Hot, Cheap & Easy

Some things are worth repeating.

Full disclosure: I have posted a close relative of this recipe before. That was a long time ago, the early days of this blog, and  this is slightly tweaked, plus the photos are new (since I made it again for a visit from my sister-in-law and niece).

They are still the best damn mussels I have ever had and you should know about them, because they are also extremely easy to prepare and can be made the night before any big affair. (Washing out the shells takes a bit of time, but it is satisfying and mindless work that can be done while sipping a glass of something and chatting companionably with whomever is around).

Served cold and slurped right from the shell, they are a stupendous appetizer in looks and flavor. Want to impress? These are your bad boys.

(serves 4-6 as an appetizer…

Ah the illusions of youth!

Rock Cornish Game Hens were such a fancy thing to eat when I was little. They were so cute and golden when they came out of the oven; a half a bird each for me and my brother, and one each for our parents, basted in a peach sauce that was lovely and sweet. (Keep reading for Puerto Rican, Greek and Mesquite marinades!)

These little birds, almost invariably sold frozen into hand-held cannonballs, seemed to me to be an exotic species (don’t laugh, those of you from Cornwall) and having been an eager reader of all things Annie Oakley and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and other tough girl survivor books in the days before Katniss Everdeen and I imagined that these little birds were hunted by young folks with charming accents, roaming the plains of Cornwall (do you even have plains in Cornwall?) in home-made…

I have been ripening this recipe for weeks. No kidding.

I bought a bunch of plantains on sale (15 for $2) at a Caribbean grocery store three weeks ago, made tostones with some and then let the last 6 get black on my counter. Black, I tell you. Not just mottled yellow, but black and withered, while my son looked on with occasional science experiment interest, sort of a Peter Greenaway film of disintegration but not quite as exquisitely grotesque and not with the speedy convenience of time-lapse photography.

I find already ripened amarillos (yellow plantains)  in my regular white-people supermarket (I hate saying non-ethnic, because white people are ethnic too!), but Latin supermarkets are your safest bet.

Pastelón is the Puerto Rican answer to lasagne – or maybe shepherd’s pie – but sweeter, spicier, meatier – all around naughtier. If you love a dish that has balance while being…

 This is how the stars aligned. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got my friend, Ashley, in the mood for Scandinavian food. I had a couple of bags of frozen shrimp and prawns in the freezer and a hankering for dill. It was the third Friday night of Lent  (which I take to mean that God wants me to be creative with seafood). My Swedish sister-in-law has instructed me in the mystical art of extracting relatively authentic Swedish flavor from American ingredients (yes, IKEA plays a critical role). Thus, the following shrimp salad became the basis for a minimalist Swedish tapas night.

We also had brie on pumpernickel toast topped with lingonberry preserves (like I said, IKEA is crucial here) and, since this is being written in real time, there may be some herring and smoked salmon later on, although as there is no more sauvignon blanc to accompany it, maybe not.