Water chestnuts.

get it?

This recipe is really simple, relatively cheap [find a deal on the carrots] and easy to make. It’s nothing revolutionary, but damn is it tasty. It’s so tasty because of the natural sugars in both the onion and the carrots. Raw carrots are pretty middle of the road, but when you steam/saute them, it breaks down the matter into delicious and subtle sugary compounds. Combined with the salty/savory onions and butter, this make this a staple side dish of mine.

Ingredients

• 1 pkg. of baby carrots
• 2 tbls. butter
• 1/4 of an onion, diced/chopped/cut-up-somehow
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Get out your nonstick saute pan on medium heat [with lid, or a large dinner plate if you don't have a lid] and throw in the butter and the diced onion. Once the butter melts, throw in the carrots. You don’t want the onions to cook too long here, since there carrots are going to take awhile, but you do want the onions to absorb some of the butter right from the start. Once the carrots are in, stir it all around to make sure the butter coats everything. Turn down the heat just a bit and come back in 5-10 minutes. Add some salt and pepper and stir the carrots around. Now partially cover the pan and come back in another 5 minutes. Eat one of the carrots to see how done it is. You’re looking for a carrot that is mostly cooked through, sweet but not mushy. If it’s not sweet, or you don’t get that “damn this is tasty” feeling, add more salt, and don’t be too stingy on the pepper. Use your tastebuds to gauge. You’ll basically feel it out from here on in. If the carrots are too brown, turn down the heat and put the lid on all on the way cooking their insides. If there’s not enough fond [brown delicious crust] on the carrots, then take the cover off and start to saute with a bit higher heat.

Now eat ‘em.

Chicken is good. It’s kind of a like the blank slate of the protein world. There are a lot of blank slates in the grain/carbohydrate world, such as the Italian’s with their pasta, Asia with their rice, and the US with our… bread? Anyway, chicken doesn’t have much of a taste, probably due to its mass consumption and breeding techniques, but nonetheless, when I cook chicken, it always needs at least a little something extra.

Trouble is, I don’t have much time, and while I don’t have a lot of money either, time is the big obstacle in this case. To get a good amount of flavor into the chicken you usually need to marinade the guy, which takes planning and time. I’m not a big fan of planning that far ahead for my meals with the exception of leftovers, which is more of a matter of happenstance than strategy. So here’s what I do…

If the chicken is frozen, I carefully defrost the breast in the microwave, running water would be better, but it’s a race against the clock here. But make sure none of the sides get cooked or anything, check it often and ere on the side of frosty. After that, take your non-stick [seldom washed] pan, heated to about medium and lay it down, curved side-up no oil/butter. After you think it’s browned on that side, turn it over and cover the pan. The steam will help it cook thoroughly.

Make sure to check the inside of the breast with a knife. We’re not going for presentation here, but nobody wants salmonella poisoning. Trust me, it’s awful. When there’s no raw flesh in the middle take a bottle of your favorite “quick marinade” [I use Lawry's] and lay about 2-3 tablespoons of the marinade over the breast. Reduce to the heat to medium low, or low [depending on the stove] spread it around the top and let some go off the sides, then flip it over. Generally the idea is to coat the breast in marinade as thoroughly as possible. Cover, for another minute or two and you’ve got a really tasty, mostly healthy chicken breast to go with your rice, pasta, potatoes or other such blank slate you want to dress up.

I discovered this technique while cooking pasta for some friends. I cooked the chicken the same way, but instead of marinade I put the chicken breasts right into the pan of tomato-based pasta sauce. I let it cook for awhile along with the sauce and the chicken soaked up a lot of the flavor. The chicken turned out to be a hit, and since it was so easy and practical, I adopted it for a lot of other uses as well. One of the tricks to this, is to not use any oil, and make sure you cook the chicken on medium heat as not to burn the meat or release too much water so it remains moist. The steaming helps with that as well.

If you’ve got no money, and have some of that dried noodle-stuff hiding in the back of your cabinets, you’ll want to add in some protein-like substance to the pot.

