Clam Chowder

Chowda Time!

I ate a whole lotta Campbell's soup growing up.  Beef & barley, chicken noodle, cream of mushroom (oh how I love thee), but I think my favorite had to be clam chowder.  Oh was it creamy! Oh was it salty! Oh was it...oh it was everything!

Not everyone felt the same way, like that asshole in kindergarten who said my beloved clam chowder, which I had brought to school in a thermos, looked like throw-up.  Clearly his childhood was not enriched by the wonders and breadth of the canned soup aisle. Asshole.

Trying to revive some of that ol' chowda memories (sans Mr. Asshole), I went to the grocery store and spent one bazillion dollars on littleneck clams.  It ended up being worth it because the flavor was amazing and better than when I had used chopped claims in the past (either canned or frozen), but I certainly do not turn my nose up at chopped clams and highly recommend them if you don't want to use fresh clams.

I remember you, asshole, and lemme tell you this clam chowder is good.

Adapted from Epicurious

• 40 small clams, such as littlenecks (about 2 inches in diameter--my grocery store sold about 45 in a bag that cost, again, about a bazillion dollars)
• If you're using chopped clams (frozen or canned), you'll need about 1 1/2 cups
• 1/2 cup water
• 8 oz bottled clam juice (or you could just use water, for a total of 1 1/2 cups water)
• 3 bacon slices, cut into 1/4" dice (you could do 2 slices, you could do 4--3 seemed about right for the amount of clams I had and how much bacon flavor I wanted)
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 russet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/4" dice
• 1 TBS butter
• 1 cup half and half
• 2 TBS finely chopped parsley

Serves 4 to 6

First, rinse and scrub your clams well to get rid of loose dirt and grit hanging onto the shells.  Discard any clams with broken shells (a little chip here and there is fine, but a few of mine looked like they had been mauled).

Place clams in pot (mine was 4 quarts) with water and clam juice (or all water, if you're not using clam juice).

Turn heat to medium high and cover pot so clams can steam for about 5 to 8 minutes, stirring every once in a while.  Remove clams to a separate bowl as they open--that started happening for me about the 5-minute mark and kept going. It was like a game--you pick out one, and then lo and behold another one opens! This was very fun for me, which should tell you something about my life.

Pickin' out clams--this one was a gaper.

THROW AWAY the ones that don't open--they have spoiled and may cause serious gastrointestinal stress if you eat them.  Lemme tell you about the last time I had a bad clam.  Well maybe I won't.  Okay I'll say this--you know those juice cleanses they talk about? Save some money and just eat a bad clam.

All innocuous-looking but this guy really just wants to invite you to an evening with the toilet.

Turn off the heat.  When clams are cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the shells and build your little pile of oceanic wonder.  Then roughly chop them.

Pre-mutilation

Pour cooking liquid through a fine-meshed sieve lined with a paper towel or cheesecloth into a bowl.  Don't pour all the way--leave the grit behind.  Clean out the pot well--we'll use it again in the final product.

See? Grit, I tell ya.

Prep your bacon, onion and potatoes.  

Hm, my bacon looks more like 1/2" dice. Ne'er you mind.

Melt butter in the cleaned pot over medium heat, and add the bacon.

Cook, stirring, until golden brown, then add the onion and cook (still stirring) until softened.  This whole process will probably take about 8 to 10 minutes.

Put the potatoes in the pot, along with the reserved clam liquid.  If you are using chopped clams, I would start with about 2 cups of clam juice and 1/2 cup of water and go from there.

Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until the potatoes are tender.  The original recipe said 3 minutes, but I must have created some husky pieces of potato because it took more like 10 minutes.

Stir in clams, half and half, parsley and black pepper.  You will likely not need any salt, although no one's prohibiting you from adding it.

Ladle into bowls and serve.  We ate ours with some toasted sourdough bread.  This isn't super thick like the kind you get out of a can--although you could do a little cornstarch slurry or use a roux to thicken. And that would be more effort. Power to you.

Ta-da!

