Tues: Pizza(-ish)

On the menu for tonight is one of our favorite dishes, (mostly) homemade pizza. It's a really simple, sauceless recipe I've been making for years. Pretty low-cal, too, as long as you're stingy with the cheese. (Which I am not.)

Pizza crust (make it yourself if you're ambitious, but we go pre-fab - Mamma Mia or Boboli)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 bag of spinach
1/2 container of baby bellas, sliced
1/3 of a red onion, chopped
1/2 a pepper (orange is my favorite), chopped
A handful of sliced black olives
1-2 tomatoes, sliced or wedged
Part-skim or low-fat shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Mix the olive and sesame oil , and paint the crust with it (don't miss the edges).
2. Add the spinach, bellas, onion, pepper, and olives.
   
3. Cover (liberally!) with the mozz.
4. Cook at 375-ish for 12-15 minutes (till the cheese is starting to brown)
5. Haul it out. Add the tomatoes.
   
6. Put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes or so.

Who moved my cheese?

Pizza is a weekly go-to easy comfort meal, so there's always mozzarella in this house. We buy big bags of it (it freezes well).

Not tonight, though. The pizza was completely assembled before we realized we'd left mozzarella off the list this week, thinking we had some in the freezer. Nope. Totally out.

It was 9:00, and neither of us wanted to go back out to the store, so we figured we'd try using what we had - half a bag of cheddar/Monterey Jack blend left over from the polenta, and some spare sharp cheddar. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either. Next time, I'll go out for mozzarella.

Hints:

This is a great way to use up leftover veggies. Add whatever you like. But as the pizza gets more loaded, reduce the heat and add time to make sure it's cooked through. (Also a good idea if you add a lot of watery veggies (like zucchini) or if you didn't defrost the cheese first. )

Sundried tomatoes are great on this. Black olives are also great. Sundried tomatoes AND black olives are NOT so great - it gets way too salty.

Mon (way too) late: Zucchini/Basil Risotto

Okay, so this is late. But I didn't get home till 11pm, and then I had to write a blog post for my day job. Sorry about that.

Luckily, Maria beat me home by two hours, plenty of time to make a fabulous summer risotto. It's adapted from a recipe from Perla Meyers' Spur of the Moment Cook (and yes, if you don't have this, you probably ought to).

1 cup basil leaves (be liberal here)
2 big cloves garlic, minced or mashed
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp sweet butter
1 good-sized red or white onion, diced fine
1 3/4 cups arborio rice
2 cups zucchini, sliced pretty small (don't pulverize it, though)
3 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup whipping cream
1/4 to 1/2 cup Parmesan (freshly shaved Reggiano is best, but hey, you gotta sleep.)

Put the basil and garlic in a processor, and add a little oil to make a paste. Preheat the oven to 350 to warm up the bread.

Melt the butter in a big pan on low heat. Saute onion for about 2 minutes. Throw in rice and zucchini. Cook for about a minute.

Add the white wine, and then 2 cups of the chicken stock, stirring constantly. Simmer as low as you can get for 10 minutes.

When it looks like the rice is taking up the liquid, raise the heat to medium and add the other cup of stock, a little at a time, stirring constantly till each quarter-cup or so is absorbed. This'll take 10-15 minutes. (Throw the bread in the oven now, too.)

DO NOT cook the rice till it's soggy. It's ready when it's a little chewy at the center. Take it off the heat and mix in the basil/garlic paste you processed plus the 1/4 cup cream. Warm it through. Plate it and top it with the shaved parmesan (and a couple of diced tomatoes if you wanna get fancy, though it's fine without.) Salt and pepper to taste.

(And also, get the bread out before it carbonizes. )

A warning: Don't salt till you've added the parmesan. It's a salty cheese. And with a recipe this delicate, it's easy to kill it with too much salt. Add the cheese, melt, mix, TASTE, and adjust accordingly.

We like it with warm bread, spinach salad, and (well, me at least) a lot of black pepper. For wine, try a white bordeaux. TJ's has a decent one for $5.

