Rewarding Rice

30-Min. Kalbi-Spiced Chard and Beef Rice Bowl

Review: Oster Rice Cooker

Chard from our garden, rice cooked hands-free in my rice cooker, one patty-worth of lean hamburger, and some Kalbi Korean BBQ Sauce, makes a tasty meal. The most time-consuming element, preparing the chard, took less than three minutes, but the reward was this yummy rice-bowl dish.

I measured rice and water into the cooker and turned it on, set a timer for 30 minutes, then began washing eight leaves of bright green chard. I trimmed the leaf-blades from the ribs, stacked the half-leaves on the cutting board, and began chopping, ending with about two cups of one-inch-long chard shreds. 

These went into a medium-hot skillet with a little oil—I used sesame—for a quick sauté, then I pulled the chard to one side, and browned the burger meat on the other side. A cup of kalbi sauce was stirred in, then I reduced the heat to medium low and covered the pan. 

Now I have 25 minutes left on the timer. I can leave the ingredients to finish cooking by themselves, simply assembling them once the timer sounds. A scoop of perfectly-cooked rice, a spoonful of the kalbi-spiced beef and chard on top, and a few slices of pickled jalapeño, and I'm ready to enjoy!

The rice cooker has taken the most problematic part of cooking rice dishes out of the picture. I've made brown rice, white rice and jasmine rice in it, and also cooked quinoa and ebly (wheat berry) grains in the cooker, although these take more tending because the timing of the cooker is designed for rice.

It may be a single-tasker, as Alton Brown calls such kitchen tools, but I wouldn't want to live without it now that I have one!

Easy Magic Meals: Mann's Nourish Bowls

Food Review: Nourish Bowls from Mann Packing Co.

I adore brassicas, raw or cooked: kale. cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower. But too much of the same flavor gets old. And I don't really know how to mix them with other vegetables or spices to create a delicious dish.

Fortunately for my increasingly-vegetarian table, Mann Packing has created five delectable blends of steamable brassica vegetables with sauce and balancing roots. 

These have been available for a year already, but I only noticed them recently in the fruit-and-veggie section of our local Safeway. I've now tried three of the blends. The size of the bowl is sufficient for a main vegetarian entree for one, or a side dish for two. Even better, you can combine the cooked contents with other ingredients to create two or more full-size entrees. 

Monterey Risotto

I popped for the Monterey Risotto blend first, which combines three of my favorites, kale, kohlrabi and butternut squash, with a lightly garlic sauce that cooks into the veggies in the microwave. 

This blend works as a stand-alone entree, or as a side dish for grilled meat. It is not "juicy" enough in my opinion to work well as a topping for a rice bowl. I might in future combine the veggies in a skillet a Korean BBQ, and save the sauce packet to add as extra juice to another Nourish Bowl over rice.

• 😁 The garlic-soybean oil-parmesan sauce perfectly cuts the bitterness of the kale.
• 😁 When the squash is steamed to tenderness, the shreds of kohlrabi have not lose their crunch. The combination of textures elevates the dish.
• 😖 Unless you break up the block of rice and bury the chunks under the veggies before steaming, it can be dry and unpleasantly crunchy. 

Sesame Sriracha

The major players in this bowl (in addition to a tangy ketchup-style sauce enhanced with sriracha, sesame oil, and ginger) are Napa cabbage and broccoli, with brown rice, kohlrabi, carrots and snap peas. The kohlrabi here is cubed, so its earthy-root flavor is more pronounced than in the Monterey Risotto.

It's delicious as a stand-alone entree, but you should enjoy cooked cabbage and hot sauce if you take on the entire bowl on your own! 

Mann's chefs suggested grilled shrimp or prawns over a bed of the Sesame Sriracha blend, and it looks tasty. But we paired it as a side dish with grilled ears of corn, and the sweet/spice balance made the addition of meat unnecessary.

• 😁 Tasty addition to any sandwich in place of coleslaw.
• 😖 Contains cilantro. The cilantro is one of the last ingredients listed in the contents, and it is stem-shreds rather than leaves. I don't like the flavor of leaves of cilantro, but I didn't notice it here. If you avoid cilantro because of a cashew allergy, be warned. 
• 😖 Contains red peppers and sesame seeds in minor amounts.

Southwest Chipotle

This bowl pairs black beans and corn in a salsa to provide the steaming sauce for kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi and sweet potato cubes. 

Of the three varieties I've tried, this blend is the most versatile for meal creation. It's superb as an omelet filling. You can build an excellent vegetarian burrito with it. Stirred into pasta, it mates well with Alfredo sauce (just a bit is all you need!) We ate it over rice in a vegetarian rice bowl; the rice needed a bit of the liquid from another salsa, but just a bit.

