Kitchen Experimentation: Chowder

A few weeks ago, I decided to make a chowder for dinner. Aside from a Bear Creek soup mix, I've never really made soup before, and this was done almost entirely from scratch. I looked up two recipes online just to see how to start. One chowder recipe called for a roux, but I didn't feel like doing that. The other one called for chicken stock and heavy cream. I had already planned for something like that, so that's what I went with.

The ingredients I used were:
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp dill weed
2-3 carrots chopped
2-3 potatoes diced
1 pound tilapia
1 package imitation crab
1 can of corn
1 onion chopped
2-3 tbsp flour
butter
salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, season salt

I peeled and diced the potatoes and put them in the corning ware pan with some melted butter, onion and garlic powders, and season salt. They went into the oven at 400 degrees for about a half hour.

I could have just eaten the potatoes by themselves when they were done. Although, I did over season them a bit to stand alone.

In the large soup pot, I set the four cups of chicken broth to simmer with the dill, some fresh-ground pepper and the peeled and chopped carrots.

Nothing too exciting here.

In the frying pan, I sauteed the corn and onion in some leftover bacon grease. This came out really well too and I could have just had this as a side if I something else for dinner.

What isn't made better by being cooked in bacon grease?

Once the potatoes were done, I put them into the pot with the chicken stock, carrots, corn, onion, and various spices. Then I added a cup of heavy cream. I let it simmer a little longer. The butter that had been on the potatoes gave the chowder more of a yellow color than I had anticipated. The broth was also thinner than I had anticipated at this point, so I added about 2.5-3 tablespoons of flour. I whisked the flour in, adding it slowly so it didn't get all clumpy.

We're almost there. And please ignore the splatters on the stove.

I cut up the tilapia and imitation crab meat into chunks and added them to the soup. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes and then we were ready to serve.

Mmmmmmmmm.

I served the soup with slices of Vienna bread that Logan picked out in the store. I let him choose between that and some French bread.

I repeat. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Everyone liked it. It was pretty similar to other chowder I've had before, so I must have done something right. If I do it again, there are a couple things I would do differently. I would have done something to the tilapia to take away some of the fishiness of it. I wasn't expecting it to be as fishy as it turned out to be. I also would have only added the imitation crab for the last five minutes or so. It softened up a lot more than I expected in the 15 minutes it was simmering with everything else, and I thought the consistency in the finished product should have been firmer.


Ava sat in her high chair and watched while I cooked. It's funny how she changes so much in a few weeks. These days, unless you're putting food in her mouth (pureed carrots tonight), she wont sit in the high chair for all that long without throwing a fit. She's just got to be the center of attention. Everything turned out to be a little much for her and she fell asleep mid-bottle while I was cooking.

Aww, they're so cute when they're sleeping and not screaming.

Kitchen Experimentation 2-10-09

I actually made this on Sunday, but haven't gotten around to blogging about it until today. It seems that Sundays have become the day to play in the kitchen if I'm not working. Two months ago when I went grocery shopping I bought some stew meat, not knowing exactly what I would do with it, but wanting to do something with it. Saturday night we were looking throught the cook books and couldn't find anything that we wanted to try, and then Brandi remembered a recipe she'd seen on a mommy message board she's on. It sounded good, so we decided to go with that. It didn't have a name, but here's the recipe:

1 cup beef broth or red wine (we used a 2002 Merlot)

2 pounds stew meat

1 package onion soup mix

1 can cream of mushroom soup

chopped mushrooms (optional)

Put in the crock pot and cook on low for eight hours. Just before serving, stir in a 1/4 cup to a 1/2 cup of sour cream.

Here it is before cooking. It kind of looked like brains. Mmmmmmm brainzzzzzzz.

Here it is after cooking for eight hours, but before the sour cream was added.

It was served over rice with some cauliflower.

It was quite tasty, if a bit winey, when it was done, and the rice soaked up much of the extra sauce. The meat was extremely tender after simmering for so long and the house was filled with the aroma of it cooking all day, which was pleasent. I'd definitely make it again.

Kitchen Experimentation, January 11 2009

It was another day for experimentation in the kitchen. Being my first day off in a couple of weeks, and since we still had the crock pot out from last night's dinner, I felt like trying something new. Today we had chicken. Here's what I did:

3 Chicken Breasts - cut into about one inch chunks
3 Medium Potatoes - mostly peeled and cut into about one inch chunks
1/4 Cup Onion - chopped
2-3 Medium Cloves of Garlic - Crushed
1 Can Asparagus
1 Teaspoon Celery Seed
1/2 Teaspoon Rosemary
1/2 Teaspoon Dill
Dash of Salt
1-1/2 Cups Chicken Broth

I put all of this in the crock pot on high heat for about five hours and stirred it every once in a while.

