My Nana Calls This Gravy (about $15 makes two lasagna's worth; about 20 minutes)

My Nana. She's 91. Born in Italy, I think outside Rome. Her father was a scholar, then a coal miner. One of her sisters died in the flu epidemic in 1918; she still has two brothers living, one older, one younger.

My Nana has lived on Long Island (good lord, it has its own website!) for half a century or more, in the same house facing the neighborhood school. She had three children after the war: my aunt Irene, my father, and my uncle Rich. When my father was 17 he and my mother, the 16-year-old daughter of a local Irish family, made me, then relinquished me to my adoptive parents. Two years later, when my bioparents were legal, they married and then had five children: Chris, Missy, Tom, John, and Tracey. We found each other ten years ago. Which is when I met my Nana, who filled her house with her relatives so that I could meet them all.

This is a nice story, and I'm betting you think that what's about to follow is her recipe for red gravy. Actually, it's sort of my sister Missy's recipe, only not quite that either. And maybe she got it from our Nana, I don't know. All I know is that one day I was visiting the coast and Missy said, let's make spaghetti sauce. And I blinked and said, okay, and then we were shopping, and then she was dumping things in a pot, and all of a sudden, blammo. My whole spaghetti sauce nightmare of a childhood ended. Ended, I say. Blammo.

Because as is probably clear to you from my other posts, my mother, bless her heart, was a modern cook. Packages. Pre-made stuff. If it came in a box or a can it was way superior to the raw, naked, whole stuff. I don't blame her. She's a product of her generation, as I am of mine. Thus, on the issue of red sauce she was multiply screwed: she didn't have the ethnic, class, or more generally cultural impetus to make her own. Her idea of getting spaghetti sauce was--go to A&P. Find Ragu. Buy Ragu. Heat Ragu with browned ground beef. Serve over spaghetti noodles. Side salad of iceberg lettuce, pallid tomato, carrot dimes, either Ranch or Good Seasons Italian.

This isn't Ragu. Doesn't have fifty weird ingredients, preservatives, all that sugar. It takes almost no time to fix.

As I've written it, this makes maybe three quarts of sauce, enough for two lasagnas and a little more. Decrease as necessary for your purposes.

Here's what you need:

Stock pot

olive oil

crushed garlic

oregano

basil

red pepper flakes and/or jalapeno mash

vegetables (here, it's onions, green peppers, and broccoli, though just about any sort will do)

Three large (32 oz) cans of crushed tomatoes

one small can of tomato paste

opt. med can of diced tomatoes

a little red wine

possibly a TBSP of sugar

possibly a little salt

Chop all your vegetables up. Set aside onions and peppers, since they'll go in first. But you can glop the rest together.

Open the cans. If you're using diced tomatoes, drain them only. Don't drain the others (you can't actually, but I didn't want you to try).

In the stock pot, heat up enough oil just to cover the bottom. I'd say about 4-5 TBSP max. Use med heat.

When you can smell the oil, or when it starts to shimmer, drop in a heaping spoon of garlic, a handful (maybe 3 TBSP) of oregano, half that of basil (so maybe a TBSP and a half), and some red pepper flakes or jalapeno mash.

Saute these in the oil for just a minute. Don't burn the garlic. This is easy to do, so err on the side of undercooking.

Add onions, peppers, celery, any veg that's there just for flavor. Saute until just limp, stirring pretty constantly.

When the onions are translucent, or the other vegetables are just a little soft, add the tomatoes.

Stir. Turn the heat to low. Cook uncovered for about five minutes, until the tomatoes are simmering. Taste.

It's important to taste at this point because your tomatoes might be very acid. If they taste like can, or sort of bitter, you'll need to add the sugar. This happens unpredictably, so you have to taste. Add salt at this point, too, if you feel you need it. I almost never feel I do.

When the tomatoes taste right to you, add the rest of the veg and about a third cup of wine. I generally just dump, about two glugs.

Bring to a boil over low-med heat (to keep you from having red sauce popping all over your kitchen). Taste, adjust for bitterness -- more sugar -- or for richness -- more wine. Let simmer until the vegetables are just cooked through.

