The Frugal Foodie Cookbook (2 page)
Chickpea and Broccoli Orecchiette
Colorful Risotto-Stuffed Peppers
Farfalle with Portobello Mushrooms
Gorgonzola Pizza with Radicchio and Asian Pears
Mediterranean Salad with Lentils, Tomato, and Feta
Mushroom and Rosemary Marinara
Quinoa Risotto with Wild Mushrooms
Japanese Eggplant with Peanut Soy Sauce
Sweet and Sour Veggies over Rice
White Pizza with Spinach and Artichoke Hearts
Roasted Cauliflower with Marjoram
Vegetarian Mexican Bean and Pepper Salad
Chai Muffins with Figs and Oats
Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Icing
Double Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Muffins
Chocolate-Covered Toasted Rice Treats
Chocolate-Marshmallow Brownies
Danny’s Sweet and Salty Almond Cookies
Moist Apple Cake with Sherry Glaze
Tartlets with Blackberries and Lime
Vanilla Ice Cream and Strawberry Brownie Bombs
Introduction
I’m living proof that anyone can learn to cook cost-conscious, delicious food, mostly because I am such an unlikely person to have developed this skill.
I left my parent’s kitchen for college with the usual tricks—brownies from a mix and fruit-and-nut salad when I felt particularly culinary. Then I met Alex through our college newspaper, and his ease in the kitchen astounded me. On our first date, he arrived at my apartment with two armfuls of groceries, and I gaped as he casually unpacked his ingredients and began to prepare dinner. That night, he wooed me with a pear and Gorgonzola salad, followed by tender, flaky salmon fillets that he topped with a colorful homemade salsa. For dessert, he impressed me with bananas flambé over ice cream.
The meal was unlike anything I’d ever seen prepared with such limited resources. At the time, I imagined that the dishes Alex cooked would take all day to prepare and cost an unreasonable amount of money. But Alex pulled everything together in an hour, and on the budget of an ordinary college student. He floored me with contemporary recipes and meals with cohesive, delectable flavors. He prepared dishes that I wanted to eat and that tasted really good. I’ll admit that I had a crush on Alex before, but after this meal, I was smitten. Who is this boy, I remember thinking, and how can I get him to cook for me every night?
Over the next few weeks, Alex introduced my small, unequipped kitchen to high-quality, contemporary flavors that I thought were impossible to achieve on my budget. I decided that I would learn to cook the foods I love to eat, and that Alex would teach me.
Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind. With my limited equipment and funds, I learned to roast a chicken, mix vinaigrettes, and even make pasta from scratch. Propelled by my newfound enthusiasm, Alex and I began cooking frequently. We discovered that we could save an amazing amount of time and money by making large batches of stews and soups to freeze for another day. And when our freezers overflowed with leftovers, we began inviting our friends over for meals.
At first, we planned our menus far in advance and invited friends for chili on a Saturday night or scones for Sunday brunch. Soon, it was understood that we’d always be cooking, and that anyone was welcome to join us. Unsurprisingly, we found that our friends also found cooking to be an exciting and cost-effective alternative to eating out every night. And when we started writing about our meals on our blog, Two Fat Als, we realized that we weren’t the only foodies trying out high-quality, contemporary cooking with limited resources. As we shared our recipes online, our readers responded by saying that they shared our passion for good cooking and our belief that gourmet food can exist without extravagant spending.
We’re thrilled to present our cookbook because we know that fancy equipment and high costs are not necessary to create delicious food. The recipes in this book are contemporary and tasty, but anyone can execute them on a limited budget. We hope that these recipes will facilitate many happy kitchen memories and inspire you to have as much fun cooking as Alex and I have.
Living like a Frugal Foodie
Ten Frugal Foodie Tips
There are infinite ways to save money in the kitchen, but these are some of our most effective methods. In addition to the following, we try to abide by basic cost-saving techniques like reinventing leftovers into new dishes, building meals around sale items, and buying in bulk whenever possible.
1. Use the leftovers from baked chicken to make chicken stock and freeze the stock for later (see our recipe for leftover chicken stock). Since we spend a few hours making stock every time we polish off a roasted chicken, we always have chicken stock available for soups, risottos, and other dishes. Homemade stock tastes fresher than store-bought varieties, and it saves plenty of money and time.
2. Purchase different grades of ingredients. We like to keep both a cheap and a favorite version of common ingredients like balsamic vinegar, olive oil, or mustard. We use the cheap versions for cooking and the other versions for drizzling, vinaigrettes, or when the flavor features more prominently.
3. Make frugal and filling dips for parties. When hosting dinner parties, we’ll encourage our guests to fill up on frugal appetizers like hummus so that we don’t need to purchase large quantities of expensive proteins.
4. Bake bread. Bread is extremely inexpensive to bake, and having a toasty slice on hand can transform any small soup or salad into a filling meal. Additionally, there are tons of uses for leftovers, such as croutons, homemade bread crumbs, or bread pudding.
5. Multiple-stop shop. We rarely buy all of our ingredients at the same location. We have different stores for produce, canned goods, meats, and fishes. And if we don’t know which store or market has the lowest price for an ingredient, we’ll often split up and call each other to compare.
6. Make substitutions. This may seem obvious, but substitutions are not only a great way to save money, they’re also a way to begin experimenting and cooking without recipes. You can almost always substitute cheaper cheeses, nuts, and fishes for costlier versions.
7. Use expensive ingredients wisely. There’s nothing wrong with using pine nuts or expensive cheeses, but we like to incorporate them as accents to a dish, rather than featuring them as the main ingredient.
8. Freeze herbs. Because you can only buy them in premeasured amounts, it’s easy to use half of a bunch of herbs and accidentally let the other half rot in the refrigerator. To avoid this fate, mince any leftover herbs, mix them with a drop of water, and pour them into ice cube trays for freezing. We pop them out whenever they’re called for next.
9. Remember that dinner parties aren’t the only food parties. When we want to invite friends over for food but feel daunted by footing the bill, we’ll choose to host a less expensive meal like breakfast or brunch. A formal brunch party can be just as entertaining as a formal dinner party, and French toast and eggs tend to cost much less than a rib roast.
10. Keep separate cooking wine. There’s no reason to break open a $20 bottle of wine when most of the alcohol will be cooked off. We scope liquor stores for cheap wine sales and keep the bottles in a separate area so that we know they are for cooking.
Top Ingredients for the Frugal Foodie Pantry
These are items that we think every frugal foodie should keep in the kitchen. Buying small amounts during every trip to the grocery store will cost more than buying large amounts when these items go on sale, so make big purchases when you spot good prices. Since most of these ingredients keep for a while, there’s no need to worry about them expiring.