What's Good at Central Market?

My apartment is being renovated, and the hotel room that we relocated to has functionally zero cooking equipment - no fridge or microwave either. Therefore, I’ve been taking my $30/day food allowance over to Central Market and seeing what I could get from there. The results so far have been quite incredible! I’ll continue to update this post with blurbs on the various items I try.

  • Chicken Quesadilla - Absolutely phenomenal. $2.99, highly flavorful, easily heated up in the microwave for warm, gooey, flavorful goodness.

  • Mushroom and Goat Cheese Quesadilla - Also amazing. $3.49 is a steal.

  • Gumbo - $5.99 for a medium bowl is solid, but a medium bowl is probably too much food in the first place. Best to get the small. Gumbo was decent, though I wish there had been more sausage. The okra level was good though.

  • Texas Caviar - An inexpensive staple. Well worth the money, and slightly sweet.

  • Stuffed Plantain - I’m glad I tried it, and though the chimichurri was noticeable, I just wasn’t all that in love with it. Still though, I’m glad I spent the $1 or so on it.

  • Overnight Oats with almond butter and banana - Very high value breakfast option. $2.49 for a lot of tasty and reasonably healthy food.

  • Egg White, Spinach, and Mushroom Saute - Not bad taste wise, but poor value given the quantity of food you receive. I’ll be sticking with overnight oats.

  • Build Your Own Smoothies - Orange juice as a base is quite solid, and I’m quite a fan. Adding whey protein is super cheap, which is much appreciated. The smoothie itself isn’t as much.

  • Shrimp and Crab Salad - Pricey, and I wish I got less as a result. Still though, quite delicious and they didn’t skimp on the crab.

  • Zucchini Fritters - Pretty cheap, pretty solid. I bet they aren’t as healthy as I want to tell myself they are though.

  • Roasted Rosemary Potatoes - Cheap, but that’s about it. I’m just not a huge potato fan I guess.

  • Kale, Cranberry, and Pepita salad - Very, very solid. A great salad that’s cheap and packed with tasty stuff only.

  • Jamaican Style Beef Pie - Not bad, though I found this super heavy and fatty. I don’t think I’ll be getting this again.

  • Wilted Spinach - Not bad, and a cheap way to get vegetables in. I do wish that there were more consistency in seasoning - one time I got this and it was super salty, another time was good.

  • Quiche Lorraine - A little too rich for me, honestly. I think it’s the pastry crust, but for some reason I just found this too fatty, even though it wasn’t actually that greasy.

  • Avocado, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich - Solid and cheap. Great value, though the taste wasn’t as amazing as a potential breakfast quesadilla would be.

  • Hawaiian Sushi Roll - Solid, but just not filling enough for this to be a high value play at $7.99.

  • Gouda and Pecorino Mac and Cheese - quite solid. Just a better version of mac-and-cheese.

  • Roast Pork Tenderloin with Pineapple Adobo Sauce - I have no idea how they get pork to actually be tender. This was really, really solid. 3 slices is plenty.

  • Pineapple Mango Salad with Black Beans - another hit. This actually seems underpriced, and I’ll be returning for this for sure.

Weekly Cooking, March 22

Tom and I went camping this past weekend, which meant that we weren’t feeling up to cooking Sunday night. Thus, Monday. We’ve finally decided to splurge on a food processor, dropping $200 for a 14-cup Cuisinart that can slice peppers like no ones business (and we’re REALLY excited for that). Stay tuned for an update next week on how that goes.

  1. Creamy Salsa Chicken Skillet, 3x (Budget Bytes). Perhaps my favorite thing that we’ve ever cooked. So many wonderul flavors here. We doubled up on the spices (beyond our standard tripling of the recipe), and we messed up by not crumbling the queso fresco over it (though thankfully, I had some cotija lying around). We also didn’t flatten or pound out the meat beforehand, despite clear warnings to not skip the step - it took much longer than anticipated to cook the chicken. Finally, we substituted out chicken breast for thighs (as we always do). Despite all of the missteps, this remains an all-time favorite.

  2. Spinach and Artichoke Wonderpot, 2x (Budget Bytes). I bought a giant 8 quart stockpot this past week too, which came in handy for this dish. It’s super easy to make, which is great, but I ended up getting distracted and messing up the time on the stove. As a result, the pasta wasn’t nearly as al dente as it probably should have been. On the bright side, this is one of the few pastas that I’ve had that keeps quite well. Overall, however, merely an average recipe - I didn’t love the flavor. Not that it’s bad, it’s just middling. The wonderpot genre though is promising.

