Monday, August 30, 2010

Chicken and Corn Soup

Despite the fact that it has been hotter than the hinges of hell the last few days, I made more soup. This soup isn't the light and delicate cream soup that readers might be accustomed to in the summertime. It's hefty, hearty soup more like a stew than anything else. It's definitely a cold weather kind of a soup, except it calls for the corn from six ears of corn. That is a summer thing. The wise person will not buy corn on the cob in January. The stores carry it, sometimes, but the results are awful.
This is farmer food. Tables laden high with biscuits and corn on the cob and three or four different kinds of vegetables. But, thanks to air conditioning, it is also good for dinner in August as a main course. The recipe says to cook the corn on the cob in the chicken broth. My pot wasn't big enough, and there wasn't enough chicken broth. I just cooked the corn separately and scraped it off the cob, burning my fingers in the process.

Chicken and Corn Soup

1 five pound chicken, cut into serving pieces
salt to taste
12 peppercorns
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots quartered
1 onion
6 ears of corn on the cob
2 hard cooked eggs, chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 cup cubed cooked ham

1. Place the chicken in a kettle. Add water to cover, salt, peppercorns, celery, carrots and onion. Simmer until the chicken is thoroughly tender.
2. Strain the broth and pour it into a clean kettle. Simmer while preparing the remaining ingredients.
3. Remove the chicken from the bones and skin and cut the chicken meat into bite-size pieces.
4. Shuck the corn and drop it into the kettle. Bring just to a boil. Scrape the kernels from the cobs into the soup. Add the chicken and remaining ingredients. Serve piping hot.
Makes eight to one dozen servings.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Rhode Island Fish Chowder

School started Monday, and the week before that was devoted to teacher planning, so I haven't had a lot of time to devote to anything but the most automatic cooking. Also, I was out of money, so I had to resort to pawing through the refrigerator and the closet to see what I could cook with the minimum amount of expenditure. I didn't even open the cookbook. But, with things settling down a bit, I thought I could make one or two things this week. Those of you invisible readers who actually thought I would make two dishes a night four nights a week to knock out New England, dream on. I'm not that disciplined.
I never thought of Rhode Island as having a unique cuisine. However, I understand it's a pretty unique place, so why not? This dish is interesting, because it does not conform to what I understand the basic principles of chowder to be. Now, understand that even though I am from Massachusetts, I was actually 18 before I went to Cape Cod. You are not talking to some one with a lot of experience with coastal cooking, here.
As I understand it, and I would like nothing better than to get a debate going, the basic principles of chowder are A. milk, B. potatoes, C. other stuff. This chowder contains neither milk nor potatoes. It does have other stuff, namely fish. It's more like a solid than a liquid, although it does have liquid in it. What take the place of potatoes is what they call split pilot crackers or cream crackers. I interpreted that to mean oyster crackers. I have seen cream crackers. Nabisco markets them, or did. However, I forgot to look when I was in the cracker aisle at Safeway, and in fact, had to send my husband out to get them. So, do not overlook the crackers when making this dish. They are an integral part and not a garnish.
There is a question about the quantity of crackers. We got a 10 ounce box of oyster crackers, which, between the recipe and people eating them, got all used up. And we cut the recipe in half. So if you wish to make the entire recipe, you will probably need a 20 ounce bag of oyster crackers, or similar.
There is another question here, and that is, the chowder pot. I googled chowder pot and discovered that my pot was not unlike the one presented as a chowder pot by the first vendor on Google. It's a stew pot. I thought possibly a real chowder pot would have a smaller diameter than mine and be taller. This particular brand of chowder pot did not seem to fit that model. Any ideas, readers?
The verdict from my husband Bob was, bland. The only spices are summer savory, which I was finally able to find, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper which is so microscopic an amount it is practically below Alvogadro's number, and 3 tablespoons chopped parsley. Bland. But, good.

