Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

Sue's Cheesy Potatoes

(Note: the recipe below is for a 9 x 13 pan but this photo is 9 x 9 so I used a little less  half and half and potatoes)

36-40 ounces frozen shredded hash browns (I’ll explain about this at the bottom)

1 stick salted butter

1 quart half and half

¼ cup Kraft parmesan cheese

Salt

Pepper

In a large sauce pan combine the butter, hash browns and half and half. Cook over medium heat until butter is all melted. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour into a 9 x 13 baking dish and top with the parmesan cheese.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour depending on how accurate your oven temperature is.

The final result should be golden brown and bubbly on the top and the potatoes should be semi firmly set. Not soup but not concrete either. If they are not set, consider covering the top with foil to prevent further browning while baking a little longer to firm things up.

The casserole  can be mostly made ahead and stored in the fridge (follow steps up until the addition of the cheese) but you have to add an extra hour to the baking time if everything is cold.

A word about shredded hash browns.

When I got this recipe it was for those shredded hash brown patties that Ore-Ida used to sell. And the recipe was calibrated for those specific hash browns.

Of course, those patties have been discontinued  and there are no patties on the current market quite like them.

( (here is what they looked like)

For one thing, despite the image on the box, the patties inside were completely unfried and pale and the potato shreds were really big and when you thawed them you could take them apart. Which is what made the recipe work.

Current, dense, prebrowned patties do not, I repeat, DO NOT work at all.

The closest thing I have found to use is a bag of shredded hash browns. The cheaper the better.

And, to get the casserole to “set”, you have to be sure to have enough potatoes to absorb the liquid so as to not just get potato soup."

Hence the 36-40 ounce suggestion. You might even need more than that. The best thing is to get all the non-potato ingredients into the pot and then add hash browns until the saucepan is so full you literally cannot fit in one more shred.

Sugar in the Potatoes? (Overbooked Cook)

I love Potatoes.

I love them so much that if you stick me on a desert island with only one food available, make it potatoes, and we're good.

If there's salt.

Because what I should also mention here is that my fondness for potatoes stems from my craving for salt. And potatoes are the perfect delivery system for salt.

So why am I suggesting sugar in the potatoes for this week's cooking tip?

Because, as much as I love potatoes, I've had a love/hate relationship with cooking them. More specifically, with frying them.

For years I have tried everything to get crispy fried hash browns from fresh potatoes. I have blanched them. I have soaked them in saltwater, I have squeezed the starch out of them with paper towels, I have added lemon juice (tip from some cooking magazine - not a success and tasted terrible) - you name it, I've tried it.

Until recently, when my husband fried up some lovely potatoes - not from the store but from our garden - and they came out perfectly. They were the most delicious fried potatoes we have ever eaten. Bar none.

Of course, you say, produce from the garden is always fresher than the stuff from the store and it was also probably a better variety of potato.

And you would be half right, because the truth does lie in the fact that the potatoes were right out of the ground. But it isn't the variety because these potatoes originally were seeded from - store bought potatoes.

Remember the Montessori Garden? Well, a couple of years ago we had some potatoes in the pantry that were starting to sprout. We knew you shouldn't eat them when they get to that state (something about toxins in old potatoes) and our daughter was eager to plant them and see what would happen. And what happened was that those sprouting store potatoes turned into lots of new little potatoes. And they were delicious!

And when we fried them, they crisped right up. No sogginess, no falling apart, just gorgeous lightly browned fried hash browns.

Unfortunately, after the fresh potatoes for this season ran out, we were reduced to store potatoes again.

Oh, how depressing to come down from the mountaintop once you've seen the light.

So my husband got this idea. What if all those things we tried over the years were coming at the problem from the wrong angle? Those tips were designed to get extra starch out of the potatoes. What if, instead, we should be adding something in to the potatoes. What did the fresh potatoes have that the store potatoes didn't?

Sugar.

Of course. 

When you pick things from the garden, their sugar content is always at it's highest and then, the longer the produce sits, the more the sugar breaks down.

So we fried the store potatoes up as we always had - diced and thrown into hot hot butter in an iron skillet - but this time we sprinkled sugar into them while they were frying. Not too much - probably a little less than a teaspoon - but it did the trick. 

Voila! Non greasy, lightly crispy, fried potatoes.

Try it, you'll like it!

