Red Sauce with Crabs

12 small crabs*
olive oil for sauteing
6-8 cloves of garlic
a splash of red wine
Tomato sauce made with: 3 big and 2 little tomatoes, a little sugar, fresh basil to taste, and 2 bay leaves

Clean the crabs and saute them with the garlic in a little olive oil.  Add in the rest of the ingredients and cook until done.**
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*This reminds me of the time Grandmom and I decided to eat crabs since I was up there and Grandmom therefore had justification for buying them.  We both love seafood.  Grandpop does not.  Or rather, he didn't before their marriage, went through a 20-year period where he did like it after being tricked into eating it, much the same way he learned to appreciate rabbit, and then in recent years has returned to his original seafood-hating state.  So we went to the grocery store to purchase some crabs, which in New Jersey is not a difficult thing to do.  But lo and behold!  That day, there were no large, luscious Alaskan crab legs or Snow crab legs for us to take home and boil up with a hint of Old Bay and dunk in hot melted butter.  No.  The only crabs to be gotten in the midst of the summer were little blue crabs.  So we bought them, and took them home, and made this sauce with them, which we ate on top of linguine.  The funny part is that you have to understand that when this recipe says "clean the crabs" it doesn't mean "take all the meat out of the shells"-- it just means "run them bad boys under some water so you don't eat sand and crab poop."  So the crabs should be, and were, in shell.  Hard shells.  And they were little crabs.  So, we started out with a serving platter piled high, I mean high, with tiny cooked crabs, and we, seafood lovers that we are, and stubborn people that we are, commenced to eating them.  When we conceded that we were done, two and a half hours later, we had made it about 3/4ths of the way down, sucking every tiny claw to its very core along the way.  Grandpop had left the table after finishing his non-seafood alternative about a half-hour into the crab festival muttering something about how we were eating too much.  But, as anybody who has ever tried to eat a tiny crab can tell you, there ain't a lot of meat in them tiny crabs.  I think we got more calories from the linguine.  But it was a delicious and messy experience and, honestly, that's what eating crabs should be.

**"Until done."  Possibly the two most obscure words in the English language.  It assumes so much of the recipe reader, like that they know what done is, what it looks like, and about how long it takes to get there.  In this case, you should have a nice saucy tomato sauce (not cooked salsa), and your crabs should be safe to consume without fear of horrible digestive consequences.  So at least 30 minutes on medium-low (think "simmer").  Maybe an hour.  An added benefit to making this sauce is that you have deliciously crabby red sauce left long after you finish off your tiny crabs, which you can soak into good Italian bread (the sauce, not the tiny crabs) or coat more luxurious pasta with.  A good pasta sauce should go a long way.

Repurposed Food

Dear Blog Readers:

Today I admit that eating leftovers has its limits.  There, it's in print.  Remember the pasta part of the unsatisfactory bean and pasta soup?  That went into my freezer, to be removed and repurposed at some point in the future?  Well, I repurposed it into some Vegetarian Chop Suey.  Now, you would think that the very same person who wrote a whole tirade on how you really can't make good pastry without a fat is the now the exact same person who tried to make a beef and macaroni casserole with no beef and recycled macaroni.  Let me spell it out for you.  N. A. S. T. Y.  What's that?  Naaaaaaaaasty.  How was it?  NASTY!  And yet it sits in my lunch bag right now, along with some corn muffins that are even more bricklike than the edible doorstop, which I actually finished off.  I feel like I need to have a Guy Fawkes Day just for my leftovers.  TLC can even come over and do a reality show about my food hoarding, and if they pay me enough I'll pretend to have a breakdown watching the show crew go through my freezer.  If they pay off my student loans, I'll even pretend to have a breakthrough and let them come back six months later to film me eating single servings of things so they can dub that music over it that they usually play in made for tv movies during the part where the mother and daughter are reunited.  You know, a bittersweet piano solo with maybe some windchimes thrown in at the end.  Anyway, today is the day that I admit that there are worse things than thowing out more than one serving of food.  Like eating it for a week and hating every minute of it and then eating out, which definitely does NOT save money.

