When the going gets tough, the tough get going!  Or in my case, I get creative and cook!  Here’s what you’ll need to make this special “Italian” dish:

• ½ to 1 (16oz.) can of garbanzo beans or chick peas
• 1 (14.5oz.) can of diced tomatoes
• ½ box of penne dry pasta
• At least 1 cup of mixed frozen vegetables.  Some sort of vegetable mixture whether it’s fresh, frozen, or canned to make it Primavera!
• Olive Oil
• Chopped or minced jarred garlic
• Salted butter
•  Spices: Salt and pepper, crushed oregano or some sort of italian spice, crushed red pepper, ground cayenne pepper.
• Some sort of grated cheese.  Depending on your budget, you can use good old Parmesan from Kraft or real Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano.
• A little meat.  Could be chicken, pork, or fish.  A can of solid white tuna can also be used in this dish if you’re meatless in the house.  I used a leftover grilled chicken breast from the night before to make this dish.

Let’s cook.  You’ll need a pot to boil the penne pasta and a large frying pan for the rest.  Fully cook your penne pasta and drain water.  Drizzle olive oil and salt over the cooked penne and stir it around a bit.  While the pasta is cooking, nuke the frozen vegetables (if frozen).

Turning your attention to your frying pan, warm it up and coat the bottom with olive oil.  Add a generous amount of chopped or minced garlic and some salted butter.  As the garlic butter is cooking, add your dry spices listed above.  Add the garbanzo beans (chick peas) and diced tomatoes.  Cut up whatever meat you have and add it in (If it was raw and not a leftover you have to cook it first!).  Now you can slowly mix in the vegetables.  Sprinkle a generous amount of grated cheese to the mixture.  Finally, start to mix in the cooked penne.  And voila - dinner is done.

Plate it up and sprinkle with more grated cheese. If you really want to make this dish extra ”fancy”, pair it with a Sauvignon Blanc, Fume Blanc, or Italian Pinot Grigio.  If you prefer a red wine here’s one for you – Negroamaro.  It’s an Italian red grape from southern Italy, grown in Puglia and Salento.  Add candlelight and that’s amore! 

Salute fellow Poor Chefs!

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While cooking, treat yourself by starting with a glass of the bubbly stuff like Freixenet Brut Nature (Approx. $9) from Spain.  The Spanish call their bubbly “Cava” not Champagne.  It tastes really good and your date or dinner guest will never realize that you paid less than $10 for it.

Next is the salad.  If you have a Trader Joe’s near you, consider yourself a lucky Poor Man’s Chef because these guys nearly give away lettuce and salad stuff for free.  Here’s the salad stuff that you’ll need:

• Sorrento- Fancy bag of lettuce that is a mixture of Baby Arugula, Baby Spinach, and Baby Lettuces. Cost for a bag $1.99
• Butter Lettuce & Radicchio – Cost for a bag $1.99
• Romaine Hearts – 3 hearts for $2.29

Grab a nice salad bowl and mix a little less than a half a bag of each lettuce and cut up 1 Romaine Heart.  The rest of the lettuce can be for tomorrow night’s magical creation.  Next, grab yourself some fresh asparagus and green beans and chop them up.  Fire up a pan, melt some butter in it and add the fresh chopped up asparagus and green beans.  Drizzle some balsamic vinegar and soy sauce over the vegetables in the pan.  When the vegetables are done cooking, sprinkle them over your salad greens.  Season the salad with some salt and pepper.  Lastly, top each salad with some Brianna’s Home style Chipotle Cheddar Dressing.  One warning:  This dressing ain’t cheap at around $4 a bottle.  But it’s worth the splurge for this salad and you’ll have lots of dressing leftover for another time.  Pair this salad with the 2007 Goats Do Roam White wine from South Africa.  At only $7.99, it’s a steal of a white wine and goes really well with this salad creation.

Up next is Supper.  I’m pleased to say that no leftovers went to waste in the creation of this tasty chicken dish.

Grab a big skillet.  Warm it up and coat it with some olive oil.  Next, melt two pieces of butter. Now add some chopped garlic (chopped garlic is typically found in a jar in the produce section).  Throw in a handful of grape tomatoes into your skillet.  Squash the tomatoes into the garlic butter.  Add some chopped up onions – any kind of onions will do.  Add a can of chopped tomatoes.  Lastly, add the seasonings – salt, pepper, cilantro leaves, paprika, ground cayenne pepper, chipotle chile pepper, and ground coriander seed.  A generous sprinkle of each spice based on your liking.  It’s now time to add tonight’s meat to our skillet medley.  I cut up 2 chicken cutlets and 2 pieces of turkey sausage and added it to the skillet mixture (Add whatever meat you have whether its beef, chicken, or pork).  Cook it all up together and add some water as needed so you don’t burn your fancy creation.

On another burner, cook up 1 cup of white rice.  After the rice is cooked and you’ve strained the excess water, mix the rice in with the stuff in your skillet.  Pair this homemade Jambalaya with the 2007 Lo Tengo Torrontes from Argentina (Price: $7.99).  Or if  you prefer a red wine, give this “fancy dish” a go with the 2007 Sebeka Cabernet/Pinotage (Price $7.50). 

End this meal with a couple of mini cannolis from your local bakery. $1 buck a piece.

Bon Appétit fellow Poor Chefs!

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1.)    Make sure you have more than just salt and pepper in your spice cabinet.  This will allow you to discover how great spices, like coriander and fennel, can pair with a wide variety of foods from luncheon meats to grilled salmon and tuna.  With a decent spice cabinet, you can turn anything into a gourmet masterpiece.  Trust me. 

