The exceptionally frugal gourmet, part 2

Two more simple and ultra- economical pasta dishes from my notebook.

Vodka Penne

My son Kosta loves this dish.
It’s another one from the Patricia Wells’s Trattoria cookbook – a great source for quick and easy Italian food. It’s less do-able on an extremely low budget if you don’t already have a bottle of vodka. You only need two tablespoons, though, so you might be able to get a neighbor to donate to the cause. Or call a friend who has a full liquor cabinet and an empty fridge, and maybe you can do a barter.

¼ C olive oil
4 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed hot red pepper flakes
Sea salt
1 28 oz can plum tomatoes, or 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, or 28 oz frozen peeled homegrown tomatoes (thawed).
1 lb dried penne
2 T vodka
½ heavy cream
¼ C chopped parsley

In a large unheated skillet, stir to combine the oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and a pinch of salt. Cook over moderate heat until garlic is golden but does not brown (2 to 3 minutes).
If using canned or frozen whole tomatoes, chop them with their liquid in a food processor or put them through a food mill. In any case, add the tomatoes to the pan. Stir to blend and simmer uncovered about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile boil the penne in salted water until al dente. Drain thoroughly.
Add the penne to the sauce. Toss. Add the vodka, toss again, then add the cream and toss. Cover, reduce heat to low, and let rest 1 to 2 minutes. Uncover, add the parsley, toss again. Serve immediately with a green salad on the side.


Spaghetti with Browned Butter and Mizithra Cheese

We used to like to eat out at the Old Spaghetti Factory. In the days when we were traveling frequently to Oakland or Portland with four small children, it had exactly what we needed: noise, lots to look at, and an inexpensive kids menu with something everyone would eat. The kids ordered spaghetti and meatballs, but this dish was my personal favorite.

The menu still features it with the interesting assertion “Legend has it that Homer lived on it while composing the Iliad”. My first thought was, what was Homer doing in China? But I looked it up in Meals and Recipes from Ancient Greece and it seems those guys did have a kind of pasta - made of spelt, wheat, and water - which they served with sauce (don’t tell my husband, or we’ll never hear the end of it; like the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," he thinks the Greeks invented everything). Clever fellow, that Homer, composing orally with a mouth full of pasta while strumming his phorinx at the same time.

Anyway, I buy mizithra at the Ashland Food Co-op, where it’s $8.99 a pound. It is almost certainly cheaper at Costco.

This is about the easiest recipe you’ll ever find: Boil a pound of spaghetti in salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, melt and then brown half a cube of butter in a pan (watch it – golden brown is good, but dark brown will make it bitter). Grate the cheese – maybe about 4-6 oz. for this much spaghetti. When the pasta is done, drain it well and toss with the butter and cheese. Sprinkle some chopped parsley on top if you’re feeling fancy. Also good with a little ground black pepper. Serve with a green salad.

At about a dollar a person, no wonder the Old Spaghetti Factory promotes it – they charge $10 plate.

Poor planning

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
-Wilkins Micawber

Oops. The untimely confluence of UC tuition and co-op payments this week has resulted in a serious cash flow problem.

I’m no stranger to radical fluctuation in my bank balance, and over the years I’ve developed some pretty effective coping strategies for avoiding kitchen misery. Not that anyone is likely to go hungry around here, what with the 200 pounds of local organic meat in the deep freeze. But we do want a little variety and I like to provide it without breaking out either the credit card or the Top Ramen.

When I was a kitchen manager at Andres Castro Arms in the 70s, my profligate ways once caused the budget to run out two weeks before the end of the semester following a special dinner involving caviar, steak, and (aptly named) chocolate decadence cake. A letter went out to the 52 residents and 2 boarders that we were now on poor-house rations. No more Captain Crunch. No more pork chops. No more guacamole. Necessity is the housemother of invention, though, and new challenges for the resident cooks resulted not only in numerous interpretations of classic vegetarian Hippie Hash, but also innovative dishes like “Zesty Lymph Gland Whoopee” - a casserole of rice and tomatoes, onions, peppers, and chorizo (read the label sometime). Some of us revisited this infamous creation at a co-op reunion years later – ah, the memories.

In Washington in the 80s I discovered bulk potatoes, which at 10 cents a pound provided many a Thursday-night mashed-potato meal for me and my buddy Kelly after we’d squandered our weekly Commander Salamander commissions on Mary Quant eyeshadow and Betsey Johnson fashion accessories. Desperate times, desperate measures, but fortunately my housemate Ira never noticed the missing milk – at least he never mentioned it. Thinking back on an hour-long house meeting (presided over by Ira and endured by me and the four other residents) concerning the fate of a pot of soup left on the counter to cool, somehow I think he would have said something.

These days I’ve got a ready list of dinner possibilities for when the funds run out. As most everyone knows, pasta is ideally suited for such times. Here’s one of my end-of-the-month standbys, which you can make for under a dollar a person. It’s from Patricia Wells’s Trattoria.


