Quick Marinara Sauce: Cheaper than the Jar

Is jarred spaghetti sauce a good deal? We think not. Good reasons for making your own:

• It's really easy
• It requires no skill and minimal equipment
• It's not pumped up with added sugar, a common problem with cheap jarred sauces
• It's cheaper - high quality sauces run $3.50 to $4.00 a jar. A can of crushed tomatoes costs as little as $1.49, which is most of the cost in homemade sauce
• It tastes much better

If you have a saucepan and a can-opener and you know how to stir, you can pull off a decent marinara sauce. You can customize it according to your taste: add different herbs, add cheese, add veggies, add meat. It's your sauce, so you can make it your own. The basic sauce uses only pantry staples.

We'll be posting other easy tomato pasta sauces in the future, versions that aren't quite so simple. But, really, this one isn't bad in a pinch.

Quick n' Easy Marinara Sauce
(makes about 3 1/2 cups; total cost $2.41)

2 tbl olive oil
28 oz can of crushed tomatoes or tomato puree
1 tsp onion powder
½ tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried basil, crushed in your palm
½ tsp dried oregano, crushed in your palm
1 large pinch black pepper
½ tsp salt

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Variations:

Tomato-Butter Sauce: replace olive oil with butter (adds 20¢ to cost)
Spicy Marinara Sauce: add 1 large pinch of crushed red pepper
Parmesan Marinara: add ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese before using (adds 20¢ to cost)
Chunky Marinara: add a 14-16 oz can diced tomatoes, increase other ingredients by half (adds $1.95 to cost)
Pesto Tomato Sauce: add 1-2 tbl prepared pesto (adds 30¢ - 60¢ to cost)

Vegetarian Lentil Soup

Homemade soup is so easy, so filling, so inexpensive. Your homemade soup will taste so much better than anything in a can. Why not try to make your own?

Vegetarian Lentil Soup
(serves 4 as a main course; total cost is $4.86)

¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 large onions, diced
7 ½ cups water
1 cup lentils, rinsed and picked over for stones (see Note)
4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
3 celery stalks, thinly sliced
¼ cup tomato paste mixed with ½ cup water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Heat olive oil and butter in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add garlic and onions. Cook for about 10 minutes, until onions are very soft and golden. Stir often to get even browning.

Add everything else except the parsley. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil. Give it a good stir, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. The lentils and carrots should be very tender.

Just before serving, stir in the parsley.

Note: Nowadays, it's pretty unusual to find any pebbles in your dried beans, but I have found them so it's best to look.

Moroccan Couscous Salad

So pretty! My daughter used Israeli couscous which is bigger than regular couscous.

My daughter is going off for a semester abroad in Scotland. For the first time in her life, she will be cooking for herself. Day in, day out. Not just the occasional grilled cheese sandwich. We are going through cookbooks looking for recipes that a) she would eat, b) require a minimum of equipment, and c) are quick and easy. A whole lot like the recipes here at School of Eating Good.

The first recipe she picked out is from Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York. My daughter had it this summer when we finally got to the Moosewood, after 30 years of trying on my part. It fulfills all three of her conditions. Added bonus - it's full of healthy veggies.

Moroccan Couscous Salad
(serves 4 as an entree, 6 as a side dish; total cost $7.80)

Salad
1 ½ cups dry couscous (see Note)
½ tsp salt
1 ¼ cups boiling water
1 cup diced carrots
2 large bell pepper, whatever color you like, diced
⅓ cup finely chopped red or sweet onion
1 15-16 oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed
⅓ cup currants or raisins or craisins
½ cup sliced almonds, toasted at 300 F° for 5 minutes

Dressing
½ cup vegetable oil
juice of 1 lemon
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
3-4 tbl orange juice (juice from 1/2 an orange)
4 tbl chopped fresh parsley or cilantro (about 8 sprigs)
1 tbl fresh mint, chopped (optional)
pinch of cayenne
¼ tsp black pepper

Combine the couscous and salt in a large bowl. Add the boiling water and stir. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 10-15 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

While couscous is cooking, steam the diced carrots for 10 minutes. Add steamed carrots, diced peppers, onion, garbanzo beans, currants, and almonds to couscous. Stir with a fork.

Combine dressing ingredients in a medium bowl. Add to couscous mixture and mix to coat the salad.

You can eat it right away but it's even better if you chill it for an hour to let the flavors meld. It will keep for up to 4 days if refrigerated. Once it's cold, you may need to season with more salt. Cold foods don't taste as seasoned as hot foods.

Note: Couscous is a teeny-tiny pasta which doesn't require much cooking. It tends to clump together if stirred too much when hot. Fluffing with a fork keeps the grains separate.