Rhode Island Fish Chowder

1 pound salt pork, cut into strips, soaked in boiling water five minutes and drained
4 pounds cod or sea bass fillets, cut into four inch squares
3 cups finely chopped onions
1 tablespoon chopped fresh summer savory, or one teaspoon dried savory
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
split pilot crackers, cream crakers or ship biscuits or any plan, unsalted crackers that have not been oil-dipped
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon flour

1. Make a layer of the salt pork in the bottom of a chowder kettle. Top with layer of the fish, then the onions and season with some of the savory, parsley and cayenne.
2. Make a layer of the crackers. Repeat layers until all increadients are used, ending with crackers that have been spread with two tablespoons of butter.
3. Pour water down the sies of the kettle until water almost covers top layer of crackers. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer one hour. Replenish water level with boiling water if level sinks too low.
4. Decant the liquid into a saucepan. Blend together the remaining butter and the flour and gradually whisk the mexture into the simmering liquid.
5. Transfer solid part of chowder to a tureen or soup bowls and pour thickened liquid over.
Makes eight to ten servings.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Braised Lettuce with Rosemary

There's a theme here. August is cooked lettuce month. This recipe comes just ahead of Wilted Lettuce.This is a somewhat imprecise recipe. It uses words like cook briefly. How the hell long is briefly, if you don't mind my asking? We know briefly is not very long, because the recipe says sternly, "Do not overcook." However, we really don't know what overcooking is, when dealing with this recipe.
As opposed to the wilted lettuce, which had the same texture as spinach, this lettuce retained its raw lettuce shape and most of its texture. At least, the way I cooked it. I would say briefly means two or three minutes. Probably, what the directions considered overcooking would render it limp. My interpretation consisted of slightly softer lettuce, served with very good sauce. I certainly did not dislike it. The cookbook said to serve it with poached or stuffed chicken breasts. I served it with broiled chicken breasts.

Braised Lettuce with Rosemary

1/4 pound mushrooms, sliced
6 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
2/3 cup chicken broth
2/3 cup light cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 tablespoons Cognac
2 large or three small heads Boston lettuce
2 tablespoons chopped chives

1. Saute mushrooms briefly in four tablespoons butter. Sprinkle with flour. Gradually stir in the broth and cream and bring to a boil, stirring.
2. Season with salt, pepper, the nutmeg, rosemary, parsley and cognac. Hold over hot water. (This means keep it hot over a saucepan of hot water. Do not leave it on the stove to keep it hot.)
3. Shred the lettuce into very wide ribbons and saute very briefly in remaining butter. Do not overcook.
4. Toss lettuce with sauce, sprinkle with the chives and serve immediately.
Makes six servings.

Manicotti with Veal and Ham

Back on Tuesday, August 3, before we left for vacation, my son and his fiance were invited to dinner. When you left us, my son and I were making pickles, he having some extra time since he has taken the bar exam, but his job hasn't started yet. After the pickles, we got down to the manicotti. Dishes have various parameters in this family. As stated, my husband can't eat shellfish. My daughter is a vegetarian, and the fiancee doesn't like ground beef, or apparently any kind of ground meat. She was too polite to tell me about this, but my son told me. So I made two batches of manicotti, one with meat, and one with ricotta cheese.
I put the water on to boil for the manicotti tubes, and started making the fillling. The recipe calls for ground ham. Now, as near as I can make out, one cannot buy ground ham. Requests to the butcher guys at the supermarket to grind same are met with refusals. So, if you want ground ham, I suggest you do what I did. Buy a slice of ham. Cut it in chunks and put it in the Cuisineart. The Cuisineart renders it ground, or close enough.
The recipe says cook the manicotti tubes until half done, about 12 minutes. I don't know what I did, but the tubes were fully done, and limp. They split up the sides which made it difficult to fill them. I just sort of spread the filling on one side of the opened tube and folded the other side over the whole thing. Tomato sauce covers up a multitude of sins.

Manicotti with Veal and Ham

1/2 pound ground veal
1/2 pound ground cooked ham
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon rosemary
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 egg lightly beaten
2 tablespoons Marsala wine (I used red.)
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
8 four inch pieces manicotti
6 quarts boiling salted water
3 to four cups tomato sauce, preferably home made marinara sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Saute the veal, ham and onion in one tablespoon of the oil until lightly browned.
3. In a bowl, combine the meat mixture, salt, pepper, rosemary, nutmeg, egg, Marsala, bread crumbs, and two tablespoons of the cheese.
4. Cook the manicotti in the boiling salted water until half done, about twelve minutes. Draine and rinse in cold water. Add remaining oil.
5. Cover the bottom of a shallow baking dish with half the sauce. Fill the manicotti with the meat mixture and arrange in a single layer on top of the sauce.
6. Cover with remaining sauce, sprinkle with reamining cheese and bake about thirty minutes or until tender and bubbly hot.
Makes four servings.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Ernie's Mustard Pickles

