Pomegranate and Parsley Pork with Spicy Eggplant

Sometimes an entire dinner comes together to participate in my no-ingredient-left-behind policy.

There are two main ways I've found to stop ingredient-wasting pitfalls and both of them play a role in this evening's dinner.

First: keep track of what's in the fridge. I try to keep tabs on "investment" ingredients (condiments, sauces, salty/pickley treats) and cycle them through now and again, in different permutations to keep it interesting. Pomegranate molasses, I'm looking at you.

Second: Make friends with the freezer. Find a great deal on meat but don't want to eat the same chicken breasts all week long? Freeze it. Family packs are great for this, especially when you don't have a family.

So here's how this meal is a waste-saver: I'm using the pomegranate molasses dish-by-dish, I'm freezing the half of the pork loin chop family pack I didn't cook, and all the veggies come from the CSA vegetable dump, which is getting so big as summer comes to a close that I'm going to start freezing some items we don't get to each week.

Pomegranate and Parsley Pork

3-4 lean boneless pork loin chops

1 heaping Tablespoon pomegranate molasses

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 c. parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper

In a shallow bowl, mix the pomegranate molasses, olive oil and parsley. Add salt and ground black pepper. Slide the pork loin chops in and turn until well-covered with the marinade. Set aside for 10 minutes. Heat a nonstick pan with a little olive oil over high heat. (You can try it without the olive oil, too, but I just find my pan needs a little help to prevent sticking.) Cook pork on both sides. These were thin cuts so they cooked about 3 minutes a side.

Spicy Eggplant

1 medium-size Japanese eggplant

1 teaspoon Ras el Hanout

2-3 scallions, chopped

olive oil

Slice off the ends of the eggplant and cut in half. I cut 1-inch slices, but if you are short on time, go smaller. In a bowl mix the eggplant with the Ras el Hanout. Set aside.

Heat some olive oil (about 1 Tablespoon) in a saute pan over high heat. Chop the scallions and start to saute in the pan. Then add the eggplant on top and cook, stirring, until the eggplant has turned darker and is soft. The scallions will get crispy and the eggplant will be nice and tender.

Salad: lettuce leaves + juice of 1 lemon + olive oil drizzled + sea salt

Tally:

Standard veggies and lean protein take a trip to Morocco

Pantry items find new ways to the table

Pork family pack's $5 split over two nights = thrifty

Quiche Love

I seem to be on a kick: forgiving food. Not food to ask forgiveness, or to forgive others with, but food that actually can stand up to a challenge. Sometimes you need a dish that can go the distance, or at least the length of a buffet without wilting, drying out or going bad. And the answer happens to be one of the easiest and most delicious options around, and did I mention that it's actually pretty thrifty?

Quiche can be made ahead, frozen and reheated, served hot or at room temperature, and can sit out for, well, usually as long as you need it to (I wouldn't go overnight, but...) And then there's the flexibility of ingredients. The basics are some sort of pastry base, some eggs and some milk/cream. Then, you just go wild: vegetables, meats, cheeses.

But even with swapping in skim milk for cream or using fewer eggs, the fact remains that quiche isn't exactly healthy. There's that little problem of, oh, the butter-laden crust and the cheese (and you DO want the cheese.)

So here's the solution: make it small. I like wee food in general, and I actually prefer my quiches mini. Over the winter I'd turned out batch after batch of itsy bitsy quiches that I froze for those "impromptu" guests. (Well, not impromptu so much as coming by when I wouldn't necessarily want to be rushing around before they arrived.) They were perfect as everything from proper cocktails to a starter for brunch.

And this weekend I had the honor of co-hosting an afternoon bridal shower for a dear friend, so another perfect time for my forgiving little friends. But this time I turned out a batch of 3-bite quiche using my handy muffin pan (regular size, not mini!) I filled a flaky crust from Martha with yellow pepper, asparagus and Gruyere; Gruyere, onion and bacon (aka Lorraine), and my personal favorite, leek and parmesan. Good things do come in small packages

Mini Quiche Universal Recipe

I studied up on my quiche recipes in trying to figure out a healthy option that would still taste yummy when shrunk down. And you know what? You can pretty much do what you want with quiche. So this is a universal recipe that swaps in ingredients, but I've also included some suggestions of what I used. And the thrift factor of being able to use what you have can't be beat.

