Hot, Cheap & Easy

Gallery

Super Bowl: Yuca en Escabeche- a bold alternative to potato salad

Note to readers: I am reblogging this, one of the top HC&E posts ever, because it is one of our family favorites AND the best potato salad alternative for Game Day!

Hot, Cheap & Easy

I’ve got nothing against potato salad; in fact, it is a big favorite of mine for summer barbecues, church functions, Christmas buffets or midnight raids on the leftovers.

But Game Day calls for a more assertive strategy: yuca en escabeche (or, as my friends and family know and love it: yuca salad) is the clear winner for full flavor, honking big texture, great colors and the ability to stand up to spicy wings and ribs. It has the heft to defend against the beer and alcohol blitz of Super Bowl Sunday, but is not so exotic looking or smelling as to scare off cautious diners. And of course it makes for more interesting conversation amongst those who are only really there for the food and the commercials.

Yuca (Manihot esculenta) is a rough-skinned root vegetable native to Brazil. It is also known as cassava, manioc and mandioca. The bitter kind has a poison…

View original post 547 more words

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Uncategorized

Nine Super Bowl Tapas and Snacks (Easy and More Elegant than the Average Tailgate)

28 Jan

Note to Readers: As Super Bowl approaches…here are some ideas for stepping up your game….

Hot, Cheap & Easy

If you are getting ready for a Super Bowl party, I’ve got some styling, kickin’ tapas ideas for you! Just click on the picture for the recipe…they are all pretty easy (with the exception of the tortillas, which require a bit of derring-do, but are well worth it). They are also portable! Have a great Game Day…I’ll be back with more ideas soon!

View original post

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Uncategorized

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Harissa Chickpeas: The Heat is On!

25 Jan

I first saw this gorgeous chicken recipe recipe in Bon Appetit magazine on an otherwise uneventful doctor’s visit. I considered walking out with the magazine or tearing out the page or even asking one of the attending staff if they would make me a photocopy, but settled on copying down the basics of what I needed to remember.

Browning the drumsticks in a cast iron skillet

Then I promptly forgot where I had written it down.

But the recipe stayed on my mind — it was a haunting blend of everyday easy, basic ingredients I knew I had around or could get in any supermarket, and a sultry North African vibe. Plus chickpeas. I love chickpeas.

So I hunted the recipe down in a Google search and took the chicken out to thaw.

Golden brown and waiting for the spicy bed

Continue reading →

Tags: chicken, chickpeas, cooking, food, harissa, recipes, skillet

Comments 17 Comments
Categories Chicken, Entertaining, Food, Recipes

Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Dip (Barefoot Contessa Lightened Up Just a Bit!)

24 Jan

Recently my editors at Edible Long Island asked what we contributors were doing to eat local in the middle of winter.

Hmmm. Embarrassingly, I am not doing enough. Except drinking Long Island wine and using up the home-grown tomatoes, and CSA peppers, garlic scapes, and berries I froze this past summer when the getting was good. I must do better next year!

This will make an impact at your next party

But, I am reading about cooking local…my godson, Sean, who understands me better than most, got me Ina Garten’s The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook with a forward by Martha Stewart for Christmas. For those who don’t know, The Barefoot Contessa is a specialty food store in East Hampton, Long Island, owned by Ina Garten, a former White House nuclear policy analyst and now Emmy-winning Food Network host. She is very charming, very Hamptons, and that makes her very local to me! Bonus, Martha Stewart also has a home in East Hampton, which makes her local too, at least part of the year.

Anyhoo, I do like Ina Garten and her relaxed style. She’s forever cooking up special treats for her beloved husband, Jeffrey, who seems to enjoy it very much. And since Super Bowl is coming up and that means a lot of entertaining, I adapted one of her signature recipes from the book to what I had in my fridge to see what happened.

Continue reading →

Tags: buffet ideas, cooking, dip, easy party recipes, Edible Long Island, food, Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, recipes, sun-dried tomatoes, Super Bowl

Comments 7 Comments
Categories Edible Long Island, Entertaining, Party Snacks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Grilled Rib Steak with “Bordeaux” Mushroom Sauce

22 Jan

Marianne and I cooked together again, this time doubling and adapting a recipe she found (I can’t remember where, so I can’t credit it, but will add it in should she remember later) to use up the mushrooms I had bought on sale. That this involved buying more mushrooms not on sale is not something I consider particularly relevant right now.

