Cheap Bastid's "Deconstructed Tamales"

Simply put, Tamales are incredible. In Hispanic neighborhoods and families they are most often a holiday feast where whole families will spend a day (if not a night) with the multi-step preparation and then will eat freshly steamed tamales throughout the day on whatever special occasion is being celebrated—Christmas, New Years, a christening, etc.

We like to go to a bodego just a couple of blocks from our apartment called Tortilleria Los Hermanos Reyes. This is a neighborhood store right in the heart of downtown Vista which makes chicharrones, often in one piece of the whole side of a pig along with other meat cuts that you can find almost no where else. Plus they have their own tortilla “factory” which is busy all day everyday cranking out fresh corn tortillas starting with the ground masa and ending in fragrant, fresh tortillas.

And, this place makes some really, really tasty carne, carnita and pollo tamales. Here’s a recipe I made up for “Deconstructed” Tamales which creates the flavor but avoids the long, involved process which only someone with generations of tamale-making DNA seems to be able to master.

“Deconstructed Tamales”
2 cups yellow stoneground polenta
2 cups water
1 ½ cup chicken broth
1 cup shredded cheese—cheddar, jack or a combination
¾ lb cooked and shredded beef, pork or chicken
2 roma tomatoes
1 medium onion
1 orange or yellow bell pepper
1-2 jalapeno peppers
2 cloves garlic
Cumino, salt, pepper and chili powder

Directions:
First do all your “prep” work of chopping the tomatoes, bell pepper, onion and jalapeno. Peel the garlic than squash it with the blade of the knife so that it’s like a paste or use jarred, minced garlic. Next shred the beef, pork or chicken.

Prepare the liquid for the polenta (2 cups water and 1 cup chicken broth), put in a heavy pot and turn to high on the stovetop. When the water/broth boils add the polent, turn the heat to low and stir it for several minutes to incorporate the grits and water together. Cover and let it simmer on the lowest heat possible for 30 minutes.

At 30 minutes, put a skillet on the stove and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Turn the heat to medium high. Add the onions, bell peppers, jalapeno and garlic. Cook for 3-4 minutes until they start to soften then add the cumino, salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste. Add the shredded meat and stir everything together well. Then add the tomatoes and mix it all together. Turn heat down to medium low for 5 minutes.

Turn the heat off the polenta and add the cheese. Stir it thoroughly so everything mixes together.

Remove everything from the stove and prepare you plates. Put a generous scoop or two of polenta on a plate, cover with the meat mixture and you are ready. If you want, you can top with your favorite salsa.

So, what did you think of this recipe? I took a page from “Top Chef” with it in calling it “Deconstructed Tamales”. In that show, it seems like any dish labeled “deconstructed” or “crudo” gets rave reviews from the judges. It’s a fancy name for a simpler, faster way of preparing a dish that would normally take more time than the contestants have for preparing a dish for competition. And in restaurants, it’s a simpler, more cost effective presentation of the “flavor profile”.

My own term for this dish is “Grish” (which I pronounce “greesh”). It’s a left-over dish which to me is a little bit grits and a little bit hash. I personally would not call the stone ground corn prepared for this meal “polenta”. That’s way too “foo-foo”. It’s G-R-I-T-S! Grits and polenta are essentially made from the same stone ground corn and are prepared a bit differently.

But the main thing for Cheap Bastid is that the grits provide a base for the left-over topping of shredded meat. And it’s an incredible combination of flavors. What my wife particularly likes is that we’ll have slow-cooked pot roast one night and a couple of nights later we’ll take the left over pot-roast and turn it into “Grish” by adding just a couple of ingredients like fresh tomatoes and bell peppers and make it something new and exciting to our palate.

I came up with “Grish” one night when we had some left over pot roast and a part of a bag of stone-ground grits and Mrs. CB was whining for the taste of grits. It was an “a-ha” moment to combine the two rather than whipping up something like fried rice with shredded beef. And this is a totally different taste that takes no longer to prepare and is just as easy to prepare.d

What about The Cheap Bastid Test? This is cheap. There’s maybe a pound of left over meat at about $2 and there’s a couple of tomatoes at about $.75 plus onion, bell pepper and jalapeno for a cost of about $.75. Then I add some broth to the skillet. I use a cup and a half of grits and a pound and a half bag of them costs $2.29—so I’m using maybe $.50 worth of them. Total budget--$4. And we’ll have left-overs of the left-overs to reheat for lunch.

Think about it though. If you went to a restaurant and saw this dish and it was labeled “Grish”, you might pay $8. Same dish, labeled “Deconstructed Tamales”and the price just doubled except you’d also expect a linen table cloth and a skinny slice of lemon in your water.

You know what the bottom line is here though, don’t you? Sure you do:

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Cheap Bastid's Left-Over Chicken and Grits--It's My Anniversary

Today is my 4th wedding anniversary. This is the 3rd marriage for both of us. (Or perhaps as we joke it’s the last for both of us). Anyway we got married 4 years ago today in a “Cheap Bastid” wedding in Reno, Nevada. It was a planned elopement just for the 2 of us complete with a 6 day honeymoon in Reno. I used Southwest Rapid Rewards for our plane tickets (1 for me plus a bonus Companion Pass for Carolyn) and I used HHonors rewards for our hotel—Harrah’s Hilton. Even better, the Hilton messed up our reservations and we ended up in a “whale suite” for 5 nights!

Don’t get me wrong about being Cheap Bastid. This is what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. We had fun, including a white water kayak trip down the Truckee River in which I got in a fight with a willow tree growing out over the river. Carolyn laughed so hard that she got twisted around and started through a bunch of rocks backward. The willow tree won the fight too.