Also, chicken stock is way better for risotto than bouillion, which is really two-dimensional. And Maria swears you could cut out the cream and this would still rock. I'm unconvinced.

Sunday: SW Ribs, polenta, salad

Sunday: Ribs w/SW rub, polenta, salad

We had two ginormous center-cut ribs left over from a bulk buy two weeks ago.

Rub from Food Network:

* 1/2 cup chili powder (preferably ancho) [BACK UP A LITTLE ON THIS]
* 1/2 cup smoked paprika
* 3 tablespoons ground cumin
* 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
* 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper (adjust to personal preference)
* 1 tablespoon salt, taste for level
* Freshly ground black pepper
(We make a batch of this and then throw the remainder into an empty spice jar and label it.)

Use the rub on the ribs, then grill. 10 min., tops.

Polenta (from Spur of the Moment Cook by Perla Meyer)

3 1/4 cup skim milk
Salt
3/4 cup fine white cornmeal
3 tbsp sweet butter
2 tsp minced serrano or jalapeno
1 11-oz can corn kernels, drained

1 8-oz bag cheddar-monterey jack cheese blend

• Boil skim milk and 3/4 tsp salt in a big saucepan. Sprinkle in the cornmeal slowly, whisking constantly. Lower heat and simmer covered for 20 min., whisking often. (A film will form on the bottom. Don't worry about it.)
• Melt butter in medium saute pan over low heat. Saute pepper for 30 sec.; add corn, salt and pepper to taste, and warm through. Set aside.
• When polenta's ready, add the pepper and corn from skillet plus half the bag of cheese. Stir till melted. Serve immediately.

Good with a bagged salad with a little oomph - herb or spinach.

Sunday: Menu

First, bookmark all your local grocery stores in your browser. Get in the habit of checking them every weekend. The best way to eat cheap and fresh is to eat what's in season - and that's usually what's on sale.

We check every week for our favorites - seafood, pork tenderloin or country ribs, chicken breast, T-bone or strip steaks. The fresh seafood pickings in Raleigh this week are slim, to say the least. We go with some frozen salmon steaks - skinless, which makes marinating easier. Food Lion (best steaks in Raleigh) has a strip steak sale, so even though they aren't on the menu for this week, we'll pick some up and freeze them.

Note: We're working with a standard refrigerator freezer, just like you, so we can't go crazy at sales. But if you take things off the styrofoam, wrap, bag, and label (!) them, you can fit a lot into a standard freezer.

The in-season rule applies to produce, too. We picked up some gorgeous asparagus for two bucks, and a quart of strawberries for even less. Neither was on the menu we put together, but we'll fit them in. Extra veggies and fruit never hurt anyone.

On the menu this week:
Sun: Pork ribs w/SW rub, polenta, salad
Mon: Zucchini and Basil risotto, crusty bread
Tues: homemade pizza
Wed.: Salmon steaks with lemon orzo and asparagus
Thurs: Chipotle chicken hoagies
Fri: Pasta w/homemade pesto and chicken breast

Introduction

First: Julia Child doesn't live here. Nor does Jamie Oliver or Emeril or Gordon or Eric or anyone else with any culinary training. We're just people who work long hours and who also like good food - and have the misfortune of living in a place where decent restaurants are rarer than hen's teeth.

I'm a political reporter, which means my schedule is completely at other people's whim. My partner is a veterinarian, so ditto and then some. Each of us regularly clocks 60-70 hours a week. Sounds like a recipe for take-out, right? Wrong. We're big believers in honest food, as tasty and unprocessed and easy as possible, low sodium and (mostly) low fat.

We started this blog because so many of our friends commented on our Facebook posts about our menus, mostly saying there's no way they'd have the time to cook what we cook. Most of them eat takeout or frozen entrees every night. If you ask us, that's freaking depressing, not to mention unhealthy. If you aren't happy to come home to dinner after a long day, maybe you need to rethink your dinner. Even overworked people can eat well if you plan a little.

We welcome feedback and suggestions - we're always in the market for new menu ideas, so please send them along. Thanks for reading!

Laura and Maria