Warning - extremely Cheap Eats up ahead. You may want to look away if you’re adverse to main meal recipes with only three ingredients.

If you were ever a hungry latch-key kid coming home from school, chances are you’ve made an afternoon snack like this before. I call it Ghetto Pizza, although maybe it should be called “Starving College Kid Pizza”. I happen to think this is quite good for lunchtime meals as well (as long as you eat other stuff with it, veggies would be nice!).

I actually wasn’t a latch-key kid until high school, but I still found occasion to make these every so often. The recipe is stupidly simple, has endless modifications, generally tastes “good” and can be fairly cheap as long as you don’t go putting any gourmet toppings on top.

We haven’t had a recipe on Cheap Eats in awhile, and I know that this doesn’t really count, but hey it’s cheap isn’t it? Here are the basics:

Ghetto Pizza

2 tbsp spaghetti sauce from a 26 oz. $2 jar — $0.07
1 slice of white bread — $0.10
1 slice cheese (mozzarella, swiss, etc.) — $0.15

optional pepper, dried oregano — negligible

Total: $0.32

If you can’t figure out how to make this, then I don’t know what to say. Put the sauce on the bread and cover with the cheese. Optional dried oregano and pepper on top. Put it in the toaster oven and toast it until the cheese is bubbly. That’s it.

You probably want to make a couple of these to fill you up. You couch potato guys, I’m talking to you…

Continue reading “Ghetto Pizza” …

Cabbage rolls aren’t much to look at sometimes and they sure contribute to, er, gassiness. But they can make a really nice meal and can be made out of stuff that I usually have in the fridge and freezer. I’m not too sure of the origins (German?) of the cabbage roll but I’ve been eating it at my parent’s house since I was a little kid. Since I’ve moved out I’ve tried once or twice to make them with varying degrees of success.

Basically, the cabbage roll I know is like a mini meatloaf that is wrapped in a cabbage leaf. I know some use a toothpick to secure the leaf, but I like to pre-boil the cabbage leaves so that they’re easier to wrap. I also put leftover rice in it, which tends to make it more tender and also uses up that rice in the fridge that is always there. I also use a mixture of Ground Beef and Ground Pork… The pork makes it more tender but too much might make it have a gamy “pork” smell. You can also use ground veal and ground beef like that in a meatloaf mixture but I don’t.

Here is one variation of a recipe that I made (just barely squeaked under $3 but your mileage may vary either cheaper or more expensive:

Cabbage Rolls

2/3 lb. Ground Beef — $1.00
1/3 lb. Ground Pork — $.0.33
1 cabbage, core removed — $0.45
Brown Onion (1/2 an onion) — $0.25
1 cup of cooked rice — $0.10
Parmesan cheese (1/8 oz of $3.50 8oz can) — $0.05
1 egg — $0.10
Parsley (1/4 cup chopped from $0.69 bunch) — $0.06
Homemade Breadcrumbs — free
1/2 can Chicken Stock — $0.25
1 8 oz Can Tomato Sauce — $0.30
Olive oil (1 tbsp) — $0.08
Water / Salt / pepper — negligible

Total: $2.97

I like to boil the cabbage leaves first to make them easier to wrap. You need a huge pot of water, salt it a bit and get it boiling. Meantime, if you don’t like crunchy onions in your meat (I don’t) mince the 1/2 onion fine and start simmering it in a pan with olive oil. When it sucks up all the oil, add some water. Keep adding water every so often while cooking… you want the onions to be really soft, almost mushy.

Drain the cabbage and separate the leaves. You can also separate the leaves first before boiling. Set the cabbage aside. In a large bowl combine ground beef, ground pork, rice, parmesan cheese, egg, breadcrumbs (I make my own from bread loaf ends so it’s free), and parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste (you can also throw in some soy sauce, worcestshire sauce, garlic powder, etc.) Mix well to combine.

Take a scoop of meat mixture, place it on a cabbage leaf and roll it up until all the meat is covered. Place it in a lightly oiled deep sauce pan, seam side down; that way you don’t need to use toothpicks. Continue filling the pan. I try to have only 1 layer of cabbage rolls. Add the tomato sauce and chicken stock and about 1/4-3/4 cup water. Shake the pan a bit to make sure the sauce has coated the rolls. Cook on very low heat, covered, for about 40 min to 1.5 hours. Check the rolls every so often to make sure there’s enough liquid in the pan… if not, add some water or chicken stock.

