New England Clam Chowder
May 19, 2008 by Andrea
Filed under Pork, Seafood, Soups & Stews
New England clam chowder ranks in my Top 10 list of comfort foods, and it’s one of my favorite things to order in seafood restaurants. Recipes for clam chowder are hotly contested, and if you get into a discussion about chowder with New Englanders you are likely to get a wide variety of opinions on what is the best clam chowder. When I fix this soup I feel like I’m back in Maine, and that’s good enough for me; serve it en boule and I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.
This recipe starts with cooking some bacon, then sautéing onions in the bacon drippings, cooking it all with clams, clam juice or stock, potatoes, thyme, and bay leaf, and then adding the clams and corn and thickening it all up with some heavy cream. This chowder doesn’t require loads of salt because of the bacon, plus canned clams are kept in brine, and the stock will be salted as well, so I use a light hand with the salt. I almost always use more than the amount of bacon specified in a recipe because I love my bacon. I confess I had a 12-ounce package and it all went into the pot for this chowder. All that flavor gets into the onions and then the flour soaks up some of it and it infuses the potatoes and mixes with the clams and creates a thing of beauty. We only have bacon a few times a year, so by golly I’m going to enjoy it! Read more
Grilled Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs
April 29, 2008 by Andrea
Filed under Vegetables
Summer grilling season is fast approaching, and the bug has already bitten us. We started grilling a couple weeks ago when we had a few warm days, and we’ll probably grill every weekend and a few days during the week between now and winter. We usually do at least one simple grill a week with hamburgers, hot dogs, and brats because we like how easy it is, and the other times we’ll grill chicken, ribs, or steaks. Potato or macaroni salad or some kind of slaw is our regular accompaniment, but lately I’ve been grilling potatoes and we love them! It’s just like roasting them in the oven, only we put the pan on the grill. I like how it keeps the kitchen from heating up so much, a big plus when the temperatures soar in July and August. And I like how the potatoes in the bottom of pan turn into nice brown crusty bits, which taste really good!
This isn’t a recipe but more of a formula because the ingredients change a bit every time I make it. I’ve used various potatoes, even sweet potatoes, and sometimes I mix two or more kinds for color; and I always have garlic, peppers, onions, two or three herbs, salt or seasoning salt, pepper, and olive oil. For this batch, I used Yukon Gold potatoes, red onions, whole garlic cloves, rosemary, thyme, and sage. All the herbs were from our indoor garden.
This is my contribution to this week’s edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly event founded by the fabulous Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen. This week’s host is Anh of Food Lover’s Journey, so check out her blog next week for the round-up!
Other Recipes You Might Like
Thai Grilled Chicken with Cilantro Dipping Sauce
The Daring Bakers Make Tender Potato Bread
Tanna of the wonderful cooking blog The Half Cup chose the challenge item for this month, a delicious bread that can be shaped in many different ways. As the name suggests, the bread is tender and quite flavorful, and it’s one that I enjoyed making, so I’m sending a big THANK YOU to Tanna for selecting this bread for us to try this month! I had some for breakfast this morning, and it’s still tasty.
Each month the host chooses the rules for preparation, and Tanna set the standards pretty high, but she also gave us free reign for shaping the bread. The rules for this month were as follows: Read more
Curried Lentil and Potato Stew
October 3, 2007 by Andrea
Filed under Soups & Stews
I’m not a summer soup person, and you generally won’t find soup on the menu around our house until the first frost. The weather isn’t even remotely cold here yet and I’m still wearing shorts, but for some reason I had a craving for this stew.
I love stews with lots of flavor, and this is definitely in that category. Lentils are a great way to get protein since they have the second highest protein content of any legume, and they are also rich in iron, fiber, and other important nutrients. Always rinse your lentils and pick out any stones or bad pieces before cooking them. I pour the dry lentils into a bowl and cover with water, allowing it to sit for about 5 to 10 minutes, then drain and rinse again.
You can make the spicy oil, or you can skip that step and add curry paste to the soup while cooking. Either way, you end up with a delicious, healthy, hearty meal. I serve this with dollops of plain yogurt on top. There’s something about having a lentil stew with curry flavors … it just begs for some yogurt. Read more
Ajiaco Bogotano (Colombia)
December 27, 2006 by Andrea
Filed under Poultry, Soups & Stews
For me this is the ultimate comfort food, and it’s also my favorite food from my years overseas. It’s a great weekend soup, but it’s also a celebration meal for the Bogotanos who often make very large pots of this soup for festive occasions such as Christmas. They typically serve the soup in black bowls just like the one in the photo, sitting in a basket because the bowls are rounded, not flat, on the bottom. Sides include rice, capers, and avocado. I’ve missed the wonderful ajiacos I enjoyed in Bogotá, so this year I wanted to have it as part of our Christmas celebration.
There are several versions of ajiaco in Hispanic culture. Ajiaco Bogotano has chicken, three different kinds of potatoes, corn on the cob, and the herb guascas. The potatoes are papas criollas, sabaneras, and tocarreñas, or yellow, red, and white potatoes respectively. Of the three, the papas criollas are the most important Read more
Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Green Chiles
My husband isn’t fond of sweet potatoes because they are, well, too sweet. I can certainly understand his sentiment given the many sweet potato dishes incorporating sugar or marshmallows and taking on a noxiously sweet flavor. I don’t like that kind of sweet potato dish, either, but due to my Southern heritage I enjoy and sometimes crave a baked sweet potato with a tiny bit of butter and a pinch of salt on top.
So you can understand how we were skeptical when my mother served us mashed sweet potatoes while visiting her last spring. We were sure that they would be too sweet, but we were pleasantly surprised Read more