On Sunday, August 1, Bob and I trekked back to DC. It was hot, although not insanely so, but the traffic in Delaware was truly insane. It took us 10 minutes to get out of the Delaware Reststop on 95, and another 10 or 15 to get to the first exit, which said Route 301. Now, I knew that 301 went through Maryland, and could be used to get to DC. So, seeing an out, I took it. This is called not thinking very clearly, because if I had taken any time at all to ponder this option, I would have realized that 301 goes over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Anyone who has ever lived in DC or on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and I have lived in both places, will tell you that the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a place you don't want to be on a weekend in the summertime.

We drove through a lot of pleasant countryside, and pleasant countryside that was getting ready to have the shit developed out of it. But, as predicted, when we got to where 301 joins Route 50, we hit the bridge traffic. The bridge traffic goes faster than it did when I lived there in 1978, but it isn't what anyone would call speedy. So we got home around 8:00 pm having left the Berkshires at 10:30..

Because we were turning around and leaving DC on Thursday, I figured it might be nice to have my son and his fiancee over to dinner. Tuesday was the appointed day. I also decided that if I ever want to finish this chapter, I'd better do some more canning. I settled on Ernie's Mustard Pickles because the recipe didn't make too much. Our family has a history of canning things, and then putting them up in the closet to molder. Winchester Center Bread and Butter Pickles came before Ernie in the book, but it made five quarts. Ernie's recipe made two quarts. Less was better.

So, Tuesday morning, I started cutting up cucumbers and onions. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 quarts of cucumbers, and six cups of onions. Well, I cut up the cucumbers into my measuring cup and dumped them into the big ceramic bread bowl, where they were to soak for three hours. It wasn't until I had cut up all the cucumbers and an entire bag of onions that I realized that my measuring cup held two cups, so I had doubled the recipe.

Just as I was finishing up the chopping, my son came in with a bag of groceries. He had found a recipe for chocolate cake to be cooked in a slow cooker and volunteered to make it for dinner. Now that the bar exam is over, he has some time on his hands. I gave him a brief lesson in separating eggs, volunteered to lick the beaters, and left for the gym.

When I got back, he was still there, and offered to help me with the pickles. Things went better than they had gone at Mommio's, because I had my canning equipment and I felt free to sterilize the jars in the dishwasher. We put all the spices and vinegar into the pot, boiled it briefly and loaded it into the hot, sterilized jars. They were good. Son liked them and ate an entire half jar. Husband likes them too. These particular pickles can be termed a success. Maybe doubling the recipe by mistake wasn't such a bad thing after all. One thing. It called for turmeric. I didn't have turmeric. However, since turmeric is a prime ingredient in curry powder, I put in 1/2 teaspoonful of curry powder. It seemed to work.

One other thing. Jean Hewlett is really not the cookbook editor for a novice pickle maker. The recipe does not say how one seals jars, for example. Here's what you do. Y ou must sterilize the jars, the new, out of the box lids and the bands in boiling water. After you fill up the jars, put on the lids and then keep them in place with the bands. Then, boil up your enormous pot of water. What you really want here is a canning pot, with a rack on the bottom. The rack is to fish the hot jars out of just subboiling water without burning your fingers. Once the water in your huge pot is boiling merrily, put the jars in the rack and lower them into the water. They should be submerged in the water. Then, put a tightly fitting lid on the pot and let it boil for 15 minutes. This is according to The Joy of Cooking, which is a good cookbook for the novice pickle maker. It gets pretty steamy, but that is how you seal the jars. The boiling process forces all the air out of the jar and creates a vaccum.

