During the latter half of January, the Ottawa Citizen (a very local newspaper) re-published a piece by Victoria Times columnist Eric Akis, entitled "Slow route to tenderness: Lamb and veal shanks and beef short ribs make economical comfort food." Accordingly, during troubled economic times, scratch-cooked comfort foods provide a satisfying escape. With this year's talk of economic stimulus packages and the growing lists of layoffs, it is predicted that long simmered foods will again become popular.

As someone who subscribes to Chef Fergus Henderson's "nose to tail" eating paradigm, I never really let go of slow cooking, forging a special relationship with my slow cooker. Oft overlooked meat cuts lend well to simmered cooking, such as braising or stewing. This includes the lamb shank recipe that follows Akis' short editorial. The shanks are braised in an oven at 325 F for 2 and a half hours.

While I have a slow cooked lamb shank recipe that I want to share, I fear that Akis overlooked the fact that people are still overburdened with tasks. Simmering foods in a low oven is somewhat "inconvenient" while picking up groceries, visiting the local post office, fighting Bell Sympatico for yet another expensive cock-up, cleaning the condo, or spending time with your significant other. It is especially difficult when your city's entire public transit system is shut down due to strike.

The strike ended recently (thanks to an upcoming visit from America President Barack Obama), but I doubt most peoples' lives permit anymore flexibility. Tasks multiply now that buses and partial light rail are becoming available again. When once tasks were slow to accomplish because it was difficult to get around, they become location-independent again, meaning we can accomplish more. Thus, time is again a limited resource, so, before I post a slow cooked recipe for lamb shanks, let's look at one way to satisfy our slow cooked appetites without having to look after an oven for a couple hours.

My solution, pickup low sodium prepared sauces with no preservatives and look to the slow cooker to set us free. Introducing, beef rogan josh, slow cooker style.

What you'll need:

2 medium sized onions

onions, chopped fine

4 medium-sized potatoes and one can of Patak's Rogan Josh curry sauce

potatoes, chunked and soaked in water

2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

one pound of hand cubed top sirloin beef with significant marbling

beef, mixed with 1 tbsp corn starch and 2 tbsp canola oil

Before we go any further, the rogan josh that we are familiar with in North America may be an English interpretation of an Indian curry. This is because, while Rogan Josh online recipes are spiced with Indian spices (tumeric, garam masala, coriander, cumin, and chile powder) and employ yoghurt, they also contain tomatoes, something common to a dish that Brits call "chicken tikka masala." In fact, the ingredient list for noted British Chef Heston Blumenthal's "perfect" chicken tikka masala is very similar to that of rogan josh. One has chicken. The other, beef or lamb. As Chef Blumenthal discovered, the closest authentic Indian dish he could find that resembled chicken tikka masala was butter chicken.

What to do:

read the instructions from the can

brown the stew meat in pan and place in the ceramic bowl of a slow cooker

de-glaze the pan with the onions, cook the onions until coloured, and add the garlic

add the contents of the can to the pan and bring to a simmer

add the chunked potatoes to the ceramic bowl and cover with sauce

Heat on high until simmering, switch to low and cook for 45 minutes.

finished rogan josh with potatoes

With a gentle brightness from the tomato-y sauce, savoriness from braised beef, and lots of Indian spices, this rogan josh made a great entree. The aroma during cooking was indescribably good.

Plate on cooked basmati rice, add a salad, and you've enough in one batch to serve dinner to 4, generously.

The best part: it's a slow cooker. There's no oven to look after.

Originally, I intended to draft this entry as a response to a piece from columnist Zosia Bielski, entitled "Really cheap eats: How low will we go?" It was posted in the Life Section of the Globe and Mail website. It demonstrated that my fears were well grounded. North American diets have changed now that the economy has worsened. Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to print the article after coming across it two Mondays ago (January 12, 2009). Instead, I e-mailed myself the link. When I finally found time to put the entry together, I clicked on the link and was led to the following advertisement:

Pay Per View Globe and Mail Article
Perhaps it is a further sign of recessionary pressure that the Globe and Mail feels it must charge people to read its content several days after it was published and/or posted online.

