Pack a Great Lunch

A crunchy, flavorful, satisfying meal

Some people are embarrassed to take lunch with them to work. If you don't want to be embarrassed don't bring embarrassing food! Your food should be your bling! Bring a steak! Bring these salads!


This is a lunch you can take anywhere and it will pack a lot of flavor and crunch. I will admit that when I sat down to eat this I really wanted something hot and filling but I changed my mind after a couple of bites. This is an outrageous meal.

The idea behind this lunch was to have a good number of different flavors and textures and colors. I went to a new market in the neighborhood that I had been meaning to check out and I approve!

Here are the flavors and textures: romaine lettuce, carrots, kalamata olives, boiled potato, 2 different cheeses I picked up at the market, toasted almonds, fresh flat leaf parsley, smoked herring, satsuma tangerines and a vinaigrette made with olive oil and fig balsamic vinegar.

I know what many of you are thinking - smoked herring? Isn't that really strong and fishy? Yes, but with the combination of the bland potato, crunchy lettuce and the sweet and sour dressing it tastes fairly mild, sort of like a smoked salmon but admittedly stronger. I love it and talk about cheap! Cheap!

The cheese I bought was an aged white cheddar and a cheese that was simply marked 'Italian table cheese' but it was made here in Silicon Valley so I had to try it. Funnily it tastes just like the cheddar!

I made the dressing with fig balsamic vinegar which, while sort of stuck in the 1980s, can be a very tasty food.  It is rather sweet so I cut it in the dressing with the juice of an unripe orange from my tree.

This looks pretty good but it tasted way better than that

I was lucky to have this leftover pasta, too. It's mini bow ties that I dressed with onions, walnut pieces and corn sauteed in walnut oil the night before. Perfect for a picnic it doesn't contain any ingredients that will go bad quickly.

The combination of the pasta and vegetables with the crunchy nutty almonds and the salty olives was very tasty.

To make this meal vegetarian you could substitute smoked tofu for the fish. If you did that and left out the cheese it would be vegan.

This is a relatively low fat, low sodium meal and there is a lot of nutrition here. Total cost: about $2.50. What you would pay in a restaurant for this? Ten, fifteen, twenty bucks?

Another Classic - Pork Chops with Apples

What's a chop? What's a steak?

A bone in beef rib-eye is a steak. A pork loin cut is a chop.  A beef T-bone is a steak, a lamb T-bone is a chop. Huh?

The pork in this recipe is a sirloin chop. Or steak. Who knows. It depends on what the butcher thinks he can get more money for.

Another great, fast, inexpensive meal

Here we have a great lunch, spicy pork chops with apple and yellow beet salad.

The pork is seasoned simply with olive oil, chipotle powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper then grilled in a cast iron pan.

The salad is dressed with walnut oil and this great French cider vinegar. Each of these is expensive but the amounts used  on this plate costs pennies.

The bread is a ciabatta toasted over a gas burner. It stays soft in the middle but the outside gets crusty and smokey.

The beets are raw yellow beets that I sliced so thin you can see through them.

The pork is easy to make if you have a heavy bottomed frying pan. You can use a non-stick pan too if the bottom is not too thin.

You want to take the pork chops out of the fridge at least ten minutes before you cook them. If you take them right from the fridge they won't be as tender.  Cook them over medium heat so they brown and take them out just as they firm up. Let them rest for a couple of minutes before you eat them.

A hunk of meat, crusty bread and a flavor salad in about 15 minutes. Total cost for the meal: about two bucks!

Family Favorite - Orange Chicken

We have this huge Valencia orange tree in our backyard, which means lots of free food to a cheapskate like me.

We juice them. we eat them, we use the zest. I throw them into sautes and the things I brown on the stove then finish in the oven.

This is not a difficult dish to make although it might take some practice to get the timing down.