• 😁 If you don't use the cheddar cheese, you can remove the only non-vegetarian component. This also removes the two non-food additives (used in the packaged cheese), powdered cellulose and natamycin.
• 😁 Add queso fresco to pop the protein level of the dish. Substitute it for the cheddar to take its flavor in a slightly different direction.
• 😖 Salsa contains red peppers and onions in minor amounts.

NaNoWriMo Cooking: Time to Write and Still Eat Well

Review: Campbell's Sauces: Thai Curry, Toasted Sesame, Creamy Garlic Butter

I make dinner at our house. Actually, I make breakfast as well, but that is only picking from a menu at Chick-fil-A or one of our Sunday morning favorites. Dinner, though, is made at home, ranging in complexity from icebox potpourri (leftovers) to a full Thanksgiving-level roast. With occasional exceptions, on retirement we quit going out to dinner.

Except in November. In the past, my focus on plot, character development, and world-building made problems with finding time and energy to cook.

I'd find myself saying, "I'll get up in a minute and make dinner." Two hours later, still deep in the keyboard, I'd hear my spouse in the kitchen putting together a cheese sandwich to stave off starvation. Then I'd finally knock off for the day and binge on popcorn to still my own hunger pangs.

Creamy Garlic Butter Oven Sauce

This year, I tried something new. In October, I noticed a new product in the supermarket: Campbell's Oven Sauce. With a minimum of prep time (a few minutes to peel and dice potatoes and brown chicken breasts), I could put together something very like a roast chicken dinner. My favorite of several, the Oven Sauce Creamy Garlic Butter Chicken took less than 5 minutes to get ready for the oven, and rendered up three dinners: the initial feast on Sunday night, a toast-and-chicken sandwich Monday night, with a side of green beans from the original meal, and finally, a sauce over green beans meal with a side of scrambled eggs for the protein. 

We may have been a test market, because the next thing I knew, that single shelf section in the market had become a whole aisle section offering oven sauces, slow-cooker sauces, and my new favorite, skillet sauces.

Like the oven sauces, Campbell's Skillet Sauce is usually designed for pouring over cooked chicken, but the beauty is that they can be bent in unexpected ways to make tasty entrees "with legs." That's our phrase for a meal that has leftovers that can be recombined the next night in a non-boring way.

Thai Curry Chicken

Subtly sweet and slightly spicy, thai curry sauce seems designed to go over chicken. A $5 supermarket-brand pack of chicken tenders, a 16-ouce bag of frozen peas, broccoli florets, or cauliflower, and 10 minutes of kitchen work makes a super-tasty meal with at least one leftover-supper in it.

I snip the tenders into bite-size chunks of raw chicken, brown them in the skillet, then dump the entire packet of sauce, and the frozen vegetables, into the skillet, stirring them together to get everything coated with sauce. Then I lid the pan, reduce the heat to low-medium, set the timer for 20 minutes, and go back to the keyboard.

The resulting sauce can be:

• added like gravy to scrambled eggs
• poured over toast
• spooned into baked potato
• served over rice, mashed potatoes, or pasta

The surprise comes with using the thai curry skillet sauce to finish fish sticks. Yep, those homely kid-meal favorites can be cooked according to the directions on the packet, then finished in the skillet with the "chicken" sauce packet for a savory meal that works nicely over toasted English muffin. 

Toasted Sesame with Garlic and Ginger Ground Beef

Yes, I know the packet says "chicken." I add this sauce to a pound of browned ground beef, stir in a 10-ounce packet of frozen green peas I cooked in the microwave while the beef was browning, and lid the pan, letting it simmer for 10 minutes or so.

This is more like a meaty stew or a sloppy-joe filling than a sauce. We ate it the first night in hamburger rolls with leftover slow-cooker beans. It works over mashed potatoes, but might be too thick to do well on rice or pasta.  Its tangy sweetness reminded me of South American picadillo empanada filling. Next time I make it, I plan to make biscuit empanadas with the leftovers, using ready-to-bake biscuits to cut time in the preparation.

Bottom line? You don't have to dine on sandwiches and potato chips just because it's November. Write a new plot using these amazingly tasty shortcuts, and return to your novel with a sated appetite and a satisfied family.

Savoring the Red Bush

Review: Davidson's Rooibos Tea

I learned to love the fruit-laden aroma and creme-soda flavor of South African rooibos tea when I lived for three years in the country. On returning to the US in the late 1970s, I resigned myself to life devoid of this herbal tisane (tea, to all but the purists).

Rooibos tea contains no caffeine, and much lower tannic fractions than Chinese tea. The problem is that unlike "real" Camellia sinensis tea, the Aspalathus linearis plant apparently requires a specific soil and climate ecosystem found only in South Africa's fynbos region in order to thrive.