  3. Sundried Tomato, Kale, and White Bean Skillet, 2x (Budget Bytes). There isn’t much to say here: quick and easy to make, decent flavor. The only thing not to love is that I couldn’t find private label cans of cannellini beans - a very rare misstep for HEB. I forgot to take the photo after I made this, so the photo below is of leftovers.

Weekly Cooking, March 14

Another week of fire recipes — we ate well. Having a food processor really sped things up for us, and this was the first week where we really understood its value. Mincing garlic and shredding a whole head cabbage was just dramatically faster - though we had a very basic, barebones food processor that barely cost $20 and didn’t always do what we wanted.

  1. Cajun Cabbage and Noodles, 2x (Budget Bytes). This is actually quite incredible, and topping it with some jalapeno Tabasco makes it a truly top-tier recipe. We used the HEB bulk Cajun spice blend in place of making our own, which was perfectly fine. This is where the food processor made the biggest difference — rather than shred the whole head, we chopped it up and used our food processor. Unfortunately, we ended up with cabbage that was less shredded and more chopped.

  2. Cilantro Lime Chicken, 3x (Budget Bytes). This isn’t the first time we’ve made this, though I did mess things up a bit by using too high heat - the outside got nicely charred, but the inside of the chicken was still a bit undercooked. I had to compensate by overcooking the chicken a bit - next time I’ll just be patient and cook on medium heat for longer. Adding in the lime wedges and cilantro into the food storage container was great - more flavor for later when reheating. This recipe is an all-time favorite. It’s crazy to me that I can easily cook food that tastes this good. Perhaps 3x was a bit too much for two people.

  3. Warm Brussels Sprouts and Pear Salad, 4x (Budget Bytes). A solid salad overall. Cooking the brussels on the stove, however, isn’t the way to go - some of the sprouts weren’t cooked evenly throughout. Better to just bake them, or steam them with some water in the pan. The dijon vinaigrette was absolutely wonderful.

Weekly Cooking, March 7

This week we were back to only cooking for two, so we’re back to just three recipes (and smaller portions). My roommate chose all of the recipes (I was a bit occupied with work), and it’s been interesting to roll the dice by entrusting someone else to entirely decide what to cook. Nonetheless, the week had hits (as it always does).

Our three recipes were:

  1. Cowboy Caviar, 2x (Budget Bytes). I didn’t expect to like this nearly as much as I did. I’ve always thought that I didn’t like cold dishes, especially cold “salads” (not actual salad, but dishes with the word salad in them, e.g. potato salad/bean salad). This is basically a bean salad, and it’s incredibly refreshing - especially when you just take it out of the fridge and start eating directly from the container.

  2. Parsley Pesto Pasta with Peas, 2x (Budget Bytes). This week, I zested my first two lemons, and made my first batch of pesto (food processors are quite incredible). Anyways, I thought that this was really solid - the lemon in the pesto was quite surprising. Drop-off in quality throughout the week was about what I expected of pasta, so perhaps it’s best to just steal the pesto recipe from here and apply it to other dishes as necessary. Pasta is best fresh.

  3. Slow Cooker Carnitas, 1.25x (Budget Bytes). Once again, we adapted a slow cooker recipe to the Instant Pot. Worries about having enough liquid led to us adding a cup of orange juice, which then produced results that were closer to a pork soup when cooking was complete. We decided to move the meat into a skillet and finish it off there, which led to the end result (the leftover liquid got used to cook rice). I unfortunately didn’t taste this fresh off the stove, though it smelled wonderful. It didn’t hold up as well, due to the fridge and microwave producing some less tender results after reheating.

Weekly Cooking, February 28

We finally branched out and tried a recipe from somewhere other than Chungah’s or Beth’s site and… it actually worked out really well. This is a week where I’m glad to have food available, since work is dialing up in the classic pre-spring break fashion. Our four recipes (all with doubled portions) were:

  1. Pasta Alla Vodka (NYT Cooking). I was absolutely blown away by how good this turned out. After we finished cooking it, it tasted absolutely amazing. I’m typically averse to eating up reheated pasta, as I feel like it loses a lot of flavor and moisture, but this has kept surprisingly well in the fridge. Despite the insane amount of cream used, I don’t think I’d alter this recipe next time we make it, beyond perhaps adding in some blackened chicken on the side or doubling/tripling up on the amount of pancetta. The comments suggested adding Italian sausage and/or sundried tomatoes - I can see those modifications also being a hit. In any case, I’ll never look at vodka sauce the same way.