Overbooked Cook: Bruschetta

 

(First posted Summer 2011)

Tis the season to harvest Tomatoes and Basil. Which means 'tis the season to make Bruschetta.

This is the recipe I've come up with over the years after some tinkering.

 

Knock Out Bruschetta

Ingredients:

2 good sized garden tomatoes like beefsteak or 4 smallish "on the vine" grocery store tomatoes or one pint grape or cherry tomatoes or 6 roma tomatoes, chopped into small pieces.

2-3 tbsp balsamic vinegar (the older, the better)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp honey

6-10 good sized leaves of fresh basil, chopped

coarse salt

freshly ground pepper

2-3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 small ball fresh mozzarella, diced into fairly small pieces

or

2 oz fresh parmigiano or asiago cheese julienned

 

Put everything except the tomatoes and cheese into a medium sized bowl and mix together thoroughly making sure the honey dissolves completely.

Cut the tomatoes into small pieces on a cutting board (not in a food processor) and try to drain off as much of the extra juice as you can before adding to the oil and vinegar mixture.

Add the cheese and mix all together.

Let sit for about 15 minutes before serving so that the cheese and tomatoes get sort of marinated. 

Overbooked version: serve with Breton Crackers

Full gourmet version: Using the best baguette you can find, cut it into diagonal slices. Then rub each slice with a clove of garlic (one clove should do several slices), brush lightly with olive oil and broil until lightly browned. 

Note: Eating Bruschetta can be a very messy business so I try to keep the bread pieces small enough for 2 bites. The same for serving on crackers - the less fragile the cracker and the fewer bites it takes to finish, the better.

Extra note: As the quantity and type of tomato vary, so will the exact measurements of the oil and vinegar mixture. There should be enough of it to coat every bit of cheese and tomato, and enough vinegar and garlic that you can taste the bite.

The Overbooked Cook: Rafaele's Meatballs

I have spoken before of my dear friend and cousin Rafaele who lost her fight with breast cancer two years ago. And I have mentioned how important I think it is to make time to cook together and share recipes. Perhaps sharing recipes is one of the ways we achieve immortality. A little slice of our lives gets passed along to others and enjoyed - possibly in perpetuity.

And so I offer to you a little bit of Rafaele that I get to carry with me - it won't matter where I live or what my circumstances are - I'll always have the memory of the time we lived together in college and she taught me how to make her German meatballs. I actually give her a little nod in my mind every time I make them or eat them.

Enjoy!

 

German Meatballs

 

 1 lb Ground Beef

1 egg

1 potato, peeled

3/4 cup rolled oats

1 medium onion, diced

2 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp oregano

1 & 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 cloves garlic, crushed (or 1 tsp garlic powder)

 

Before I begin, I need to put up a disclaimer. When I make these meatballs, I never actually measure the spices. I just eyeball them. Through long years of experience, I have learned how much salt, pepper, garlic and paprika my family likes in their meatballs. So I have given you my best guess at amounts and, if something seems to be too much for you - like, say, the paprika - then cut the amount down the first time and then experiment as you go. To be fair, Rafaele never measured anything either and so experimenting is, apparently, part of the recipe! 

 

Preheat your oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with foil.

In a large bowl, put the meat and the egg, the onion and the oats and smoosh it all together with your hands - doing your best to distribute the oats evenly. Next add all the spices at once and, again, smoosh together and distribute them evenly. Now take out a course grater and grate the potato into the mixture. Again work the potato around until it seems well distributed.

Form the mixture into meatballs of desired size - I like to make them about 2 inches in diameter - and place them onto the baking sheet.

Bake for about 16-20 minutes or until done in the center. Baking time will vary with the diameter of the meatball so keep an eye on them the first time you make them. They should be thoroughly cooked but not crunchy.

 

Serve alone with mashed potatoes and gravy or in spaghetti sauce with pasta. One thing about these meatballs - they are good served cold and are even better the second day so they make great lunch food.

Overbooked tip: make a triple batch and freeze the rest for the next time you need a 16 minute dinner. Some cooked pasta and sauce from a jar and dinner will still taste homemade if you use these meatballs.

Overbooked Cook: Banana Bread With - You Guessed It - Peaches!