Cuttings from Oriental tea plants transplanted well to plantations in Indonesia and India, equatorial Africa and the New World tropics. The red bushes of rooibos tea, on the other hand, fail to thrive when planted where the Cape-native soil bacteria and mycorrhizae do not exist. So when apartheid, and the reason for the boycott against South African product exports, finally ended, one of the first things I searched for in US markets was rooibos tea.

Several brands had appeared by the middle 90s, under corporate labels like Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. I had purchased these, and also a South African brand from an import store, in my attempts to recreate that wonderful flavor in my cup. Alas, only the expensive 'native' brand was true to my memory. The 'international' brands sometimes added spices (unnecessary to appeal to my palate) or blended rooibos with other herbs—even Camellia sinensis leaves—to bring down the price point. 

When I saw this tea advertised in Amazon's Prime Pantry, I thought it was time to try again. Hurrah! Here it is, the sublime taste I recall from morning breakfast in Johannesburg. These tea bags are a little over $1 apiece, each yielding a full "company teapot" of 5-8 cups, depending on the size of the service. For my generic porcelain mug from Safeway, I pour 6 full cups.

Served alongside wheat toast spread with honey, or Milton's crackers with fresh mozzarella and a tiny spoonful of black lumpfish caviar, it makes an elegant late supper on a cold winter evening. So civilized!

And with no caffeine, I can indulge right before bedtime.

Fantastic Fall Flavors at Chick-fil-A

Review: Harvest Kale-and-Grain Bowl at Chick-fil-A

The grains are farro, plus red and white quinoa. They are assembled over a bed of fresh chopped kale, then topped with thin slices of grilled chicken, dried cherries and chunks of butternut squash and apple to make an astonishingly succulent salad. 

I said yes to the blend of goat and feta cheese, and asked for my favorite dressing (apple cider vinaigrette) in case I didn't like the recommended light balsamic vinaigrette dressing. 

Then I was glad I had tried the balsamic option first—its tangy sweetness perfectly balanced the kale and apples, and added a extra savory note to the chicken slices. 

The blended chevre/feta crumbles had a creamy texture you sometimes miss in classic feta cheese, but still had the perfect salty tang to complement the kale and apples. There was also a small packet of mixed nuts to sprinkle on top, but in truth, the dish didn't need it, and I didn't add it. As it sat, it was refreshing and satisfying: seasonal perfection. 

Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll hit the restaurant before 10:30 am, and try the breakfast offering, a bowl with the same grain blend, plus scrambled egg whites, grilled chicken and a Monterey jack and cheddar cheese blend. I'm glad our Santa Rosa restaurant is in the test market—I predict these will soon be on the Chick-fil-A menus across the country.

Sunday Pizza Cravings

Review: Mombo's Pizza, Santa Rosa

It has been argued that there are really only two kinds of pizza places: by-the-slice and whole-pie. Usually a by-the-slice place sells pizza and maybe salads, and a whole-pie restaurant will have a wide variety of offerings. Maybe even beer.

Then there's Mombo's Pizza, a cultishly small restaurant near the Santa Rosa Junior College on Mendocino Avenue. The menu board here offers beer and sodas, pizza of several varieties by the slice, whole pies, sandwiches and piadinis, "amazing" salads, and a host of finger foods. 

It has a college atmosphere to it: four large wooden tables grouped closely, ideal for hosting the crowd after a game. Several smaller tables sit in corners for the solitary diner or student hitting the books at lunch. The restaurant even gives a nod to NYC-rush lunches with a high counter for stand-up diners in a hurry.


The pizza is delicious, perfectly made—and by-the-slice servings are huge. Two slices covered a 15" pizza pan. Since just after Mombo's opened in Santa Rosa in 2002, it has consistently won the Bohemian's Best of the North Bay award, year after year after year. The second restaurant in Sebastopol that opened in 2005 has slightly different hours, but the same marvelous pizza.

In case you're not in a pizza mood, I can recommend the incredibly yummy spinach/pine nut salad. Fresh spinach, feta cheese, pine nuts and dried cranberries make the base, and I topped it with Mombo's raspberry vinaigrette and some grilled chicken. 

I got my lunch in a to-go box, because I usually need to take away half of any restaurant salad. This salad was large, but so succulent it vanished in the same amount of time my dining companion polished off his three pepperoni slices! (This never happens; I'm a slow eater. But it did at Mombo's.)