Given how the website seems to work, more than likely all articles have a "readability expiry." If so, I wonder why the website allows comments when the Globe and Mail has absolutely no intention of permitting free or open discourse. Then again, who am I to question? The Globe and Mail has the readership of 10 million. foodiePrints has the readership of 10. To my faithful, please bare with me as I work with the recollection I have of the article.

In the growing economic calamity, consumers are opting for processed foods. They include frozen hor d'oeuvres from Walmart, Campbell's condensed soup, and Velveeta. People are turning back to canned meat and Jell-o. Bielski further intimates that foodies see this food as "low brow." Clearly, she (presumed to be a she) doesn't know the difference between a "gourmet" and "foodie." True foodies can find pleasure in processed foods. I consider myself a foodie, and I proudly stock my pantry with cans of baked beans, ready to serve beef stew, and condensed mushroom and chicken noodle soup.

Are processed foods part of my regular diet? No, but, as I've written before food can be characteristic of a stage in life. Hence, they can represent a connection to a simpler time and offer comfort during a turbulent one. Some of my comfort foods are the same as other North Americans' who grew up in the 80s. They include the following:

• Heinz Baked Beans with Pork - long cooked beans in tomato sauce
• Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup - yellow broth with short noodles and very scant pieces of meat
• Campbell's Chunky-brand Beef Stew - ready-to-serve beef stew so thick it can be eaten with a fork

These were foods that were economical during my childhood. They are economical now. Though, these days I also have vats of "from scratch" chicken stock, bottles of homemade tomato sauce, and individually portioned containers of slow cooked Asian-style beef stew in the freezer.

I have also learned to supplement Bielski's "low brow" foods with fresh ingredients. Take for instance the "Sloppy Joe." According to wikipedia.net, the Sloppy Joe is an American dish of ground beef, onions, and sweetened tomato sauce, served on a hamburger bun. It is a variant of the pulled pork barbecue sandwich. Browned ground beef replaces the slow cooked pork. A homemade or commercially prepared sweetened tomato sauce sauce replaces the barbecue sauce. A well-known brand of canned Sloppy Joe sauce is "Manwich", which is manufactured by Con Agra foods under the "Hunt's" label. Here is my take on the Sloppy Joe:

Finely chop one onion, three stalks of celery, and three cloves of garlic and set aside.

Vegetation

Assemble the meat (1 lb of ground beef and 2-3 Italian sausages, stripped of their casings) and brown it in a pan, pouring off excess grease. Set it aside.

Ground Beef

Italian Sausages

Gently sweat the vegetation with 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and a pinch of kosher salt over medium heat until translucent. Add the browned meat and one can of Manwich Sloppy Joe sauce. Bring to a simmer, reduce until there is no excess liquid and place into a metal bowl.

Simmered Sloppy Joe mixture

Ready to make Sandwiches

For traditional Sloppy Joes, spoon a heaping amount of the mixture into hamburger buns and serve. As for taste, think meat pasta sauce, but with some brighter flavours and more substance. One sandwich is very filling.

Hamburger Buns

Sloppy Joe

For a Sloppy Joe "Melt", heap some of the mixture onto a slice of bread. Sprinkle with shredded cheese. Top with another slice of bread. Toast in a non-stick pan, either teflon or seasoned cast iron, over medium heat. Gotta luv adding sharp melted cheese flavours to tomato. Yum!

Sloppy Joe

Yellow cooking onions are $2-3 for a 5 lb bag. Celery is $2-3 a bunch. A 2 lb chub of ground beef can cost anywhere between $1.99/lb and $2.49/lb. Italian sausages can be found fresh at $2.39/lb for a family pack. Just freeze the rest in meal-sized portions. Bread varies in price. This weekend, I picked up a loaf of thick-cut whole wheat bread at 2 for $4.