Lamb Tagine

My parents came over for dinner the other night, and my mom wanted to bring a red Portuguese wine (Duoro, for those of you curious) for us to try.  I had originally thought of making a linguini with clams or shrimp scampi, but changed course due to my mom's enthusiasm over the wine.  While I am not usually a stickler for matching just the right wine with whatever I'm eating, it is a general haphazard concern that becomes more pronounced when seafood is at stake.  A mismatched wine can be no big deal (at least to me), but a mismatched wine with seafood really throws a metallic off-taste to things that makes me very sad.

After a little research, I decided that lamb would be the way to go.  Somehow I settled on lamb tagine.  I used a combination of recipes I adapted from Food & Wine and NY Times.  In many of the lamb tagine recipes I saw, you brown the cubed lamb meat before braising it in a spicy fragrant mixture.  I am not a fan of browning small chunks of meat before a long cooking process--the spattering and turning of itty bitty pieces to get all 6 sides nicely browned makes me...very sad.  Apparently it's not hard to make me very sad. Anyway, what I liked about the Food & Wine recipe was that there was no browning, just a long marinade before moving onto the main event.  So yes, you do have to plan ahead to give the lamb enough time to marinate, but I was willing to make that sacrifice in order to avoid the fine spray of oil that would cover my cooktop if I had gone the browning route.

As for the NY Times recipe, there were some flavor components that I liked from that recipe, namely tomatoes and orange juice, that I decided to incorporate.

Ingredients

Marinade
1/4 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 two-inch strips of lemon peel (you want just the peel, leave the white pith)
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 TBS kosher salt (less if using table salt)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 cinnamon stick or 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of saffron threads (I happened to have this, but it is $$$, so consider this optional--you know, as if you were considering any of this as mandatory with penalty of death if not followed exactly)

2 1/2 pounds lamb stew meat (like shoulder or leg), cut into 1-inch chunks

Braising...stuff
1 medium onion, halved and sliced into 1/4 inch thick half-moons
juice from 1 orange
one 2-inch strip of orange peel (this could also go in the marinade--I was kind of making things up as I went along, which is what I'm sure you want to hear if you're going to use this recipe)
one 14 oz can of diced tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth
1 medium carrot, sliced 1/2 inch thick
1/4 to 1/3 cup green olives, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley

Serves about 6

Combine the marinade ingredients in a large bowl.  There's a lot of yummy stuff in there.

Add lamb, stir to make sure the marinade is evenly distributed.  No one should be neglected.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours.

Add the onion, orange juice, orange peel, tomatoes, and chicken broth to a large pot (an enameled cast iron casserole works well--it should be at least 4 quarts).

Add the lamb and scrape in any residual marinade from the bowl.  Bring everything to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 1/2 hours.  Add in carrots, and cook for another 30 to 45 minutes.

At some point I felt like my liquid wasn't reducing enough so I uncovered the pot and let it simmer for about 30 minutes, but it may turn out differently for you.  Anyway, at the end of cooking, stir in the olives and parsley.  Serve with couscous.

I loved this dish--the marinade packs a lot of flavor, and then you have the play of the vinegary olives against the sweetness of the carrots and orange.  I highly recommend for a weekend winter meal.

Ta-da!

Time Out

I've been lazy about blogging lately.  There are a few draft posts of recipes I have made but honestly I haven't been that excited about the things that I've made lately. I'm in a post-holiday slump.  Kevin suggested that I think of other things to blog about.  I'm going to ignore that helpful, positive suggestion and instead, put myself in a time-out.

This is how the pros to a time-out.

Bunni wedging herself in the corner by the front door. Totally random (she must have had a guilty conscience about something, like always backing away from me when I try to embrace her in a soul-crushing bear hug)

What, Bunni, what did you do?

I know you did something, it's written all over your face. 

Yes, hang your head in shame, little girl. Hang it.

You're round-eyed and horrified at what you've done, aren't you?

Oh wait, you're just sleepy.

No remorse, I tell you.