Chicken Noodle Soup - the easy way

By Till Westermayer from Freiburg, Germany (Buchstabensuppe) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

These days, you don't need to make stock from scratch for a decent bowl of chicken noodle soup. Once upon a time, all the chicken stock you might find in the supermarket was either powdered bouillon (mostly salt and MSG) or a canned brand (again, a whole lot of salt). Neither of these choices came close to tasting like real stock. Now, there are many good brands of stock in a box and Better than Bouillon makes a line of stock pastes that is really top-notch. No kitchen should be without some form of stock since it is used in so many recipes. If you are a vegetarian, there are vegetable versions which can be used in any recipe calling for stock.

These supermarket stocks can be the basis for a good bowl of chicken soup. Not quite as good as my Jewish grandmother's chicken soup, but decent and far superior to any soup in a can.

Fast Chicken Noodle Soup
(serves 4; total cost is $7.60)

6 cups chicken stock
1 carrot, peeled and cut into thick sticks about 2" long (or use mini-carrots, cut into sticks)
1 large stalk of celery, trimmed and cut in 1/2 lengthwise and then into 2" lengths
6 oz cooked chicken breast, chopped into bite-size pieces
1/4 cup tiny pasta such as vermicelli, alphabets, or tiny stars
lots of black pepper

Heat up the chicken stock to a simmer. Add carrots and celery and cook until carrots are tender, about 20 minutes. You want no crunch in the carrots.

Add the cooked chicken and cook for 5 minutes until chicken is hot.

Add pasta and cook for 3 minutes until pasta is done.

Season generously with black pepper. Usually additional salt is not needed because even the low-sodium stocks are fairly salty, but add some if you feel the soup is lacking flavor.

Oven-fried Chicken

We at School of Eating Good are not opposed to frying. There is nothing like frying to produce crunchy crispy food. There is a significant drawback to frying, however. What a mess! For a quick weeknight dinner, frying is definitely not our first choice.

Oven-frying may not have the serious crunch of deep-fat frying, but it is feasible any night of the week. The breading keeps the chicken moist. It's reasonably crunchy and very tasty.

This recipe uses bone-in chicken parts, but boneless, skinless chicken works too. You'll need to adjust the cooking time because boneless chicken cooks faster. Figure 30 minutes for a boneless breast.

Oven-Fried Chicken
(serves 4)

2 clove Garlic, minced
1 cup Panko Bread Crumbs
¼ cup Grated Pamesan Cheese, about 1 ounce
½ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Black Pepper
1 tsp Crushed Dried Thyme
2 tbl Butter, melted
¼ cup Milk, or buttermilk
2 ½ pounds Chicken Parts

Preheat oven to 375℉. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray or rub with a little vegetable oil.

Combine garlic, panko crumbs, salt, pepper, and thyme in a medium bowl. Add butter and toss to moisten crumbs.

Pour milk into a shallow bowl. Dip chicken in milk to coat then roll in panko crumb mixture.

Place chicken on prepared baking sheet, leaving space between pieces. Bake until coating is crisp and juices run clean when chicken is pierced with a knife, about 45-55 minutes.

Note: Panko bread crumbs are extra crispy Japanese bread crumbs. Other crunchy things can be used instead of panko such as crushed up tortilla chips, potato chips, pretzels, or regular bread crumbs (either dried or fresh).

Peppered Party Almonds and a tip on becoming a successful cook

If we had one tip for beginning cooks it would be "Read the recipe." Read it all the way through, carefully, before you ever start cooking. Surprises suck - surprises like "Cook for 2 hours" and your guests are about to arrive. Or "Chill overnight" and you need to bring dessert to a party right now. Or, you are missing an ingredient in the recipe you were hoping to eat for dinner in the next 30 minutes.

Now, before you start thinking "Oh, that has so happened to me!" and you beat yourself up over it, just stop. We have all done this, experienced and beginner alike. You're in a rush, you scan the recipe, and you miss some important step or ingredient.

So, slow down. Read that recipe top to bottom. Read all the ingredients. Read through all the steps.

We know this is rather obvious as tips go, but it is really important. If you get in the habit of reading through recipes, you will avoid a lot of surprises that can make you feel like an incompetent cook (not to mention a dope). Confidence, which comes from success in the kitchen, is a big part of becoming a good cook. Give yourself an advantage from the get-go: read the recipe. If you can eliminate those unnecessary surprises, you'll be well on your way to being a star in the kitchen.

Here's a party recipe that takes no time to read or make.

Peppered Almonds
(makes 2 cups)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
¾ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¾ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups whole unsalted almonds

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add salt, garlic powder, cayenne, and black pepper. Stir and cook for 1 minute. Add almonds, toss to coat with butter and spices and remove from heat.

Spread nuts on a sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool for a couple of minutes and serve.

Peppered almonds will keep for a few weeks in an airtight container. They make a great snack too!