If the sauce looks too thin, add more paste or just let it cook down for a while. This will overcook the vegetables, however, so unless that's okay with you, use the paste to thicken.

[This is a picture of the sauce boiling. I thought it was really neat: a still of motion. Also, the sauce launched a giant blob of red stuff into the atmosphere; it landed on my arm, where I licked it off like Yukon Cornelius licks his pick.]

There you go.

Burritos for Breakfast (maybe $5; about 15 minutes)

I preface this whole entry with the caveat: we are not Southwesterners. These are as inauthentic as any other ethnic recipe here.

As I say this, I wonder: what is authentic Southwestern? A hybrid of Mexican and American food? What is authentic Mexican? A hybrid of Spanish and indigenous food? And which indigenous food? And which Spanish cuisine? And how long does a cuisine have to be itself before it's really a cuisine and not some hybrid? And while we're at it, what's Spanish cuisine, but a mash up of regional food ways overlaid with preferences from hundreds of invasions from elsewhere?

I'm looking for the Ur cuisine. That might be authentic.

And don't get me started on "American" food. Now there's a mare's nest if I ever saw one.

Okay, caveats and phlights of philosophy aside, here's what we do when we want quick finger food for brekkie.

You need:

** tortillas (these are El Banderito, but any will work.)

** 2 med potatoes, washed, unpeeled, and chopped into about 1 inch pieces

** 2 eggs

** jalapeno cheese slices (You too can torture your children! Use pain and bribery!)

** a little margarine or butter

** salt and pepper

You can add diced onion and salsa if you want. We generally don't.

In a microwave-safe dish, cover and cook the potatoes on high about 5 minutes. They should be completely cooked.

In a separate bowl, beat the two eggs together.

Meanwhile, heat two skillets. Lightly grease one (I use spray grease). You'll use this to heat the tortillas.

In the second skillet, melt a little butter. Use med to med-high heat.

When the potatoes are done, dump them into the buttery skillet and brown the potatoes. If you want diced onions, this is the stage to add them.

As the potatoes brown, set a tortilla in the other skillet and put a piece of sliced cheese on it. Heat for about a minute (until the edge of the cheese starts to soften). Remove to a plate.

In the potato skillet, pour eggs over potatoes and scramble with potatoes until almost dry. Turn off heat, add salt and pepper, mix.

Set another tortilla in tortilla skillet, add cheese. While that's warming, take a spoonful of the potato mixture and wrap it inside the warm tortilla. You can do a simple taco-like fold-over; we tend to want less messy envelopes, so we fold and roll like a burrito.

Repeat fill-and-fold with the now-warm second tortilla; repeat whole process with the rest of the tortillas until you run out of filling. This should make 5-7 small burritos; maybe 1-2 large ones.

If you want salsa, I'd recommend adding it before you fold, or using it to dip.

There you go.

Stone [Soup] Salad (virtually free; less than fifteen minutes)

This is virtually free, since what you're doing is using the odds and ends you have left over in the fridge to make the salad. You may have to buy some lettuce (you know you want the vegetarian starter kit, right?). Or maybe you have some, or some spinach, or something leafy and green? That's where you start.

Chuck can make two meals: this, and a pasta dish he calls carbonara, but it's really just pasta with olives and turkey bacon. It's really good, equally as good as his salad. He tells me that most of his cooking life was spent microwaving fish sticks or eating processed cheese on tortillas (microwaved). There's a good story about a last minute Thanksgiving he and his brother Bob ended up eating at 3am the morning after Thanksgiving. I've seen him make Bisquick pancakes -- and they're also good. But yeah. Now that we live together, mostly I cook.

Here, however, is his "famous" salad. Salad, in this part of the world, is best in fall and spring, when lettuce is fresh and local.

This one he made for dinner, and the way he makes them, they are a dinner.

What you'll need:

Green leafy substance (this is romaine, but any lettuce or non-cooking greens will do)

some fruit (here he's got apples, tangerines, dates, and raisins)

some vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, scallions, green peppers)

some nuts (here, pecans [how to say it like a native] and walnuts)

some salty stuff (like pickles, olives, capers)

some cheese and whatever else you have a spoonful or two of left in the fridge

Some spices (here, dill, cilantro, red pepper and black pepper)

What you do:

Wash what needs washing. Cut up what needs cutting up into bite-sized pieces.

Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

Put this in the bottom of a big bowl.

But the other bite-sized stuff on top.

Shake on some Parmesan or other cheese.

Toss and serve.

We eat this without dressing, but for guests we have some bottled stuff, or I drizzle on a little mustard mixed with honey and olive oil, or some Good Seasons Italian.

There you go.

Turkey Shaped like a Football (under $15, about an hour)

I have the lyrics to "Secret Agent Man" (I know I used this in the last post, but it's just SO good) stuck in my head this morning. Only they're the wrong lyrics, they're the classically wrong lyrics: I'm hearing, secret... ASIAN man, secret... ASIAN man over and over again. It's a mystery. Can you be a secret Asian? Why would you keep that a secret, even if you could? Why can't the singer sing AGENT, with a nice hard G?

Look, I'm procrastinating. I need to write a paper, but instead I'm writing to you guys.

Everything isn't what it should be.

Welcome to meatloaf.

Once, I sat down at a table to a meatloaf made of god knows what dead animal -- what obese dead animal -- ground up and pressed into a big square corningware casserole. The grease was...impressive, if you're impressed by about half an inch of grease, say, floating on top of your meat. There was also ketchup somehow, but I never caught how.

I think of this particular meatloaf as an insult to the meatloaf deity.

My mother's meatloaf was never like that. When I ate beef, I liked hers, and conveniently enough when it's reshaped, it makes delightful meatballs. So when I stopped eating red meat, I began experimenting with her recipe. Her meatloaf was tender in the middle, crispy-edged (for those yummy heel pieces), savory, and remarkably ungreasy. I wanted that for my non-beef-loaf.

Here is what I came up with. Look at the pictures for what you want in consistency and meat-to-bread ratio. I make two loaves at a time and often freeze one for later.

about a pound and a half of ground poultry
about a pound and a half of poultry sausage (we like hot Italian turkey sausage when we can get it)
stale bread (maybe four cups), cut into cubes
about 1/2 c seasoned breadcrumbs
two eggs
some milk
oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt
jalapeno paste, if you like it hot

Dump the cubes in a giant bowl.

Dump the ground poultry on top of that.

Squeeze the sausage out of the casings into the bowl. Discard the casings.

Add eggs.

Splash in maybe 3/4 c milk. Keep the milk out in case you need more.

Add the bread crumbs and spices.

With a potato masher, mash everything together. You want to do this until everything is WELL mixed, so give it some time. If the bread cubes aren't coming up into the meat, splash on a little more milk, but just a little at a time. Keep mashing. It should come together so that you can form balls of it with your hands. If you set them down, they should hold together and not crack or fall open. This may take five minutes of mashing, though I'd say it takes maybe two-three normally.

When you have everything mashed together, wash your hands, set the oven for 375 and get out two pans with edges. I use rectangular brownie pans because both with fit in my oven together. But use what you have and bake in stages if you have to. Lightly grease the bottom of the pans (I use spray grease). Divide the meat mixture in half, taking out one half with your hands and forming it into a footbally-loafy shape. Pat it smooth. Place it in one pan. Repeat with the other half and place it in the other pan.

Wash your hands (remember you're working with poultry) and then put the pans in the oven. Baking loaves can take from 45-60 minutes. You want to watch that they're uniformly brown on the outside, and they aren't pink in the middle.

If you need this in shorter order, divide the meat mixture in three or four and make smaller loaves: four loaves will cook in about 20-30 minutes.

To make meatballs, just form the meat mixture into balls whatever size you like. You can bake these, but I normally use a skillet and pan-cook them on the stove. Since they're very unfatty, you need a little olive oil in the skillet.

There you go.

Smashed Potatoes (under $3; about 25 minutes)

There is almost nothing more unpalatable to me than the mashed potatoes of my childhood. My mother used to peel and boil chunks of potato until they fell into powder. Then she'd get out the electric mixer, add margarine and some milk and mix until she could nearly pour the stuff. Babyfood. The consistency of vomit-froth. Insubstantial and unchewable. Gah. Yuck.

