Go fish

I love fish and chips, but I am not a big fan of deep fat frying, at least not when it is me doing the frying. I usually cook for two, so a big vat of oil just doesn't make sense, and reusing french fry oil is a pretty poor idea, health- and taste-wise.

So I've been opting for hashbrowns and oven-fried fish:

Oven-fried fish for two
8-12 ounces true cod, cut into pieces of your choosing (i.e. the size you like your fried fish pieces, skipper)
Three slices of bread (I am talking about bread about the size of Wonder bread)
About 1/4 cup cream
Butter (I use about 1/4 of a pat per piece of fish during cooking)

Break the bread into small crumbs and heat on a cookie sheet in a 200-degree oven until dry and crispy.
Dip the fish pieces in cream, then dredge in the crumbs. In principle, you're supposed to somehow place the dredged fish pieces on a rack until "dry" but I didn't have a lot of luck with that.
Place the fish pieces in a casserole, top with a little bit of butter and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
As I hinted a moment ago, this dredge-in-crumbs bit is a little sketchy, so you could also lay down a layer of crumbs in the casserole, lay the cream-dipped fish in on top and top the fish pieces with crumbs, then butter, then bake. The result is just as tasty.

Hashbrowns
Three medium Yukon gold potatoes, diced
One *small* yellow onion, finely chopped
Worcestershire sauce or other seasonings, to taste
Two to three tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup cream

Heat the oil over medium heat until hot, then dump in the onions and potatoes. Season with your favorites (I like W-sauce, but they're good with pepper, salt and paprika, too)
Um, cook the hash until brown, flipping at least once (to prevent burning, if nothing else). When they're done, drizzle the cream over the top and cook for a couple minutes more, then serve.
These can also be amended with some cottage cheese...

Unnecessary but fun

Being a homeowner, I find myself in what must be a traditional trap of saving jars and other containers. Until a recent sweep of my storage area, I had a mountain of yogurt containers, peanut-butter jars, jelly jars, olive jars (martinis - yum!), you name it. Luckily, my city started taking a lot more plastics than it used to at curbside, so I recycled plenty about a month ago. I couldn't part with the PB & J containers, though.

The jelly jars (Bonne Maman, my favorite for raspberry preserves) turn out to be super everyday drinking glasses, and the peanut butter jars are handy storage containers for all kinds of things in my pantry (my pantry is probably just like yours: aka cupboard).

I don't think my cupboard contains too many items in their original packaging: Black beans, lentils, popcorn and chickpeas all hang around in PB jars, which is probably unnecessary, but makes me happy. I think that's important - having fun - especially if your pantry is as lavish as mine.

Chase's Cobbler v2.1

It's been a few years since I posted my original cobbler recipe. So, taking inspiration from a recipe I found in this month's Country Home magazine...here are a few more delicious combos to try:

Cherries with Chinese Five Spice
Blackberries with Pears and cloves
Apples with Cheddar (add 1/4 cup sharp shredded cheddar to the "dough") and Nutmeg

Space-saver?

The second thought that passed through my mind while admiring the clever Nuscup (by Dalla Piazza, a Swissmar company):

Who keeps spices in jars big enough to fit this scoop?

The first thought was, "hey, that's neat!"



You can get these measures in larger sizes, so maybe a big one would be useful. But a bigger one would be no better (and more expensive, and harder to clean, and with moving parts) than one of the Oxo angled measures, which you will be shocked to learn I use in my kitchen. I still have a set of dry measures, too, mostly because they are pretty and my wife gave them to me! Sometimes even a cramped cook has to be given a special pass.

Always paring down

I think this is probably true of any part of your living space, but the premium on space in a cramped kitchen necessitates an occasional spring cleaning (even if it isn't spring).

For me, this usually just means rooting out a few old sets of napkins and haggling with myself over whether to keep all the coffee cups or get rid of a couple. And trying to part - once and for all - with the little-used Dutch oven. Maybe I'll turn it into a garden ornament.

Even if you haven't bought or received anything new and are sure the exercise will yield nothing to offload, I think it is still worth it. Maybe you'll realize you have some unused ingredients you want to make a dent in (I found a bunch of chickpea flour last night, for example), or maybe you'll realize that by reorganizing your spices you can save some valuable cupboard space, too.

I try to make a pass through the kitchen every two or three months. I also do so whenever I think I might be putting on my traveling shoes: It is always nicer to move with less, not more, stuff.