Sally’s Kitchen & Stuff

I figured this one out last night, after realizing that my local supermarket doesn’t have cilantro OR serrano peppers. (How could they NOT have cilantro? How? It’s a Sobey’s!) Guacamole always kinda scared me, since it usually requires popping raw onions and garlic into your mouth. (great date food!) This recipe won’t stink up your breath.

How to pick a ripe avocado: DARK, dark green. Almost brown-ish. Gives a little when lightly squeezed. If it doesn’t give at all, it’s unripe. I usually buy them green since nobody carries them ripe, then leave them in a bowl on the counter and check every morning until it’s brown. Then I stash it in the fridge and have it that night. (They don’t keep well in the fridge!) Usually people recommend that you put it in a brown paperbag to ripen, but I tend to forget about them when I do that. I’m that scatterbrained. :p

The proper way to open an avocado: cut length-wise around the seed in the middle, twist open, then quickly chop the knife down onto the seed, twist, and discard the seed. With a ripe avocado, you can turn the peel inside out and just plop the flesh into a bowl. Save the peel.

The art of the guacamole - don’t measure ANYTHING. It’s all eye-balled. Using prepared salsa guarantees that you won’t need to chop anything.
Pick a mild one and adjust the spice factor with Tabasco sauce.

Ingredients
flesh of 2 ripe avocados
Half an avocado peel worth of prepared salsa - plain jar will do
1 squeeze of half a lime
2 pinches of garlic salt
1 dash of fresh pepper
As much green pepper Tabasco sauce as you want

Instructions
Sprinkle salt, pepper, and add lime juice to avocados in serving bowl. Mash. (I used a potato masher) Throw in the salsa, mix.

Taste test. It might be enough if you want it mild. Add tobasco sauce, then mix with more salt to taste, if necessary. Serve with plain tortilla chips.

Stu and I polished the whole thing off as dinner, but as a snack, you can probably pass this around 4-5 people. If you need to make more, do batches as needed, because no matter how much lime juice you throw on avocados, it’s still going to oxidize and turn brown - eventually.

Jamie wrote:
> um hi, i was just curious to ask if you have any ideas for big meals (10-12 people) that would cost less than 20-25$ at the most? or a way to reinvent pasta or rice based foods? i have a meet with my teen group every week and though i love cooking i’m just running outta ideas…
> do i dare? …yup. HELP!
> p.s i love reading your blog, it’s the only interesting one they feature.T

Thank you! I just love reading comments when I get back from a weekend!

If you have a grill, you can bring the whole group outdoors and ask them to bring some meat that they would prefer. If each person bring a little something, all you’ll need is BBQ sauce. You can variate what you put on as a glaze - I love orange marmalade chicken wings, by the way.

Roast beef is cheaper than you’d think: the cheaper, fattier cuts will put you back less than $20 - just pick whatever’s on sale! The last time I went to a market to pick up roast beef, I scored a pot roast for $7.99, 4 lbs. That fed 8. So just double it and you can feed 16, and still have $ left over for the trimmings. The traditional chinese congee is a proverbial crowd pleaser. People that’s NEVER heard of congee loves it. It’s time consuming, but one pot of congee can easily feed 10+, and costs less than $10 to make. Sheperd’s pie made with lamb and beef is another favorite - costs less than $15 to make and easily feeds 10+ with leftovers.

If you’re used to cooking spaghetti and serving as is, may I suggest a baked spaghetti dish with cheese, cream, and salt? You can accent pasta & cheese with pretty much anything. Salmon? Chunks of meat? Surimi? The sky’s the limit.

Take a walk in a chinese supermarket and pick up some chinese sausages, preserved meats, green onions. You might end up with $50 worth of stuff, but the preserved meats really keep, and you only need a bit of each. Get some glutinous rice (chinese sticky rice) and cook WITH chopped bits of preserved meats and green onions, and a dash of soysauce for color. If you have a rice cooker, this is a snap to make. With a pot, you’re going to have to brush the sides and bottom down with oil, and it’s still going to stick. But the results are well worth it. (order "sticky rice" with chinese sausages at dim sum and find out)

Rules of thumb:

• Choose cheaper cuts of meat. When you’re buying beef steaks, you may find that the cheaper cuts of meat has better marbling and fat distrubution, and actually taste better than its leaner counterpart. Chicken thighs are cheaper than chicken breasts, and depending on the recipe, tastes practically the same.
• Flank steaks are relatively cheap, the size of a flattened soccer ball, and when sliced, feeds plenty of people.
• Congee is magical. It keeps atomically hot for hours, it cooks on its own on the most part, and whatever cheap ingredients you throw into it at the beginning, you’d have a wonderfully thick soup at the end.
• You can serve a meaty (meat bone soup!) soup over a scoop of rice to make it more hearty.
• Mac and cheese doesn’t just have to contain mac and cheese - you can add whatever you want!
• Seek out recipes than can be easily doubled / tripled / quardrupled, with common ingredients. It’d take you just a bit more time to prep, but just as long to cook.
• Slowcookers are great for big batches. Bouillabaisse, anyone?