Ernie's Mustard Pickles

1 1/2 one-inch chunks halved, peeled cucumbers
2 large onions chopped (about six cups)
3 tablespoons salt
1 quart water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons celery seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1. In a crock or earthenware bowl, combine the cucumbers, onions, salt and water. Let stand at room temperature three hours.
2. In a saucepan, mix together the sugar, flour, celery seeds, mustard and turneric. Gradually stir in the vinegar. Heat, while stirring, until mixture thickens and is smooth.
3. Drain cucumbers and onions, rinse brefly and add to boiling mustard sauce. Bring to a boil again. Pour into hot sterilized jars. Seal. Cool and store in a cool, dark, dry place.
Makes about 4 pints.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Wilted Lettuce

As far as lettuce goes, I believe it should be eaten raw and should be crisp. Once, in my youth, Mommio prepared cooked lettuce. Now, I was much better about eating what was put in front of me than her own children, but even I baulked at cooked lettuce. So I wasn't positive about this recipe, but decided to go ahead because the salad recipes didn't quite fit with the other stuff we had. Everyone, even I, liked it. One thing about this project is, I have discovered that things that one thinks might taste disgusting are actually quite good. It is sort of like spinach.
The recipe does not say if you are supposed to serve it immediately, or if you can chill it. I made it about half an hour ahead and chilled it. About the bacon. I used slab bacon, which is much thicker than the stuff you get encased in plastic. It's also much better.

Wilted Lettuce

6 slices bacon, cubed
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 teaspoon bown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 cups torn-up Boston lettuce

1. Cook the bacon until crisp, remove vits and reserve. Remove and discard all but three tablespoons fat from the pan.
2. Add the vinegar, brown sugar, salt and pepper to pan. Bring to a boil and pour over lettuce.
Add reserved bacon bits and toss.
Serves four.

Zucchini Appetizer

I had been thinking of some fish related appetizer, like Lobster Canapes, or Scallops Mayonnaise, or Crevettes Paula. But then I decided it would just be too much fish. Also, Ed, the farmer, had given me a large zucchini, which he was probably delighted to get rid of. I had made half of it into Ratatouille, but I still had the other half. My stay at the apartment was winding down, so I was intent on finishing up leftover stuff. This was proclaimed tasty by Mommio and Ann, can be done in advance, and does not heat up the kitchen.
In a couple of areas, I did not follow the recipe absolutely faithfully. I couldn't find chervil, and since I had half a large zucchini, I did not stuff the mixture into zucchini shells to serve it.

Zucchini Appetizer

1 large zucchini
2 tablespoons olive oil
one medium size onion, finely chopped
1/2 clove garlic (really, people, use a whole one)
1/2 tablespoon wine vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon chervil
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
toast triangles

1. Halve the zucchini lengthwise and scoop out the flesh, leaving a one-quarter inch shell. Chop the flesh.
2 Heat the oil and saute the onion, garlic and chopped succhini in it until tender. Increase heat to evaporate any excess moisture.
3 Add the vinegar, salt pepper, chervil, tarragon and parsley. Pile into zucchini shells and serve warm or cold, with toast triangles.
Four servings.

Rhode Island Clam Cakes

Last Wednesday, I invited Mommio and another Ann to dinner in the apartment. Ann has lived near the farm since I was a teenager, but I'm only just getting to know her. True to my vow to stick with the Northeast section of the cookbook until I finished it, we ate Northeast food. I decided on the clam cakes because, even though the recipe called for a frying basket, I figured I could do it in a frying pan. And I did. It's hard to know if quality suffers from doing things like this. I've never had a genuine Rhode Island Clam Cake, cooked in a deep fryer, to compare mine with.
In fact, although I am a New Englander by birth, my exposure to Rhode Island is limited to taking the train through it, or landing at the Providence Airport to avoid Logan on a trip to Boston. I may never have eaten an actual meal in the confines of the great state of RI.
But, these were good, and interesting. They reminded me of the oyster fritters I ate at the Kent Island Fire Hall Election Day Dinner in 1978. They contian baking powder, and hence, puff up. Mine were about an inch thick. They are quick, and don't heat up the kitchen. So, if you have leftover clams, or are sick of crab cakes, or something, try these. Oh, yeah, and the fish guy at Big Y told me that canned clams contain more preservatives. so stick with frozen.

Rhode Island Clam Cakes

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup clams, drained and chopped.
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup milk
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
fat or oil for deep frying

1. Combine the eggs, clams lat, pepper, milk, flour and baking powder
2. Form into small cakes and fry, a few at a time, in afrying basketin fat or oil heated to 360 degrees. Drain on paper towels.
Four servings.