2.)    Canned chick peas (i.e., garbanzo beans).  I’ve made countless poor recipes with this lifesaver bean.  Garbanzo beans are very cheap and versatile. 

3.)    Canned tomatoes.  Like the garbanzo bean, a can of diced tomatoes offers up a lot of interesting possibilities for just pennies. 

4.)    Brown or white Rice.  Rice is cheap and it can be used in a variety of different meals. 

5.)    A bag of frozen mixed vegetables, frozen peppers, or frozen spinach.  If you’ve got more than just salt and pepper in your spice cabinet, then you have a good chance of making something terrific with a little bit of these frozen vegetables. 

6.)    Jar of chopped garlic.  I don’t have the time or the money for whole garlic cloves.  So I always keep a jar of chopped garlic in the fridge.  

7.)    Some sort of meat or fish is always helpful, but not essential.  It doesn’t matter if its lunchmeat, breakfast sausage, or frozen fish sticks. If you’ve got some sort of protein in the house, then consider yourself a lucky Poor Man’s Chef, my friend.  

8.)    Salted Butter.  Why?  Because sweet salted butter can make anything taste good.  

9.)    Olive Oil.  Unlike butter, a little bit of olive oil goes a long way in adding and enhancing flavor.

10.) A bottle of wine.  Why you ask?  Because a bottle of wine can make any imaginative meal seem more special than it actually is.

There you have it!  10 Dinner Saving Ingredients to help you to become the most creative Poor Man’s Chef that you can be!  Best of luck! 

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Here’s a spicy delicacy that will have your taste buds asking for more.  I call it Spicy Chick-Chicken and no, I’m not stuttering.  Here are the ingredients that you’ll need:

A tablespoon or two of salted butter

A decent amount of jarred chopped garlic

At least 2 raw chicken breast cutlets

At least 1 cup of peppers (I used frozen red and yellow)

1 can of Chick peas/Garbanzo beans

½ to a 1 can of diced tomatoes

Ground Coriander Seed

Chipotle Chili Pepper*

Cilantro leaves

*A secret spicy seasoning that I used in this dish was RTG “Spicy Cajun Seasoning”.  This spice can be substituted for any “spicy as hell” dry seasoning that you might have.

First, grab a deep frying pan or pot.  Melt the butter, drop in a generous amount of chopped garlic (to your liking).  Cut up the chicken breasts and add to the garlic butter.  As this is cooking, start adding all the spices listed above.  As I mentioned above, I used something called RTG “Spicy Cajun Seasoning”.  The bottle looked pretty old and for the life of me, I have no clue how this seasoning made its way into our spice cabinet.  To be honest, it might have been left by the previous owners, so you might not even be able to find it in your grocery store any longer.  But tonight it was going into this chicken dish.

Next, add the frozen peppers.  Finally, add the can of chick peas/garbanzo beans and diced tomatoes.

This meal will have some “heat” on it.  But it’s sure damn tasty.  I paired this spicy chicken dish with a 2008 Argentinean Torrontes called Crios de Susana Balbo.  This white wine was amazing with this dish.

As usual, don’t knock it until you’ve tried!

Until the next time we run out of food… bon appétit fellow Poor Chefs!  

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Just two more days before a grocery trip to BJ’s.  Things were definitely running low in the kitchen.  I knew that we had dinner covered on Thursday night because that’s our pizza night.  But what in the world were we going to have for dinner tonight?

I made my way into the kitchen to see what sort of “fine” cuisine I could whip up.  After assessing the situation, as only the Poor Man’s Chef can, I was ready to cook.

I call this dish Sufferin’ Succotash Spicy Chicken.  You’ll need the following ingredients to make this (ahem) “delicacy”:

-          2 frozen chicken breasts

-          At least 8oz’s of frozen Succotash (that would be lima beans and corn to all you heathens out there)

-          At least a handful of grape tomatoes that have a shelf life of about 2 days. In a pinch some other sort of “old” tomatoes will work…or a can of crushed tomatoes or stewed tomatoes. You get my point here - you need some sort of tomato product other than spaghetti sauce or tomato paste.  Do not use a red sauce or paste with this dish.  We had some grape tomatoes that were starting to look like raisins in the refrig (sometimes I just like to test the boundaries of the human intestine).

-          A cup of some other frozen mixed vegetables. I used about a cup of frozen mixed vegetables

-          1 slice of ham - any kind of lunch ham, I used a slice of lunchmeat ham

-          1 can of chicken stock, chicken broth, or those bullion cube things

-          Southwest seasoning – for this tasty meal, I used Emeril’s Southwest Essence from our spice cabinet. Bam!

-          Dry cilantro leaves

-          Chipotle chili powder

-          Ground cayenne pepper

-          Butter

Grab your big pot and heat it up.  Drop some butter in it.  Next, drop in whatever tomato product you have opted to use.  Heat up the butter and tomatoes.  Defrost your chicken and drop it into your pot.  Cook the chicken and tomatoes.  Now you can start to gas this concoction up with all your seasonings.  After you add the seasonings, dice your single slice of ham up and drop it in. Add your succotash, mix all this around a bit in your pot and then add whatever chicken stock product you’ve chosen.  While this is brewing in your pot, nuke your frozen vegetables and add them to the pot once soft.  Remember that along the way, you may need to add some tap water to keep things moist.

Cook it all up and serve it on a fancy plate and pair it with a California, Chilean, or Washington State Riesling.  Now this just screams “fancy dinner”.

As usual, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.  Until the next time that we run out of food.  Bon Appetit! 

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