Nope, it’s not your typical chicken marsala. It involved no chopping, no dicing. I make this when I have absolutely no time. You just need one large skillet.

If you have a rice cooker, start the rice before you start cooking. Dinner in 30 minutes!

Ingredients - serves 2
4 chicken thighs (skin on/skin off. Your chioce. I like skin off.)
1 TBSP light oil
1 TBSP unsalted butter
1 TSP garlic salt (or garlic powder and salt to taste)
1 TSP marsala powder
1/2 TSP chilli powder
1 TBSP flour (any kind you have)
2 CUPS frozen mixed vegetables (I used Asian mix)

Instructions
Heat oil and butter on medium heat. Cover chicken with the spice mix, and stir fry. 15 minutes. Life chicken from pan, add flour, stir. Add frozen vegetables. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Last 5 minutes, return chicken to pan, let heat for 5 minutes. That’s IT! Tastes divine spooned over rice. You can double the portions for company (it really does taste good enough and looks pretty good, depend on the veggie you use), and it freezes ok. But since it only takes 30 minutes to cook, why bother?

Well, I found it. Sort of. I had this obssession with the Iriver-H120 a while back. It wasn’t an ipod, it was black, it had the look of a good old JVC all metal cassette walkman (my first portable music device) and it was just…my thing. It was also discontinued.

My hunt for another Iriver led me to the H-10. The next version from the old H-120. It’s the same storage capacity, an updated firmware system, and it no longer plays OGG. Poo. But it retained the look, so I thought, what the heck. The price tag, at every local retailer I’ve searched, has been around $370. Tigerdirect had it for $279 for months, but I was waiting for a lower price to pounce.

So I checked this morning, and the price was $224 + $20 rebate. $204 + tax + shipping. About $250 when all’s said and done. Compared to $370+tax = $425 at TheSourceCC. That means…I save a whopping $175. So if anybody wants to nab one before they’re gone (the rebate will be honored until the end of the month), here’s a link. By the way, that’s Canadian dollars. It’s even cheaper on the US site.

Warning: this is a geek mp3 player. It’s probably one of the least user-friendly players out there. You can learn to use it, then hand it to your friends, who will promptly hand it back. Since that’s exactly how I’ve set up my computer (Aston shell, anyone? No desktop icons? All shortcut menus binded to F-keys? Confused yet?) I LOVE it.

Firmware upgrade link (There’s MAJOR problems with the built in 1.01 firmware. latest as of this posting: 2.51.)
Fixya page

You will need a skillet, preferably deep, since this stuff is going to RISE. You’ll also need a whisk, a basting brush, and a pizza lifter type of tool to lift the slices out. VERY decadent.

Ingredients
12 regular eggs or 10 large eggs
1/2 TBSP seasalt
1 TBSP President’s Choice Creamy Mild Seafood Sauce
1/3 cup table cream (18%)
2 TBSP light oil (not olive or other strong flavours)
1 TBSP butter
1 package fresh smoked salmon, pre-sliced
3 TBSP cream cheese at room temperature
1 TBSP capers, drained

Instructions
Preheat oven to broil. Oil your pan with a brush. Oil the SIDES as well as the bottom (otherwise the quiche would cling and not rise). Turn the heat to medium. Add butter.

Whip eggs, cream, salt and seafood sauce together until lightly frothy. You can employ a mixer for this job, but a whisk will do. Pour into oiled, preheated pan, immediately turn off the heat. Wait 5 minutes and check for doneness with a fork - you want it done 50% from the bottom up. Press 1/3 of the smoked salmon halfway through the egg in an even layer, then add blobs of cream cheese and half the capers in the same manner.

If you have a plastic handle on that skillet, wrap it loosely in foil, shiny side out. Shove the whole lot into the oven, spinkle with more capers (the heat will dry them out a bit) Cook, uncovered, unti done, but NOT brown. Not even LIGHTLY brown. It should’ve climbed to twice its original size by now. Remove from oven, and let sit for 5 minutes before topping with remaining smoked salmon. If you top it the moment it’s out of the oven, the salmon would cool it down a little and not allow the middle to continue to cook, and you’d end up with cooked samon topping. Ick.

Serves 6 as an appertizer, or 4 as a main dish. This can keep in the fridge for ONE day, max, tightly wrapped. Do not freeze. It’ll reheat just fine in the microwave, but I suggest peeling the salmon off, heat, then put the salmon back on.

And she’s done!

It’s so beautiful (messy) and complicated (messy) I think I’m in love with it.

It took me about 4 days of free time. 4 days of undivided attention, 2 Xacto blade, 2 utility blades, 1/5 of a bottle of Elmer’s glue-all, and now, where shall I put the thing?

Right now it’s balancing precauriously on my Stereo, backlit. It might as well be flying.

Here’s ALL the photos, in my Flickr photoset.

