Winter-squash soufflé: 73 cents/serving

Starting our winter squash in the greenhouse this year has paid off—a good bit of it is already ready to harvest. So far we’ve gotten a medium-sized green turk’s turban, a small acorn squash, an enormous hubbard squash, and a small white gourd of indeterminate origin. Given that more are on the way, I felt no compunction in roasting what we had, puréeing it, and freezing it to use as baby food*. I did, however, reserve about a cup’s worth to use in a soufflé, the flavors of which turned out to be a delicious fall preview. In fact, it’s a great catch-all recipe for any winter squash you may have and not know what to do with; no need to worry about texture or flavor, so long as it’s vaguely squashlike.

Roasted strawberry, goat cheese & black pepper soufflé: $1.49/serving

Yep. More strawberries. Unfortunately, my stomach is now too big for me to bend over and pick them myself, so I have to rely on B., who not only works 12 hours some days, but is also saddled with the myriad other tasks I’m now unable to do. (Weeding, picking up dog poop, et al.) Needless to say, we’re still getting them, just not always before time and the sun have taken their toll. I admit this recipe is something of a work in progress; I’ve noted changes I’d still like to institute for next time, and tinkering at all levels is welcome…just let me know what you did and how it turned out. It should be served with salad and a lot of balsamic vinaigrette to pour over both the soufflé and greens.

French onion soup with bacon: $1.52/serving

For some reason I’ve been really craving French onion soup this week. Trashy French onion soup—extra-cheesy, extra sweet. It’s been hot (read: not soup weather), but as anyone who’s been pregnant knows, once there’s a craving, it doesn’t ever really go away until it’s fulfilled. The budget obviously precludes going out and ordering food at a restaurant like a normal person, so my only solution was to spend part of an 80-degree day sweating over the stove. Thankfully, it was worth it. This is a much different take on the French onion soup I made a few months ago; sweeter, with a little smoke from added bacon. (In the past I’ve complained that bacon overwhelms the soup, but this time I only added a tiny bit and it was perfect.)

Roasted celery root and bacon soufflé: $1.80/serving

I make quite a few savory dinner soufflés on the $35-a-week budget, both because we can use our backyard hens’ eggs and because it’s a great blank canvas for odds and ends. This week’s stockpile consisted of a few stray frozen strips of bacon and a nice, firm celery root I bought after failing to locate any other appealing in-season vegetables. (It probably doesn’t help that I hate asparagus, which is everywhere right now. How someone decided that stuff was edible will forever be beyond my comprehension.) I knew the two flavors would work well together after the success of February’s celery root and beer soup, so I figured I’d try them out in a new format. I have to say, it definitely worked; roasting the celery root allowed for a concentrated-enough flavor to stand up to the bacon, and using bacon fat as a base for the béchamel infused the whole thing with noticeable but unobtrusive hints of pork and smoke. Très délicieux!

Poulet au vinaigre: $1.70/serving

This popular-through-the-ages French dish is pure genius in its simplicity: chicken thighs and shallots braised in wine, chicken stock and cider vinegar. That’s it. No obscure or exotic ingredients or off-the-wall cooking methods. And the ratio of flavor to effort is phenomenal—I was pretty surprised the first time I made it. You mean I can just throw a handful of ingredients together, bake them in a skillet, and have it taste that good, for under $2 a serving? Mais oui!

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.

Balsamic glazed chicken-liver ravioli: 73 cents/serving

Thanks to the lack of cheese and expensive meat, these are the most inexpensive ravioli I’ve ever made. They also happen to be some of the best ravioli I’ve ever made. (If you like pâté, that is.) Intensely flavored, with a bit of crunch from some fried sage, these are at their best if you make your own pasta, which is actually extremely simple, but you can also use prepackaged gyoza wrappers (usually housed near either the tofu or the mushrooms at the grocery store) if you’re in a pinch. I don’t like to use them both because of the cost and because I think they’re too thin and flaccid and don’t absorb sauce flavors very well, but I’ve done it before and can attest that it works.

Mushroom & goat cheese soufflé: $2/serving

Now that the chickens are laying again, the specter of inferior soufflés has finally lifted. Not that the past two soufflés I’ve made with store-bought eggs weren’t good; they were just…well…inferior. The whites were harder to separate and took longer to beat; the base didn’t thicken as well with the pale, runny yolks; and the finished product just didn’t rise as high. In fact, you can see a dramatic difference between the first soufflé I made with store-bought eggs and both this one and the cheese soufflé I made before the chickens stopped in the fall. You may also remember that the one I made with cauliflower (also with inferior eggs) was paler and visibly less sturdy. If you’re intimidated by making a soufflé, don’t be—it only takes one or two tries to get it down, and it’s a quick, versatile, impressive dish to have in the arsenal. This soufflé can be made with any mushroom you have on hand or can find on sale, dried or fresh. I used dried shiitakes, which are dirt-cheap at the Asian grocery.

Cauliflower soufflé for people who hate cauliflower: $1.19/serving

Regular readers of this blog would probably not be shocked to know I don’t like cauliflower. I suppose I can understand how someone hundreds of years ago with limited options for sustenance could look at this odious, mealy brain-like thing and think “This looks edible!,” but today? In this day and age? Still, like most people in their 30s, it’s come to my attention that eating more vegetables is actually really important, so I’m always on the lookout for ways to sneak the ones I really hate into my diet. Making a purée seemed to work pretty well in the case of a broccoli pesto I made last year, so why not use the same technique with something equally versatile, like a soufflé?

Splurge: coffee crème brûlée: 95 cents each

You may have noticed there are only three desserts on this entire site, and two of them are crème brûlées. There’s no particular reason for this other than the fact I don’t really like making dessert, and not only can crème brûlée be made in advance, it offers the most bang for the dessert-making buck. Smooth, cold, creamy custard topped with a shatteringly crisp crust: What’s not to like? I made these coffee ones for a dinner we were having with my father-in-law, to complement the beef-heavy main dish. If you’re sensitive to sugar, you might want to reduce the amount to 1/3 cup or so. Otherwise, everything about this—from the amount of coffee flavor to the custard texture—is spot-on.