Santa Rosa

Address: 1880 Mendocino Avenue #B 
Phone: 707-528-3278 
Hours: Sun-Thur 10 AM – 11 PM; Fri-Sat 10 AM – midnight 

Sebastopol

Address: 560 Gravenstein Hwy N 
Phone: 707-823-7492 
Hours: 11 AM – 9 PM

All Hands to the Plow

Review: Plow Brewery Tasting Room, Santa Rosa, California

We headed the back way to visit Harbor Freight on Sunday, and overshot the turn by a block. No problem! We'll just scoot through the parking lot west of the store and... What's that?! A new brewery tasting room?

Not even Harbor Freight can trump beer; we diverted immediately, and ducked inside Plow Brewery to find a cool space with tractor-seat bar-stools and fruit-scented air. The beer here is hoppy—a wall outside the front door is covered with hop vines—and fresh, with plenty of taps to accomodate future brews.

Right now, though, there are only four: a pilsner, an IPA, and an IIPA ("Intense" is the extra "I"), plus a porter.

Not being fond of hops, we went straight for the porter. I must admit, I did not expect to like it. Most dark beer tastes burned to me, and the promise of "plenty of hops" was not a selling point. But this was like the finest Bavarian-brewed Löwenbräu Münchner Dunkel, with a winey fruit finish on the rear of the palate. Plum? Blackberry? I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain this was the source of the intense fruit aromas that greeted us when we entered.

The barkeep was discussing the cost of the quart-sized beer cans and sealing equipment with a customer who saw a business opportunity in it. The cans, it seems, are the product of Ball Manufacturing, of Mason jar fame. Ball sells the cans only by the container-load, but some enterprising fellow had bought a container-load to break bulk and supply the local micro-brewerys.

We had to raid the coin-cups in the car to pull together the $2 for a 4-ounce tasting portion, so we vowed to return for an entire glass some hot afternoon. Soon.


Address: 3334 Industrial Dr, Santa Rosa, CA 95403
Phone: 707-843-4583
Hours: Mon-Fri 4–8 PM; Sat 2–7 PM; Sun 2–6 PM

Cookbook Inspired by "The Da Vinci Code"

Quick Review: The Diet Code by Stephen Lanzalotta

Stephen Lanzalotta lost half his Portland, Maine, bakery business to the low-carb diet craze. So he looked to another craze for inspiration. Lanzalotta’s "revolutionary weight-loss secrets from Da Vinci and the Golden Ratio" was the result.

The diet is based on the Golden Ratio or phi, a mathematical value that was used to build the pyramids. Da Vinci is said to have used the Golden Ratio to proportion the human figures in his paintings, and that’s how it comes to be cited in Dan Brown’s popular novel, The Da Vinci Code.

What is the diet inspired by this mathematical proportion? According to the one-time baker, it “consists mostly of Mediterranean foods, including bread, fish, cheese, vegetables, meat, nuts and wine.”

Lots of bread, is my guess.

A Cuban Diversion In Northern California

This Huge Cubano Sandwich Made 2 Meals!

Restaurant Review: Rumba Cuban Kitchen in Windsor, CA

I last had a "real" Cubano sandwich, with its layers of pork meat and ham, pickle, swiss cheese, and toasted, flattened bread, at the touristy Cuban Pete's Caribbean Grill restaurant outside Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. I hadn't realized how much I missed those flavors until one weekend on Old Redwood Highway, hunting for a new Sunday alternative to our regular hangout, I spotted the Rumba Cuban Kitchen sign as we drove past.

Alas, like Chick-fil-A, Rumba is not open on Sunday. But we persisted, and finally caught it open when we were in Windsor, and hungry. 

The outside of the building is unprepossessing—in fact, it looks like it may have begun life as a realtor's office or a florist's shop. The thermometer stood at 89 in the bare, half-empty parking lot, and I worried the inside might not be air-conditioned.

Savory Picadillo in a "Cuban Sloppy Joe"

We stepped inside to find a cool, breezy, welcoming space with a dozen or so tables and a high lunch counter. A chalk specials board immediately caught my eye with a promise of oxtail. Wow! I haven't had oxtail since we were in South Africa... 

But today, I am here for the Cubano sandwich, and although I flirt with the menu, I order the Cubano in the end. My spouse opts for the "Cuban Sloppy Joe," a meaty picadillo in a small loaf of bread. Both meals come with a side of tosturos, salty fried plantain chips, and a dip of Cuban-style mojo sauce, probably made with bitter orange juice, garlic, oregano, and salt.

The picadillo sandwich vanished rapidly, but my Cubano was so rich and meaty—and so large—that I eventually caved, and asked for a to-go box. The half-sandwich barely fit on the diagonal. It would later make a savory supper for both of us, with an extra layer of yellow mustard to perk up the moisture.