Spaghetti con olio, aglio, e peperoncini

(note: kitchen manager experience taught me to bolster morale by making sure your bargain basement dinner has a fancy name)

1 lb dried spaghetti
½ C plus 2 T olive oil
6 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed dried red pepper flakes
½ C chopped parsley

Add the pasta to a pot of boiling salted water and cook to al dente. Drain well.
Meanwhile, in a large unheated skillet, combine ½ C oil, the garlic, the red peppers, and a pinch of salt. Mix it around with a spatula to coat the garlic with oil, and cook over moderate heat until the garlic just turns golden but not brown (2 to 3 minutes). Add the drained pasta to the sauce. Toss, add remaining 2 T oil, toss again, and cover. Let rest off heat 1 to 2 minutes. Add the chopped parsley and toss again. Serve immediately, with a green salad on the side.


Pasta 79 cents
Garlic 25 cents
Oil 50 cents
Parsley maybe 25 cents, or grow your own like we do
Salt, pepper flakes – under 5 cents
Salad (from a head of lettuce, with homemade Italian dressing) 1.25
For 4 people: 77 cents each. At that price, two of you can each have a glass of two-buck Chuck and still keep the average at just about a dollar apiece.



After dinner, make a bowl of popcorn, open up the latest red envelope from Netflix, and snuggle up with somebody to watch a movie. Don’t worry about the cashflow –as Mr. Micawber assures us, something will turn up.

I love Eric

Today’s post is not for vegans. My animal-loving friends, your hearts are in the right place, surely, but we’re unapologetic omnivores here. We love animals… for dinner.

I am not without ethical scruples, however. I would much rather eat a chicken that's seen a little bit of life, been around the barnyard a time or two; a cow that’s spent some time in a grassy field and been spared the horrors of the feedlot and slaughterhouse; a lamb that's enjoyed quality time with mom. So my strategy is to go with local, sustainable producers. I sleep easier, and we certainly don’t regret the difference in flavor.

Apparently the law makes it difficult for beef ranchers to sell individual cuts by the pound to the consumer. Instead, you need to place an order with the rancher for a whole, half, or quarter animal. A few years ago I got my hands on a 5-foot freezer that a co-worker was giving away. This made it possible to really buy in bulk.

The way it works is you call the rancher (if I'm buying beef, that’s Larry Martin in Central Point) and tell him what you want to order (quarter, whole, or half beef). He’ll give you a rough idea when the meat will be available; this depends on whether the animals are ready, the kill dates, some time for aging, and processing (cutting, wrapping, and freezing). He’ll give you a per pound price and an approximate weight so you’ll know about how much it’s going to cost. If you're buying a half or quarter, he will have to arrange for the other parties who are going to buy the rest of the animal before he can proceed. He’ll also quiz you about what cuts you want: how thick to make the steaks, what percentage of fat to put in the hamburger, how much you want as stew meat versus hamburger, and so on.

The first time I bought beef I got a quarter, to see how it went. We used it all within a few months, so this year I went with a half beef, yielding about 200 lbs. After the animal goes to the processor (Larry Martin uses Jerry’s Custom Meats in Central Point) he will call with the price, which depends on the final weight. For my half beef this year I sent Larry a check for $880. A week or so later when I picked the meat up at Jerry’s I wrote a second check for $250 for the processing. The price works out to about $5.65 per pound. It may sound expensive, but I’ll tell you that included in the deal was a gigantic 18 pound rib roast. We cut that roast beast in half for a family feast on Christmas and then had a second one for guests on New Year’s Eve, easily $200 in prime rib if I’d bought it at a retail meat counter.

In addition to the Martin Ranch beef, I have purchased lambs each of the last two years from Tim Franklin of Yale Creek Ranch in Jacksonville. Lambs are small and yield about 30 lbs of meat after processing. For our current lamb I paid a $100 deposit, then $180 more to Tim when the meat was ready. Price of processing was included, so there was no additional payment when I picked the meat up at Jerry's. That works out to $9.30 a pound, close to the retail meat counter rate but so much tastier.

It's kind of cool to know that all the meat you're serving is from the same animal. It's a sort of personal relationship that might even inspire you to give the critter a name. Ours is Eric (as in... Eric the half a beef. OK, I guess we're are not as repectful as we might be).


Breaking news... as I was googling for a web address for my pork source, Bickle Family Farm, I discovered this - which apparently came out January 18 but vanished into the recycling bin before I had a chance to see it. Check out the article for a rundown on the health benefits of natural meats, as well as contact information for local producers, including all those I've mentioned in this post.


If you want to argue with me about the meat-eating thing, I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer's book. It will give you plenty of ammunition. But remember, I've got 200 pounds of frozen meat. With a small trebuchet - or some homemade sauce Bernaise - I am prepared to defend my position.