 

 

 

So, in looking for recipes for things to do with peaches - many of which are now rotting because I just could not deal with them all - I came up with one of my own. The good news is that it is delicious. The bad news is that you can't put an entire bushel of peaches in each loaf. Here goes:

 

 

Banana Bread with Peaches.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup shortening or butter

2 eggs

3 tbsp buttermilk or yogurt

1 mashed banana

2/3 cup diced peaches

 

Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare a loaf or bundt pan by rubbing it with shortening or butter and then dusting it with sugar (not flour!)

Set aside. 

In a medium sized mixing bowl blend together the sugar and shortening. Once thoroughly combined, add the eggs and the yogurt. Then, again after thoroughly combined, add the fruit.

In a separate bowl sift together the flour, salt, soda, and baking powder.

Gradually add this to the banana mixture.

Mix until combined - do not overmix. The batter should be thick and sticky.

Spoon into prepared pan (it will be too thick to pour) and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the type of pan and your oven. I always check it at about 40 minutes.

Loaf is done when the top is golden brown and springs back in the center.

Extra touch: I like to sprinkle raw sugar over the top before baking - it gives a nice crunch. (Raw sugar, if you're not familiar with it,  has much larger crystals than refined sugar and is light brown in color.)

Overbooked Cook: Asiago - Super Cheese

 

 

So today we are going to talk about easy, delicious, appetizers to take to a gathering when you forgot you promised to take something to a gathering. 

 

A gathering that is in 30 minutes.

Heck - you may even have forgotten there was a gathering in the first place, let alone that you promised to bring food to it.

But first a word about Asiago cheese. 

This is one of the all time great cheeses. It is usually a pretty hard cheese so it has a longer shelf life than a soft cheese. Which is very important for overbooked people because we need to be able to stock our fridge or pantry for emergencies and we need to be able to do that with stuff that lasts longer than a nanosecond before we throw it out.

Asiago is also a pretty affordable cheese that has a great sophisticated taste - a little sharper than a Parmesian, but definitely more mellow than a Romano.

And, most importantly for our purposes, Asiago generally slices well with a sharp knife without crumbling and it pairs beautifully with sweets and crackers.

So my all time best last minute hors d'oeuvre for emergency, panic stricken situations is as follows:

 

Sweet Asiago Canape's

Prep time 15-25 minutes - (add extra time if you have to run to the store and get these ingredients - the great thing is you can even take the ingredients with you and make these canapes on the spot if needed.)

Ingredients:

1-2 boxes of quality crackers - Breton and Carrs make several good varieties. 

(Occasionally I have also used thin cookies instead and that is even more delicious - check out Annas Thins here.)

1 wedge of Asiago

Jam or Honey (Raspberry and Peach Jam are particularly good for this)

 

To best serve these canapes you will need a pretty good sized tray so they don't overlap. The canapes themselves are incredibly simple - arrange several crackers on a tray, spread a little jam on each cracker, and then - with a very sharp knife - cut small pieces of cheese and set one piece on top of each jam covered cracker. The ratio of cheese to cracker is up to you but you can actually get away with pretty small pieces.

If you use honey instead of jam, put the cheese on the cracker first and then add a small amount of honey. Be careful not to add too much because the honey will just keep spreading out and spilling over the cracker if there is too much. When I make this with honey, I actually add the honey at the event.

If you have extra time and want an even tastier canape, add a small apple wedge, or a piece of walnut or a raisin.

Voila! A tasty appetizer that will impress everyone and they'll never know you how colossally disorganized you are!

(Unless they read this blog.)

Salsa, Baby! (Overbooked Cook)

 

OK, this is officially a Big Deal.

I am publicly putting up my salsa recipe.

The one that gets raves everywhere I take it.

I am particularly proud of this recipe because it came entirely out of my own head. About 15 years ago I decided to make salsa. As the internet and google were in their infancy, just pulling up a recipe was not an option. In those days, if you wanted a good recipe for something, you had to look it up in a cookbook, happen upon it in a magazine or on a cooking show (of which there weren't that many - no HGTV either) or get one from a friend.

Well, not only did I want to make salsa - I wanted to make it Right Then.

And, not finding one in any of my resident cookbooks, I decided to make one up.

I didn't have the vaguest idea what constituted a genuine salsa - I only knew that I didn't want to have to cook it and I didn't want it to be "ketchup-like". ( I would later discover that what I make is called a raw salsa.)