For a healthier version, omit the sausage and use lean ground beef. To avoid the canned sauce, simmer pureed canned tomatoes, each can costing anywhere from $0.99 to $1.49. Whatever the case, this take on the "low-brow" Sloppy Joe demonstrates that processed foods can be supplemented with fresh ingredients without incurring significant cost. The recipe is also quick and easy.

To Bielski, would it not have been better to provide some guidance to your readers on how to survive a recession than simply pointing out that everyone is turning to processed foods? Take for instance the comments in response to your piece before it was made unavailable. Many include personal accounts on how to eat healthily when times are difficult. Some point out that the public is more health conscious than you give it credit. For the time being, the comments are still available in Google's cache.

Me, I'm not amused with Bielski calling foodies food snobs. While we can appreciate "squeeze-bottle" cuisine, being a foodie doesn't mean we are immune. We too have to survive the recession. We also make adjustments to our diets. The issue should have been about eating smart, not just eating cheap.

It doesn't take much to see something in the following advertisement, given the current turmoil in the financial markets and witnessing its impact on the global economy.

Be There When the Market Turns
Source: darkroastedblend.com c/o digg.com

I can identify with the image. I'm sure a lot of my readers can as well. The question is, are you the one serving the hot dog or the one being served.

According to wikipedia.net, the advertisement comes from Dagens Industri (often referred to as DI), a financial newspaper from Sweden. It was founded in 1976, producing two issues per week. In 1983 it increased its periodicity to five. In 1990, six.

With respect to hot dogs, it has been said that Toronto hot dogs compare well with New York hot dogs. While I have yet to try an authentic New York "dirty-water" hot dog, I can say two things: 1) Toronto's hot dogs are great and 2) Toronto's hot dog vendors are hardcore!

Toronto Hot Dog Stand
I took the above picture of a hot dog stand at the corner of Bloor and Younge on January 9, 2008. Torontonians can get their hands on street meat in the middle of a Canadian winter.

In Ottawa, on the other hand, hot dog vendors are few and far between when the temperature drops below the freezing point. I don't blame them, but Ottawans have to take things into their own hands to get their hot dog fix.

For instance, have you ever heard of a "pigs-in-a-blanket"? I hadn't, so Jenn picked up a pack of Schneider's Barbecue Hot Dogs and a tin of Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough to quiet my hot dog cravings. Here's what turned out:

Boil up some wieners until "the seam shows." Remove and let them cool. These are the "pigs."

Boiled Wieners

Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough comes rolled up in a tin, already perforated into triangular sections.

Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough

For the "blankets", separate the secions with a pizza cutter (a knife produces too much drag) and roll each "pig" in a piece of dough.

Crescent Roll Dough

Arrange on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.

Ready to Bake

Place in a pre-heated 400 F oven as per the instructions on the Crescent Roll packaging. For us, it took 5-7 minutes for the "blankets" to puff, brown, and cook through.

Done!

They were an interesting sight and had an equally "interesting" flavour. Unlike traditional croissant dough, which is yeast risen and buttery, crescent roll dough uses a large amount of chemical leavening. Though cooked, the dough still tasted of baking soda.

Even so, this is a fine winter hot dog concept.

I'll have to try the recipe again with a scratch biscuit dough and substituting sausage for wieners...

After a quick browse through recent postings, I've realized that it's been months since I posted any entries from my meager kitchen. Here's a quick and easy method to put pasta on the table when you're short on time.

Firstly, when it comes to quick meals, it really helps to have purveyor of fresh pasta in walking distance. Of course, I am referring to the Wellington Village's very own Parma Ravioli.

Card

Secondly, and I can't stress this enough, a well stocked pantry is a must. If you can't cook from scratch, a pantry that is well stocked with canned and dried ingredients allows you to shorten time to plate, but preserves the quality your dishes.