  2. Carrot Feta Salad (Budget Bytes). This was solid, though doubling up on the recipe just wasn’t enough to feed the three of us for a week. I ended up eating my entire portion the night we cooked it, since I was worried about how to properly reheat this - I found the warmth of the roasted carrots combined with the coolness of the feta and parsley was incredible, and a uniformly warm reheated salad didn’t sound as amazing. Solid, but overall I think there are better salads and better oven dishes.

  3. Slow Cooker Rosemary Garlic Beef Stew (Budget Bytes). Due to starting incredibly late at night, we chose to ditch the slow cooker and ended up using the Instant Pot. 25 minutes at high pressure seemed to do the trick (version 4 hours in the slow cooker). A very solid, hearty dish. The amount of potatoes is actually quite high, and if we were to do this again I’d probably fudge the ratio to 4:3 beef:potatoes instead of the other way around. Nevertheless, I’ll be making this again once things turn cold.

  4. Jerk Chicken with Pineapple Black Bean Salsa (Budget Bytes). Phenomenal. Akshay decided to 6x the seasoning (instead of 2x) and rub it into the meat very well, which created an intensely spicy and flavorful piece of meat that gave off a highly aromatic scent while cooking. I think 4x seasoning would be ideal - that way, you don’t have too much extra jerk seasoning lying around when you plate things up. The pineapple salsa wasn’t anything all that special in my opinion, though we did use frozen pineapple for that.

This was a week of solid hits.

Weekly Cooking, February 14

Due to intensely inclement weather in Austin, my Valentine’s Day night was spent just like any other Sunday: cooking vast quantities of food at the apartment. This week featured another set of 4 recipes:

  1. Chorizo Sweet Potato Skillet (Budget Bytes). This is the third time we’ve made this, and it’s always reliable. Doubling the recipe isn’t too hard, and the time required doesn’t change all that much. It’s not mind-blowing fresh off the stove, but it holds well for a week and is excellent for breakfast purposes. This time we used a mix of 2% and whole milk shredded cheddar - I think next time using all 2% will be better.

  2. Roasted Vegetable Salad Meal Prep (Budget Bytes). We quadrupled this recipe and cut out the quinoa. We messed up a bit by baking both the mushrooms from this recipe and another one, but ultimately it just added more flavor to the chicken. I haven’t tried this yet.

  3. One Pot Chicken and Mushroom Orzo (Damn Delicious). This is the second recipe from Chungah that we’ve tried, though it wasn’t as much of a hit as her pot roast. It was a bit creamier than I expected, so if we do this again I’d replace the heavy cream with half-and-half. I also should have checked that the chicken was fully cooked through before setting it aside. The recipe could also use some more spinach - a full 5 oz. bag will work fine. We made two batches at once, which was quite the move.

  4. Unstuffed Bell Peppers (Budget Bytes). A rare miss from Beth. We cooked this and the end result was a bit too watery (though that’s probably on us for not adjusting the simmering time). The tomato sauce and 4 bell peppers (we doubled the recipe) may have contributed to a bit too much sweetness in the dish, so next time I’d probably look to reduce the amount of tomato sauce used (I don’t think it meaningfully contributed to the dish either). Thick cut mozzarella also wasn’t the move here - it takes too long to melt and is super annoying to distribute into containers.

Overall, I enjoyed cooking this week as much as any other week. I may not enjoy eating this week as much as the one before it though.

Weekly Cooking, February 7

I haven’t posted on the food section of my blog for a while, even though that was the original purpose of this blog. That’s not because I haven’t been cooking - I’ve just been too lazy to post lately. My roommates and I have started meal prep-ing, which has honestly been one of the more fun and productive ways to kill pandemic time.

This week, Akshay joined in on the fun as we made four recipes:

  1. Mediterranean White Bean Salad (Budget Bytes). We doubled up the recipe on this one, though we should have made more. Quick and easy to make, with little ingredient prep involved. Tasted cool and not overly heavy on the feta or the parsley (two flavors I normally don’t like, but really enjoyed here.) We used the Mediterranean Herb flavor feta from Odyssey.

  2. Soy Dijon Pork Tenderloin (Budget Bytes). This was the second time that we’ve made this, and it was absolutely fire (again). We made 4 tenderloins (about 5 1/3 lbs.), though we were less than precise with the timing on the pan sauce. The pan sauce might be labeled as optional, but it’s a solid addition that can be run in parallel with the main dish.

  3. Spicy Orecchiette with Chicken Sausage and Kale (Budget Bytes). Also a returner. We doubled up on the recipe here. This time, we pre-steamed the kale in the skillet so that we wouldn’t have overflow issues (and if you do this, you don’t need to reserve the pasta water either). Initially, I tried just putting kale in a skillet over heat. Once I added water to the skillet (not too much, the goal isn’t to eat water) the process went much quicker.