So I set to work and, after some trial and error, came up with the following:

Sweet and Sour Salsa

Ingredients:

16 oz (or 1 pint) cherry or grape tomatoes

1 cup chopped fruit (see notes)

2 green onions or a generous handful of chives, chopped

1 glove of garlic, pressed

finely chopped hot pepper (optional - see notes)

1  1/2 tbsp honey (secret ingredient #1)

2 tbsp red wine vinegar (secret ingredient #2)

salt and pepper to taste

Extra optional ingredient if you can get them: Tomatillos - about 2 small or 1 large one

Chop the tomatoes and fruit into small pieces (a food processor tend to make the whole thing too juicy and mushy) and put them in a small to medium sized bowl. Add the onions or chives and the pressed garlic. Do not stir. Add the honey on top of what is now a little pile, then the pepper (I use about 1/4 tsp) and the salt (dash). Now add the vinegar on top of that and stir the mixture all together, making sure the vinegar breaks down the honey. 

Get the flavor of the basic salsa exactly where you want it, adjusting garlic, salt, pepper, honey, vinegar as you see fit.

Then add the hot pepper of your choice. Adjusting the seasonings becomes very difficult one the heat of the pepper has been introduced.

Serve with tortilla chips or in tacos and fajitas.

Best if consumed within 10 hours but can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Notes:

The tomatoes - This salsa will turn out well with any type of tomato except Romas. If you are using large tomatoes like Early Girl or Best Boy or Beefsteak etc., be sure to take out the pulp and the seeds. Otherwise you have too much juice. I have recommended cherry and grape tomatoes because they are the most flavorful tomato you can find in the grocery store year round. For me, the only decent large tomatoes come from my garden or the farmers market - the supermarket ones seem to have no flavor at all.

Fruit - to date I have made this salsa with: strawberries, grapes, kiwi, cantaloupe, and now, of course, peaches.

Garlic - you can use garlic powder but it's not quite as good.

Onions - this recipe does not come out well with yellow, white, or red onions. They make it too bitter.

Peppers - your choice of pepper will depend on how hot you like your salsa. Fresh peppers make this salsa much better than dried ones. I always add my pepper slowly until I can tell how much effect it is having. For a truly mild salsa, don't add any at all.

Vinegar - this is the most important part of the recipe! Only use red wine vinegar! No other vinegar has the right sweet/sour element. Trust me - I've tried them all.

 

Bargain Dinner

 

My husband and I feel very, very strongly about having the family sit down to dinner together as many nights a week as possible and also not to feed the kids processed foods like budget gourmet and we have done pretty well making it happen for 19 years. 

But somewhere along the line I started to lose it when it came to planning and executing dinner. You know something is wrong when your kids balk at pizza  - frozen or otherwise. I think we were maybe getting to the point where I threw one in the oven three nights a week.

My husband, noticing the slide away from home cooked food, quickly stepped in and started cooking dinner at least three or four times a week. 

At first, I was just tremendously relieved. I mean, I really do like to cook, but I had put in 19 years and I think I was burned out. 

It wasn't the cooking that got to me but the planning. I was just so tired of having to figure out what on earth to make each night. Sure, the kids would probably have happily lived on spaghetti six nights out of seven, but I was more ambitious than that.

Now that some time has passed with my husband doing the lion's share of the cooking, I can see there is something deeper at work here than mere burnout. We view cooking from completely different perspectives. 

I see cooking as something that interferes with all the things I'd rather be doing. When I'm cooking, I'm not knitting, reading, making art, practicing harp, or even spending time with the kids. (Except for the occasions where they help me cook.)

When he's cooking he is actually playing hooky from all the things he'd rather not be doing. Cooking is a kind of therapy for him that he can lose himself in, whereas for me, it feels like a prison.

Unless I'm making dessert.

Totally different.

I love to bake or make practically any kind of dessert at all.

But I don't very often.

Because I also love to eat the dessert.

Anyway - tonight was one of those overbooked nights where neither one of us really had time to cook - but we don't have a huge food budget either - so I happily introduce to you one of our favorite "almost feels like home made food" cheap, quick dinners.

 

    

 Voila! The grocery store rotisserie chicken (anywhere from 5.99 - 6.99 depending on whether or not it's on sale) and the take and bake bread (1.29-1.89) (add another .50 for butter or 1.00 for cheese to go with the bread)

Believe it or not, this actually feeds our whole family of five for under ten dollars.

And we throw the carcass into the stockpot afterwards. It makes a terrific stock for chicken and noodles later in the week - an even cheaper dinner - so we often wind up spending about twelve or fourteen dollars total for two dinners.

