Roasted-tomato topping for pasta, bread or polenta: 39 cents/serving

Apologies for the late post, but I have officially entered into the late stage of pregnancy where standing on my feet, at the counter, for long periods of time has gotten almost unbearably difficult. I’m still cooking, mind you, but it’s more in the vein of throwing things together based on the garden and pantry and hoping they cohere enough to be edible before I have to go sit down. The resulting “recipes,” if I remember them at all, are rarely innovative or tested enough to warrant inclusion on the blog. The last thing I made that would be worth your time and trouble to re-create was this roasted tomato dish, utilizing what appears to have been the last big tomato harvest of the summer. It’s nothing fancy, just a big ol’ pile of heirlooms and a few handfuls of sun golds (or whatever tomatoes you have on hand), roasted in olive oil to concentrate their sweetness and topped with basil-garlic bread crumbs. I served it over pasta, but it would also be great over polenta or on bread as a sort of bruschetta.

Panzanella: 18 cents/serving

With compliments to the Italians, panzanella is the original budget meal. The O.G. Sui generis. Some stale bread, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and tomatoes and basil from the garden, and you’ve got yourself dinner. Provided you made your own bread or are using a loaf that otherwise would’ve been thrown out (and have tomatoes and basil in your garden), it shouldn’t cost more than 25 cents or so a serving. And it’s still tasty even after it’s sat for a while, making it an excellent side or potluck dish.

Tomato cobbler: 60 cents/serving

Regular readers of this site know I’m a big fan of savory baking. It’s efficient, it’s delicious, and if you happen eat it all, oh well—it’s dinner! I’ve been wanting to make this particular cobbler for a couple of years now, given that it calls for three pounds of cherry tomatoes. I certainly knew I wouldn’t be buying those tomatoes in the store, so I’d have to wait until a year I could grow them myself. As it so happens, this is the year. Our plants have been so fecund that harvesting three pounds of sun golds only took a couple of days. If you yourself have a surplus of cherry tomatoes, or don’t mind going out and buying them, this is perhaps one of the best places for them to end up. Oven roasting brings out a sweet tartness that contrasts with the topping of rich, creamy cheese biscuits, and, provided you grew your own tomatoes, the whole thing costs less than $4 to make.

Garlic and herb croutons: $0 (or close to it)

Do you make bread? Do you buy bread? Then there is no excuse for you EVER to buy those supermarket cubes of edible particle board packed into boxes and labeled “croutons.” I don’t care how lazy you are; making your own takes pretty much the same amount of effort as buying and opening a box. Obviously your results will vary based on the type of bread you’ve got to work with (as with pretty much everything, better quality materials = better quality results), but I guarantee they’ll taste better and cook up crisper than anything you’ll find at the store or neighborhood salad bar. Plus, they’re pretty much free, especially if you were going to throw out that stale bread anyway.

Sorrel and onion panade: 60 cents/serving

Although I’m pretty used to baking bread by now, given that I’ve been doing it twice a week for the past nine months or so, occasionally I’ll turn out a loaf that’s just not up to par. The final dough temperature wasn’t warm enough, for instance; the bottom got burned; or, in the case of a particular loaf I made on Thursday, I didn’t dust the proofing basket well enough and half of it stuck to the bottom. Normally I’ll just make bread crumbs out of the most disastrous parts of the bread, but if an entire loaf is a problem, I like to make a panade, which is part bread soup, part bread pudding, and cheap, not to mention addictive—the bread kind of melts into a silky, spoonable bowl of heaven redolent with cheese and caramelized onions, almost like a thickened French onion soup.  Any kind of greens would work, but this time I chose to use the rest of the sorrel from the garden, since it usually bolts once the weather starts getting hot.

Fried tofu sub sandwich: $1.19 each

Inspired by the General Tso’s fried tofu sub featured on both Serious Eats and in The New York Times, this is a sandwich for meat lovers. I’ve been cooking tofu a long time, and this method of applying a dry-rub to water-expelled tofu (the latter being one of my tweaks), dredging in a slurry of egg white and cornstarch, and covering in panko before frying is something I had never thought of doing, and it completely transformed the tofu into something abjectly un-tofu-like. Super-crunchy on the outside, sweet, soft and flavorful on the inside, it tastes like an illicit state-fair treat or exotic Asian bar snack, not the humble, flavorless tofu you know. Nestled in a sub sandwich with spicy sriracha mayo, lettuce, roasted onions, and lime juice, it’s almost transcendent. I feel compelled to provide fair warning that this is a project—I made both the sub rolls and the mayo from scratch—but it’s completely worth it. (It should also be noted the original sub, from No. 7 Sub in Manhattan, costs $9.)

Casarecce with fennel, chilies & bread crumbs: $1.46/serving

Chilies and fennel: Yet another success in my ongoing quest for inexpensive, unexpected, and healthy pasta meals. This is definitely on the lighter side, almost more of a salad, but the nuanced flavors and textures will hit just the right notes for those tired of the same old heavily sauced noodle dishes, and the servings are big enough to qualify as a main dish. Casarecce is by no means mandatory for this; I just liked the way it looked. Penne, ziti, or any other medium tubular pasta works just as well.

French onion soup: 84 cents/serving

I am, admittedly, a French onion soup fanatic. I order it whenever I spot it on a menu, whether it’s an upscale French brasserie or a strip-mall Red Robin, and I’m constantly trying to perfect my own version. I’ve tried recipes with bacon (overwhelms everything), recipes with Vidalias or Walla Walla sweets (too cloying), recipes using a mixture of chicken broth and beef broth (too thin-tasting), red onions versus yellow onions, $25-a-pound Gruyère versus store-brand Swiss cheese, you name it. The perfect French onion soup, in my mind, should be beefy and full-bodied, cheesy but not all about the cheese, and redolent with caramelized-onion flavor without being too sweet. And, at long last, I believe I’ve been able to strike that balance, using an ingredient I actually had set aside for another dish.

Beer-baked white beans and skillet cornbread: $1.38/serving

No sense beating around the bush: I like beer. A lot. I also have not had any beer for a long time. In fact, it’s been quite a while since I’ve had any alcohol (or caffeine) at all due to a misguided  attempt to live and work more mindfully. Not that I drank that much before (although I did drink too much coffee by anyone’s standards), but couple of beers a few days a week went a long way. You’d think it would get easier the longer you go without, but it actually seems to get worse as time goes on, especially when it comes to coffee. In fact, I apologize to all who’ve had to work with or talk to me in the past week. I thought this dish would allow me a way of finally having beer without actually drinking beer, but instead it caused a great deal of angst and emotional trauma for its requiring me to purchase a large bottle of beer—sweet, wonderful beer—only to pour every last drop of it into a pot of beans. Thankfully for these beans, as well as my sanity, it was actually worth it. These are some of the best beans I’ve had in a very long time, and they do have a pronounced ale flavor.

Stuffed onions: $1.32/serving

This is such a brilliant idea that I can’t believe I haven’t seen it elsewhere (including my own mind): stuffed shells using a thin layer of poached onion in place of pasta. When cooked, the onions layers curl up to look and act every bit like a pasta shell, and provide a much more interesting textural and flavorful contrast to the filling. Even B., an avowed onion-hater who normally wouldn’t touch something like this with a ten-foot pole, scarfed them down and, dare I say, even enjoyed them. An actual serving is bigger than the photo above (I didn’t want to crowd the plate), and goes great with a simple garden salad. (The one above features freshly picked grated beets—our first harvest of anything other than lettuce since about August.)