I encountered these again in Wisconsin and would have despaired, but thankfully, I'd been living in Georgia in between, where I --

1. had a shitty electric mixer that couldn't handle potatoes for, say, 15 (I fed 23 people at once);
2. so had bought a potato masher (mine is less hand-grenade-y than this), which changed my life, potato-wise; and
3. had met the inestimably wonderful Peter Gareis, who taught me his secret to mashed spuds.

The secret to smashed potatoes ala Gareis is that you must chew, and you must chew on rich, worthwhile things. All hail Peter, who stood in my kitchen and made these one day while I watched. Actually, come to think of it, it might have been his kitchen, and I might have been spying intrusively. All hail Peter anyway.

Okay, what you need:

A large pot

water

about 6-8 medium boiling potatoes (for about four people, or just one of you, if it's been a really really bad day)

butter

milk

salt

cream or yogurt cheese

Easy.

Step one: wash potatoes thoroughly. You're going to eat the skin, so make sure it's clean.

Step two: cut unpeeled potatoes in about 2" pieces.

Step three: put potatoes in pot and just cover with hot water.

Step four: boil them on high until a fork slides easily into the largest piece you can find. This should take about 10-15 mins. NO longer than 20 or you'll have crap falling apart potatoes and that's no fun.

Step five: drain the potatoes. Save the water for soup if you're that kind of person.

Step six: put the potatoes back in the warm pot. Add about two-three TBSP of cream/yogurt cheese, a splash of milk, a tsp salt and some butter.

Step seven: mash vigorously. Add a little more milk to get a smoother consistency if you need to.

Taste and adjust salt and add pepper if you like that. Find an old sappy movie and plop down on the couch with a bowl of these. Eat in big gobbing spoonfuls, like ice cream. They're good for your soul, very calming, very grown up.

There you go.

Cornbread (about $2; 40 minutes)

I was reading something the other day -- don't ask me what -- and someone was complaining that she couldn't make cornbread because there wasn't any buttermilk. That got me to wondering what the heck she was talking about. I guess you could use buttermilk. I'd never used it. But I guess you could.

And anyway, the chemistry of using buttermilk in baking is easy enough that you can substitute spoiled milk (or sweet milk curded with a little vinegar) for buttermilk, in a pinch.

People get their panties in a wad for the weirdest of reasons.

Witness: the sugar issue (this person's actually pretty mild in her disapprobation; she only kicks you off the website). Apparently -- I'm really outside this debate (here's another random sampling), too, so can't be trusted to represent it at all well -- if you add sugar to your cornbread you are [insert nasty regional epithet here]. "True" cornbread, the food of [benevolent regional description]ers, is sugar-free.

I don't know. You could take out the sugar I guess, just add a little less milk, and see how it does. All depends on whether or not you want to be a [nasty region]ist, or if (heresy, I suppose) the matter of sugar really does mark you as a [nasty region]ist.

Alright: here's the recipe. I make this in a cast iron skillet, and make 1 and a half of this recipe to fill it. As written below, this will fill a loaf pan.

You'll need:

1 c self-rising cornmeal (buy local!)

1/2 c white flour

1/4 c white sugar

1 egg (what I want for my birthday)

milk

corn or a very small can of creamed corn (6 oz?)

Oven at 350.

Grease the skillet or loaf pan generously.

In a bowl, mix meals and sugar. If you're using corn niblets, add them to the meal/flour mixture. I put about a handful in mine -- so maybe 1/4 c?

In a large measuring cup, beat the egg with creamed corn if you're not using niblets. Don't do both or you won't have bread so much as corn pudding. Which is delicious, but won't really sop much.

Add enough milk to the measuring cup to make about a cup and a half of liquid. Keep the milk out since you may need a little more wet.

Mix the wet materials into the dry materials all at once. Add enough milk that the consistency of the batter is like very loose pancake batter. You should be able to pour it. Mix just until everything's incorporated, then immediately pour into your greased pan.

Bake about 30 minutes. Eat hot with lots of butter. Sop up soup if you want.

NOTE: I use this for stuffing at the holidays, only I make it hot and spiced. I double the recipe, add garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, sage, basil and thyme. Cook in a large skillet. Leave out overnight, then crumble with regular bread for your stuffing. It's my secret. Shhhhh.

