I love this thread because it reminds me of my college days, trying to eat on less than $10 a week while saving for a flight to France to eat everything in sight.

Cynthia wrote:To me, the ultimate "survival food" -- a dish made entirely of stuff you can stick in the basement for the whole winter, is Newfoundland Cod Cakes.

Apparently, several hundred year-old salt cod is also edible, with a good dusting and soaking. I learned this while touring a museum in Bergen, Norway, where they had some very old fish on display. I have no reason to think this was an exaggeration.

She is only using stuff from 99 cent stores.. wonder if she reads LTH?
She didn't really bring up socioeconomic issues at all.. I think the LTH concept yielded better recipes and had more insight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/dinin ... ref=slogin

Don't you mean food dessert? Oops!

Signed,

Tod Stroger

BTW, I am also blogging all my recipes, so they're together in one place; haven't quite put all of them up, but there's a handy reference if needed. Riffing on Cynthia's excellent idea, I was thinking about patties and burgers in general, and am planning a recipe for Blackeye Pea burgers. Will post as soon as I've had time to actually create...

(and, thanks for the vote of confidence, emdub!)

Interesting parallel exercise in today's New York Times--eating entirely from
99¢ stores:

http://tinyurl.com/yo6vp8

Many of the same problems encountered, with similar solutions.

Geo

Mhays wrote:Moros y Cristianos - extra cumin-y

1 pound dry black beans
Water
4 bay leaves
2 tbsp ground cumin (edit: 1 tbsp whole and 2 tsp ground OR 1 tbsp ground)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp crushed curry powder
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tbsp dried onion flakes
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 large jars of roasted peppers (or 3 jars of pimientos) drained and chopped.

Soak the beans overnight in three times as much water as the volume of the beans (if you soak it in your cooking vessel, this will save you time later.) Add remaining ingredients except peppers to beans and water and simmer for 5 -6 hours. Add peppers and cook for another 1/2 hour. Taste, adding additional salt, pepper or cumin as needed. Serve over plain white rice.

Delicious recipe, Mhays, thanks! The long, slow cooking infuses every bean with flavor.

I discarded the soaking water, for digestion's sake, replacing it with 4 cups of fresh water. These wound up cooking a couple hours extra, but they were still great, though I did add a little more water at the end. This makes about 6 cups of beans, and freezes very well.

Looks delicious, LAZ!

Food Deserts and junk food becoming a concern in India (scroll to the bottom of the page)

And another article in the Chicago Tribune discusses farmer's markets in the "food desert" areas of Bronzeville, Englewood and Woodlawn. Interestingly, these markets will be tax-supported and offer a range of imported produce like banannas and citrus - but no prepared foods. Even more interestingly, though, according to the research on food deserts conducted by the Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group, although the three areas are proximate to South-Side food deserts, not one of these neighborhoods is actually in a food desert. (the area known as Bronzeville combines the neighbhorhoods of Kenwood and Oakland on the food desert map)

As promised: Hoppin’ John Burgers

½ cup of uncooked rice
1 cup of water
1 tbsp dried onion flakes
½ tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
1 ½ cups of cooked or canned blackeye peas
¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese
3 eggs
Fresh breadcrumbs
Bacon fat
Oil

Cook the rice and seasonings together (bring water and seasonings to a boil, add rice, turn down to low and simmer for 15 minutes) add the blackeye peas and allow to cool. Place in a chopper, blender or food processor with 3 eggs and cheese and blend to a chunky paste (like chunky peanut butter) form into loose patties and dredge in breadcrumbs. Fry in oil flavored with rendered bacon fat.

Serve on toasted hamburger buns slathered in mayo. Top with bacon.

(interior shot)


I was thinking about food desert falafel or hummous, but making those without fresh foods requires more thought than I'm capable of today. We often buy the frozen blackeye peas, which I assume are no different than if you bought dried ones and soaked them overnight. I like having these in my pantry; they brighten up a plain bowl of rice, and all you have to do is toss them in the pot with the raw rice.