Pastry/Dough

This is from Martha Stewart and you can find her original mini quiche recipe here. I've changed mine to reflect healthier ingredients and different proportions. But Trust In Martha when it comes to pastry. She knows her stuff. This is her Pate Brisee recipe and I follow it to the T:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 sticks unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes

1/2 cup ice water

In a food processor, combine the flour salt and sugar. Add all the butter and pulse about 10 seconds until the butter is no longer visible. With the machine running pour in the ice water and allow the mixture to come together. This will NOT take long so keep your eyes on the processor. I also hear a different sound because the blade is dealing with a more solid form. Divide the dough into two disks. I usually spread out two large pieces of plastic wrap and dump it onto them directly. Wrap tightly and refrigerate at least one hour. I've kept this stuff for several days in the fridge and it is totally ok.

Roll out on a floured surface and cut circles that are about two times the circumference of the base of your muffin pan. Haha, kidding. Grab a wide mouth glass or jar from your cupboard and play around to see what size circle fits nicely when nestled into a muffin pan, as pan sizes vary. I used a big old plastic cup from my college days that is about 3 1/2 inches across. Grease your muffin tin well and then start fitting the little dough circles into each spot. I often cut out a small wedge to make the dough fit more easily.Half the recipe above made about 15-18 3-bite quiches.

Filling

For 15-18 quiches, you need about 1 cup of filling, and cook anything that is not a soft vegetable (tomatoes can go in raw):

• 1 leek, cut into 1/8 disks and soaked in water to get rid of any grit
• 1/2 pepper, diced + 3 spears asparagus, sliced thin
• 5-6 strips of bacon, cut into 1/4 inch pieces + 1 onion, diced

Cheese

You *want* cheese in your quiche, and you need about 1 cup grated. I love my microplane and it does a great job of creating a fluffy mound of cheese that I can easily distribute into the smaller cups.

Egg Mixture

4 eggs

2 cups milk (I tried 1 % and it worked)

Freshly grated nutmeg (microplane, again, about 1 teaspoon)

A little salt

Put it together: evenly distribute the filling and cheese in the bottom of your dough-filled muffin pan. Pour in the egg mixture until it is even with the top of the pastry.

Bake at 350F for 35 minutes when a knife comes out clean from the center. Let sit about 10 minutes in the pan before removing to finish cooling.

I've used both my silicone pan and my regular old tin. Both work well.

Tally:

Great party food that stands up over time

Thrifty way to use up bits and pieces of vegetables, cheese and meat

Bite-size dishes let guests determine how much they want to indulge

Put leftovers in the freezer and reheat whenever you need a quick nibble or lunch.

Persian Pomegranate Walnut Wonder

I recently had a project that took up some serious time, meaning the thrifty cooking efforts were at risk of falling by the wayside.

But rather than reach for the take out menus, I reached for my stash of frozen goodies. What goodies do I speak of? Well, I'll tell you.

A couple weeks before I'd found my winter-long chicken stock supply had finally been tapped out. To my great good fortune (yes, I do actually get this excited about this stuff), the local supermarket had a good deal on bone-in chicken breasts. I'd poached them with the usual stock subjects (carrot, onion, salt, pepper, parsley), pulling out the chicken when the meat was still tender and pulling it off the bone, then returning the bones to the stockpot to bubble and boil some more.

Which is all to say, I had some frozen cooked chicken. Yay! I had some frozen chicken stock. Double yay!

The aforementioned project included some Persian poetry which got me thinking about my favorite use for pomegranate molasses (another already there pantry item from a cocktail experiment that went, well, wrong.)

This is quick to throw together, kinda healthy (pomegranates are loaded with antioxidants, walnuts with omega-3's), and pretty inexpensive due to buying protein on sale and the occasional but long-lasting pantry investment. Tangy and satisfying, I'll make an authentic version of this someday...but for now, I'm happy with this concoction.