Orange chicken, brown rice risotto and dry fried asparagus

I put some of my spice rub in a big mixing bowl and added a couple of tablespoons of the old extra virgin. I had bone in, skin on chicken breasts. You can use boneless and skinless if you want.

The chicken pieces were large so I cut them in half with a big knife. Then I used one of them to mix up the spice rub and olive oil. I got my big cast iron pan hot on the stove and turned the oven on to 350°.



I rubbed all the chicken in the spice mix then laid the pieces skin side down in the pan.

After they had browned a few minutes I tossed a couple of oranges in the spice oil and threw them in the pan.

While the chicken was cooking I made dry fried asparagus. Dry frying is using a hot cast iron pan with no oil, butter or fats to cook vegetables. They cook in a few minutes, steaming in their own juice.

As soon as they are just done they are seasoned with salt, pepper and (optional) a tiny bit of butter.

Dry frying works great with many vegetables like green beans, squash, carrots, etc. It imparts a slightly smoky flavor.

Along with the chicken and asparagus I had leftover brown rice risotto and one of the cooked oranges, which I squoze over the chicken and rice.

Low in fat (especially if you remove the chicken skin) high in nutrition and cost about $2.50 for the whole shebang.

If I am so Frugal why do I use Truffles?

I am frugal; I like to think I got to retire from high tech because I was cheap, not because I was rich. But I also think life is too short to eat bland food.

I have a nice little collection of fine ingredients that I use on a regular basis. Truffles, nut oil, salt packed capers, Greek olives, fine cheeses and expensive vinegars frequently find their way onto my plate.

A fourteen dollar bottle of walnut oil might seem like an extravagance but if it enhances fifty meals out of it it works out to 28 cents per meal. And it tastes great.

I love condiments made out of boiled down grapes, from the balsamico we know to unusual items like must, which is simply boiled down grape juice. A drop of that on a plate packs a lot of flavor. I love putting just barely a drop on a piece of apple or cheese or a slice of beef. Sweet and sour with a lot of depth it's really worth looking for.

Truffles are the sign of a special meal here. They have the cachet of being rare and expensive but if you use them right they can be a very cost effective way of packing some powerful flavors. I buy jars of truffles or peelings to make sauces for beef or chicken or vegetables. Just a dollars worth sauteed in a little butter in a pan where a steak had cooked will make your whole house smell like truffles and with a few drops of cream you have as good a sauce as can be made.

One area I don't suggest spending a lot of money on is fancy salts. I have tried grey salts, pink salts, sea salts from all over and cheap salts. Use a good brand of kosher salt for most things or everything and you'll do well. There are some fun salts like Maldon, which are little crystal pyramids and crunch when you eat them, but is that worth the bundle of money it costs? Maybe, but it's hardly frugal and doesn't pack a flavor punch.

So if you don't know what to get or how to use it I suggest you start with a single item like a good nut oil or maybe an aged balsamic vinegar. Spend ten or twelve bucks. Then taste what you have been missing!

Crazy, rainy day means Turkey

It's been one of those days - I played two concerts at a high school this morning and on my way back I got a call from my dentist. My 18 year old son fell ill as they started to work on him. Rats!

I dashed over there picked him up and ran home. The pediatrician's office was closed for another hour so I slapped lunch together, called them and they gave us an appointment for late in the afternoon. I canceled all my students. As I was getting lunch on plates they called back and said to bring him right it.

The good news is that he's fine and it was probably a one time event. The bad news is that I had to eat in the car.

Sorry about the lousy picture - had to rush to the doctor..

Today I make potato and onion soup and turkey tenderloins. The soup is really easy. I sauteed up a large onion, put 5 potatoes in cut into fourths, with the skin and added boiling water. Today just for kicks I added some dried porcini mushrooms. It simmered while I made the turkey. When the potatoes and mushrooms were soft I used a stick blender and pureed it. Add some salt and pepper and it's ready. I garnished it with a little of my home smoked pork belly.