Continue reading “Cabbage Rolls” …

I haven’t put a recipe up on Cheap Eats in such a long time because I haven’t had much chance to cook lately. Well, the other day at the supermarket we picked up 2 packages of Barilla Thin Spaghetti because they were only 99 cents each (this is fairly cheap for Barilla which is more expensive than Anthony brand spaghetti or super market generic spaghetti). But I didn’t really get to make a “real” recipe, just some fast tomato basil pasta… but I’m going to put up the recipe anyhow. We got basil for free (someone actually grew it) so that was why I decided to make it.

I don’t know if it’s because Barilla comes in a box so it seems more “upscale” or something, but I always preferred their quality over generic. Their mostaccioli, penne, and bowtie pasta is actually pretty decent too. We dig “Thin Spaghetti” over Angel Hair pasta… angel hair doesn’t seem to soak up enough sauce and also seems too much like Japanese Somen which we eat a lot of already. It also seems easier to cook thin spaghetti exactly “al dente” than normal spaghetti. Somehow more forgiving.

Anyhow, here’s one take on fast garlic, basil and tomatoes pasta. Note this isn’t conventional thick “spaghetti ragu sauce” … I just make it to barely coat the noodles. I’m sure you have your own variations:

Quick Basil and Tomato Pasta

1/2 box Barilla pasta — $0.50
Basil, cut in a chiffonade — Free, hopefully
6 cloves garlic, slivered or minced — $0.10
Olive oil (1-2 tbsp) — $0.10
1 Can Petite Diced Tomatoes — $0.45
Parmesan cheese (1/4 oz of $3.50 8oz can) — $0.11
1 tsp of dried oregano — $0.05
pinch of red pepper flakes — $0.02
1 tbsp sugar — $0.02
salt, pepper — negligible

Total: $1.35

Start boiling a lot of water in a big pot for the pasta. Wash the basil, remove stems so there are only the leaves. Set aside. Peel and mince (or sliver if desired) all 6 garlic cloves. In a skillet, heat up 1 tbsp of the olive oil (extra virgin olive oil tastes best) over medium heat for a minute or so. Add the oregano (if dried, roll between fingers to release more flavor), garlic, red pepper flakes and a few grinds of black pepper to the oil and cook for about 1-2 minutes or until fragrant. Don’t let the garlic and oregano burn, turn the heat down if needed.

Open up the can of tomatoes and add it to the pan, along with the liquid from the tomatoes. Add the sugar. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 10-20 minutes. Depends on how blended you like your sauce. Meanwhile, add thin spaghetti to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain pasta in collander, reserving about 1/4 cup of the cooking water.

Now cut up your basil. Add pasta, cooking water, and remaining olive oil to sauce in pan and toss to coat. Add salt, pepper to taste. Serve in plate topped with parmesan cheese and basil.

Continue reading “Barilla Thin Spaghetti” …

The other day I had a hankering for some French Toast which is a bit unusual for me because I’m not so much a “sweets” type of person. I’ve had good and bad french toast outside in restaurants, it’s pretty much been a tossup. So making it at home seems a good bet especially for those times you get a craving for it.

French Toast, or Pain Perdu (Lost Bread), was originally meant to be a way to fix up bread that had gotten old. This pretty much qualifies as Cheap Eats because you’re using stuff that otherwise might get thrown away.

The basic recipe is beat up an egg, dip toast in it, and fry that. Most add some sort of milk and sugar to the mix. The key is that you want it to be sort of crispy on the outside but buttery and velvet smooth on the inside. Pretty tough.

I think a lot of it has to do in the type of bread you choose. I hadn’t made french toast in awhile so I decided to go off a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. They did all sorts of testing and came up with the bread of choice being something called “Challah”(I believe this is Jewish?) They said to stay away from supermarket Italian or French breads beacuse it comes apart. White Sandwich bread seems to be acceptable though. I used bakery sandwich bread because it’s thicker and crisps better, but you can probably use Wonder as well.