Anyhow, I’ll get to a recipe in a little bit. I just wanted to tell you a bit about the love of my life. It took me 54 years to find her.

And here’s a little piece of music to go along with this anniversary mushiness, “Special Lady” by Ray, Goodman & Brown. (Recipe follows)



One night last week, Carolyn said she wanted something with grits for dinner (now THAT’s PROOF that she’s a “Special Lady”). So, I had some left over grilled chicken breast (the official cheffing term is “paillard” meaning that I pounded the crap out of the breasts with a heavy saucepan before I grilled them) and decided to see what I could do with it. And here’s what I came up with.

Special Lady Chicken and Grits
2 cups stone ground yellow grits
1 grilled chicken breast
4 thick slices of bacon
½ diced fresh jalapeno pepper
½ cup (appx) diced onion
1 roma tomato diced
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (or jack)
Chicken Broth
2 tbsp flour

Prep
Cut chicken into ½ inch cubes. Cut bacon slices into about 1 inch pieces. Dice jalapeno, onion and tomato. Put 4 cups water in a large pot and turn temp to high. Put large skillet on stove and turn heat to medium.

Cooking
Put bacon in skillet to brown. Bring water to a boil. When bacon just starts to color add the onion and jalapeno and let bacon continue to brown. When water boils, stir in the grits and turn the heat down to low. When bacon is brown sprinkle in the 2 tbsp flour and stir into the mix (including the bacon grease). Add about 1/3 cup chicken broth and chicken. Add ½ cup chicken broth to the grits and stir in the cheese (cover and let simmer) but return for a stir every couple of minutes. Turn heat down on skillet. Gently scrape bottom of skillet to loosen the bits and incorporate them into the blend. Add the diced tomato (I like the tomato for both the color and the little bit of acid). Turn heat off on the skillet. Turn heat off grits.

Plate grits with the “sauce” over the top. This is some good “country style” eating full of flavor and a great use of leftovers.

That’s the Cheap Bastid way! Eat well. Eat cheap. Be grateful.
And….I’m grateful for my “Special Lady”

Cheap Bastid's Budget Roast Beast & Grits

For some reason my Saturday morning channel surfing always seems to take me to NBC’s Today Show right when they’re doing “Chef on a Budget”. This is where a chef is competing against other chefs to make a family meal on a budget. A budget of $35! Who the hell can afford to spend $35 on one meal? And, for some reason it always ticks me off.

I love to eat. I love to eat just as well as I possibly can. And, I love to do it as inexpensively as possible. That’s why I’m the Cheap Bastid. But I’ve learned to come up with some things that are pretty delicious at the same time as they’re pretty frugal.

Let’s take 2 dinners last week. Carolyn and I ate these 2 dinners for a total of $7.40 plus the cost of a fresh garden salad including feta—so maybe a total of $8.50. Here’s how we did it:

I took a 2 ¾ lb “London Broil”, 1 ½” thick (which is bottom round) and slow cooked it for about 5 hours with potatoes, onion and carrots in a braising liquid of water, Worcestershire and soy sauce along with some garlic powder, dried rosemary and a couple of good squirts of habanero sauce. What Carolyn calls “Roast Beast.” This was slow-cooked until it was falling apart. Along with a salad of fresh green leaf lettuce, roma tomato, cucumber, bell pepper and feta cheese we were eating pretty well.

(photo from Google Images)

Now the total cost of the London Broil was $4.50 (I bought it on special at $1.60/lb).

Two nights later I was wondering what else I could do with a small sack of stone ground grits that I had purchased the previous week to make Charleston Shrimp and Grits and I came up with an idea of using them rather than shredded potatoes to make hash. I figured I could use the left over London Broil and make what I called “Grish” for grits & hash.

(Photo from Google Images)

So, I chopped up some red and yellow bell pepper along with a fresh jalapeno and some onion and a roma tomato. I shredded the left over London Broil and poured the beef juices off it into a bowl. Then I made a pot of grits and prepped a sauté pan. The beef went into the sauté pan along with the peppers and onions as the grits simmered over very low heat. I added the tomato and beef juices then tossed about a cup of shredded cheddar into the grits and stirred it until everything was smooth.

I put the grits on a plate as a base and ladled the meat and veggie mixture over top. Talk about some good eating! Creamy, cheesy grits. Juicy shredded beef, veggies with a hint of crunch left in them and the tang of fresh tomatoes. The only thing that might have made my “Grish” better would have been a couple of fried eggs on top of everything to make the ultimate “brinner”.

Now this might not be Jacques Pepin type of cooking but it was pretty tasty. Even better, it’s further evidence that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on groceries or go out to eat to eat well.

Let’s look at the budget.
Meal 1, the “Roast Beast” used about $2.50 worth of beef, $.50 worth of potatoes, carrots and onion and about $.20 worth of soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Total cost: $3.20. And, add a buck for the salads, so total $4.20.

Meal 2, the “Grish” used about $2.00 worth of beef, about $.45 in grits, $.75 peppers & onions and $1.00 worth of shredded cheese. Total cost $4.20.

Plus, I strained the left over liquid from slow-cooking the London Broil and froze it so I now have 2 ice cube trays of beef stock/broth cubes for future cooking and adding flavor. And, I used the left over potatoes/carrots/onions to make “hash” patties. Sautéed in just a bit of oil they’re really tasty.

Nothing goes to waste and there’s a lot of good eating for under well under $10! Hey, the economy still sucks. Gas has gone up a buck a gallon in the last 6 weeks. There are still a lot of us who don’t have jobs. But, you can still eat pretty well just by doing a bit of planning and being creative!

So, call me the Cheap Bastid! But a well-fed Cheap Bastid.