Wingin’ it Wednesday: Oliver’s Stew

Sometimes things don’t always work out exactly how you want them to.  But that’s okay, because you can learn from what you’ve done and move on.  So while this recipe was a little bland for my liking, I’m sure with the right combination of spices it would make a great mid-winter slow-cooker bowl of comfort.  I called it “Oliver’s Stew” because it has a gruel-like consistency that reminded me so much of the musical based on Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, specifically, this song. Nonetheless, I know some of you out there like your stews to be on the mushy side, so maybe this one is for you.

I started with some chicken thighs, and pulled the skin off them. There are only a few people in the world I will handle raw chicken for. The Pie is lucky to be one of them.

Then I quickly browned them in a cast iron skillet.

Cut up an onion and some garlic.

And gathered some herbs: mustard, rosemary, and savoury.

A red pepper.

Some chick peas.

Some rice.

And some chicken broth.

I hucked that all in the slow cooker with some salt and pepper and let ‘er rip. I ended up adding more liquid later on as it all got sucked into the rice.

Shortly before serving I added some frozen corn and peas for colour.

And there you have it — the chicken has fallen off the bone and lays in these lovely strips and the peas and corn and pepper add a nice pop of colour.

Pumpkin Soup

Right.  So.  In my effort to effectively use all the pumpkin purée left over from our Pumpkin-Off, all 14 cups of it, we are starting to get sick of pumpkin (though the amount of fibre that has been added to our diet is extraordinary).

The solution?  SOUP.  Most pumpkin soup recipes call for a single can (a little less than 2 cups) of the stuff, but I’m just gonna giv’er and dump in the rest of what I got.  BLAM.  It came out to about 2 1/2 cups.

I don’t really feel like blending this soup, because the pumpkin is pre-puréed, so I’m just going to cut everything else up really small. It’s a really quick recipe, too, no need to simmer for a long time, so you can make it, say, just before lunch, and then eat it right away.

First I got my spices ready: minced garlic, a little bit of cumin, some curry, and a bit of chipotle.

And the incidentals: lemon juice (don’t mock my plastic lemon, it’s the best I can do in Newfoundland), chicken broth, and coconut milk.

Then my vegetables: three carrots, an onion, and a red pepper.

The carrots I scrubbed and grated with the skins still on.  That’s good vitamins for ya.

The red pepper and onion I diced up.

In a large saucepan, then, heat up a bit of olive oil on medium-high and toss in your onions.  Cook those until they’re softened.

Then add in your cup o’spices, and stir that around for a minute or so.

Chuck in your grated carrot and diced pepper and stir that around as well, spritz it with lemon juice, then add in your coconut milk and stir until fully incorporated.

Add in the pumpkin finally (it was already cooked, so I didn’t want to overcook it), and pour in the chicken broth until you’ve reached a consistency that you like.  Let that simmer for about 20 minutes and that’s it, you’re all done.

Season with salt and pepper, and a little more lemon if you like.  At the eleventh hour I added a teaspoon ground cloves to boost the pumpkin.

This one came out a bit spicy, because I guess my curry was hotter than I had previously thought. I would recommend serving with a bit of yogurt or sour cream.

Butternut Bisque

I’m not the biggest soup fan (I prefer to drink my hot liquids), but I’m starting to acquire a taste for them.  I’m especially fond of blended soups (because then it’s like a savoury pudding and I’m less likely to burn my tongue on the hot broth).  This one comes from Martha Stewart and is a good match for a nice late-summer lunch or a good accompaniment to a fall comfort meal.  It’s quick and easy, which I like in a soup.  You can also freeze it and enjoy it at any time.

First, do your chopping.  In this case, chop up 1 medium onion, 2 cloves garlic, and 1 large butternut squash.  Peel the squash, cut it open and remove the seeds, and then hack it into smallish cubes.

Then, get your spices ready to go.  You’ll need 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.  Also, not shown, is a pinch or two of coarse sea salt.  Feel free to add more or less, according to your own taste.  It’s only soup, after all.

Melt about 3 tablespoons butter into the bottom of a large saucepan.  Add in the onion, garlic, and the spices and cook until the onion is tender and translucent, about 7 minutes.

Dump in the squash cubes, as well as about 15oz chicken broth and 1 cup half-and-half (you could use plain milk if you wanted to be healthier, but do you really want to do that?), and then about 3 cups water.  Bring that whole thing to a boil and reduce it to a simmer for about 20 minutes.  Your squash should be squishy at this point.  You should be able to squish your squash with the back of a spoon.

Remove the pot from the heat and use your immersion blender to squish — er, purée — your squash and onions and all that stuff.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of cayenne, if desired.