Here’s the recipe as modified by me:

Quick French Toast

6 slices day old sandwich bread — $0.30
2 tbsp melted butter — $0.10
1 egg — $0.05
3/4 cup milk — $0.15
1.5 tbsp sugar — $0.05
1/3 cup flour — $0.05
2 tsp vanilla extract — $0.20
1 tbsp oil or equiv “Pam” spray — $0.05
1/4 tsp salt — negligible

Total: $0.95

Heat up a skillet till it’s really hot, 3-5 minutes. I like to use a really flat pan (like for pancakes), and if you’ve got it use a Cast Iron pan. In the meantime, beat up the egg in a shallow plate, whisk in melted butter, milk, vanilla extract, sugar, flour and salt, in that order.

Soak each slice of bread for about 30 seconds a side in the batter mixture. Take it out and shake it to remove excess. Put some oil in the pan and swirl with a paper towel. Alternatively, you can use those “Pam” sprays. Fry the bread until golden brown. It’ll be about 2 minutes for first side and then 1 minute on the second. You made need to experiment based on temperature of pan. Serve while hot, hopefully with maple syrup!

Continue reading “Quick French Toast” …

Ah.. the tuna sandwich. When it comes to sandwiches, tuna is a pretty popular way to go for picnics, bag lunches, and marketing meetings (the in-house catering service for where I used to work seemed to have nothing but tuna and egg salad). It’s a pretty popular sandwich, but is it Cheap Eats?

In many cases, the answer is no because of the price of tuna. There are many different brands to pick from like Chicken of the Sea, Bumblebee, and Starkist, but the price seems to be pretty static for them. They also have Generic tuna, but this is one food where I think I might pay the extra 25 cents per can.

I make sandwiches from tuna pretty frequently, sometimes as a standard sandwich and other times as a Tuna Melt, which I’ll save for another time. One thing I like to do is to change up the consistency of the tuna by putting something “crunchy” in it. If you don’t like the crunch, in this case provided by celery, you can easily substitute it or omit it completely. I think it makes it less boring, though. I also put in tomato and/or lettuce usually:

Simple Tuna Sandwich

1 can Chunk Light tuna — $0.79
1/2 tomato, sliced — $0.25
2 slices white bread — $0.10
1 rib celery, minced — $0.10
1 green onion, minced fine — $0.05
2-4 tbsp mayo — $0.10
Salt / pepper — negligible

Total: $1.39

I don’t need to tell you how to make a tuna sandwich do I? Oh, all right. Mince the green onion really fine, this is kind of important so you don’t bit into onion chunks. Chop it super fine and it will add flavor without being annoying. Mince the celery too, but leave some chunkiness for texture.

Pop the bread in the toaster and toast away to your liking. Drain the tuna and empty into large bowl. Break it up with a fork and then add the celery, onion, mayo and salt and pepper to taste. Mix up well. Spread the mixture on bread, top with tomato slices, and cover with other slice. Yay, tuna sammich is done.

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You are probably looking at the above picture on your screen and wondering if I’ve lost my marbles. What in the world is a Loco Moco and did you make that up?

Nope, this is a real dish and contrary to your first impression is not a Mexican or Spanish dish (at least I don’t think it is). Nor does it have anything to do with El Pollo Loco. There’s no chicken in it.

This is actually a “Hawaiian” dish that I’ve been eating for a long time (my dad’s side is from Kona). I think they’ve always sold it over there, but recently there has been a huge influx of Hawaiian BBQ restaurants into the area where I live. This is the latest fad in California (and a few other Western states); everyone and their mom wants to open one of these Hawaiian BBQ deals (a big chain that came over from Hawaii is called L&L) nowadays because they have been making a huge amount of money, primarily because people on the Atkins diet can gorge themselves off the meat heavy menu.

Not every Hawaiian BBQ chain sells Loco Moco, but most have something similar. So what is in this “crazy booger” of a meal? Why, it is a veritable layered heart attack on a plate. The usual consists of 2 scoops of Japanese sticky rice on a plate. Layer on TWO grilled or fried hamburger steaks, then add TWO fried eggs on top, and then douse the whole thing with artery clogging brown gravy. Sometimes there is a scoop of macaroni salad on the side. Whew, I rarely finish the whole thing when I eat it at a restaurant; it’s just too much.