While we enjoyed our sandwiches and tasted the Iron Beer, a Havana-local root beer with a pleasant notes of cinnamon and island spices, the restaurant filled up with others looking for a cool haven from the heat, and a meaty meal. We toyed for several minutes with the prospect of dessert: arroz con leche (rice pudding), or perhaps a cafe cubano with a coconut pastry on the side—but the half-Cubano stored in its to-go box argued that our appetites were fully stated.

Next time, I will order dessert first!

Rumba Cuban Kitchen

Address: 8750 Old Redwood Hwy, Windsor, CA 95492

Phone: (707) 687-5632
Open: Mon—Thur, 10:30 AM—9 PM; Fri & Sat, 10:30 AM—9:30 PM (Closed Sunday)

Bodacious Brews

Free popcorn, delicious beer, and a good mil-SF novel... Sweet!

Review: The Henhouse Brewing Company, Tasting Room in Santa Rosa, CA

I'm not so fond of beer. You'd never have known it when I was a student at CSM, doing my p-chem and calculus homework in the I-Club with a pitcher of beer and a dime basket of popcorn on the table, but now it's rare that I drink an entire glass. I am usually content with a sip or two of my spouse's.

Yesterday, I had three glasses of Saison de la Cruse at The Henhouse Brewing Company tasting room in Santa Rosa. 

This delicious verjus-infused "sour beer" is made by combining Chardonnay juice from Cruse Wine Company in Petaluma (where Henhouse began in 2011) with the Saison-yeast beer, aged in wine barrels. The fruits of the vine meld agreeably with the fruity esters of this yeast to produce a perfect sip for a hot summer's day.

I might have never tried the beer at all, except that Carly behind the bar cocked an knowing eyebrow at me, and when I told her I wasn't "so much into beer," said "I'll bet you're a wine drinker, right?" She was right, and she poured me a taste of each of three different beers she thought I might enjoy. The third was the Saison de la Cruse. It hit all the right notes on my palate, and I surrendered immediately.

To share the brewers' description of the process and product:

...we blended the oak-aged beer with an all-lactobacillus fermentation [of Chardonnay juice] to bring down the oak and bring up the acidity. The result is a tart and effervescent saison with all the fun melon and apple of the grape juice, some slight vanilla and spice oak action, and long funky finish.

I don't know about funky (not a beer person, remember?), but the fruits and spice were definitely discernible. It makes me so grateful to Billy Henderson and a chance meeting with him at Chick-fil-A that opened our eyes to this local gem. We'll be back, and next time, I'll bring along some Alouette Smoky Jalapeño cheese and Milton Crackers to extend the enjoyment.

Liner Notes

• Free popcorn beats the dime baskets at the I-Club!
• A local food truck from Sebastopol's Red Horse Pizza is there on the weekends, and other days you are permitted to have food delivered.
• Picnic tables outside are shady and inviting, and reportedly popular since the tasting room opened in March 2016. On Wednesday afternoon when we were there, the crowd was content to be inside, in the cool.

Address: 322 Bellevue Ave, Santa Rosa, CA 95407 

Phone: (707) 347-9211
Open: Wed—Friday, 4—9 PM; Sat & Sun, 11 AM—9 PM

Clown Bread at the Clown Motel

My grandmother had a treat she offered to good grandchildren as a reward for completing a chore. She called it clown bread.

Grandma made clown bread the same way her own British grandmother had made it, with cornmeal, red and black currants, and coriander seeds, and sweetened it with molasses.

My mother made her clown bread for school bake sales and church-social platters. Mom swapped two colors of raisins for the original currants, and substituted poppy seeds for the coriander kind. Her cornbread base was sweetened with ordinary white sugar in the time I lived at home. (I heard from younger siblings that her recipe had used Splenda in later years.)

Knowing that we planned to be at the Clown Motel in Nevada this last weekend, I made a big tray of clown bread to take along as journey fare, and to share at the campfire in the Berlin Ichthyosaur Park. Mine was sweetened with sage honey, and boasted cran-raisins and amaranth seeds from our "farm." The amaranth and sage honey gave the clown bread a noticeably floral aroma. 

I use amaranth seeds wherever a recipe calls for poppy seeds, so I knew they would work well. I wasn't prepared for the pronounced scent, though, nor the definite "crumb-y" texture they gave the clown bread. This did delight the pigeon flock at one picnic ground we stopped at on our way into Tonopah!

We shared clown bread for breakfast with the hotel staff (Pam and her cleaning buddy), and split between us some jalepeño baked potatoes with cheese as a side dish. The potatoes also came from our farm, the last burgeoning of the plants under the taller flowers. 

Quick Recipes For Dummies Like Me

Review: 30-Minute Meals For Dummies by Bev Bennett

I’m a sucker for cookbooks with a twist, and this super compilation of quick recipes in the For Dummies series, Bev Bennett’s 30-Minute Meals For Dummies, is certainly skewed far enough to suit my tastes. 

