Hot, Cheap & Easy

My friends greeted the news with gasps. With disbelief. With wide-eyed incredulity.

Yes, it was true. I actually bought a loaf of sliced white bread last week, smeared it with variations of cream cheese, jelly and butter and served it to my son. I also bought cupcake mix from a box AND, horror of all horrors, two tubs of pre-made icing with all manner of indecipherable ingredients written on the side by the (seriously?) “nutrition” information. I had my reasons. And I have no regrets.

Halloween is Leandro’s favorite, number one, most-anticipated holiday, so we invited a few of his beastie besties for a Halloween get-together on the Sunday afternoon before Halloween. Between goody bag decorating, scavenger hunts, and cupcake decorating, I felt like I had the activities covered, but it was a challenge to make good-looking seasonal stuff that would impress the moms, be attractive to the kids and…

So we spent another evening in the emergency room and Leandro got another four stitches, this time in the forehead. With that kind of excitement going on, you can be sure that once the chocolate ice cream dinner for brave boys was up, I was STILL going to be too tired for anything elaborate in the kitchen.

Marcella Hazan to the rescue. This queen of the kitchen’s Essentials of Italian Cuisine is a much loved and much soiled recipe book over here. These days I don’t have the resources for some of the more ambitious dishes, but her tomato sauce with onion and butter is simple and perfect: three ingredients resulting in one glorious, sweet, rich sauce that you barely have to stir!

I have adapted it slightly to make it even faster (puree, rather than whole tomatoes, adjusted the butter, for example). The beauty of this one is that it can be done…

(Three hundredth post!!!!)

Cooking a nice meal for both parents and kids does not have to involve making two separate dinners.Well, not exactly, anyway.

I confess to getting cold feet halfway through my prep and making myself a safety net, so let’s say this time I made one-and-a-half meals, but in the process, I really stocked the freezer for the new semester.

I made some “fancy” meatballs and some basic ones (that recipe later in the week) for a Single Mothers By Choice-three-family dinner here at home last weekend…pasta, meatballs and red sauce…can you really go wrong? My friend, Pam, brought the salad fixings, and Kim brought a sinful dessert (which one pretends is for the kids, but is really just as much for the growns) and everything went swimmingly! And everyone liked both fancy and plain.

Southern Italy has had a great influence on the population of the South Shore of Long Island. That means there are a number of stores here which make their own mozzarella. It is heavenly stuff; soft, milky, barely salted, and, if you get to Fairway, AS Pork Store or Uncle Giuseppe’s at the right time, it will still be warm.

No, it isn’t mozzarella di bufalá, the rich Italian water buffalo cheese that makes insalata caprese that much more delicious, but which is only available imported (that I know of). This is strictly cow’s milk – but what it lacks in texture and complexity, it makes up for in freshness and simple comfort.

And, you can always dress it up. Small mozzarella balls in their liquid can be purchased and made more interesting in a flash when drained and dolloped with your preferred pesto. Or you can try…

Oh this heat wave is tough. I’ve been cooking as little as possible, trying to limit turning on the stove and oven and trying not to eat food that is hot and heavy. Simple wrap sandwiches of veggie spears and hummus, apple slice dipped in hummus, cherry and Sungold tomatoes just popped into my mouth straight from the fridge.

This is a go-to no-cook pasta sauce that, yes, requires you to cook the pasta, but is fresh and cool going down. It’s done in an instant, and takes full advantage of the sweet little tomatoes and basil that are starting to hit their stride right about now. This sauce ends up with a silky sweetness that is almost buttery, but there is no dairy involved – unless you choose to add cheese…

Here’s wishing you a cool weekend!

Raw tomato sauce for pasta

1 pound pasta (penne or other short…

Cannellini beans have come to the rescue a couple of times this week – once when I needed something to take across the street to dinner that would show off one of the tomatoes we grew in our backyard and then when we had a mom and kid playdate and I wanted a quick addition to a snack-y type table, along with hummus, veggies, crackers, grapes, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.

These little white beans are tasty right out of the can, so you are only seconds from a hearty snack when you have it in your pantry. I think I’ll be using this recipe a lot this winter to add dash and protein satisfaction to otherwise ordinary salads.

Quick Cannellini Bean Salad (great with tomatoes!)

1 15oz can cannellini (white) beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 onion, peeled and minced (red onion preferred, but use what you’ve got)

1 tsp extra…

“Tis the season for the tomatoes to overwhelm. In fact, last year we were so overwhelmed that I had tomatoes in the freezer all winter. The texture isn’t as good as in the middle of summer, but the incomparable bright, fresh flavor is still there.

So this is a terrific simple sauce that you can make from frozen or fresh. Instructions for blanching appear at the end!

Golden Tomato Pasta Sauce

¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil

1 Cup shallots, chopped

¼ tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 Tbs oregano (less if oregano is not your favorite; this is a pretty generous amount)

Pinch sugar

5 lbs golden tomatoes, cored, blanched and peeled*

10-20 basil leaves, chopped

Heat olive oil at medium-high in a heavy-bottomed soup pot until liquid and fragrant. Add shallots, stir to coat and lower heat to medium low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until shallots are soft and…

The problem with warehouse shopping places like Costco is that when you are just one and a half people (little man being that half because he only eats half the variety that I do so far) the food comes in packages that are far more than you can consume before it goes off. We just can’t eat that many avocados or tomatoes or asparagus before they start looking nasty, no matter how good the price.

But, I was tempted into sins of excess by a quart of bright orange tomatoes in a plastic shell that reminded me irresistably of Sungolds. Why I was buying tomatoes out of season and out of state is a question you can reasonably ask. I hang my head in locavore-gone-wrong shame and go on with my story. I bought them. I did.

They were delicious, ridiculously sweet and kept me on the salad path…

As the weather cools, I am turning the oven on more and more (the big oven). Packing the oven uses less energy and is a great way to use up an abundance of garden vegetables. Roast everything one evening and have veggies for side dishes, quick pastas, lunchtime wraps, and whatever else you can think of for the next three or four days!

On this occasion I packed the oven with tomatoes, eggplant, onions and peppers, and pattypan squash in separate  dishes…all at 450° for approximately 30 minutes. It was quite a production, but more on those recipes later!

Today’s installment is yet another delicious way to get the most from the end-of-season tomatoes and basil. This method turns little plums into savory-sweet disks that dress up any dish they are around. They marry well with pizza, feta, mozzarella, hummus, olives…anything Mediterranean.

Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic and Basil

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