Which is why I make a “mini” version at home. It’s slightly better for your arteries as well. The key for me is: less meat, less eggs, more gravy. Indeed, you can barely see the hamburger underneath the gravy. Here is how it goes:

Loco Moco Mini

1-2 cups cooked sticky rice — $0.15
1 egg — $0.10
1/4 lb hamburger meat — $0.50
1/4 brown onion, sliced — $0.15
3-5 mushrooms, sliced — $0.25
1/4 cup flour — $0.05
1/3 can chicken stock — $0.15
1 tbsp Bread crumbs — $0.03
Dash soy sauce — $0.02
2 tbsp oil — $0.05
Salt / pepper / water — negligible

Total: $1.45

(If hamburger meat is frozen, gently defrost on plate in 1 minute intervals… you don’t want to cook it!)

Warm up the rice in microwave if cold. Spread out the rice fairly thinly on a large plate and set aside. Heat a small pan on high. Mix the hamburger meat, bread crumbs, soy sauce, and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl. Form a “patty” that is not round like a hamburger but elongated, like a Salisbury Steak almost. It should be very thin, so it will cook fast.

When pan is hot, add 1/2 tbsp of oil and sizzle that hamburger patty, about 1 minute on either side. It should be nice and chared. Remove to the plate on top of the rice and put it in the oven to rest. Now, DON’T wash the pan… add 1 tbsp of the oil in the pan and throw in the sliced onions and mushrooms. Sizzle that for about 5 minutes on medium or until onions are soft.

Meanwhile, get another small non-stick pan going with 1/2 tbsp of oil. Crack an egg in there and fry it, turning once through the cooking, until done as desired. Put that egg on top of the hamburger patty and put it back in the oven.

Returning to the onions and mushrooms - reduce heat to low and sprinkle flour evenly over mixture. DON’T mix it yet; let it stand there for about 3-5 minutes. This will cook the flour, preventing the gravy from tasting flour-ey. Now increase the heat to medium and slowly add chicken stock in thin stream, stirring frequently with wooden spoon. You may need more or less liquid to get the desired thickness. When gravy is done, add some black pepper to it, pour it over the hamburger/egg and you have a mini loco moco!

Continue reading “Loco Moco” …

Every time I walk around downtown L.A. there’s bound to be some guy pushing one of those hotcarts and selling either hotdogs or sausage and onion sandwiches out of it. I never tried one of those but I hear they can be really delicious if a bit sketchy on preparation and cleanliness.

They also have ‘em at chains like Jody Maroni… yeah I know comparatively weak next to all those great mom and pop sausage sandwich places. I’ve been to a few and have been wowed and disappointed variously. I think there are a lot better ones on the East coast…

I had some frozen Italian sausages in the fridge so I decided to try cook up my own Sausage Sandwich with Peppers. I was actually hoping it’d turn out better than the Sausage and Pepper Pasta that I attemped awhile back.

Sausage Sandwich with Peppers

2 Italian Sausages from large Costco pack — $1.00
French Bread (1/2 small loaf) — $0.12
Provolone Cheese (1 slice from Costco pack) — $0.10
Mayo (1-2 tbsp of $2.00 jar) — $0.08
1/4 brown onion, sliced — $0.15
1/4 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced — $0.12
Corn Oil (1 tbsp from $2.00 bottle) — $0.03
Salt / pepper / water — negligible

Total: $1.60

(If sausages are frozen, defrost them in 1 minute increments until thawed, turning them around after each interval)

Heat about 1/4-1/3 cup of water in a small nonstick pan. When bubbles form, place the sausages in there and cover with a lid and steam-cook them on medium heat until most of the water has nearly evaporated, about 10-15 minutes. Make sure to check them every so often. If the water evaporates too fast you may need to add more.

Meanwhile slice up the onion and pepper. When water is almost gone, remove the lid and cook until the water is gone. Flip sausages once and cook for a few minutes more. Flip several times more, until desired doneness is achieved (I like it when the outer surface is browned but not charred)

Remove to a plate to cool. When cool, cut the sausage into chunks (you can also keep them whole if you are using bread that is meant for sausages, like hot dog rolls). Toast bread if desired.

Add oil to pan on medium heat. Add onion and red bell pepper and cook until parts are slightly charred. Add the sausage and stirfry a minute or so. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste and mix a bit. Push the mixture toward the center of the pan and place a slice of provolone on top. Cook it until the cheese melts. Mayo up the bread if desired. Take a large rubber spatula and scoop the entire mixture onto the bread. There’s your sandwich.

Continue reading “Sausage and Pepper Sandwich” …