Masala Curry Crab Soufflé - Food Desert Style

Crab Soufflé:
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
1 tbsp sherry
2 cans crabmeat, drained – reserving liquid for masala sauce
¼ cup of minced canned red peppers, well drained
1 tsp dried parsley
3 eggs, separated
½ tsp salt
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp ground mustard
Preheat oven to 325.
Thoroughly butter a soufflé dish and coat in breadcrumbs.

Make a thick béchamel: melt the butter over low heat and add the flour, increasing heat to medium-high. When flour begins to bubble and smell nutty, add the milk and whisk thoroughly. Flavor with a teaspoon of sherry and turn off the heat.

Add crabmeat, peppers, parsley, salt, paprika, and mustard and mix thoroughly.

Allow to cool - mix in 3 egg yolks (if your mixture isn’t cool enough to touch, you will need to temper the eggs) and whisk well.

In a clean bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.

Add ¼ of the egg whites to the crab mixture and mix it in to lighten it.

Add crab mixture to the egg whites and fold in gently, keeping as much air as possible in your mixture.

Pour gently into soufflé dish and smooth the top. Bake for 35 minutes without opening the door; check – soufflé is done when a skewer comes out clean.



While soufflé is baking, make Masala Curry Sauce

Masala Curry Sauce:
¼ cup of rehydrated dried onions (about 2 ½ tbsp dried onion flakes, soaked in ¼ cup white wine overnight)
2 tsp canned garlic
2 tsp powdered ginger, rehydrated in 2 tsp white wine overnight
½ cup tomato puree
2 tsp whole cumin, or 1 tsp ground
4 bay leaves
2 tsp food desert garam masala
2 tsp chili flakes
½ cup plain yogurt mixed with 1/2 tsp cornstarch*
1 cup of reserved crab liquid (add water to make up cup)
¼ cup oil
Put the rehydrated onions, garlic, and ginger in a blender and blend thoroughly into a paste. Heat oil in a frying pan; add cumin, bay leaves, chili flakes and garam masala; fry until fragrant. Reduce heat, and add onion mixture, fry a few minutes

and add tomato puree, fry for a few minutes, then add the crab liquid and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes. If using whole spices, remove bay leaves, pour into a blender and puree, or blend with a stick blender. Cool slightly; stir in yogurt.


Serve souffle immediately, topped with Masala Curry sauce.


I have to admit, this was my first foray into the world of the soufflé: although I had better luck than say, Lucille Ball, it didn't rise over the top of the dish as the original recipe implied. However, the results were quite good, and it did at least double in size, never fell, and had a nice crusty top to it.

Curried softshell crab is a favorite dish of mine in Thai restaurants; converting it to a food-desert friendly recipe presented several problems, the largest of which was how to replace the coconut milk. The Masala Curry sauce is adapted from an Indian recipe which took a bit of guesswork and google-translating: curd is yogurt, jeera are cumin seeds, ginger-garlic paste is a puree of these two fresh ingredients, and onion paste is pureed onion. The resulting sauce is flavorful and spicy, and worked quite well with the mild-flavored soufflé.

*I also ought to admit, I cooled the sauce fairly thoroughly and added the yogurt to a warm base to prevent curdling, but further research suggested that Indian dishes often add starch to the yogurt to prevent curdling, so I altered the recipe as directed - but I haven't tried it with the cornstarch.

Made this last night to accompany meatloaf - and found that the leftover Masala Curry sauce from the above recipe was the best topping for meatloaf I've ever tried, bar none. Even the 'spouse eschewed his usual topping of mayo...

Polenta e Fagioli

4 cups of chicken broth
2 tsp parsley
½ cup of rehydrated onions
1 cup of yellow cornmeal
1 tsp salt
EVOO

1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
3 slices of bacon, chopped
1 tsp canned garlic
½ tsp dried basil
½ cup crushed tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste

Make polenta: in a small amount of oil, fry ¼ cup of the onions until translucent and they brown slightly. Add chicken broth, 1 tsp salt and parsley flakes and bring to a boil. ½ cup at a time, add the cornmeal in a thin stream, whisking thoroughly as you add to prevent lumps. Cook on low heat until thickened.

Fry chopped bacon until crisp and well-rendered. Add remaining onion, garlic, and beans and fry in bacon fat until fragrant. Add basil and tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the bean mixture to the polenta and stir until lightly incorporated. You can serve this soft polenta for one meal, and continue the recipe with the leftovers as follows:

Pour the mixture into a wide, shallow dish or cookie sheet and cool in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours. Cut into cubes.