When buying mushrooms, look for the area under the cap to be closed. That says freshness.

Another view of a tightly closed cap

Our plan was to divide it up. I would use it to help dress up some simple steak I had in my fridge and she would use it to top some Salisbury steak she had in her weekday menu plans. Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, food, mushroom sauce, recipes, rib steak, steak, wine sauce

Comments 8 Comments
Categories BBQ, Food, Grilling, Recipes

2014: The Year of the Empanada (first in an occasional series)

18 Jan

I love empanadas. The “pan” part of the word comes from the word for bread in Spanish, and empanadas are basically stuffed bread pockets. That’s basically…they have many permutations and depending where you are from they might be made with corn dough, wheat flour, fried or baked. They may be stuffed with meat or chicken or seafood or vegetables. We also call them pastelillos in Puerto Rico, pastel referring to pies, much like meat pies are hand-held dough pockets in other places.

Entry-level empanadas…premade discs. Do not be ashamed! I am not.

Regular readers know that my son and I are not big sandwich eaters, but empanadas actually do the same job and we love those. You can pack them up for a picnic, grab them on the run and eat them in the car, have them for an afternoon snack after school, serve them as appetizers with an aperitif when your guests walk in the door.

Improvised rolling pin. Yet another reason to enjoy wine responsibly (photo: Ashley Fifer)

Every country seems to have a version of empanadas; Jamaican meat patties, Indian samosas, even Chinese dim sum (potstickers) could be called empanadas.

Picadillo

This year I want to explore the world of empanadas. My friend Ashley and my godson Sean have agreed to go on this journey with me (and calling them out here is my way of holding them to it). Ashley was my cooking buddy for this first go and took the picture of me rolling the dough. Continue reading →

Tags: broccoli empanadas, comida criolla, cooking, empanadas, food, fried foods, kid-friendly food, party snacks, picadillo, Puerto Rican, recipes, sandwich substitutes

Comments 16 Comments
Categories Comida Criolla, Entertaining, Food, meat, Party Snacks, Puerto Rican, Recipes, Spanish, Super Bowl, Tapas, Vegetarian

Funchi: Polenta the (Easier) Aruban Way

15 Jan

NOTE ON REBLOG: For some reason loads of people have been visiting Hot, Cheap & Easy in search of this recipe. So it seemed like a good time to remind regular readers of this MUCH easier version of polenta. Bon apetit, dushi!

Hot, Cheap & Easy

You may know that my dad is from Aruba, One Happy Island.

If you are not familiar with Aruba, it is part of the Netherlands Antilles, about 13 nautical miles off the coast of Venezuela (18 or so regular miles), south of the Caribbean hurricane zone, and notable for its absence of rainfall and its white sand beaches and crystalline waters. With sunshine guaranteed year-round, it is extremely popular with honeymooners and northern folks from wet places who want to know their vacation dollars won’t be wasted on a week in a monsoon.

It’s a gorgeous little place – and I mean little – Aruba is about 30 km (19 miles) long and about 8 km (5 miles) wide. You can drive around the island and dispatch with most of your touristic cultural obligations in about half a day, and return in good conscience to your beach towel for the…

View original post 466 more words

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Uncategorized

Lasagne, Lasagna, Lasaña: keeping it simple, making it Puerto Rican

14 Jan

No matter how you spell it, lasagne is great food for entertaining and with the SuperBowl coming up, you may want to consider this version as an option for the buffet table!

This is a wonderfully homey dish

In its original Italian version (which may actually be adapted from a Greek dish) from Emilia Romagna (if Wikipedia is to be believed and on this one I am not really sure), lasagne is pasta layered with ragu, bechamel (creamy white sauce) and parmigiano reggiano. Lasagne has since been adapted and changed and reworked in so many ways that it has as many permutations as there are cooks who make it.

I have to say, I do not love bechamel. It’s okay when someone else makes it, but I would rather not. So, I do what so many do: layer mozzarella and ricotta and grated parmigiano and I am at peace with this shortcut that results in a creamy gooiness, no doubt horrifying to the Emiliani, but they are far away living their Italian lives and are not doing my dishes for me here in New York. And with apologies to the late, great Marcella Hazan, I am not ready to be making my own lasagne noodles, even though she maintains it is heresy to do otherwise.