There you go.

Locked and Loaded, Sir, Yes, Sir (less than a dollar, 1 minute or less)

[No, you've come to the right blog: I changed the colors because, much as I loved the way the black looked with the pictures, the letters swam and danced and I was getting a headache trying to read the thing. Let me know if this works better for you, or if you really want to be back in black again. I'll listen, my disciples. My precious.]

Okay, today: weapons. Specifically, habaneros, jalapenos, hot peppers and that voodoo they do so well.

I issue a warning here. Working with hot peppers means washing your hands A LOT, with soap and hot water, before you touch your eyes or any other mucusoid or otherwise private part of your or another person's anatomy.

True story.

No, wait. I can't tell that one. Sorry.

Jalapeno paste is designed to allow you to eat VERY spicy food without blistering your lover's(') privates, or your own. Or blinding him/her/them/you. After you make JP, you touch it only with a spoon before you eat it. It's a beautiful, relationship-saving, doctor-visit-preventing thing.

I grow my own peppers and make up, and can, vast batches of this every summer. I have heard that setting out hot peppers next to mild ones -- say, habaneros next to bells -- can make the mild ones hot. Also, the heat in a pepper is there to prevent the fruit from getting fungal infections: thus, peppers grown during wet summers (like this one) are drastically hotter than those grown during dry ones.

Oh, and one reason people like hot peppers is that the pain of eating such things releases endorphins in the brain. In warm countries, the sweat the heat of peppers creates is also cooling. They are amazing little things. More fun facts? Why yes, I have one more! Only mammals experience capsaicin (the "hot" in these peppers) as hot: birds and bugs don't. Thus, you can help keep squirrels out of your feeders with hot pepper-coated seeds (well, except those "Cajun" squirrels [dear GOD, do NOT Google "cajun squirrel" unless you want recipes] -- listen for their zydeco bands to know whether this will work for you). Seriously.

What you'll need:

1) Peppers. This is a picture of the very last batch we could harvest before the first frost killed our plants. It was our sixth or so harvest of this size from these plants. The peppers come from two jalapenos, one habanero, and one plant sold as serrano, but which I think is thai green peppers. Probably there's a pound or a pound and a half here. Note that I have not stemmed or seeded any of these -- they go into the paste whole, without my cutting them. If you have to have less hot pepper paste, I'd suggest using milder peppers (poblanos, for instance) instead of seeding. Or using less paste in a recipe. Seeding means cutting peppers which means getting your hands on them, which means -- danger, Will Robinson. You get the picture.

2) Salt. Use about a tsp or 2 per 3 med. jalapenos. This sounds like a lot, but if you're going to store it, salt is a way to keep the peppers from going rancid. If you're going to use it all at once, you won't need more than a single jalapeno or two and I'd skip the salt entirely -- just salt the dish. I make this en masse so I add a lot of salt.

3) Optionally, olive oil. I add this because it also prevents spoiling and saves me a step in cooking. I don't have to oil the pan at all or as much if I add oil at this juncture. And my peppers stay green in the fridge. Here I've added maybe a quarter cup. Sometimes I add more, but I figured I'd be using this batch up pretty fast.

4) Food processor or blender.

Step one. Wash the peppers.

Step two. Stuff them in the processor/blender.

Step three: Add salt and/or oil.

Step four: Press go-button. Process to a paste. You'll still see seeds, but it should be smoothish.

Step five: Move the paste carefully to a refrigerator-compatible, sealable dish and refrigerate until it turns black and nasty throughout, which means its spoiled. I've been able to keep this for up to a year open in the fridge, with the right amount of salt. By which I mean a lot.

Step six: Rinse everything carefully and wash in a hot, soapy medium. Wash your hands. If you think you got some on you, lick that part. If you tongue heats up (slowly, painfully), wash that part again with hot water and soap. The heat in peppers is oily, so it takes lipid-busters to get it off.

You're done.

One of Chuck's favorite ways to eat this is by the cafe-spoonful, on top of cream cheese (they have a festival!), on top of a cracker. His eyes water. It's fun to watch.

There you go.