Here's the before shot:

Here's the after shot (not much difference):

It turned out ok. Everything was nice and tender. It also made the house smell nice. Brandi said all she could taste was the asparagus and rosemary. I mostly tasted the rosemary. If I do it again, I will cut back on or eliminate the rosemary and use more dill. Unfortunately, I'm now all out of dill. I love dill on chicken. Grilled chicken with dill and a little celery salt is magnificent.

What's For Dinner

I don't really have anything to talk about today, so since we just got done with dinner a little while ago, I'll talk about that. Tonight we had a genuine Matt Creation.

Brandi pulled out a round steak today, so we had that as a starting point. But what to go with it? My first thought was some Stovetop stuffing, but nah. Been there, done that. What else do we have...ah, noodles.

The round steak was seasoned with garlic powder, a little salt, Italian Seasoning from the spice rack and a splash of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. It was then grilled for about four minutes per side over a medium flame. I did have to brush the snow off the grill first. The round steak was a little thinner than I figured, so a little part of one piece got crispified, but I just cut around that later.

Then I made a pot of vermicelli and spaghetti (I was using up the last of a couple of boxes of pasta) and I boiled some broccoli.

While that was all going on I made a thin sauce that was composed of a little of the Worcestershire, some soy sauce, a little water, two cloves of crushed garlic, a little of the Italian Seasoning and a little garlic powder and whisked that all together. All in all, it was maybe a third to a half of a cup of sauce, with this stuff you really don't need much.

With the round steak inside I cut that into thin-ish strips. The noodles were put in a large bowl with the broccoli on top. The round steak was added to that and then the sauce was poured over all of it. The combination was tossed together and ta-da! we're done.

As strong as the sauce is by itself, since there's so little of it mixed with everything else it creates a nice balance of flavor. I've done this a few times before with other combinations of meat and veggies, so I didn't think it would turn out bad.

And that's that. Logan partook of a couple noodles and a little of the round steak without the sauce, and then he had some applesauce.

I really do enjoy experimenting in the kitchen when I'm making dinner. Most of the time it turns out pretty good, but then every once in a while, not so much. Perhaps I'll have to post some more kitchen experiments in the future.

What's For Dinner?: A Rant

Seems like ranting has been the flavor (ha!) of the day around a few of my regular haunts out on the intertubes, and damn it, I have a rant too. But first, lets answer the question above. What was for dinner tonight? Grilled cheese and shitty French onion soup. And why, Matt, would you be having grilled cheese and shitty French onion soup for dinner? Because I'm a little tired of making dinner, that's why.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind cooking for my family. I enjoy cooking and I enjoy experimenting with food, but every once in a while, it would be nice for someone else to make dinner. In Brandi's defense, she doesn't enjoy cooking and she has to take care of Logan all day, so she's not exactly keen on jumping into the kitchen at the end of the day. She does make dinner, but only on the nights where I'm working, which means she's making dinner two nights out of seven. Then there's Vern, my father-in-law, who made baked chicken, rice and some kind of canned vegitables just about every night of the week, unless he had dinner with someone else.

Part of the problem with making dinner when I come home is that after being at work all day, Logan wants to spend time with his daddy. This makes making dinner much more difficult when there's a screaming toddler getting in the way for every step you take in the kitchen. If I manage to get him distracted in the living room with something, then he has some kind of internal clock that tells him he needs to scream every two minutes and run into the kitchen to make sure I didn't sneak away somewhere.

Most recently, though, I've just become a little tired of cooking. When I ask for volunteers, no one ever wants to step forward. A typical exchange might go like this.

Logan: screams (translates into OMG Where'd daddy go!?!) *runs into kitchen*
Me: Do you think you could distract him for a while so I can make dinner?
Brandi: I've been dealing with him all day and he just wants his daddy.
Me: *picks up Logan and tries to cook single handed*
Logan: Want's to play, not be carried around the kitchen.
Me: This isn't working. Could you please watch him for just a little longer?
Brandi: He doesn't want me.
Me: Ugh, well does anyone else want to make dinner then?
*cue crickets*

Another thing that bothers me is that when dinner's ready, I let everyone know, and usually have to let them know again before they rouse themselves to come eat. Then, everyone gets their plates ready first and I get at it last by which time it's not really hot any more.

So that's why tonight was grilled cheese and this god awful soup mix that I had some left over from another recipe. It was simple and quick and I didn't really think about it. Even so, I ended up getting at least half of everyone's sandwhich darker than they prefer.

Ugh, I feel like I have more to say, but I'm out of rant juice.