Layers of gooey goodness

Continue reading →

Tags: buffet dishes, comida criolla, cooking, food, kid-friendly food, Lasagna, lasagne, party food, Puerto Rican, recipes, Super Bowl

Comments 8 Comments
Categories Comida Criolla, Entertaining, Food, Italian, Party Snacks, Puerto Rican, Recipes, Spanish, Super Bowl

Tales from the Lunchroom: The Story Continues

12 Jan

So a couple of days ago I posted a note I had sent in to my son’s first grade teacher.

Guess how this turned out?

The story goes that he started complaining that his friends wouldn’t sit with him in the lunchroom because they said his food smelled bad. Regular readers know the lengths I go to to make sure he has good home-cooked food every day, which is mostly rice and beans, pasta with vegetables, quesadillas (yes, with beans sometimes). I would very much like to be able to send him in with lunch money, but what I have seen from the cafeteria menus looked pretty, well, not-what-we-eat-dear (mind you, the new January menu looks like someone has made some changes: baked chicken fingers, homemade macaroni and cheese…so I am giving it another look this month since I need a break!).

So I sent in the note, a bit skeptical of the story and thinking that perhaps this was actually a play for lunch money and tater tots for lunch. Then at dismissal the teacher asked to speak to me. Continue reading →

Tags: cafeteria, food issues, kids, school lunches

Comments 14 Comments
Categories Food

Lunchtime Blues: Today’s letter to the teacher

10 Jan

A sad irony of American life: loads of food, not all of it nutritious.

I can’t honestly say that I love making lunches for my son. It takes an extra half hour in mornings that are already too short. I get him up around 6:30, since I start teaching at 8 a.m. and have to leave him at before-care. Since breakfast at before-care is a choice of not-really-food cereals or more-like-dessert cereal bars, I give him juice, toast and fruit at home. I make (or heat up) and pack lunch — usually leftover rice and beans or pasta with vegetables or quesadillas — and then after school there is snack and of course dinner. It’s a lot to think about, plan, shop for and do!

There are lunches to buy at school, but they are either stuff he doesn’t like or things I don’t trust. And he is not a sandwich guy. I don’t have time to fight the system, so I make hot lunch every day. I am glad to do it (because the alternative is unacceptable) and he is glad to eat it. But….I’ll let today’s letter to the teacher explain the rest, then await your comments. Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, food, kids

Comments 13 Comments
Categories Food

← Older Entries

Newer Entries →

¡Comida Hispana! Recipes to unleash your inner Latino

Mango Mojitos With Ancho Chili Salt

It was another summer Friday in the neighborhood and that called for another festive cocktail. Riding high on the success of last session’s passionfruit mojitos, I decided to make mango mojitos. The drink itself followed much the same construction, but the mango was decidedly sweeter than the passionfruit, so I decided that it needed a […]
Passionfruit Mojitos by the Pitcher or Glass

Summer evenings in the neighborhood can be wonderful. Occasionally on a Friday some of us neighbors bring out folding chairs and sit together in one front yard for a bit of happy hour while the kids go mental on someone else’s lawn. It’s pretty much BYO, but we do mix up a pitcher of experimental […]
KID IN THE KITCHEN: Tembleque (Tropical Coconut Pudding)

We spent the better part of last summer in Puerto Rico, and among the tasty things that my little guy fell in love with was tembleque, a jiggly (temblar means to tremble) dessert that falls somewhere between pudding and flan. I promised him we’d make it back in New York, and this weekend, for a […]
Sangría Tropical (and rainforest paradise pictures)

When the heat gets tropical, so should the drinks. On a recent trip to the mountains of Puerto Rico, I was inspired by a wonderfully cooling and exotic sangría I had up around and about El Yumque (Caribbean National Forest, the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service system) at Noelia’s, recommended to us […]
Salmorejo de jueyes (Land Crab Stew)

There are a number of land crab species skittering about Caribbean coastlines. Some are edible and the one we eat most here in Puerto Rico (although I am told they mostly are imported from Venezuela these days) is Cardisoma guanhumi which we call juey and — if you are English-speaking — you might call the […]