Vegetable Chowder

Yesterday I met up with some of the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers for a soup swap. I brought my tub of chowder and went home with five large containers of soup, which will feed me for days. My offering was a vegetable chowder.

• 4 tsp canola oil
• 1/2 cup green bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup shallots, minced
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 3 cups corn kernels
• 3/4 lb red-skinned potatoes, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 3 cups milk (skim if you're fat-content-conscious, 2% if you want a rich flavor)

Heat the oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the bell peppers and shallots; cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the curry powder and cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant, 30 seconds.

Stir in the corn, potatoes, broth, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the vegetables are tender, 10 minutes.

Transfer 1/2 cup of the vegetable mixture to a blender; add the milk and puree until nearly smooth. Return to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring, until just heated through. Makes four 1 1/2-cup servings.

(adapted from Weight Watchers Ultimate Flex & Core,  "Fresh Corn Chowder," p. 52)

As always, I made some modifications...since I was making this for a larger number of people than specified, I used more corn, more peppers, more potatoes, more broth, and more milk. I also sprinkled a healthy portion of cayenne pepper into it, giving it a spicy kick which elicited a number of comments.

This recipe is my favorite way to use up large amounts of fresh corn scraped from the cob during the summer. When my farm share yields 6 big ears of corn, instead of eating them one at a time, I make this chowder. I also like to use red peppers and potatoes from my farm share.

It was lovely to see the ladies of the MLFB again...I think my last event was the holiday cookie exchange in December 2009!

January Spice Rack Challenge: Rosemary

My, my, my it has been a while since I posted here, hasn't it? I find the lack of attention paid to this blog rather shameful, considering how much I cook. Fortunately, I have an excuse to resuscitate my food blog: a monthly cooking challenge put together by my fellow Michigan Lady Food Blogger Mother's Kitchen: the Spice Rack Challenge. The focus for January was on rosemary.


Rosemary. It grew wild and untended in my childhood home of northern California. There was a particularly lush, fragrant patch in a grassy area on my walking route home from my elementary school. I forgot about the rich piney smell of rosemary bushes warmed by the sun until I went back to California for vacation in 2009. I discovered rosemary being used as landscaping near the house in which I was staying.

It's...a shrubbery! Of rosemary!

It smelled fantastic!

I hosted a large gathering at my house at the beginning of the month which necessitated the cooking of several different crowd-pleasing dishes. Along with the black bean chili and the beef chili and baked ham I made this lamb stew, one of my cold-weather favorites.

Savory Lamb Stew (adapted from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook, 2006, p. 203)

Ingredients:

• 4 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 lb boneless lamb leg meat, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
• 2 tsp fresh sage, minced
• 2 tsp fresh thyme, minced
• 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup water
• 2 medium red-skinned potatoes, cubed
• 2 cups cut green beans
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, minced

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil. Saute the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic until the onion is translucent, 8-10 minutes. Add the lamb and saute until no longer pink, about 4 minutes. Add the wine and cook for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, rosemary, sage, thyme, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and 1/2 cup of the hot water, stir, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes, green beans, and the remaining 1/2 cup of water, cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender and the liquid has reduced, about 20 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the parsley.

I quadrupled this recipe for my party because I was expecting about 20 people at my house. This meant I used almost all of the little container of fresh rosemary I had purchased. It was a huge success and I had several people tell me it was absolutely delicious. You'd never guess it was a Weight Watchers recipe!

I hope the coming months of the Spice Rack Challenge will motivate me to resume regular posting. I have a food blog for a reason: I love to cook and I love to eat, and at one time I wanted to share that with whoever was interested. I can't wait to see what next month's challenge is!

Pâté de Foie de Porc

That's fancy talk for "pork liver pâté," which is what I made for the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers' "April in Paris" gathering on April 26. The theme for this event was French cooking, using Julia Childs' seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking as inspiration. (Aside: Julia was a fellow Smith College alumna, class of '34. Smithies represent!)

I decided I wanted to use the pork liver from my Back Forty Acres hog for pâté. I honestly didn't know what on earth I was going to do with those pork livers. This presented itself as the perfect opportunity. I awakened the livers from their frozen slumber and got them ready to perform.

When I read the recipe I had chosen more thoroughly, I realized it called for ground pork livers. Oops. Well, break out my trusty food processor!

Uh, gross. I can only describe this as "liver slurry." I was fairly disgusted.

Stirring in the cream. No, this recipe is NOT healthy. What on earth gave you that idea?

After dealing with the red mush of puréed liver and cream, I had to console myself with a hearty adult beverage, in this case, Dark Horse Brewing's "Tres" Blueberry Stout. It calmed my nerves.

Sautéeing onions and herbs: something I've done scores of times. This, I can handle.

All mixed together and ready to go. It doesn't look quite as nasty now.

Pâté on display: the finished product.

La table français.

A few of the MLFB gang.

I confess I did not get my pâté recipe from "MTAOFC" (as we started referring to it). I was too lazy to procure a copy from my library so I just looked up a recipe online.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground pork liver
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup finely chopped onions
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 1/2 pounds ground pork
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1/3 cup brandy
• 3 bay leaves

Put the pork liver in a bowl. Add the cream and let stand for one hour. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Sauté the onions in the butter over medium heat for about five minutes, or until they are very soft. Add the garlic, parsley, thyme and basil and mix well. Remove from the heat. Place the ground pork in a mixing bowl. Add the vegetable mixture, ground liver and cream mixture, eggs, salt, pepper, flour and brandy. Mix well. Spoon the meat mixture into a loaf pan and top with the bay leaves. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Place the loaf pan in a larger pan that has been filled halfway with hot water. Bake for 1-1/2 hours. Carefully drain off excess fat. Cool. Cover again tightly with aluminum foil and weight it down on top with two or three canned goods. Refrigerate for at least eight hours. Remove the bay leaves. Serve with toast points or crackers.

Summer in January

The spread

On January 24 the lovely ladies of the MLFB descended on my house for a late-afternoon get-together that was intended to transport us back to those warm and luxurious days of summer. If it had to be winter outside, then it could also be summer inside, if only for a few hours.

I can't emphasize enough how fortunate I feel to be part of this group of women. You guys (gals?) rule!

This is what happens when you spend the first part of the afternoon listening to opera and get home 45 minutes before the party starts: total biscuit chaos.

Patti, Diana, and Jen (Zora on the couch)

Zora, Cathy, Kim, and Alex (I apologize for the big fingerprint smudge)

Cindy (aka MK) and Alex's fabulous mojitos in the foreground (oh, so divine!)

Maggie's miniature cones and berry sorbet...yum!

Patti's blackberry pudding made with frozen blackberries from Locavorious

The way it should be: an empty glass at the end of the day

Holiday Treats Exchange

Buddy thinks: "If they just look away for a second...all of this could be mine!"

On Saturday I met up with the lovely Michigan Lady Food Bloggers at Patti's house for a cookie exchange. Well, not really a cookie exchange, but an all-out treats extravaganza. A cookietravaganza? Either way, it was good eats, good treats, and good conversation. I brought three varieties of cookie to the gathering: espresso biscuits, pecan snowdrops, and molasses spice cookies. I came home with my biggest plastic container bursting with about a dozen different kinds of treats. It was another fine evening of merriment. Even the foul weather could not dampen the mood.

The madness begins!

My haul

The aftermath