Happy Birthday Pugs

The pugs turned 6 years old a few weeks ago (this is late).  We don't typically make a big deal out of their birthdays, because, well, we forget to (so awful!), but this year things were different.  We just happened to be on one of our 5x/week trips to a local bakery that makes these little wonders called "pupcakes"!

How did the pugs handle this birthday hedonism?

I presented to them da goods. Bunni is mesmerized.  Notice Kevin's hand in the background keeping Bunni's ass planted on the floor.

A closer look, madame? Perhaps you would like just a teensy leetle bite to make sure zat zeese pupcakes are to your liking?

What part of "teensy leetle bite" did you not understand??

While Bunni cleverly destructed her pupcake in .001 second, Rikki's strategy was to lock her jaws around the pupcake entire, trot around the living room in simultaneous jubilee and utter fear that someone would rob her of her precious pupcake, only to be nabbed by Kevin all wide-jawed and just bizarre-looking.  All the while, mind you, not actually biting into the pupcake.

She still doesn't get it.

After some considerable time (and, ahem, Kevin retrieving the pupcake from her jaws and breaking it up for her), she finally did get the hang of the pupcake.

After the carnage, the pugs retreated to their bed.

I expected gratitude after the pupcake extravaganza. I expected unadulterated love and adoration.

Instead, I received one sleepy look and one "what da f&#! you want?" look.

Rikki did open her eyes in hopeful anticipation of a stray pupcake.

Bunni, that blessedly iron-hearted pug of mine, gave me a glare that said it all: "You gave me one pupcake.  One. I don't understand how you expect me to live."

Roasted Mushrooms

I love mushrooms. I think they're delicious, I like the texture, and they add such a meaty component to dishes.  I know not everyone feels the same way about mushrooms, which makes me sad.  The cafeteria in my office building had roasted mushrooms every day as a selection in the buffet for about a month, which made up for the sadness.  But then the sadness returned when they stopped offering the mushrooms.  My emotions are being toyed with.

If you do like mushrooms, here's a recipe for an easy side dish. Or, if you're like me, you'll eat the entire pound of mushrooms all by yourself as a whole meal. It happens.

I looked at various roasted mushroom recipes and liked this one the best, and adapted it just the tiniest bit.

Ingredients

1 lb. mushrooms (crimini or white)
2 TBS plus 1 tsp olive oil
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 TBS finely minced garlic
1 TBS balsamic vinegar
1 TBS finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 TBS chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Serves 4 as a side dish, or 1 if we're talking about me

About prepping mushrooms: they say you're not supposed to rinse mushrooms because they soak up too much water, and that the best way is to wipe each f*(#$ one with a damp paper towel.  However, I was watching Jacques Pepin and he said washing mushrooms is fine, as long as you wait to do it right before you use them (otherwise the water soaks in too much, causes soft spots, something like that).  So I decided to side with Jacques on this one since it made my life easier.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Crank it!

Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Trim the dried ends of the washed mushrooms and quarter them--some of then were petite enough that I just halved them, or, if extra mini petite, just left them whole.

Toss with 2 TBS olive oil, salt and pepper, and place mushrooms onto a baking sheet.  Give them some space so they actually roast instead of just steam each other.  Roast the mushrooms for about 15 minutes, stirring things around halfway through.

While the mushrooms are roasting, prepare the very complicated sauce.  What you do is combine the remaining 1 tsp of olive oil, balsamic, garlic, and thyme.

Toss the sauce with the roasted mushrooms (if there is a lot of liquid in your baking sheet, pour that off before this step).

Put the mushrooms back into the oven for another 10 minutes.

And enjoy.  I think they say mushrooms have a lot of umami. I find them addictive. Hence a pound of them disappearing into my mouth in 10 minutes.

Ta-da!

For the Twilight Fans, Again

Remember the cupcakes I came across last year that commemorated the release of Eclipse? Well, I'm a little late in posting this, but a local bakery made a very special Breaking Dawn cupcake a few weeks ago.

Reader, I ate it.