Crispy Honey-Mustard Breaded Eggplant

1 large eggplant
breading
ample seasoned breadcrumbs
a 2:1 mixture of mustard to honey -or- a prepared honey-mustard from the store
about 1 C. buttermilk

1/4 C. butter or oil

Wash and peal your eggplant, cutting off the green stem part at the top.  Slice it in half longways, then into wide strips about 1/2" thick (1 cm) by 4-6 inches long (10-15 cm), basically the size and shape of a deck of cards*.  But this is the vegetable world we're talking about here, so don't get your perfectionism on.  Just make sure they're not too thick.  Preheat a large a non-stick skillet on medium-high heat.  DO NOT PUT ANY OIL IN IT!!!  When a drop of water sizzles in the pan, lay your eggplant pieces in there on a single layer, doing batches if you have to.  Cook them on each side until they get dark golden brown on each side, then remove them to a plate.  When all your eggplant slices are brown, prepare three dishes or bowls: one with honey-mustard, one with breadcrumbs, and one with buttermilk.  In the meantime, slice your butter into pats into a large glass baking dish or just put the oil in the bottom of the dish.  Either way, put the dish in an oven preheated to 400F.  (Don't stress that I didn't tell you to preheat the oven until this point-- you have plenty to do while the oven gets hot enough after this point.)  Dredge your eggplant slices well until coated on each side in each of the three bowls in this order: honey-mustard, breadcrumbs, buttermilk, breadcrumbs.  When you're done, put the breaded pieces in the glass baking dish and return it to the oven.  Bake for 30 minutes, turning them about 15 minutes into the process, or until they are done on both sides.  They may or may not technically be what is described as "crispy".  This is okay.  They will still be "crunchy".  Voila!  Serve while hot.  Makes about 6 servings.
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*I hesitated to use words like "filet" or "steak" or "tender" even though this recipe is inspired by a couple of different baked-chicken recipes I like, because I wasn't sure those words were descriptive enough for the purpose-- the key to getting a good texture with eggplant, which has a lot of water in it, is to slice it thin enough to cook the water out without burning it.

So, eggplant that is not a "steak" or a "tender" but is styled after "chicken".  At this point, I basically have made a challenge to myself to see how long I can go without buying meat in the grocery store.  ('Cause is espensive.)  But yet, I still crave meatiness more than I (or my waistline) can afford to get it eating out.  So, this is my first attempt at vegetable chicken-like food.  The prior vegetarian main dish recipes posted here are pretty satisfactory in the "red meat replacement" category, but honestly, I have been eating more of, and there are more vegetable-based recipes for, pretend red meat than I ever ate of the real thing.  So, I've been wanting something I could use in my kitchen with all the great chicken recipes I have.  This recipe is pretty tasty both in flavor and in texture, and I hope to use eggplant successfully in other recipes in the future.

Pickled Green Tomatoes

As many green tomatoes as you want!
plenty of salt, olive oil, fresh peppermint and leaves, sliced garlic cloves, and hot peppers

Slice the green tomatoes.  Salt them well and let them sit at least 12 hours.  Rinse them and, in prepared jars, layer the tomatoes with the fresh herbs and sliced garlic, and fill the remaining space with olive oil.  Stuff whole hot peppers down the side of the jar or wherever you can find space.*  Put the lids on the jar and can as appropriate.  Serve on slices of Italian bread.**

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It's Lent, and Lent reminds me that springtime is just around the corner, and the fresh bright taste of pickles is just what I need to suit my mood.  Technically, pickles tend to be more of a fall-winter thing, I know-- it's what you do when you're sick of eating whatever your garden is producing fresh and what you eat when the trees and garden are bare.  Maybe that's why I think of pickles in the springtime, then-- it's the freshest thing around until the first peas and baby carrots come up.  Great-grandmom Canduci made plenty of pickles in her day, as well as Great-grandpop Canduci, who is still known for his homemade smoked sausage.  Apparently the girls of the family got out of the sausage making and procuring festivities.  So while my Grandmom and her sisters were at home making pickles, my Great-uncles were off learning the ins and outs of hog-slaughtering!

