Every Tuesday this fall, the Whole Foods in Town Square (where the contestants did all of their shopping on Top Chef Las Vegas) has been hosting cooking classes taught by different chefs from the Wynn and Encore resorts. I have been to quite a few of them, but perhaps my favourite cooking class was taught by Jet Tila, the chef at the Asian restaurant Wazuzu at Encore. Not only is Jet an incredible chef, but he is also a wonderful teacher and he gladly shared his secrets on how to make restaurant-worthy Thai food at home!

One of the three dishes that he made in the class was this Pineapple Fried Rice, which is a great way to use up leftover rice (or if you are us, we now make extra rice so we can have leftovers for fried rice). Whenever I had previously attempted to make fried rice at home, my rice would always get smushy and not taste anything like it did when I ordered it in restaurants. Rice made the day before or a few days before is the key to any successful fried rice recipe as the rice grains have dried out a bit and hold up better when recooked. Cooking the fried rice over a high heat is also important–I get a bit scared by high heat sometimes and its oil splatters, but it really does get the job done and best mimics the power of restaurant woks.

I love the sweetness of the fresh pineapple against the saltiness of the soy sauce and bacon. This recipe is just a guideline for how to make the fried rice, so be sure to keep on tasting it throughout the cooking process and adding a bit more fish or soy sauce until it tastes just right to you. You can also throw in other meats or veggies into the rice as well if you want. This recipe makes enough fried rice for 4 side dishes at 96 cents per serving.

Pineapple Fried Rice, from Jet Tila at Wazuzu, Wynn Encore
3 tablespoons vegetable cooking oil
3 to 4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon ginger, peeled and grated
3 tablespoons shallots, diced
1 egg (optional)
4 ounces bacon, diced
4 cups day old rice
2 to 3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 to 2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 1/2 cups pineapple, diced
2 to 3 green onions, chopped
2 teaspoon white pepper
3 tablespoon cilantro leaves, chopped

Pour the oil into a large skillet or wok and swish it around until all of the cooking surface is covered. Pour out the remaining oil and heat the wok over a high heat. Add the garlic, ginger, and shallots and cook them until they are light brown. Add the bacon and cook until the pieces are slightly crisp, around 1 minute. If you want to add an egg to your fried rice, crack it open while cooking the bacon and mix it around until the egg becomes scrambled.

Fold in the day old rice using the back of your spoon so you don’t break the rice grains. Add the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and curry powder, and continue to stir the rice for about a minute. Stir in the pineapple and incorporate it well into the fried rice. Cook the rice for another few minutes, folding all of the ingredients into the mixture. Add the green onions and white pepper, and check your seasonings to see if you need to add more fish or soy sauce. Serve the fried rice with a sprinkle of chopped cilantro on top.

We love Indian food, but despite the ethnic food riches available in Las Vegas, we’ve struggled a bit to find much good Indian cooking here (though there is one new candidate). In any case, one of my favorite dishes has always been Chicken Tikka Masala. I know it’s not very “real” Indian cuisine, and it’s not particularly fiery, but I love it all the same. This recipe isn’t tikka masala, but it’s really close — and, maybe, even better. The sauce is a rich, mild, creamy tomato-based one that’s got really deep and comforting flavors. Of course, anything with this much butter should! But in any case, definitely try this one out. If you’ve got leftover chicken or turkey laying around, you could just use that and skip the separate marinating and cooking, and just put the meat into the sauce. You’ll miss a little of the flavor, but not much. This curry recipe makes enough for 6 people at $1.85 per serving.

Murgh Makhani (Butter Chicken), from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book

1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken breasts

For the Tikka Marinade:
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon lime or lemon juice
2 tablespoons garam masala
2 teaspoons chile powder
2 teaspoons ground mixed spice (some mix of cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and ground ginger)
2 teaspoons ground fenugreek
golf ball-sized piece of fresh ginger, grated
4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 to 2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 to 4 green chiles, finely chopped

For the Tomato Sauce:
1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes
small nugget of fresh ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 to 3 small green chiles, finely chopped
5 cloves
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup water

For the Makhani Sauce:
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons tomato puree
4 teaspoons honey
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fenugreek
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon black pepper

Mix together all of the ingredients for the tikka marinade and then add the chicken. Let the chicken marinate for at least 4 hours in the fridge, although overnight is preferable if possible.

Take out the marinated chicken from the fridge and grill it when you are ready to make the curry. We put our chicken on the bbq, but you can easily cook it on a griddle, or even roast the chicken breasts in the oven.

Put all the ingredients for the tomato sauce into a pan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and gently simmer the sauce for 20 minutes until it has nicely thickened. Rub the sauce through a sieve and set aside the strained sauce.

To complete the sauce, melt the butter in a large pan, add the ground cumin, and let it sizzle gently for a couple of minutes. Add the reserved tomato sauce, and bring it back to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Add the tomato puree, honey, cream, fenugreek, lime juice, and black pepper, and continue to simmer, stirring gently, for about 5 minutes, until the sauce is rich, thick, and creamy. Finally, add the cooked chicken, mix and heat through, simmering for a final 5 minutes.

Serve the curry with plain white rice and lots of naan bread to soak up all that creamy sauce.

A big trend in food right now is the emergence of food carts around the country, especially in cities like Portland, San Francisco, and LA. These mobile gourmet kitchens serve street food kicked up a notch, and perhaps one of the best known food carts is the Kogi BBQ truck in LA, which uses Twitter to tell their fans where they will be located for the day.