I also love a chef who shares my own approach to cooking, in which many favorite recipes begin, “Open a can of…”

Bennett starts with a brief review of why family mealtimes are important. In addition to the family bonding that takes place at the table, she stresses the importance of nutritional control, and the dietary training that starts in the kitchen. She avoids being preachy by delivering this message with humor:

• Assumptions about my readers: You buy every book with a black-and-yellow cover that you run across…
• Packaged foods don’t all come in the macaroni-and-powdered-cheese variety. You don’t have to eat like a 7-year-old when you cook from a box.
• In case you’re thinking about double-duty, a “poached salmon in the dishwasher” recipe occasionally makes the circuit of Internet message boards and spiral-bound school fundraiser recipe books. It’s not a technique that I endorse. I tried it, and my dishes smelled fishy for weeks…

I wasn’t tempted to poach salmon in the dishwasher, but I did try Bennett’s Hot Sweet Chicken over rice from this chapter, and although my prep time ran 10 minutes instead of the 5 she estimates, with the 20-minute cooking time, it still came in at a half-hour. This dish was such a hit, I’ll try it with the pork tenderloin variant next time!

Like the Working Stiff Cookbook (reviewed under What's for Dinner? [And Who's Cooking?]), this cookbook spends a chapter recommending the contents of a well-stocked pantry to help speed the task of cooking. Beans, grains, and canned fish and tomatoes top the list of pantry-stuffings, with spices and herbs for the seasoning cupboard. 

Among other recipes, the vegetarian Kale and Canellini Bean entree shows the value of having ingredients ready to hand. Canned canellini (white kidney) beans are a favorite of mine because of the way they fall apart in a slow-cooker, making a delightful thick soup. Matched with garlic and kale fresh-picked from the garden, this soup-pot meal took less than the 27 minutes estimated (mainly because I used pre-minced garlic). I’ll probably convert it to a slow-cooker recipe in the future.

Dining Once, Eating Twice is Bennett’s suggestion for the occasional restaurant meal. In response to super-sized servings of steak, fries and roasted chicken, she recommends eating a sensible portion, then bagging up the rest with an eye to recipes that rock out on leftovers. My favorite in this chapter, I have to admit, is French Fry Soup. Knowing that fries are basically inedible once they cool and lose their crisp “tooth” leads many of us to eat the entire serving. But with this clever, quick recipe, you combine those cold, limp leftovers with a large can of chicken broth, some dill, garlic and pepper, and get a super soup in just over 10 minutes. It’s much easier to stop cramming fries down long after the satiation point when you know the rest will be reborn in this tasty dish.

The next chapter, Cooking at Warp Speed, advises how to use pre-packaged meals to reach a nutritional conclusion in a short cooking time. Restaurant risotto is a dish that takes a long time to prepare. The rice is stirred slowly over a low heat, so that the grains develop a slightly sticky consistency—definitely not a candidate for a quick meal! Yet packaged risotto mixes can be prepared in much less time, yielding a similar result from your “home cooking.” The Bacon and Vegetable Risotto was the first recipe I tried from this cookbook, since I had a package of plain risotto mix and uncooked bacon already. Because I needed to cook the bacon first, it took me 20 minutes, as opposed to Bennett’s estimate of 1 minute prep-time and 15 minutes cooking time when pre-cooked bacon is used.

Bennett even includes a list of time-saving equipment to boost your kitchen productivity. From silicone spatulas to parchment paper, these items can help reduce prep and cleanup time, making your cooking time more effective.

I have a final word for Bev Bennett. Don’t be so quick to dismiss the blue-and-yellow box! Packaged macaroni and cheese is available as Kraft Easy-Mac, in microwave-quick servings. I make Kickin' Kraft Easy-Mac by stirring chopped jalapeños and a small can of drained tuna into two of these single-person packages after cooking. The result is a hearty adult meal for both of us in just under 5 minutes.

Bon appétit!

Liner Note:

30-Minute Meals For Dummies is available for Kindle—although who buys a cookbook on Kindle?

What’s For Dinner? (And Who’s Cooking?)

Review: The Working Stiff Cookbook, Bob Sloan

It’s 8 PM and you just got home from work. What’s for dinner?

Far from the halcyon Fifties, when a working stiff walked in the door, shouted, “Honey, I’m home!” and sat down to a meal cooked by a stay-at-home spouse, the responsibility for making evening meals has devolved upon Swanson, Dominos, and the food court at the mall. In The Working Stiff Cookbook, Bob Sloan shows us how to take back control over the family dinner.

