Vegetarian Lima Bean and Cabbage Cassoulet

I love the French dish cassoulet, but it requires finding just the right sausages, cooking a duck or goose (and reserving the rendered fat) and roasting some lamb. I made mine vegetarian out of laziness, especially because there we got two feet of snow and I didn’t feel like going out for any food not already in my house. Cooking the beans is probably a weekend thing unless you have a timer on your slow cooker and have tested it before. However, you can make the rest any time.

Looks-wise, this rather monochromatic dish, especially because I was out of carrots. You could probably use kale instead of cabbage and get a nicer color, but cabbage is what I had, so that's what I used. (I also overcooked the beans because I was out at the pub drinking beer.) No matter how it looks, it's a super-frugal winter meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 lbs (aprox. 2 cups) dried lima beans (or any other white bean)
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 tbsp. thyme
• 1 tsp. rosemary
• 1 head cabbage
• 2 carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 cups bread crumbs
• 2 tbs. garlic powder
• 1 stick of butter
• Salt to taste
  

Directions:

1. Rinse dried beans and place in slow cooker with 4 cups water and the dried herbs and one diced onion
2. Cook on high for about six hours (really depends on your make, model, age of beans, etc), until beans are soft but still firm to the tooth (al dente). Add water if needed. Drain and reserve cooking liquid
3. Dice up a head of cabbage and carrots; steam until al dente, set aside
4. Dice remaining onion into half-inch pieces, toss with some herbs and olive oil, and roast at 400 for 20 minutes or so
5. Melt butter in saucepan and add bread crumbs, garlic powder and salt to taste. Mix until all crumbs are coated
6. Toss cabbage, roasted onions and beans. Add cooking liquid until mixture is very loose (like a thick stew)
7. Salt/pepper/season to taste
8. Coat a 9x13 baking dish with half the bread crumbs.
9. Add the bean mixture
10. Top with remaining bread crumbs, spreading evenly and as flat as possible
11. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes.

Frugal factor: Off the charts. Dry beans and cabbage are two of the cheapest forms of nutrition. This made eight portions. Figure $1.50 for the beans, $2 for the cabbage, $1 for the bread crumbs, $0.50 for the butter, and $1.50 for everything else. That's about $0.82/portion.

Fish Cake Sandwich w/ Slaw

This was an easy little recipe to use stuff I had in the fridge. I had some leftover broiled mahi mahi which I supplemented with a can of mackerel. I like to use masa harina, the processed corn flour used to make corn tortillas and tamales, as a coating for fried fish.

Ingredients: 1 can mackerel, a few slices of stale bread pulsed in a in the food processor, 1 egg, 1 tbsp. smoked paprika, 1 tbsp. dried chives, 1 grated shallot, 1 cup masa harina

Mix all the ingredients except the masa harina together. Form into patties. If it falls apart, add a little of the masa. Once formed, dredge in the masa and fry in a pan with 1/2 inch of oil (I like peanut oil for pan frying - it's light, a litttle nutty, and you can get it very hot.

I shredded some cabbage and a carrot and tossed it with some tartar sauce to make a fish slaw, put it on a crusty roll with the fish cake, and had a tasty sandwich.

Frugal Factor: Mackerel, $2; egg, $0.25; cabbage, $0.50. Let's say $3 for four portions, or $0.75/portion plus whatever the cost of the roll you choose.

Liberty Cabbage (Ham n' Sauerkraut)

When I was a kid, my dad used to get a whole bunch of wursts and pork from the German butcher and cook them with sauerkraut in a Romertopf - a semi-porous clay roasting pan and lid. Today, I use my slow cooker. It's pretty much the same idea.

Any collection of pork products will do, particularly the large or fatty pieces that need slow cooking like shoulder, hock, etc. Cured sausages and franks are great too (uncured ones will dry out). In this case, I used some ham that's been in the freezer since Thanksgiving (to make way for a new ham) and some German-style franks that were getting a little freezer burned.

I also added potatoes and a few herbs and spices which really add to the flavor, mainly coarse mustard, caraway seeds and savory. The latter two are rumored to reduce the social liabilities of cabbage. I don't know if that's an issue with a fermented product like sauerkraut, especially after six hours of cooking, but they are mighty tasty.

I'm not much for these raw food people, but raw sauerkraut is loaded with vitamin C. Canned sauerkraut is not, so I suspect cooking reduces the vitamin. That is why I reserve 1/4 of the kraut to stir in after slow cooking the rest with the pork. At minimum, it adds a little crunch that is lost in the cooking. If it wards off colds and improves your digestion, even better.

Ingredients: 1 32 oz. bag sauerkraut, 2 lbs diced potatoes, 1 sliced yellow onion, 1-3 lbs of pork, 1/4 tsp. caraway, 1/2 tsp savory, 1 tbsp coarse grain prepared mustard.

• Put potatoes and onions in bottom of slow cooker
• Drain sauerkraut and put 1/4 aside for later
• Layer kraut with the meat and herbs and spices
• Cook on medium (autoshift) for 8 hours or so
• Stir in reserved raw kraut.
  