I love the contrast of the rather bland soup and the strong flavored pork.

I had some turkey tenderloins, which is really part of the turkey breast and not a tenderloin at all, but tenderloins sounds expensive so that's what they call them. They have virtually no waste. I just rinsed and dried them, poured olive oil over them and some of my spice rub. I browned them in a cast iron pan and finished them in a hot oven. Let them rest a few minutes and away we go.

Total cost for today's treats: about 2 bucks.

I don't like to eat before concerts or rehearsals so I will have a snack around 6 then eat a light snack when I get back. Tonight's Symphony Silicon Valley concert is special by the way: Thursday concerts never sell well so they have opened the house to the public for free and will be asking for donations to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

It's Sushi Day

(Note: I wrote this onstage in the middle of Brahms' German Requiem, waiting for my cue. Right in front of a large, strong, well rehearsed choir and a fine, large orchestra. Not bad place to be.)

If you think you need years to learn how to make sushi you are dead wrong. In Japan sushi is restaurant and home food. It was originally a way of preserving food for lunches. Think of it as their version of a PBJ.

Simple ingredients. Great food.

 I was lucky enough to have friends of Japanese ancestry when I was growing up and I ate plenty of raw fish back when most Americans thought it was poison.

In 1980 I got to go to Japan with an orchestra. I was the only one who who was used to Japanese food. After a few days whenever they served us something they weren't used to they would all offer it to me. Awesome!


 I remember when we got served huge, incredibly fresh prawns. Oh man oh man.

If you have never eaten octopus you are missing out. You buy it already boiled and tender at the Japanese market but my favorite way to make it is getting it raw and grilling it for a long time in olive oil. Some other time..  

Like so many Americans now my kids grew up eating and loving sushi.

Making it home is easy, fun and way cheaper than eating out. I spent 20 bucks on fish for this lunch and it made a lot of sushi for 4 people and yes, we have leftover ingredients like rice wine vinegar and nori.

Notice the knife blade is almost parallel to the cutting board.

Aside from the fish you need some short grain rice, a bit of rice vinegar, sugar and the Japanese ingredients, none of which cost more than 2 bucks, and there is plenty left over.  To make the seasoning for the sushi rice, we put a little water in a bowl and add the sugar and rice vinegar in small amounts and keep adding until it tastes right.  I know it's not traditional but I like to put a little fresh lemon juice in the solution.

Spreading the vinegar mixture over the rice.

The rice takes 20 minutes to cook, 10 minutes to rest and a few minutes to cool off. Traditionally the chef cuts the rice and sprinkles it with the vinegar mixture while the apprentice fans it to cool it quickly.

Today my son Phil helped out, waving the Gordon Jacob horn concerto frantically at it while I cut the rice and mixed in the solution.

I'm sure my critics would say that's how I play the Gordon Jacob concerto.

With rice and condiments, here is lunch for 4.

Here is a finished serving plate. It really doesn't take much time as aside from making the rice all you have to do is slice stuff up.

The fish we have here is hamachi, octopus, scallops with the roe and innards and marinated mackerel. To make them more interesting I floured and lightly fried the scallops.

Along with the fish we have shiso leaves,  nori seaweed sheets that I waved over a flame and shredded, sliced cucumber, wasabe, pickled ginger, and takuan, which is daikon pickled with rice bran.


On this plate, starting at the top is the fried scallops on top of shiso leaves, then on the left is takuan and on the right is cucumber and below the scallops are octopus, yellowtail and vinegared mackerel.

Today we served sushi Chirashi or 'scattered' style. Instead of making rolls or lumps we simply put the rice in the bottom of a bowl and topped it with the fish and stuff.

This was Phil's bowl. Not a bad lunch.





I have a hot tip for you today. We use Kikkoman Organic Soy Sauce. Not because it's organic, but because it tastes awesome. A really fine flavor unlike the usual dull soy sauces.  It smells and tastes great.