When we went to LA a few weeks ago, we both wanted to try their Korean-inspired bbq, but with a long list of other restaurants to try, we didn’t get a chance. So when I saw a recipe for Korean style tacos with Kogi bbq sauce on Steamy Kitchen, I knew I had to finally try what lots of people are talking about.

The recipe calls for some leftover chicken, pork, or beef. If you don’t have any leftovers on hand, shredding up a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store would work well too. We had some leftovers from the Chicken Under A Brick, so I used that meat as the base for our Kogi BBQ Tacos.

The tacos were incredible with a whole lot of spice cut by the sweetness of the sugar and rice wine vinegar. They were a bit juicy from the sauce and the kimchi, but well worth the mess! This recipe feeds 4 people at 57 cents per serving.

Kogi BBQ Tacos
1 pound leftover chicken, pork, or beef, shredded
2 tablespoons chili-garlic sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
12 corn tortillas
kimchi

Combine all of the wet ingredients and add the sugar. Mix everything together well until the sugar is thoroughly dissolved.

Add the shredded meat to the sauce and let it sit to marinate for a few minutes.

Place the shredded meat in a warmed up corn tortilla and top with some kimchi for some finger licking tacos.

Often times I crave Thai food, and I’ll either make Carlo head across town with me to our favourite Thai restaurant in Vegas, Lotus of Siam, or we will be lazy and order take out from Pin Kaow, which is no where as good as Lotus of Siam, but they deliver.

However this fast and easy Thai Chicken, Zucchini, and Tomato Curry can make you rethink that Thai delivery because you can have dinner on the table faster than the delivery guy can make it to your house at a fraction of the cost. This Thai Curry feeds 4 people at $2.03 per serving.

Thai Chicken, Zucchini, and Tomato Curry
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, sliced crosswise 1/3 inch thick
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 zucchini, cut into 2-by-1/2-inch sticks
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon Thai red curry paste, or to taste
1/2 cup unsweetened light coconut milk
2 tablespoons water
finely grated zest of 1 lime
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
rice, for serving

In a large pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil. Add the chicken seasoned with salt and pepper, and cook it over a high heat until the chicken is just white throughout, around 2 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate.

Add the remaining oil to the pot, and add the onion and stir-fry over a moderately high heat for 2 minutes. Throw the zucchini and cherry tomatoes into the pot and stir-fry for another 2 minutes. Stir in the curry paste (you can add as much as you want depending on how hot you like your curries), coconut milk, water, lime zest, and lime juice and bring the curry to a simmer. Add more coconut milk if you think the curry needs a bit more juice and then stir in the chicken and cook for a couple of minutes.

Serve the curry with cooked rice and top with fresh chopped cilantro for a quick Thai dinner at home.

Okay, this Crab, Avocado, and Asparagus Salad isn’t the most budget friendly recipe we have posted on Recession Recipes, but it was pretty damn awesome, even if it cost $4.90 per serving to feed 4 people.

While that might be quite pricey for some home cooking, think about how much crab salads go for in fancy restaurants? We would be paying at least $15 for the lunchtime equivalent of this salad in a Vegas restaurant, and when we can’t eat out like we used to, special lunches like this help me feel like I’m not totally constrained by life on a severe budget.

You can buy a pound of fresh lump crab meat at Costco for $15, which comes in really handy for recipes like this. The chunks are really big and tasty, and you don’t have to mess around with cooking the crab and then pulling all the meat out of the claws and body. The recipe also includes a pretty ingenious way to cook all of the thick asparagus that is cropping up at our farmers’ market by thinly slicing the stalks and lightly cooking them for salad greens.

Crab, Avocado, and Asparagus Salad
1 pound thick asparagus
7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 medium basil leaves
1 small shallot, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup salted roasted pistachios, coarsely chopped
1 pound jumbo lump crab meat
2 Hass avocados, diced
2 hard boiled eggs, diced

Cut off the asparagus tips and cut each tip in half lengthwise. Cut off the very woody end of the asparagus stalk and then use a peeler or mandoline to shave the spears lengthwise. Blanch the asparagus tips and shavings in a boiling pot of salted water until they are just heated through, around 10 seconds or so.

Quickly drain the asparagus and place it in a bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking. Once the asparagus is cool, remove it from the water and drain it well. You might have to use some paper towels to pat the asparagus dry so you don’t end up with a soggy salad.

Whiz up the olive oil, lemon juice, basil, shallot, and 1/4 cup of the parsley in a food processor. Taste the dressing and then season with salt and pepper.

Mix together the crab, asparagus, and hard boiled eggs in a large bowl. I tossed in around half of the dressing and let the salad topping sit for a few minutes for the flavours to marry.

Mix the asparagus with the pistachios and remaining parsley in a bowl and drizzle with a little bit of dressing. Place the salad on each plate and then top with the crab mixture for a special lunch.

Making your own food is invariably almost always cheaper than going out to eat or picking up some takeout. However, life doesn’t necessarily always give you an option to make lunch. When I’m on the run or just can’t be bothered to make anything, Whole Foods has this incredible new line of prepared and packaged salads. My favourite salad is the Beet and Kale salad filled with roasted red and gold beets, tangy dried cranberries, feta cheese, and a mixture of romaine lettuce and kale leaves. It tastes amazing, is good for you, and more importantly only costs $3.65! Yes, I did say $3.65.

Kudos to Whole Foods for providing a tasty and easy option for lunch on the run. I just wish that everything was this cheap at Whole Foods!

Beet and Kale Salad in the Whole Foods packaging

Much fancier on a plate