Persian Pomegranate-Walnut Chicken

2 cups (2 breasts) poached chicken (I had frozen mine)

1/3 cup pomegranate molasses

1/4 cup whole walnuts

A olive oil, 1-2 glugs, if the chicken sticks

In a non stick pan toast walnuts and re-heat shredded poached chicken. If you don't have cooked chicken, you could poach 2 breasts or cut them into small pieces first and saute in olive oil. Personally, since this is a 'fudged' recipe already, I like to maintain the texture of the soft, shredded meat as it allows the sauce to reach more chicken nooks and crannies.

Remove the walnuts when they start to smell and are toasted. Mine got a tiny bit of color on them (oops, the risks of multitasking!) and they were fine.

Add the pomegranate molasses and combine thoroughly with the chicken. Turn the heat back so that the chicken simmers in the sauce. Add the walnuts, broken up, back in.

While it's simmering, make some couscous and a green salad.

Speedy Dinner...Done.

This is pretty tangy, so if you don't like your proteins candied (if you don't, we can't be friends), add some chicken broth to mellow the molasses.

Tally:

Chicken on sale turns into ready-to-serve dinner

Pomegranates and walnuts are healthy, Fat-Resistance friendly

This goes so fast you need to start making the salad first

A strong flavor from the pantry saves the day

Cheap and Cheerful

It's raining hard here today. Time to brighten this gray day up with some:

Yellow Pepper Curry Soup

There's no photo because my food photography skills are slim and certainly not good enough to capture the bright yellow color of this soup. So you'll just have to trust me -- it's pretty!

Serves 2 for smaller bowls, 1 for a large bowl

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 ribs celery, finely chopped

1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1-1 1/2 cups roasted yellow peppers (1 large pepper)

1/4 teaspoon curry powder

1/3 c. 1 % milk (or what have you)

Salt and pepper to taste

Roasted Peppers: Now, this normally wouldn't be a budget-friendly ingredient. *However* Mr. Lemon and I happened upon a lovely feature of the gourmet grocery blocks from our house: the bargain produce bin. It is hit or miss, but this means we sometimes find veggie gold -- in this case about 12 yellow and red peppers in mid-March for $1.50. Some need a little love and trimming, which Mr. Lemon reminds me of often as I have sympathy for the discarded produce and tend to be too gentle. Poor abandoned peppers!

When we made this haul I roasted in bulk (400F for 30-40 minutes, or until the skin blackens; steam skins off by placing peppers in a paper bag or make a pouch with parchment paper; peel away skin when cool.) Since we had such a large bounty, I pureed the roast peppers and froze them in 1 cup portions for later use. Especially with the bargain bagged produce, because it is sometimes a bit, ahem, mature, it's good to use it quickly or process it in a way that it can be frozen.

1. Assemble the soup: In a saucepan over medium heat, saute the onion, celery and ginger in olive oil until the vegetables become translucent. It will start to smell very good!

2. Add the peppers! Today I dropped the frozen pepper puree right in the pot and let the stove do all the work, but I could easily have defrosted in the microwave. I'm a lazy chef, what can I say? If the peppers are in pieces and freshly roasted, just give them a quick chop and add them to the veggie mixture.

3. Blender time: Once the peppers are either fully melted or have sauteed with the other vegetables for about 3 minutes, take the mixture off the stove and transfer to a blender to puree. Today, since I used pureed pepper, I skipped this step and had some nice, slightly chunky soup. But if you like smooth, thick soups, the blender is the way to go. Personally, I like having something to chew on in my soups.

4. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, add the curry powder, salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Add milk and bring back up to simmer.

I add a dollop of plain yogurt in the center when I plate this and then swirl it into the soup. Usually I have Greek yogurt (my favorite!), but we recently have been leaning toward a less expensive brand. A little chopped cilantro also looks nice against the bright yellow of the soup.

Today I had just a tiny bit of a yogurt cheese dip I'd made for a dinner party on Sunday (a super easy recipe I'll post at some point!) I literally saved 1 Tablespoon of dip...saving even a little bit can go a long way in adding flavor and cutting down on waste. I once wondered that my beloved Grammy, who had lived through the Depression I, saved one single lima bean. Now I think of her when I put away even small servings of food and ingredients.

Tally:

Curry's spiciness plays nicely off the sweetness of the peppers

2-3 servings of vegetables, most of which I usually have on hand

Creaminess, but low in fat and very filling