This cookbook is like a Joy of Cooking for the new age. Like that older cookbook, this one doesn’t assume that we know how to stock a pantry or select a good skillet. Sloan tells us, with several quick essays at the beginning. From the 33 items found in every well-stocked pantry, to the 11 pots and pans and four knives no kitchen should be without, he sets us straight on the basics.

Then he launches into the (mostly) simple, quick-to-prepare recipes. He focuses on main dishes, because “as a Working Stiff myself, I realize you’re pushing yourself to the max just getting the entrée together.” Having said that, though, he provides some staging tips for side dishes, and includes recipes for complimentary starches, vegetables and even a few desserts.

The cookbook, wire-bound underneath a strong cover, is divided into four encouragingly-titled tabbed sections: Instant, One-Pot, Pasta, and Soups, etc. A typical recipe page under the Instant tab, for example, is “Sole in Foil” for two. The three-ingredient recipe for the sole is supported by a side-bar that explains cooking in foil, a footnote that suggests variations in seasoning, and a recipe for Rice Pilaf that can be made while the sole is in the oven. The whole meal takes about 20 minutes to make, including prep time.

One-Pot recipes can be as pedestrian as a tuna casserole, or as sophisticated as Sloan’s “Paella Rapido.” Despite a slightly-daunting list of ingredients (compared with “Sole in Foil,” anyway), I was encouraged to try this recipe by the frequent repetition of my favorite recipe phrase: “Open a can of…” The author acknowledges in the sidebar that this will not be exactly like the classic Mediterranean dish made with just-caught fish and shrimp, but I can testify from my own trials that it comes close enough! Prep time is less than 15 minutes, but cooking time after the paella is prepared is 45 minutes.

The Pasta tab covers more than just the starch, of course—although I found Sloan’s tips on cooking pasta very helpful. This section shows us some quick and tasty ways to use pasta as an ingredient in such one-dish meals as the vegetarian “Thai Vegetable Noodles.” I liked the looks of this recipe because it gave me a more-creative way to use the other half of a red pepper, once it’s been sliced open. (This dish would also make a good destination for left-over broccoli, green beans and cauliflower. If we should ever have any, that is.)

The tab isn’t big enough for the full title of the final section. Under Soups, etc. we find recipes for soups, salads, and sandwiches. Nothing is too simple for Sloan to include; “Grilled Cheese Sandwich” has a page, and so does “Eggs for Dinner.” My favorite, though, is the “Sausage, Escarole & White Bean Soup.” Since this recipe uses canned white beans, it takes very little time to make, but it tastes as if it’s been simmering all day.

This isn’t a large cookbook. It really doesn’t need to be; its best use is to break us of the flop-into-an-armchair, dial-Dominos-for-dinner habit. Over 50 entrée recipes give plenty of options for a month’s worth of meals with no repeats, even if you don’t like all the menu options Sloan offers. A complete Index makes it easy to find recipes to match the contents of your refrigerator.

The cute 50s-cookbook-style illustrations by Michael Klein are great seasoning for the no-nonsense recipe writing. Sloan understands, 

...this may not be the cookbook you curl up with at night. I don’t describe the aromas emanating from rustic soup pots simmering on Tuscan farmhouse stoves.

That is true—he just makes it possible for us working stiffs to smell them first-hand! The author knows that most of us are too busy to cook the way our grandparents (or even our parents) did. We don’t even shop the way our forebears did, why would we prepare meals that way?

Like my other favorite cookbook, Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes, this cookbook takes a simple approach that makes it easy to give up the bucket from KFC or bag from Burger King as your default dinner option.

Black Pig Birthday

My spouse specializes in weirdly appropriate presents. For example, I got a Brunton hand-compass for one anniversary. (The geologist's field tool has a ruby pivot, and it was our Ruby anniversary, you see.) Christmas one year I found a package of wooden-stick Q-tips under the tree. You had to be me in the drought of such usefully inflexible swabs to know why I was awash in tears of gratitude.

This year for my birthday, I opened a chilly wrapped gift to find a package of thick-sliced bacon. Black Pig Bacon, to be specific.

Bacon is ambrosial, in my opinion, pretty tasty even at its most mundane. But if all you've ever had is the domestic product of a huge pig farm, where the animals are penned and fed with garbage, and the meat is wet-cured with liquid smoke, you have no idea how much more tasty bacon can be!

I knew what I had to do with this meat-gift. I would candy it and then share with friends... I went onto Food.com and found a spicy bacon-candying recipe, and added some extra spice to the basic brown-sugar-and-cayenne rub.

Ten minutes to rub and pan the bacon, and thirty to cook it, and I will be ready to sit down to a pig-party with my spouse and a few friends.

Life is sweet!

The Study of Pie

I like pizza. There were whole years in my early married life that pizza was on the menu for dinner whenever we could afford it. 