Fry cubes in a small amount of oil in a very hot skillet, turning until golden brown and delicious.

The Chicago Defender reports on a new study of local food deserts. Among the findings:

o New areas with low access to full-service chain stores appeared between 2005 and 2007, particularly in the Austin/West Humboldt Park area of Chicago and the southern suburbs from Riverdale through Burnham, Calumet City, Lansing, and Lynwood.

o More full-service chain stores, such as Jewel and Dominick's closed than opened during the period 2005 to 2007. Dominick's closed more than 30 stores and Jewels closed three stores during the period. Other stores, such as discount chains, including Aldi and Save-A-Lot, have opened several new locations. However, except discount chains, few stores are opening in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Thank you for that link, LAZ! The article discusses a number of things, including suggested solutions to the problem (one mentioned was community input and neighborhood planning for grocery stores)

It's a very interesting article - it made me curious enough to exercise my google-fu and track down the author. I sent an email asking if the entire paper was available online, and will post if it's available. In the meantime, I found this interesting link: Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council

I said it in a PM, but I'll say it again...this is an incredible thread, and an absolute delight to read. Your ingenuity is inspiring.

I'm curious...of the food desert recipes, do you have any favorites...things you've made more than once?

crrush wrote:I said it in a PM, but I'll say it again...this is an incredible thread, and an absolute delight to read. Your ingenuity is inspiring.

I heartily second this. A terrific thread, one of my favorites. Thanks for your ideas and recipes, MHays.

Thank you both very much, I really appreciate it.

Moros y Cristianos are a favorite of mine, mostly because they're easy as well as good (God, I sound like Sandra Lee) However, I'd say that the best recipes flavor-wise, though also the most difficult, are the Indian ones: the samosa and the Curry Crab Masala Souffle (btw - read up on souffles, probably the reason it didn't pouff over the edge was simply that I had too large a dish; it should be filled to the top) The Colcannon, Nicoise and the White Clam sauce are things I often whip up for lunch, even prior to the project, which didn't really change much in translation. (as a matter of fact, hmmm, don't have dinner started yet...)

I would say, conversely, that the one that (sadly) didn't do so well was the Noquis, but I think that could be corrected easily by using the sliced dehydrated potatoes rather than flakes. For the sake of honesty, I'll post a "failed" recipe shortly: using the rehydrated onions worked well in every instance except for refried beans, which weren't awful, but...well, Sparky "created" a quesadilla recipe which would have been fine if I'd been more successful with the beans.

As promised: Sparky's Quesadillas with not-my-favorite refried beans

For the beans, I followed the recipe I'd printed at the very start of this thread, but did two things that probably reduced my success: I used rehydrated dried onions, and instead of a potato masher, I ran them through my food chopper. They had an unpleasant grainy consistency and not much flavor. This one needs a do-over, with tutelage in the fu of frying beans.

However, moving on: Per Sparky - put 2 tablespoons of refried beans on a tortilla. Top with tons, I mean tons of the cheese of your choice (we had a mozzarella blend on hand, so that's what we used) Cook on a lightly greased non-stick frying pan. Top with another tortilla and flip. Cook until cheese melts. Serve with sour cream and salsa.

Mhays wrote:with tutelage in the fu of frying beans

Love.

Trib editorial on Chicago food deserts and Wal-Mart

They don't call it a food desert, but the NYTime's piece from 5/5/08 covers it: The Lost Supermarket: A Breed in Need of Replenishment

Thank you for those links: while Wal-Mart is often villified, but the truth of the matter is they've been addressing rural food deserts for a while; it seems only reasonable that they move on to urban ones. That editorial offers a lot of insight into the effect urban planning has on creating these areas. Also, one of the most interesting facts in the Gallagher study is the role race plays in food deserts - also pointed out in the NYT article, that bodegas are available were supermarkets are not (I'm not familiar with NY bodegas - are they similar to our little Mexican fruit markets?)