And, when you're overbooked and underpaid, that sounds pretty good.

Bon Appetit!

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Easy as Pie Part Two

 

Make pie? Are you kidding me woman? I have waaaaay too much to do!

OK, here's why you should make pie.

Firstly, there are very few desserts as satisfying and easy - yes, I mean it, easy (if you approach it right) as homemade fruit pie.

Secondly, making pie is a great family activity. I had the good fortune to grow up having a mother who showed me how to make pie. Only apple - I don't think she actually makes any other kind, come to think of it. And because my mother had learned from her mother, it felt like a big deal to be part of a tradition. 

I actually found out only last year that, due to a lot of complicated reasons, my younger sister never got this time with my mother. It turns out that my sister didn't really get cooking lessons of any kind. By the time she would have been the right age, both hers and my mother's lives spun in entirely new directions and my mother stopped doing almost any cooking.

When I found this out, it had a big impact on me. And, when my sister came to visit last year, we decided to have a pie baking day. I tried to remember everything that was special about my grandmother's pie and also to share all the little tips and tricks I've picked up along the way. My sister and I don't get much time together (she lives several states away) and this is a visit I will always especially cherish.

I also lost one of my best friends to breast cancer in 2007. She left behind three young children. One of her big regrets as she was facing the end was how much there still was to teach them. She felt especially guilty for having worked so many long hours to get ahead in her career, and also provide them with material things, but not having spent as much time doing things with them like baking.

And I also think of all the times I have "bought my kids a memory". 

Let me explain what I mean by that - once, when we were traveling from Connecticut to Long Island, we spent the extra money to take the ferry. It was the first time our kids ever saw the ocean. Well, it wasn't very exciting - kind of gray and cloudy and rough. And it was, for us, expensive. And my husband asked me, "Are we paying this money just to buy the kids a memory?" And the answer, of course, was yes.

So my first question to you is this:  "How often do you "buy your kids a memory?"

And my second question is: Who do you want teaching your kids to make pie - you or Martha Stewart?"

Honestly, I just as soon leave her out of it. 

And, even if you fail dismally and your pie is awful, you will have spent quality time with your kids, taught them something about success and failure and grace (cause you'll eat it anyway) and have spent approximately ten dollars in the process.

And the worse the pie is, the funnier the stories will be that get handed down to future generations.

So go make pie! And, if you need help, follow my tips here.

 

 

Pie Recrudesce

 

You'll have to look that word up. I did, and I am all the better for it.

I wanted to follow up a little bit on what I wrote in Easy As Pie Part Two.

I gave, I think, a pretty convincing argument for making pie from scratch, and, especially, taking the time to make it a family activity. 

The bit I left out is how to arrange your schedule to make that actually happen.

There are things I like to call "destination activities". These are things that you have to go out of your way to do or specifically put a time on your calendar to do. They often consist of things like taking the kids to the beach or to an amusement park, attending one of your kids ball games or dance recitals, you get the gist.

Most of us are in the habit of making things like ball games, track meets and recitals a priority. Especially those of us under the age of 55. I think we had it banged into our heads by all the parenting guru's since the 70's that parents who blow off attending their kids activities are going straight to hell.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty bad about cooking or doing much of anything else outside of work on a day when I have to squeeze in one of those games or recitals. The last time I actually baked cookies to take to a piano recital was probably 2005. (I always forget that it's even part of the expected recital routine and wind up picking up some really bad, overpriced, baked goods from the convenience store around the corner.) On my better days, I grab one of my own plates so that I can at least wrestle the stuff out of its store packaging, arrange it on a plate, and look as though I gave the whole business more than a nano-second of thought.

So I need to be very clear that, on days when I make pie, I very seldom cook anything else. I make the pie the big focus. 

Frozen pizzas and homemade pie? 

Works for me.

And I don't try to make pie and take the kids somewhere on the same day. I pick a day - maybe a rainy one - and, instead of taking them to the museum or the playland or whatever, we take the time that we would have spent doing something that, quite frankly we've done many times before anyway, and we make pie instead.

And it's waaaay cheaper.

And I don't come home with a bunch of crappy little plastic toys and souvenirs that suddenly have no owners when it's time to pick them up or put them away.

So, try to make pie.

You have nothing to lose but your waistline.

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