This one’s for you, Ginny!

• Add orange or lemon zest in ground beef, form into thin patties, bread with flour, and pan fry. Glaze with orange/lemon marmalade. Drizzle sugared soy on top.
• Adding ground lamb (just a bit! the stuff takes over) to ground beef gives it more flavour and browns better for meat sauce.
• Make spoon sized ground beef patties with five-spice. Drench in egg and soy sauce. Deep fry. My grandma used to do this with minced any meat. Fish, pork, chicken, you name it.
• Mix with spices (it’s like playing with food, really - ginger, honey, chilli…anything goes), pack onto the bottom of a ceramic plate in a thin layer, and steam.
• Make your own sausage patties by adding spices, fresh herbs, and other meats. If you throw enough salt in there it actually keeps pretty well frozen.
• Frittatas (an italian egg pizza) can be made with balls of ground beef, eggs, any sort of green leafed veggie, and potatoes. The effect is a whole meal in a slice of egg pizza. Just make sure you over-spice the beef.

Any recipe that calls for beef can be adjusted for ground beef. Szechuan beef? It actually tastes better with ground beef. Couple of things though - you MUST cook ground beef to well-done. And you should NEVER freeze ground beef unless you have a flash-freezer. Bateria can be on any part of the ground beef, and they multiply IN the lump in the freezer. When you take it out it’s practically a colony. Yuck.

It’s all about being resourceful, really. I have one really good pan. It’s heavy, has a great copper bottom encased in stainless steel so the heat conduction on it is amazing. But I only have one.

So how do you make breakfast for two on one pan when you want to make over-easy as well as scrambled, and keep bacon hot? It’s really quite simple. Cook the bacon first. Toast the bread. Then use the pan to cook the eggs, scramble one side not the other. Then take it OFF the heat and put the plate of bacon and toast on top. Wait five minutes. Bacon guaranteed to be still hot, eggs to be scrambled on one and over-easy on the other side.

BTW, if you haven’t read my freezing bacon tip, here’s a link. To unroll it, I usually just wrap it up in a dishcloth (it’s too cold for my hands) and bend it a little to loosen, then use a butterknife to peel them out when they’re being stubborn. Bacon go on sale from time to time, so I usually stock up.

I liked it enough that I’m actually going to tackle the 26 page papermodel of the castle. It looks daunting, it probably IS daunting, but you can’t stop me. But if you like, you could race me to it.

I’ve printed it out on letter size and nothing was cut off. So don’t bother buying A4 for it.

There’s also the scans of the castle (the first one, not the one in the ending) floating around the net, but 50 sheets, double sided? If you’re printing it out yourself, factor in the cost of the ink of a home inkjet printer…if you might as well buy the book and support the publishers.

Roast beef will always taste better 2 days after it’s been taken out of the oven. So why bother waking up early and making it on the day of? This will actually keep well in the fridge up to 5 days.

You will need: Roasting pan with rack, pastry brush, wire whisk, and a really big knife. I chose the round roast because the stuff is always cheaper and on sale, at around $4 a pound. You can feed 6-8 people with about 4 lbs or so.

Ingredients
For roast:
4 LBs beef roast - bottom round roast, but really anything as long it’s boneless. Confused? Check this page.
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup honey
1 TBSP Coarse salt
1 TSP cracked pepper

For gravy:
1 TBSP beef bouillion powder
1/4 cup flour
2 Cups water

When reheating:
2 TBSP oil
1 Cup chicken broth

Instructions
Make sure beef roast has been sitting in room temperature for at least 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350F.

Place the roast in a rack, lining the bottom with foil. Mix salt, pepper, and oil together, and brush ALL over the roast. You might have a bit left. Save it for later.

Roast beef, uncovered, for 1 hour. Lower heat to 250, roast for another hour and a half. Take it out and check it by pushing it with your thumb - you should meet with some resistance, but still have some bounce. and brush it down in a mixture of honey and a bit of oil/salt/pepper. Now put it back in and roast at 300 until it burns. You heard me. Roast it until you can smell burnt honey, then take it out. (Yes, it’s underdone. If we cook it to medium now, then by the time you serve it it’d be overdone.)

Tent with foil for the next 20 minutes, remove the oil and let sit 20 minutes. Carve and collect the juices in a pan. Put in the gravy ingredients, turn heat up to medium, and whisk until very thick. Add more flour if it’s not. I used whole wheat flour, so it might not be as nice if you use refined. It’s okay if it’s just a bit thicker than you normally like it - we’re going to thin it out later. Pour over sliced roast beef (use a bowl), making sure that it’s ALL over the beef, not just on the outside. Cover, let cool, and refrigerate.

When you’re ready to serve, heat the pan with oil, add the beef and gravy, and when it starts to sizzle, deglaze everything with chicken broth. I served this with roasted (frozen) vegetables and mashed potatoes.

You CAN freeze the whole package if you like - just make sure it’s defrosted overnight in an airtight wrap before you toss it onto the pan.