We've eaten abysmal pizza in Jo-burg and Milano, we've enjoyed outstanding, even glorious pies in Idaho Springs, Colorado and Gallup, New Mexico. We've piled extra cheese on our Tombstones, office-microwaved Red Baron.

But until yesterday, we had no motivation to study pizza. The science and knowledge of pie, short of that imparted from the taste buds, was totally unnecessary.

That was before we walked into Pieology, a new local pizzeria that replaced the defunct Blockbuster video in the shopping block at the bottom of our hill. The concept—fast, artisanal, custom-built pizzas—is unlike the Dominos model. Here, all pies are medium (11.5 inches across), and the build process is more like Subway than Round Table. There is a single price for all the toppings you want, and they do not deliver.

I had a whole wheat crust brushed with herbed butter, piled with extra mozzarella, and sprinkled with black olive slices, corn and bacon. For my spouse, the thin crust was a negative, but the availability of whole wheat or gluten-free was a plus; that pie was built with marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni, Next time, we may try the hand-made (standard) pizza crust and choose a different cheese. They have a dairy-free cheese that might be interesting.

However beautiful a pie may be, the bottom line is the taste. I watched the pepperoni pizza disappear, crisp crust and all, as I savored my own herb-buttered, corn and olive bedazzled slices. This was an $8 pie with $28-worth of flavor!

Pieology—I believe we will be attending regular classes here. Maybe even take along some homework!

Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup

I love kale. 

We had half our garden plot planted with it last year, and for a while we ate kale three or four times a week. But it takes a lot of time to trim and shred fresh kale. And it cooks down: four to five cups of shredded kale will reduce to two modest servings after it is skillet-grilled with bacon and diced sweet squash.

I was thrilled, therefore, to find in the Safeway prepared salad section a hefty portion of chopped kale in a "salad kit" from Taylor Farms, with brussels sprouts and arugula among other greens. I immediately bought two bags. With low-sodium beef broth, dried peas and lentils, some pinto beans and a minimum of prep work, we scored this beautiful beef, bean, pulse and kale soup. Cooked overnight in the slow cooker and served with a wedge of jalapeño cheese bread, it was an rousing success.

Prepared salads get a lot of negative reviews from foodies, mostly because they are "highly processed". My feeling is, if it gets more veggies into my diet, it's a great thing! (Also, we do not use the salad dressing or other toppings from the kit in this recipe, and that's where a lot of salt and other processing comes into the kit.)

Prep time using the salad kit is only 30 minutes, and much of that is waiting for the beans to precook. The rest is all slow-cooker: Set it up in the evening, and you'll have an outstanding lunch ready to serve the next day. Do your prep in the morning, and by evening you have a perfect cold-weather supper.

The recipe below makes a LOT of soup, sufficient for a couple for three or four meals, or for a family to have seconds as desired. 

Beefy Kale and Bean Soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 to 1 pound coarse-grind hamburger
• 1 - 1.5 cups dry pinto beans
• 1 Taylor Farms or other Chopped Kale Salad Kit (or you can shred 2 cups volume kale, brussels sprouts and cabbage, mostly kale)
• 2 14-ounce cartons low-sodium beef broth (I use Swanson's)
• 2/3 cup dried green peas
• 2/3 cup dried lentils
• 1/4 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp seasoning "salt" (this is why you want the low sodium broth; you can also substitute a pinch of paprika, a dash of ground or whole celery seed, and a pinch of turmeric for the seasoned salt)
• vigorous shake of Mrs. Dash (or other seasoning with coarse-ground pepper)

Preparation/Cooking:

In a 4-quart slow cooker set on LOW, combine the broth, dried pulses, and spices and set the lid in place.

In a saucepan, put the cleaned pinto beans in 4 cups of water and bring it to a boil. When boiling, set a timer for 30 minutes.

While the beans are boiling, heat a skillet to medium high, and add the ground beef in small chunks. For a whole pound, I brown the beef in two lots so the skillet doesn't get too cool. Brown and season the beef as preferred. (I like a good crust on one side, so the caramelized flavor is obvious.) Drain the fat from the skillet when done.

When the timer goes off for the beans, remove them from the heat, and rinse them with cold water until the water comes off mostly clear. Drain and add the beans, the browned beef, and the salad greens to the slow cooker, stirring to mix them through the broth.

Discard or keep the salad toppings for other dishes; they are not used in the soup!

The soup should be cooked on LOW for at least 8 hours. I often cook it for 6 hours, then turn the heat down to WARM for another 4 to 5 hours.

I have never had success with this recipe cooked on HIGH, but I suppose it would take 4 hours at that setting. I always manage to forget it, and the soup is burned.