Oh it's just too much fun. Although do you know what's *not* fun? Not actually seeing Breaking Dawn in the theater, just being a sad half hanger-on by taking a picture of a cupcake with a photo from the movie.  When I suggested seeing the movie to a certain someone, that certain someone countered with Harold & Kumar (which I have nothing against, but that wasn't the point).  My life.  It's the kind of thing where I would probably have to ask to see this with Kevin as a Christmas gift, the resistance is that high.  

You're saying to yourself: why don't you go see it with a friend? And then I would mutter to myself: most of my friends would react that same way as Kevin. I'm an outlier. It is my burden to bear. And I bear it with all kinds of angst, half-gasps, and incoherent sentences.  

Chicken and Dirty Rice

I'm sipping on an apple cocktail.  It's deleeeshous! And strong.  It took some stocking up of my non-existent liquor cabinet in order to make, but once as I bought the basics and made the thyme simple syrup, it was bottoms up. Okay not exactly bottoms up, since, and this is worth repeating, the drink is strong stuff.  It's not the most quick-and-easy of cocktails, but the making of a cocktail is a nice little ritual, isn't it? Plus, I feel ever so sophisticated. I fool everybody. And by "everybody" I mean my husband and the two pugs, the only living beings who are around while I engage in all this fine measuring and ice-and-liquor shaking and whatnot.

FYI--I've discovered that you don't need a real cocktail shaker to make cocktails. I used an old jam jar.  

Is there anything like the sound of ice gently clinking against glass?  It's such a happy, light tinkling sound.  Although when I hear the word "tinkle", I think of #1, and that's not what I mean in this instance.

By the way, this is not a sweet cocktail. While it has apple cider and the thyme simple syrup, don't be expecting Martinelli's (which I happen to love) with some alcohol thrown in. 

Onward to the point of this post...

As I mentioned, I've been starting to use my slow cooker and recipes from Slow Cooker Revolution by America's Test Kitchen.  You're like, oh my god stop mentioning ATK I can't take it anymore. And I'm like I can't. I just can't stop.

One of my favorite recipes so far is this Southern Style Chicken and Dirty Rice. Prep for slow cooker recipes can be super easy or pretty involved.  This recipe is an in-betweener.  But very worth it.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 8 ounces of kielbasa sausage, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 onion, minced
• 2 celery ribs, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups of low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed 
• Salt and pepper
• 2 cups instant rice
• 2 scallions, sliced thin (I completely forgot these when I made the recipe, which renders them "optional")

Serves 6 to 8.

Heat oil in skillet on medium to medium high heat.  Cook kielbasa until well-browned, about 5 minutes.

While kielbasa is browning, prep your aromatics.

Add the onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, chili powder, thyme and cayenne to the kielbasa until veggies are softened and onion is lightly browned, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Add flour. The two-word simplistic beauty of a command sentence.Which I just ruined with my rambling.

Stir for about 2 minutes to incorporate and cook flour.  Then whisk in broth, making sure to scrape up tasty bits on the bottom of the pan. Transfer mixture to slow cooker.

See? Those are the bits that you want to scrape up.  I am so helpful.

At this point you're wondering how the slow cooker makes life any easier, because this sure doesn't sound any easier than a regular recipe, and I wondered the same thing. I think this recipe is a great example of how the biggest benefit of the slow cooker comes after the prep, when you're letting it sit there doing its thing.  Be patient!

Anyway, season your chicken thighs with salt and pepper on both sides.

Place the chicken in the slow cooker and move it around a bit so that it's covered in the sauce.  Cook on low for 4 to 6 hours (I did 5 hours).

After you've gone to get a massage (or 3) and return to your slow cooker deliciousness, break apart the chicken with any utensil, or just look at it really, really intensely--the meat falls apart quite easily. Stir in rice and 1 tsp salt and cook on high for 30 minutes.

I know, you're like, why would I use instant rice?  Well, that's what the book said and we all know that ATK cooks things every which way, and they mentioned that using regular rice could lead to uneven cooking.  I don't know about you, but the last thing I wanted was for this thing to be cooking for 5 hours only to find that the dish would be ruined by misbehaving rice.  So Minute Rice it was.

This dish is really quite good, and I highly recommend it.

Ta-da!