A Quick and Easy Dinner Party for $30: Holiday Edition

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$30 Dinner Party is a Monthly Column that lays out a detailed 3-course meal (appetizer, entree and dessert) for a dinner party of four for under $30. With a detailed listing of ingredients (and their cost) and super easy recipes, along with budget wine pairings, you’ll never have to put off socializing due to budget restrictions again.  Recession be damned! Read more

Turkey Day Treats and Sweets

Thanksgiving is a day for football, family, friends and most importantly: food. So whether you’re hosting the big dinner at your humble abode or heading to the in-laws, you need to come up with something delicious. Here are some recipes to accompany your turkey or satisfy your sweet tooth after your hefty meal — and they’re all under $5. Read more

Still Miffed About How to Eat Healthy on a Budget? “Healthy Chick”, Rachel Chemerynski, Doles Out Advice

Rachel Chemerynski is a self-proclaimed “Healthy Chick.” Fresh out of college, she loves eating healthy while still enjoying the foods she’s grown to love and strongly believes that not only can others eat healthy, but they can do it without fearing food and still save a buck or two. Read more

Bottom of the Fridge: Creating Dinner With Your Last 3 Ingredients

If there’s one thing I love to do, it’s to cook. I have piles of recipe books stacked on my shelves and an intense addiction to Food Network. But it’s a passion that takes time and money. A lot of recipes call for an insane number of ingredients, many that require a special trip to the market — not to mention hours of chopping, filleting and sautéing. With two jobs and a ton of term papers to write, it’s not something I have much time – or cash – for anymore.

After coming home from work one night tired, hungry, and with no more than two dollars in my wallet, I had no desire to charge another Chicken Lo Mein combo platter to my credit card. I opened my fridge, determined to find something that I could whip up. My butcher sells sliced chicken cutlets for $2 a pound, and luckily I’ve gotten into the habit of buying a few pounds and keeping them in the freezer for occasions such as this. As I popped the chicken into the microwave on “defrost” and looked at the package of dry pasta and the single orange that sat secluded in my refrigerator, I thought “What the HELL am I going to make with this?”

As I deliberated, I threw the remains of my two-week-old rotting leftovers into the trash and stared at the empty shelves in my fridge. (My next paycheck was definitely going to have to go towards restocking it.) I remembered from countless cookbooks and Food Network episodes that oranges and chicken pair nicely. So like a true culinary trailblazer, I went to my trusty Google search engine and found that honey would marry nicely with the citrus flavor.

I juiced my orange and grated some of its rind to add extra flavor to my marinade. I found half a lemon in the back of my vegetable drawer and threw that in, as well. Some olive oil, a little honey, salt and pepper completed the concoction and I threw it all together, with my chicken, in a Ziplock bag.

I left my chicken marinating in the fridge while I cleaned up, ran some errands and got some work done. A couple of hours later, when my stomach was growling full-force, my chicken was ready. I heated up and oiled my grill plan and placed the chicken on it. (I was too lazy to start up the BBQ). I let the chicken cook until tender, turning a couple of times.

In the meantime, I cooked my package of linguine for my go-to dish of linguine with garlic and oil. I heated oil in a small saucepan and cooked my chopped garlic. I then added my garlic and oil to my drained pasta, topped with some toasted bread crumbs and plated it with the chicken. With only three main ingredients, a few spices and some creative thinking, I had a great, cheap meal – that didn’t involve eating out of a carton.

Here’s my Orange Chicken recipe:
-2 chicken breasts
-1 orange (use juice and rind)
-1/2 lemon
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 tablespoon honey
-salt
-pepper

Mix ingredients together and marinate for two hours. To save even more time, you can put it together the night before so when you get home the next day all you have to do it cook it.

Spaghetti with Garlic and Oil
-1/2 package spaghetti or linguine
-1 clove garlic
-olive oil
-toasted bread crumbs (optional)

A Quick and Easy Dinner Party for Under $30

Let it be known that I am 100% gourmet. I taste wine for a living and spend my days making videos and writing articles about wine and which foods to pair with it. If you come to my house for a dinner party, it would be embarrassing for me to do anything less than impress you.

Of course, right now, we’re all in a recession, and at any given point – perhaps when you’re counting the days between your rent check being cashed – you might be in a personal depression. However, when I’m fiscally down, I still get a big pick-me-up from being around friends and sharing gourmet food with them.