Cheesy Ramen

Sounds gross right? Cheese in ramen noodles?! Well, see this is where technique and ingredients are important. And why cheese? Well it’s protein. Albeit a side-steppers kind of protein, it’s protein nonetheless, and it will keep you from dying because all you ate was ramen for a month.

• 1 pckg. ramen noodles
• 1 stick of string cheese

So, first cook your ramen however you normally do. Personally, I’ve cooked so much ramen that I have a strict set of rules and a special square-shaped bowl once used for steaming vegetables. First, I fill up the bowl just enough until the ramen brick barely floats off the bottom. Then I nuke it in the microwave for 3 minutes, pull it out, stir it around, add the flavoring and then nuke it for another six minutes. But you do it however you wanna do it, on the stove, with a salamander, I don’t care. So after you’ve got your ramen done, simply take your stick of string cheese, cut it into bite size pieces and throw em in there. They will slowly start to get stringy and melt [mozzarella does that] which makes them taste even better. If you don’t have mozzarella, you could experiment with other melty cheeses, like colby or swiss. Cheddar probably wouldn’t work. Velveeta probably would, but it might taste a bit strange. So this was one long paragraph to tell you “cut some string cheese into your ramen,” but you know, I have to make it look like I’m working over here. Nobody reads the short ones.

With the advent of The Greater Depression [gonna to be the first one to trademark that phrase. Just like Three-Peat. Remember that?] and the wheelbarrows full of paper money, I figured now would be a good time to post my various hobo recipes I’ve developed throughout my penny-pinching college years. The penny-pinching continues, and so does the deliciousness. So let’s start with one of my old standbys. Red Curry Black Beans.

Red Curry Black Beans

You want to start this off with a nice red curry paste. I invested in a large tub of mae-ploy about three years ago, and I am still nowhere near finished using it. Of course, some may frown at keeping an ingredient for over three years, but if you’re frowning, well then go buy your organic swirly bread and designer peanut butter and get out of here. You’re in the wrong place. Anyway, aside from the special-order red curry paste, the ingredients are pretty cheap. Of course, if you splurge for fresh vegetables and whatnot, things get tastier, but hey, this is The Greater Depression. Madmen are burning themselves alive on the street corner, so let’s just go with cans for now.

• 3-4 tablespoons of peanut oil [don't use canola. please.]
• 3-4 tablespoons of red curry paste
• 2 cans black beans
• 1 can of corn [sub out a couple green peppers if you're rich]
• 1 can of tomatoes [with green chile, if you can swing it]
• 1-2 onions
• Salt & pepper

And away we go! First chop up the onion. I know you probably can’t dice an onion, nobody can, it’s impossible. So cut it up into some chunks and throw it a pretty large pot with half of the peanut oil. While this is going on, cut a couple slots in the cans of black beans and the can of corn to drain them in the sink. Get back to the pot and slosh that around on medium heat until the onions turn translucent. Now it’s time to add in the peppers if you have them, otherwise, throw in the tomatoes. Add some salt and pepper at this point, not too much, but sometimes this yin-yang punch is our best defense against Bland. Once the tomatoes have cooked for a bit and they’ve given up some of their juices for the greater good [not to be confused with the Red Scare] add in those two cans of black beans. Once you’ve incorporated the beans, throw a spoonful or two of red curry paste in making sure to get it completely liquefied into the oil. Taste it. Not spicy enough? Add a bit more. Not salty enough? Add a bit of salt. Let this cook for at least 20 minutes. See, what you want is kind of a slurry of ingredients. Not a paste, but more like a salsa. Each food-bit retains their integrity, but communes into one dish. After about 20 minutes, you can add the corn, make sure it heats through and then serve on top of rice, tortillas, or even bread. Heck, any kind of starch works. I like it as a dip for corn chips, served cold. Add some fancy-pants sour cream and you’ll be addicted.

Oh yea, this makes quite a bit, at least enough three-four meals. And it’s easiest to stretch with rice. I’m not sure of the total cost of this meal, but I’m guessing for all the ingredients, around $6-7. That’s if you buy your rice in bulk. Which you have every reason to.