Most of the research around food deserts seems to center around the problem of access, and while this clearly is the major issue, I think there is more to it. I did a bit of random surfing and found the following interesting articles:
Do 'food deserts' influence fruit and vegetable consumption?--A cross-sectional study. University of Sheffield, UK
Food Deserts are complicated places

I'm still working out some new recipes - I have a Torta Espanola that I'm working on (but stupidly made in my cast-iron skillet, where it stuck unattractively.) Next week or so, I'm going to work that one out; this month's Bon Appetit had an interesting version with peas that I might adapt. I was also wondering...while canned vegetables are fine in many instances, usually canned meat is something to avoid - however, all of my food desert haunts seem to carry a wide variety of beef jerky. Jerky is a common snack food, but I can't find a recipe to use jerky as an ingredient anywhere (other than SOS, though chipped beef is really a different thing) Anybody?

You might try a version of Carne Seca, the mexican dried beef dish. I found a lot of recipe links by googling it.

bnowell724 wrote:You might try a version of Carne Seca, the mexican dried beef dish. I found a lot of recipe links by googling it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you bnowell! - what a treasure trove this opened up! First, apparently this is a base for something called Apache Tacos - another Southwestern variant of frybread Navajo tacos that I'm still researching.

I was expecting Native American and Southwestern recipes, but it's also used in a variety of Brazilian dishes, sometimes appearing in feijoada but also in a dish using pumpkin puree Carne Seca com Abobora, exciting because I've been trying to work canned pumpkin into this project, as it's seasonally available and is extremely nutritious. Most exciting of all, an Argentine recipe well within striking distance of this project! (truthfully, this shows up all over Latin America, but the site claims it as comida tipica argentina!)

Yay!

I think jerky is quite a bit tougher than carne seca, so you'd have to process it somehow to use in the same recipes.

Here are a few recipes using jerky as an ingredient. I found some others, but they all have too many fresh foods for this project.

I'd think you could use Slim Jims and the like in any recipe calling for sausage, however.

Mhays wrote:I was also wondering...while canned vegetables are fine in many instances, usually canned meat is something to avoid

British cooking icon Delia Smith has come under fire from UK foodies recently for advocating canned meat in her new book, How To Cheat At Cooking, although the book and the advocated convenience products are both selling well. I think it might be tough to find Marks and Spencer tinned minced lamb in the U.S., though.

However, some brands of canned chili (sans beans) are quite edible.

Definitely, I'm going to have to experiment with jerky rehydration...just bought 2 jumbo-size bags yesterday in anticipation of new creations... at the moment I'm more concerned with the preponderance of the flavoring whose name GWiv dares not speak than I am with the texture. I plan to braise it, and hopefully that will take some of it out.

However, I'd said I was going to take another stab at a Tortilla Española, and here it is - though somewhat more like a tortilla paisana, or Spanish country omelet, as I took a bit of liberty with the ingredients. Really, you can toss just about anything into one of these, and they're simple, tasty, and good for you.

Food Desert Tortilla Paisana
Ingredients:
1 4.9 oz box scalloped or au gratin potatoes, "flavor packet" discarded, prepared with water only as directed (my box used 2 1/4 cups of boiling water for the bag of potatoes, which I simmered for 20 min)
1 tsp salt (for potatoes)
EVOO
2 tsp canned garlic
3 tbsp dried onion, rehydrated overnight in 6 tbsp wine, drained
2 tbsp diced canned pimiento or roasted red pepper
1/3 cup peas (canned or frozen)
4 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
5 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Add salt and boiling water to potatoes in a saucepan. Simmer for 20 minutes until tender. Drain and taste for seasoning, set aside. In a smallish nonstick skillet, saute garlic, onion, and red pepper until fragrant. Add peas and saute until warmed through and coated.

Pour into a large mixing bowl along with crumbled bacon and gently fold in potatoes without breaking them, until mostly incorporated. Shell 5 eggs into your blender, add salt and pepper to taste, and blend until frothy. Pour over potato mixture, again folding gently to avoid breaking the potatoes.

Carefully wipe out and oil your nonstick skillet, returning it to medium-low heat. Pour potato mixture into it and press down with a spatula so that everything is as submerged as possible in the eggs.

Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, until the top of your Tortilla does not run when you tip the pan (you can also, depending on your pan, stick it on the top shelf of a preheated 350 degree oven for a few minutes if it's giving you trouble.) Now comes the scary part: cover the pan with a large plate

Flip the entire thing upside down and pray that your tortilla slides out. Take off the pan and *very important* wipe it out and oil it again. (I skipped this step and paid for it a bit, there was some breakage) Put your pan back on the heat and slide the tortilla back into the pan, with what was previously the top side down.

Cook on medium-low for another five minutes or so. Slide back out onto a serving dish (hint: with your most asbestos-like fingers, try to spin the tortilla slightly in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion to ensure its release from the pan) Slice up and enjoy hot, or chill and serve cold!


Using the rehydrated potatoes for this dish is considerably easier than trying to get perfect thin slices on your own, and there is no discernible difference provided the potatoes are seasoned properly. Enjoy!

Looks good. I'm really going to have to try dehydrated potatoes. My occasional shortcut in that direction is canned.

What's the food desert availability of bacon and eggs?

Most drugstores have a dairy section that covers the basics, including bacon and lunchmeat. Family Dollar sells eggs as well as Dollar Tree (which also has frozen meats and fish, but as they're not consistently available, I haven't been using them)

So, I think it's safe to assume you can find milk, eggs, yogurt, half & half, bacon and bologna.

Well, I'm sad to say that my attempts to rehydrate beef jerky into something I could apply to a recipe are, as of this moment, failing miserably. I simmered the stuff for 3 hours, first in water (which I dumped, to get rid of some of the "natural smoke flavor") then in tomato juice, and then I topped it off with wine. Since it was still quite tough (not to mention late) I then left it to cool in its juices overnight in the 'fridge. Next day, I tried simmering again. Unfortunately, what I'm left with has the consistency and flavor of a dirty mophead. As some of this may be due to the quality of the original product (in this case Oberto) I looked for alternatives. While at the Jewel yesterday, I came upon their brand of "Kippered Beef Steak Nuggets" which might lend themselves to this application a little better - and at least don't taste so much of ashtray. I'll experiment and then research at the dollar stores to see if the 'nuggets' will apply to the project.

However, I was charmed by the idea of Navajo tacos (AKA Indian tacos, puffy tacos, or Apache tacos) which after all are the byproduct of a similar lack of resources, so I went online looking for a frybread recipe - and, of course, there were thousands. One in particular: "Creek frybread" struck me as interesting, as it uses buttermilk (and even White Lily flour in one recipe,) which struck me as odd when coming from a group living primarily in Oklahoma. Lo and behold, a little research showed that the Creek nation (a name given to several groups of Native Americans) was originally indigenous to the Southeastern United States, driven west to Alabama in the 1600s, and then to Oklahoma in the 17-1800s, but obviously not before "American Southern" cuisine influenced their cooking.

This is fortunate for us - first of all, the recipe is simple enough to carry around in your head, and you can probably whip this up out of your pantry right now:

Food Desert Creek Frybread Tacos

2 cups of flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk (food desert variation - 1/2 cup milk mixed with 1/2 cup plain yogurt)
1" of oil of your choice in a cast-iron skillet or dutch oven

Whisk together dry ingredients to lighten and add buttermilk. Stir until a stiff batter is formed (probably easiest to oil your hands and get them in there) Flour your surface and the top of the dough well, and roll out to about 1/4 inch thick.

At this point, one recipe directed to cut 4" squares with a slit in the middle, which I did - but I can't find any other evidence to support the rectangular taco; most frybread is oval in shape (though a hole in the center seems universal.)

I fried them in my dutch oven, turning when it started to bubble, in quite a bit of fat - but they could easily have been done in less fat in my skillet; they need just enough to float.

What I came up with were lovely, bready, golden-brown cakes that were easy to fold over; I can think of all kinds of applications for these - they're more like bread than like their biscuit ancestors and would make a terrific sandwich of any kind, or fabulous Cinnamon Bread (for some reason, my first thought was a Cuban sandwich, as the bright ingredients would be a good foil for the rich dough) I highly recommend them.

Cool slightly and fill - in keeping with the Food Desert theme, ours were filled simply but not authentically with refried beans, salsa, sour cream and cheddar.

Osama Likes Frybread from Native American Tube