*If you're new to canning, I will warn you now: spicy things get spicier the longer they sit.  I guess the flavors have a longer amount of time to come out of the food.  But the point is: don't put too many hot peppers in your tomatoes, because however hot the resulting combination is today, it will literally double, triple, and quadruple its hotness over the space of a few weeks and months.

**Drool.  If there's anything better than good Italian cooking, it's good Italian cooking served alongside a good, fresh, crusty-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside Italian bread.  It should scrub your gums a little (and hold up to a dip in the soup) but be flavorful enough to take unsalted butter in liberal amounts without a processed bread aftertaste.  In Riverside, you can buy this bread at the supermarket and pay about $2 for it.  New Jersey shoppers laugh in the face of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods for the most part, which peddle things we can get or make on our own under the guise of "gourmet" or "exotic" items.  It is a sad state of things when a good loaf of bread is exotic and saleable at exotic prices. 

Oven Baked Chicken

The Simplest Chicken Recipe Ever

1 roaster chicken
potatoes, washed and peeled, and cut into large chunks (at least 1potato per person)
garlic powder
oregano
salt

Put the potatoes in the bottom of your baking dish, which is preferably a deep but not necessarily large or wide glass dish or casserole.  Rinse the chicken in the sink.  If you're buying your chicken in the US, take out the bag of organs stuffed, aptly, in the chicken's body cavity.*  Season it all over with the garlic powder, oregano, and salt, all to taste, but make sure to rub all of these well into the chicken's skin.  Place the seasoned bird on top of the potatoes in your dish, and then bake it at 350-400F for about 1 hour, or until fully cooked.**
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*In the Canduci family, you don't throw the guts away, you save them and make something else out of them at a later time.  Like gravy.  But people tend to have strong feelings about organ meat, so I'm not going to try to sell them on anybody in this post.

**I don't buy into that BS about "until the chicken reaches 160F internally."  A) Even if you have a meat thermometer, you have to be a meat thermometer pro not to stick it in some part of the relatively small chicken that is going to give you an inaccurate picture of how hot your chicken is.  B) Meat (and most other things) continue cooking after they're removed from the source of heat (this is why you should run your hand under cool water for about 10 minutes after your burn it), so waiting until the chicken is, thermally speaking, "cooked" to remove it from the oven pretty much guarantees it will be over-cooked by the time you eat it, unless you're in the habit of plunging your chicken in an icewater bath immediately after you take it out of the oven.  There is a better way than getting salmonella or taking your chicken on a polar bear swim.  Cook the chicken at the oven temperature the recipe recommends for 30 minutes per pound of chicken.  After that time, take it out, make a slice into the breast, and inspect the color of the meat and juice.  If the meat is light pink or white and the juice is clear, your chicken is, for all practical purposes, done with its time in the oven.  If the meat is dark pink, or if the juice is pink or bloody, put the chicken back in for at least another 15 minutes and then check it again.  (More like 30 minutes if the meat is a pretty dark pink, and if it looks "rare", well, you've got 45 minutes looking at you between now and dinner.  Sorry, just sayin'.)  After it's done according to the above guidelines, remove it from the oven and let it sit out on the counter, covered in a little tinfoil tent for about 5-10 minutes.  If you feel crafty you can even stick your meat thermometer in the appropriate place on the chicken (or leave it in there, if you were using it all along) and watch the temperature of the chicken continue to rise as it sits on the counter.

White Spaghetti with Chicken

1-1/2 to 2 lbs chicken, defatted and cut into pieces
5-6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
olive oil for cooking
1/4 C. red wine
parsley and salt and pepper to taste
1-2 pototoes, cubed
1 1/2 C. frozen peas
1 lb spaghetti, cooked

In hot oil, fry the chicken pieces just a little bit-- don't let them get brown.  Then add in the onion, garlic, parsley, and potatoes.  Add in the red wine and let everything simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes.  Add in 4-5 glasses* of water-- enough to cover the chicken-- and the package of frozen peas.  Let it simmer until there is enough sauce for the spaghetti.  (Note from 4/89-- "Too much water.")
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Mystery Ingredient solved: it was a quantifiable amount of peas.  There is still no direction on spaghetti, but I'm guessing that is due to the cooking style of Great-grandmom, which basically dictated that you put in as much spaghetti as you have people to feed, and they'll eat it and like it!

