Enjoy eating on $4 a day

AJC Decatur Book Festival, Food & Cooking Stage.

For details visit www.DecaturBookFestival.com.

Potato Leek Pizzas

Obviously you should just make all kinds of pizza. Seriously, do it. Make it a Thursday-night tradition and an excuse to use up leftovers. This pizza is a fun variation that confounds expectations—proof that, indeed, anything is good on pizza! makes 4 personal pizzas.

2 tablespoons olive oil 1 large russet potato or 3 small potatoes, sliced into thin circles salt and pepper, to taste 3 leeks, trimmed, washed, and sliced into circles all-purpose flour, for shaping the dough 1 recipe Pizza Dough (page 156) 1 pound fresh mozzarella cheese, shredded.

1. Preheat the oven to 500°F.

2. Place a large pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Once the oil is hot, add as many potato slices as will fit in the pan, spacing them out to make sure each slice is touching the bottom. (If you slice them thinly enough, they’ll turn out almost like little chips.)

3. Let the potatoes cook until they start to crinkle around the edges and turn brown, about 2 minutes. Flip them over and brown the other side, another minute or so, then move them to a bowl. Continue in batches, as needed. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then (after they cool down!) toss with your hands to make sure they’re evenly coated.

4. Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in the same pan, then throw in the leeks, stirring occasionally until they’re soft, about 5 minutes. Toss them in the bowl with the potato slices, add a bit more salt and pepper, and stir.

5. Sprinkle flour on a clean countertop. Divide the pizza dough into 4 equal pieces and place one piece on the countertop. Using your hands or a rolling pin, stretch the dough into crust. I like to make mine really thin and big, but it’s up to you how thick to make it.

6. Once the crust is the desired shape and thickness, dust the back of a baking sheet with flour to keep the crust from sticking, then place the crust on the sheet.

7. Layer a quarter of the potato and leek mixture on top of the crust and sprinkle with a quarter of the shredded mozzarella. Bake for 5 to 8 minutes. If it’s your first time, simply keep an eye on the oven to see when the pizza’s done. The crust should be light brown and the cheese melted. Repeat the process until you’ve baked all your pizzas. If your oven is big enough, you can, of course, do more than one pizza at a time.

It isn’t often that a master’s thesis has the makings of a bestseller but after Leanne Brown’s student project appeared on the social networking site Reddit, traffic to her own website jumped from 80 to 50,000 people per day.

“I thought it was hackers,” said Brown, “but it was wonderful people writing to say this means so much and it will help me personally.” The object of their desire, was a cookbook of sorts, which offered recipes for great tasting meals at low cost while emphasizing the importance of cooking skill over expensive ingredients. Brown had come up with the project to address the issue of food insecurity — the 46 million Americans on SNAP (formerly food stamps) who must eat on $4 per day.

She had planned to use her degree in the relatively new field of Food Studies to work for a non-profit, but the overwhelming response to her thesis convinced her otherwise. One Kickstarter campaign later and Brown had a print run of 40,000 books and a two month, multi-city tour including a Sept. 6 appearance at the AJC Decatur Book Festival.

"Good And Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day," (Workman Publishing, $16.95) has the distinction of being a cookbook meant for people who may not be able to afford a cookbook. So for each book purchased, one is given to someone in need. A partnership with Access Wireless helps get the book in the hands of low-income individuals nationwide while non-profit organizations that purchase books to distribute to clients receive a discount on bulk orders. The original project is still available as a free downloadable PDF at www.leannebrown.com.

While she acknowledges that she is no nutritionist, Brown insisted that the food taste good and that the book look as beautiful as any other modern cookbook. “There is a huge amount of information about how to eat on a budget, but a lot of those (sources) are so focused on the bottom-line,” Brown said. “They don’t take into account how things taste.” Poverty should not mean a lack of pleasure, she says.

I tested a few of her recipes myself. The beef stroganoff brought back delicious childhood memories and the recipe for peanut sauce is one of the best I’ve found. I poured the sauce over broccoli and coconut rice as directed in one recipe and used the remainder the next day as a dipping sauce for veggies. Brown includes breakfast, lunch and dinner options in the book as well as snacks, desserts and more.

Each recipe includes per serving and total cost estimates which Brown calculated by using prices from four grocery stores in a mixed-income community in New York. She emphasizes the importance of tailoring the recipes to fit your particular budget and taste. If you don’t eat meat, you can sub in tofu. If you don’t have chick peas on hand, use pinto beans.

When she first began turning her project into a book, she tried to create meal plans, but she quickly realized how limiting that may be for families already struggling with so little time and resources. So this cookbook, she says, is also a strategy guide designed to teach readers the power of cooking. “I wanted to empower people, not just have them following directions,” she says.

In addition to recipes, she offers tips on seasonal food shopping, buying in bulk, kitchen equipment and ways to make the most of leftovers. She also gives pointers on how to accumulate pantry items, spices and other higher cost foods over time.

“People on SNAP are going though hard times. I want food not to be a terrifying, awful struggle,” Brown says. “I want people to eat well and believe that they deserve to eat well.”