Cooking for One, Part 5: Spring Pasta

This is a simple dish, good for Spring: Pasta Primavera. I think of it like eating spaghetti but with vegetables instead of red sauce. The essential ingredient is the grated Parmesan cheese on top. For this I use regular, finely grated Kraft, not something fancy with longer gratings, though you may like that. For me it's a texture thing. That's also why I prefer regular spaghetti noodles rather than spirals or shells or something:

 I usually cut the noodles into pieces two to four inches long after cooking, this helps with getting both noodles and veggies on your fork at the same time. For vegetables I use a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, ones without lima beans (again, its a texture thing) and with corn (that's a sweetness thing). In this case Greenwise, the organic brand from Publix. They microwave right in the bag. I keep them separate from the pasta and Parmesan cheese until ready to eat, just like you would traditional spaghetti. Then I layer them: pasta, veggies, and enough grated Parmesan to make it look like there's been a snowfall. No butter or anything needed, so pretty healthy, too. I usually pair it with some (less healthy) garlic bread. I've been partial to the Paisano bread from Whole Foods lately. Enjoy.

Cooking for One, Part Four: I Do Slaw

I've been enjoyed Gouda cheese slices lately, not smoked. It has an earthy flavor. Sargento has been fine, but this week it was Cracker Barrel brand on sale and they don't offer Gouda. I settled on Asiago slices. It's got a bit more barn than earth, but still worked well on my Corned Beef Bomber sandwich, that's toasted deli rye bread with stacked, thinly sliced corned beef, cheese and coleslaw:

With St. Patrick's Day still large in the rear view mirror I had thought about buying a slab of corned beef and crockpotting up a batch with cabbage, but it was just going to make way too much. Publix also had fresh cut corned beef discounted at the deli, so I bought that. But to make a proper bomber I'd need coleslaw and I wanted to make something myself. The heads of cabbage were big and I know I weary of green cabbage quickly. I pondered the contents of my refrigerator and decided to try a carrot based slaw. It became the star of the meal, and two bouts of leftovers. Here's what all you need to do:

Peel and grate 3 or 4 carrots
Peel and grate a chunk of broccoli stem
Grate 2 or 3 good sized cherry bell radishes

Sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar on the grated veggies, mix

In a small sauce pan place:
  3/4 tablespoons of olive oil
  2 tablespoons of rice (or similar) vinegar
  a couple shakes of dry mustard
  a few shakes of black pepper

Bring these to a boil, then pour this hot dressing over the veggies, stir, and refrigerate for a half hour or more (you can also eat it now if your sandwich is ready)

Enjoy.

Cooking for One, Part Three

I've become cavalier in my cooking. This is a disclaimer for the recipe below. I haven't actually measured any of this yet, but it was quite tasty. My only real training in food preparation comes from my mother and from watching Guy's Grocery Games. Oh, and from eating. I've been eating pretty much my whole life, at least three times a day. But I think it's watching Triple G (and Triple D: Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, though he doesn't seem to visit many real dives, or drive-ins, for that matter) that have set me free from a prior enslavement to measuring spoons.

I'll go by look, feel and taste these days. Especially for add-ins, like walnuts into brownies. Half a handful seems right. But the real secret that I want to share with you today is about dumplings, the pan-fried Asian kind. I don't make those. I buy them. Either from the little Chinese place at the strip mall a few blocks over in the bad part of town (that place is a bit of a dive), or in the frozen food aisle, ethnic section, at Publix. Both of those come with sub-par dumpling sauce, though, and my prior attempts to whip up my own were unsatisfactory. I knew it was a soy sauce base, but that's all I could ever taste when I made some. Neither ginger nor garlic cut the over-salty, over-soy-y taste. And water just, you know, watered it down.

The secret? Rice vinegar.

As warned above, don't trust my measurements, they may lead you astray, trust your instincts, Luke, but these are my guesses at what I put together. Worked wonderfully:

   3 tbsp Lite Soy Sauce (Kikkoman is the name brand, but I don't think it matters)
   2 tbsp rice vinegar (I got Nakano All Natural, again, probably doesn't matter)
 1/4 tsp sesame oil (go easy on this, it can overpower everything)
 1/4 tsp ground ginger (I would've preferred 1/2 tsp fresh grated, but I didn't have it)
 1/4 tsp garlic powder (again, fresh, like one clove, would've been better)
 1 tbsp diced green onions

Mix it up in your favorite small monkey dish.
Dip away.

Cooking for One, Part One

These days I mostly cook my own meals and am the only one eating what I cook. I eat a wide variety of foods, not all of them healthy, but some are. I don't eat nearly as much seafood as is on this scientific list of the most nutritious foods,  but I eat a lot of the fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs listed there.

Other times I'll order a large pizza (usually from Pizza Hut or Domino's rather than Earth and Stone or Sam and Greg's, but that's just because I'm cheap) and I'll eat about a third of it right away, then I'll have it for dinner 2 or 3 times over the next several days, augmenting with a salad or petite frozen peas from Publix. I can eat half a week that way for about 10 bucks. Did I mention that I can be cheap?

That leaves a few days to fill in with some other fare. Last night it was panko-breaded frozen fish (pollock,  Publix branded, too, as it turns out). It's a bit less bad for me than Gorton's or Mrs. Paul's Beer Battered. I do like that beer batter, though. I also prepped some sweet potato fries -- slice them up french style, a bit of spray-on cooking oil and salt onto an aluminum foil covered baking tray and roast them at 425 degrees with the fish, so not fried at all. Very tasty and pretty good for me.

Anyway, I managed to make some tarter sauce to go with it that I was quite content with:

   1 dill pickle spear, diced
   1/2 tsp prepared horseradish (I like Inglehoffer, mostly for the little jar)
   3 jalapeno rings, diced
   2 tbsp mayonaise (Hellmann's if you have it)

Put it all in a small monkey dish and stir. Enough for two chunks of fish, you don't want there to be leftovers of fish or tarter sauce, anyway.

Double it if you're cooking for two.
Happy Valentine's Day.