  4. Pork and Peanut Dragon Noodles (Budget Bytes). Didn’t really expect much out of this, but easily the hit of the week. We tripled up the recipe and messed up the noodle texture by letting it rest for too long after we cooked the pasta - in the future, we can add cold water to the pasta after we’ve finished draining it to prevent it from softening up and cooking further. Otherwise, a super quick and super easy way to make a lot of tasty food. Crushing the peanuts was done via rolling pin.

We also ended up using our new food storage containers for the first time: the Kitchen & Table Rectangular Tempered Borosilicate Container (2.7 qt) were about $8 each and hold a ton of food. They’re absolute winners.

An Efficient Breakfast

So, as occasionally happens when I’m tired or drunk (it was the former this time, I promise), I start experimenting with food. It started by placing an egg in the microwave (in a covered bowl - I didn’t want to have to clean up too much) and having said egg explode into a boiled mess about 47 seconds later. Anyways, I realized that microwaving eggs was a possibility, and so I naturally decided to try again. I whisked a bit or milk into a second egg, stuck it in the microwave for a minute, and crossed my fingers. Amazingly, it turns out that it’s just about the fastest way to make an “omelette“. It’s bland as hell unless you add salt and pepper (and some red chili pepper flakes), but it’s cheap, nutritious, and fast.

This got me thinking about what else I could throw into the microwave to finish off a breakfast. I had several bags of microwaveable/steamable spinach from HEB, so I decided to add that in. While the ratio by weight was now probably something like 8-to-1 spinach-to-egg, I decided that I could just mash it all up and call it a scramble or whatever.

But then I realized that I was missing carbs. Despite being relegated to the status of Officially Worst Macro (which I say half-jokingly), I felt like I needed some calories to carry me through my day. Thankfully, with enough butter and cheese, microwaving grits isn’t all that bad.

I took this photo after-the-fact, so I had run out of spinach and used a bag of green beans instead. I also forgot the second bowl.

Between the two eggs, one serving of grits, and bag of spinach (the organic packets are 10 ounces and won’t leave you hating anything plant-like by the end), you can actually get a solid amount of protein - I got something in the mid-twenties, and that hits just under 40g once you add in a glass of the super-milk that you can buy for $8/gallon (HEB has Mootopia, Coca-Cola has Fairlife).

Logistically, the entire operation goes best with two bowls and a spoon. Start the spinach in the microwave, prep bowl #1 with the eggs, and then prep bowl #2 with the grits. The entire process takes about 10 minutes, and I think food cost is around the $3 mark.

Or, just buy a frozen burrito that’s easier to make (albeit less filling) for cheaper. Your call.

Steaks with Nate

It’s been well over a year since my last post in the food section, which is interesting given that the original point of this website was to chronicle my food journey. In any case, semester number seven of college was functionally over as of Friday, and so as my roommate and I walked the aisles of HEB I decided to go all-out and ask the butcher for two of the nicest steaks they had to offer. I did not know how to pan-sear a steak. I can’t claim to be Gordon Ramsay, but these turned out pretty amazing [1].

Anyways, here’s the video I used to guide my decisions more-or-less. Gordon is a solid chef, although there aren’t really very clear instructions to follow.

I took out the steaks about 30 minutes before I starting actually cooking, to bring them to room temperature and to add in the salt-and-pepper seasoning. I went full Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren with the salt, perhaps you should consider being less liberal (the end result was incredibly salty):

Seriously, there was way too much salt here. But look at that fat! There have not been many ribeyes as beautiful.

Anyways, as the steaks were marinating, Nate handled preparing garlic butter and mashed potatoes (which were absolutely fantastic, and the perfect complement). Kerrygold provides some truly quality stuff - dare I say better than the Central Market sticks in our fridge.

I finally started searing the meat, and the aroma was strong. It’s worth having some water nearby, because you’ll absolutely be salivating the entire time:

Basting with garlic butter was an interesting experiment in how to cram as many calories as possible into dinner.

A few minutes of searing with flips every minute, and these bad boys were basically done. I let them rest for a few minutes while Nate finished up the potatoes, and we were ready to eat. As always, I ought to work on plating, but this was absolutely amazing.

THIS is how you kick off finals season.

As always, there were some areas for improvement. I already talked about how much I oversalted the steak, but I also undercooked it ever-so-slightly and forgot to render the fat on the side. A few extra minutes couldn’t have hurt; I definitely served a rare steak instead of the medium-rare that I hoped for. All of these are easily remedied - I’m back, Gordon.

[1] I didn’t want to say well, since ordering a steak well done ought to be unconstitutional.