Okay, first things first.  There is a mystery ingredient that I need to get with my cousin Judi to clarify what it is.  It may be spaghetti, since it's not (as far as I can tell) mentioned in this recipe other than in the title.  The 1 lb is my thought on how much spaghetti you would need to go with this sauce.

*I'm not sure if Great-grandmom Canduci was talking about her juice glasses (6 oz.) or water tumblers (12-16oz.)  Either way, it's a lot of water.  Based on the rest of the recipe, what I would do is get to the point where you would be adding in the water and peas, and add in the peas first.  Then, stir everything around in the pot so it's in an even layer on the bottom, with chicken pieces and onions and the like peeking up amongst the peas.  Then I would add in enough water to just go over the top of the peas and proceed as directed.

Vegetarian Hot-Hot Dish

5 medium potatoes, partially peeled and cut into large chunks*
3 medium carrots, fully peeled and sliced into coins
1/2 C. white beans
1/2 C. cooked barley
1/4 C. bread crumbs
oil for cooking
salt and pepper to taste
1 TB. molasses
1 TB. lemon juice
1 TB. Worchestershire sauce
1/4 C. prepared Korean BBQ sauce
1/3 C. ketchup
1/4 C. milk (optional)
1/4 C. butter (optional)

Make the vegetarian ground beef crumble out of 1/2 C. white beans (chopped in the food processor or lightly mashed), 1/2 C. cooked barley, 1/4 C. bread crumbs, and 1 TB. of the Korean BBQ sauce.  Heat a generous amount of cooking oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Add in the crumble mixture and let it sit and sizzle for about 5 minutes undisturbed.  Break it up and turn it with a spatula so that you have crumbley pieces (uncooked it's sort of a paste), about 5-10 more minutes.  In the meantime, put your potatoes and carrots in two pots over high heat and bring to a boil, then reduce to medium-high and boil until done.  Remove the crumbles from the heat when they're done.  Drain the potatoes and carrots; set the carrots aside.  Using the pot you cooked the potatoes in, melt the butter and scald the milk.  Add the potatoes back into the pot and mash them well, adding salt and pepper to taste-- I used about 1 tsp. of each.  In a small bowl, mix together the lemon juice, molasses, Korean BBQ sauce, ketchup, and Worchestershire sauce.  Preheat the oven on the "broil" setting.  In a glass baking dish, put the cooked crumbles in an even layer on the bottom.  Spoon the sauce over top.  Layer on the cooked carrots, then top with your mashed potatoes, smoothing them to make sure they are an even thickness over the whole dish.  Put the baking dish in the oven and broil until the mashed potatoes begin to brown, about 5-10 minutes.  This is pretty delicious served over top of fresh salad greens, as shown, but would also be just as good served alongside a couple of cooked vegetables.
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This dish is hot, hot, hot!  Okay, it's not that hot really.

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*Being a woman, I'm well-versed in the benefits of a diet high in B-vitamins such as the ones found in the skins of potatoes.  To make a compromise between flavor and nutritional quality, I peel my patotoes in stripes (instead of peeling all of the skin off) and use them that way.

The name of this recipe is tongue-in-cheek in more than one way.  Way number 1: "hot dish" is a midwestern staple that has potatoes and ground beef, much like this dish, which has a vegetarian "ground beef" crumble and mashed potatoes on top.  Way number 2: the prepared Korean BBQ sauce makes it kinda spicy (ha ha ha "hot dish", "hot-hot dish").  Way number 3: during a time when I had a burning need to own a pet rabbit, the perfect pet (I never did get one), I discovered that there is a breed of rabbits called the Hothot.  Also there are dwarf Hothots.  Since this is vegetarian, it's rabbit food!  Yes, congratulate me.  Creative Writing degree successfully used once again.