The secret of creating a gourmet menu for $30 or less is utilizing a small number of simple ingredients and a small number of very aromatic herbs and spices, most of which should already be in your spice rack or be in the spice rack of that beautiful, interesting upstairs neighbor that you’ve been meaning to find an excuse to talk to for the past six months.  Below, you’ll find my go-to dinner party menu.  These dishes are what I break out when I’m trying to show off my culinary skills to new friends, without regretting it when I look at my bank statement.

In the spirit of making friends and making full use of the spices left by previous tenants, the cost of dried herbs, spices, olive oil (or other things someone in your building really should have lying around to borrow if you don’t have them yourself) is not included in the grand total cost for this meal.

The Appetizer

The appetizer should take only 5 to 10 minutes to make, and it should taste great either served at a warm room temperature or served after sitting in an oven for an hour while your less-than-punctual friends commute from Astoria, Williamsburg, or wherever else they can afford to live. Tasting this dish feels like the freedom of having nothing better to do than sit in a café and talk about your first summer fling.

Dilled Summer Squash
2 Zucchini – $2.5
2 Yellow Squashes – $2
Dried Dill
Garlic Olive Oil

Cut two zucchini and two yellow squashes in halve and slice into ¼ of an inch thick half moons. Mince at least 4 cloves of garlic (or more depending on how savory you like your kisses). Sauté the lot in a large drizzle of olive oil until softened (3 minutes on medium high heat) and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a generous portion of dill. If you have extra parmesan lying around, it wouldn’t be wrong to treat yourself and sprinkle a bit on top of the dish once it hits the table.

The Entree

Almost any meat can be substituted for the chicken here, depending on what’s on sale.  Lamb will give the dish a Moorish flair, beef will add a French charm, and sausage will take you on a quick trip to Piedmont. Also, this is a great dish because every ingredient is going in the same pot, so if something is wrong near the end you can always add more of what is needed. When you eat this, remember that life can never be truly all sour, all sweet, or all dull; it will always be a mix of what you make it… and in this dish (and in life) you have the freedom to tinker with how much of each you put into it.

Sage & Mint Chicken Soup
2 lbs of boneless chicken thighs – $8
1 bunch of fresh mint – $2
1 large bunch of broccoli – $3
1 large yellow onion – $0.5
1 large (16oz) can of Garbanzo or white beans – $1.5
1 box of chicken stock – $2
Garlic (8 cloves)
Sage
Cayenne

Dice the chicken into ½-inch cubes, dust them liberally with sage and conservatively with cayenne and salt, toss them in a deep pot, and sauté them with olive oil and over medium heat until golden brown – only stir once the first side turns brown.

Dice the onion, mince the garlic, and chop the broccoli and half the mint. Toss it all into the pot along with beans and sauté along with the chicken until the chicken is cooked through.

Add the chicken stock and cook over medium-low heat until simmering.

Chop the remainder of the mint and add it to the pan. Add the mint to the pot and simmer for 2 minutes. In the meantime, taste the dish to see if it needs more sage, mint, and/or cayenne. The sage and mint should come through most prominently, and the cayenne should be present just strong enough to add a “kick.”

Dessert

Serve cool in the summer, warm in the fall, and piping hot in the winter. Try to serve this dish to a room full of people who don’t know each other well yet. Its flavors are simple enough that you can focus on having a wonderful conversation learning about each other, yet strong enough that you will forget neither the dish, nor the people you shared it with.

Savory Apple & Pear Dessert
3 large red apples – $1.5
2 large green or brown pears (Bosc, Bartlett, etc.) – $1.5
A handful of seasonal nuts – $2
Tarragon
Cinnamon
Brown Sugar
Butter

Core, quarter, and slice the apples and pears. Chop the nuts. Sauté the nuts in a small drizzle of olive oil and a quarter stick of butter (we said it was frugal, not slimming!) for two minutes before adding the fruit, cinnamon, brown sugar, and tarragon. Cook the whole of it until the fruit is soft on the outside but with the tiniest bit of crunchiness left on the inside. Upon smelling, the tarragon should come through strongest and the cinnamon should come through conservatively.

Total Cost of Meal: $26.50

M. Cole Chilton makes videos about, teaches classes on, and makes a living from tasting and talking about wine. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and drinks three cups of coffee a day.  You can check out more of his musings at Porter’s Wine.