Cooking on the Cheap

It almost sounds like a dream meal set-up, The New York Times gave Eric Ripert and his pastry chef no budget and let them loose in a store to buy ingredients to cook a fabulous meal. You know of course there is a catch in there, otherwise would this be worth writing about? (well, maybe, but only if I had been invited to the meal).

So the catch that you were all waiting for was that Ripert was let loose in a $0.99 store. Albeit, it was Jack’s which is a pretty impressive 99-cent store, but still.

Although he was asked to prepare 3 dishes they made 5 total. Though as they only tossed the pigs in a blanket in the oven I am not sure that you can really claim he “made” them. Although Ripert was impressed by $.99 wild salmon, some of the prepared dishes did not live up to his hopes and expectations (see: pigs in a blanket). The dishes ranged from bad, to “a little bit Olive Garden” to successfull. Dishes, like his canned tuna rillettes and his wild salmon over jasmine rice with tomato & coconut sauce were on the success side of things. And as the article says “Who knows? The recipe might even work with fresh fish.”