[mistress-mab.livejournal.com]

I love food posts. Nom nom.

Those fish cakes sound awesome. I love, love, love tilapia - yummy and affordable.

Oh! If you can spare the time, I would love the recipe for Eggplant Black Bean Chili.

[darth-kittius.livejournal.com]

Yummmm...

When you freeze sauce, how do you do it? In containers? In freezer bags?

My family never did that, but I like making my own sauce enough that I want to so I always ask when I see someone doing that!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

It's from the Dean & DeLuca cookbook. My meatloaf is also from there, as I never liked my mother's meatloaf. It's a bit labor-intensive, so Emily and I get together and make a huge batch, double or triple, and then freeze a lot of it. A single batch serves 4 as a main course.

1 1/2 lb eggplant, unpeeled, stemmed, and cut into 1" cubes
salt
3 oz dried chilies—we prefer mulatto, but will use ancho in a pinch
3 c water
1/4 c olive oil
2 small red onions, finely chopped (I usually use 1 large white onion)
4 garlic cloves, minced
28-oz can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped (see note below)
1/2 T ground coriander
1/2 t ground cumin
1 bay leaf
2 c cooked black beans (or one can, drained and rinsed)

For the tomatoes: When I'm making it for myself, I use crushed tomatoes because I'm not fond of cooked tomato chunks. Emily sort of likes them so often when we're making a double batch we use one can of crushed (for saucyness) and one can of diced, which we do not drain. I think the can of plum tomatoes drained and chopped would not give enough tomato sweetness to balance the earthy spiciness of the chilies.

1. Place the eggplant cubes in a strainer and sprinkle generously with salt. Let stand for 1 hour, then rinse and pat dry with paper towels.
2. Simmer the chilies in the 3 c water in a large saucepan for 20 minutes. Puree the chilies and the liquid, in batches, in a blender until very smooth. Force the puree through a fine sieve and discard any solid pieces. (My note: After they simmer, take the stem off the peppers before you puree. A stick blender makes the puree very easy. Immediately wash everything that came in contact with the peppers, as they can stain your blender and spatula.)
3. Heat the oil in a large heavy pot over moderately high heat. Add eggplant and cook, stirring, until almost tender, about 4 minutes. Remove and set aside. Add onions and garlic to the pot, with more oil if necessary, and cook, stirring, for 4 minutes.
4. Add tomatoes, coriander, cumin, bay leaf, eggplant and chili puree and simmer 5 minutes.
5. Add beans and simmer over moderate heat for 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt. Remove the bay leaf.

I find that the peppers that we use are earthy, sort of brown tasting, so I like to put a good amount of tomatillo salsa on mine to add some brightness. It goes very well with corn, whether chips or polenta or cornbread or hominy corn. You might need to either cook the eggplant longer or cut it smaller to get it cooked through properly.