Serves 6

Frugal Factor: Hard to say. The kraut was on sale for $1 (that's why I bought it) but usually it's $1.50. I went lighter on the meat - 3 franks and 1 lbs ham. That's $5 or so. The mustard, savory and caraway would probably be about $0.50. Potatoes about $1.60. So you're looking at about $8.60 for 6 servings. That's $1.43/serving. You could do it for less or more.

Note: One nice variation if you have more time is to make buttery mashed potatoes separately instead of cooking the potatoes w/ everything else. If you really want to go nuts, fry up some crispy diced bacon and sprinkle on top. That's how you change this from a weeknight meal to Das Sonntags-Abendessen. And hey, if you have a Romertopf, break it out (just remember to soak it in water and put it in a cold oven).

Ham and White Bean Soup

When I divided up a spiral ham into portions to freeze a while back, I wasn't too stressed about getting all the meat of the bone. I froze that too. Used it today in this super-simple soup. Sorry, this is more eyeball than recipe. ALERT: TWO DAY RECIPE (as written - if you are a better fat skimmer than I, maybe not)

Ingredients: 1 ham bone w/ lots of meat on it, 1 32 oz can diced tomatoes, drained, 1 halved onion, 1 diced onion, 2 spears celery, 1 lbs dried white beans (cooked separately to a slightly al dente state), 1 shredded cabbage, 2 russet potatoes, 1/2 tbsp. each of rosemary, sage, thyme, and savory (savory is optional but helps in the digestion of beans and cabbage, which is helpful if you don't live alone in the woods)

• Put ham bone in a pot and submerge in water with the halved onion
• Cook on medium low until meat has fallen off the bone
• Pour into another container through sieve. This is your stock
• Separate bones from meat and refrigerate meat (throw bones away)
• Refrigerate stock overnight, remove fat from top and discard (or save it it that's your thing)
• In pot, pour defatted stock over all the other ingredients (if you have more stock than you need, save some for something else... like red beans and rice)
  
• Cook until everything is tender. Add more salt, a hit of better than bouillon or whatever to taste. You can scoop out some of the beans and potatoes and mash them up for a richer texture.
  

Serves 12

Frugal Factor: Off the charts but here's my best estimate: $4 for the ham bone (prorated from the whole 3.99/lb ham); $1.50 for the beans; $1 tomatoes; $1 cabbage; $1 for everything else. $8.50 total, 12 servings $0.71/serving.

Jewish Stuffed Cabbage (Vegan)

This is the first vegan recipe I have posted here so far, because I had a pack of tempeh in the fridge. Usually I use cooked lentils. Of course, any ground meat would work too, but in that case you would brown it, drain the fat and remove from the pan before sauteing the other ingredients. In either case, for a firmer texture, add a beaten egg to the finished rice mixture before stuffing the cabbage. Also, I use vegetable juice rather than the traditional plain tomato juice here. It's mostly tomato anyway but it's a little more flavorful and it has extra vitamins, both especially important in a vegetarian dish. If you're a vegetarian though, make sure not to get "100% vegetable juice" not "vegetable juice cocktail" which has beef broth in it.

Stuffed Cabbage Recipe

Ingredients: 1 cup rice, cooked (not a cup of cooked rice), 8 oz coarsely diced mushrooms, 1 8-oz tempeh block crumbled, 1 savoy cabbage, 3/4 of a 48-oz vegetable juice (or plain tomato, either way drink the rest), 1/2 cup lemon juice (or vinegar), 1/2 cup brown sugar

• Cook 1 cup rice
• Cut core from lettuce and boil in a pot 15-30 minutes until very tender and cool under the faucet
• Combine 32 oz vegetable juice with 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup brown sugar
• Saute onion, grated carrot, diced mushrooms and crumbled tempeh. When tender and browned a little, add the cooked rice and 3/4 cup of the vegetable juice mixture
• Pour half remaining veg. juice mixture into large casserole dish.
• Break apart cabbage into the large (and small) individual leaves
• Place 1/4-1/3 cup of rice mixture in center of leaf. Tuck sides over, then roll. You can press it together a bit to form it into a roll. Place in casserole, and continue until done. At some point you will realize you have too many cabbage leaves for the remaining rice or vice versa. Deal.
• Pour remaining veg juice mixture over cabbage rolls and bake uncovered at 350 for an hour, checking to make sure they don't burn (they won't).

Frugal Factor: 8 oz Tempeh; 2.99, 48 oz bottle/can vegetable juice; $1.49, 1 cup Jasmine rice; $1 (est.); carrot ($0.25?); onion, $0.30; 8 oz mushrooms (I spent $1 at the produce discounter but at Shop Rite it's $3); 1 savoy cabbage, $1.00; 1/2 cup brown sugar, $0.22; 1/2 cup lemon juice, $0.22 (based on the 32oz bottle, which at $1.79 is $0.40 cheaper than the little 7 oz one the looks like a lemon). $8.17 for 7 servings or $1.17/serving ($1.45 if I had bought the shrooms at the supermarket). As is sadly the case, using meat in place of healthful, sustainable tempeh and mushrooms would likely reduce the cost.