Based on what I cobbled together from my fridge, pantry, and herb garden:

Ingredients

• fresh veal and lamb tortellini
• sun dried tomatoes
• garlic
• shallots
• basil

Here's what turned out:

Plated Quick Pasta Dinner
Method:

1. Blanch (briefly plunge into boiling water and remove to cold water) the sundried tomatoes as directed on the back of the package. This will soften the tomatoes enough to handle them.
2. Drain and finely chop the tomatoes
3. Cook the fresh tortellini as directed. For mine, this involved 5 minutes of simmering in salted boiling water. Since they will be further cooked in the pan with the shallots, garlic, and tomatoes, cook the pasta to super-aldente (very toothy)
4. Reserve 3-4 tbsp of pasta cooking liquid
5. Finely chop shallots and garlic
6. Add 3-4 tbsp of olive oil to a pan and gently sweat the shallots and garlic with a pinch of salt on medium heat.
7. Add the reconstituted tomatoes to the pan
8. When the oil colours red and the aromatics soften, add the pasta
9. Stir until combined and add the cooking liquid. The cooking liquid contains enough starch, that it will combine with the cooking oils and thicken to form a sauce to coat everything in the pan.
10. Stir until the pasta is coated with the tomatoes and aromatics
11. Plate and top with chiffonaded basil

Done!

BTW, it seems that I always make pasta with this method for Mademoiselle Ling every time she comes to visit. It's usually the first dish I serve when she arrives.

To North Americans, lasagna is a pasta casserole, consisting of alternating layers of meat sauce, cheese, and pasta. To Italians, lasagna refers to the flat sheets of pasta that are typically used to make this dish. To me, lasagna is the quintessential comfort food that takes both time and care to make. My favourite is a slightly modified classic lasagne alla bolognese (bolognese lasagna) with béchamel sauce. Traditional classic bolognese lasagna only uses parmigiano reggiano.

According to wikipedia, while the dish is generally accepted to have originated in Italy, the word "lasagna" has etymological roots in the Greek words λάγανον (laganon) and λάσανα (lasana). The former refers to a type of flat sheet of pasta dough cut into strips. The latter refers to a chamber pot.

Over the years, many variants the dish involving layers pasta with other ingredients and baking it in a vessel have emerged. Some recipes call for several cheeses, including ricotta and mozzarella. Others, include adding spinach to the pasta, colouring the noodles green and producing a lasagna verde. Still others, replace the meat ragu with seafood in a cream sauce, producing a seafood lasagna. If I were Alton Brown, this is where I'd say "lasagna is 'good eats'."

I have been puttering around with a "from scratch" lasagna recipe for years. My recipe makes a lasagna that I reserve for family or very dear friends. Save for the pasta sheets that I try to purchase ready-made but fresh, the recipe starts from fundamentals: ripe Italian tomatoes, herbs (oregano, basil, and parsley), freshly ground pepper, garlic, onions, carrots, celery, cheese, milk, olive oil, ground beef, ground veal, and ground lamb. Its method involves good knife work, careful roasting, long simmering, and a little patience. If I ever purchase a hand driven meat grinder, I'd grind the meat myself. If I ever purchase a pasta maker, I'd make the pasta as well.

Unfortunately, I only have the time to make this recipe when a weekend allows me a full day to do the prep work. With my weekends the way they are, I can barely find the time to roast a decent chicken, let alone simmer a tomato sauce for a couple hours. Happily, when a friend of mine sent me pictures of his first lasagna, I was forced to think of a quick and easy recipe. His lasagna, with its meaty ragu (spiked with chopped sausage) and layer of spinach and ricotta, made me crave lasagna so much that I had to make my own. Only, I didn't have a day to prep and I was limited to what my pantry and fridge contained.

Here's what I was able to cobble together with some canned spaghetti sauce, ready-bake lasagna noodles, and some frozen ground beef that I had in the freezer:

Baked

Sliced

One luscious square to Satisfy a Craving

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...