Chicken Cacciatore

Canadian Living always seems to have the best freezer-friendly recipes.  I haven’t tried this, but the stuff smelled great and when I licked my fingers to catch some spills I was quite happy.

I doubled the recipe, but the single batch makes 8 chicken thighs and a bunch of red delicious sauce.

Start with your vegetables.  Chop up an onion and a pepper.  I had some roasted red peppers in a jar so I used those as well to boost my quantities.

Take 8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs.  You can use bone-in ones to save money, but they will need to cook for twice as long.

Toss them in a bowl with 2 tablespoons flour and some salt and pepper for seasoning.

In a large skillet or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil and, working in batches, brown the chicken on both sides.  You don’t need to cook it all the way through — you just want a nice crispy edge.  That’s why I like the skillet.

Transfer the chicken to a plate and drain any fat out of the pan (if you used skinless chicken this shouldn’t be a problem).

Add a bit more oil to the skillet and fry up your onion and pepper, with a little bit of minced garlic and some Italian seasoning (or basil and oregano if you don’t have it).

Pour in 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can tomato paste and bring it to a boil. Because I doubled the recipe, I ran out of room in the skillet and had to move to a pot, alas.

Add your chicken back in and simmer for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Serve over rice or pasta and sprinkled with parsley, or freeze for later, which is what I did.

Gang Keow Wan (Thai Green Curry) with Eggplant and Bamboo

When I was in Ottawa a couple weeks ago, Krystopf and Atlas got takeout one night from a local Thai place.  There was one dish we got, the gang keow wan, that was so good I was determined to see if I could recreate it.  So here’s my best approximation, and it turned out pretty close to the original, minus the disposable aluminum serving dishes.

Get everything ready first, obviously.  The idea behind this is that if everything is sliced super thin and ready to go, the actual cooking of the curry will take less than fifteen minutes from start to finish.  Fantastic for a quick meal, which our Sunday dinners always turn out to be.

Start with your chicken (you can use beef as well, or leave it out for a vegetarian option).

Take 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, slice them into thirds lengthwise, and then slice them up again into thin little pieces.  It’s easiest to do this if the chicken is slightly frozen.

Wrangle yourself a leek.  Just one will do.

Chop off all the dark green stuff, and hack it into thirds.  It goes without saying that you do this with separate implements than you did the chicken, unless you do all the vegetables first and then the chicken last, which is what I usually do.

Cut each of those thirds up into matchsticks.  Remember to rinse off the dirt before you eat them.  If you want to know the real scientific way to clean a whole leek properly (which I forgot about until it was too late) then take a lookie here.

Gather up a handful of hot peppers.  These ones are of the mildest sort, but you can go with whatever floats your boat and suits your fancy.  Cut the tops off, remove the seeds (don’t stick your fingers in your eye, OW OW OW OW OW), and make those into matchsticks as well.

Grab some eggplant.  If you have those tiny Asian ones handy, or baby eggplants, use about five of them.  These are the long thin Italian ones, and I used three.  Slice the tops off and cut them into thin discs.

Bust out some lime leaves (kaffir).

Grab a handful, and, if they’re frozen, let them thaw.  If they’re dried, give them a soak.  If they’re fresh, then you are a lucky person for living in a part of the world where you can get them fresh and you probably don’t need my instructions on how to make a green curry.  Go find something else to do.

When they’re ready, slice out the woody centre stem and chop them up finely.

If you have them handy, like, for instance, you are growing your own indoor herb farm (see tomorrow’s post!), then harvest some fresh cilantro and fresh basil. Chop those babies up as well.

As well, crack open a can of slivered bamboo shoots.

Put them aside with your other fresh stuff.

And you’re going to need an assortment of canned and jarred stuff as well.

In a large, shallow saucepan or deep frying pan, heat up about 3 tablespoons olive oil.  Add to that 3-5 tablespoons green curry paste and 4 teaspoons minced garlic and sauté that at medium heat until the kitchen starts to smell really good.

Add in as well 2 tablespoons each ground cumin and ground coriander and 1 tablespoon powdered stock (chicken, beef, or vegetable — this is optional).  You can add in some salt and pepper as well, if you like.

If you’ve got it, add some lemongrass in as well.  This stuff came in a tube!

Now add in 1 can coconut milk and, if you can get it, 1 can coconut cream (if not just go with two cans of the milk).  Make sure your cream isn’t sweetened before you dump it in.  I discovered that a little too late, so this curry was definitely on the sweet side, but still good.  Now you have this lovely rich greenish brownish soup.

Slide in your chicken slices and the chopped lime leaves and allow to simmer for just a few minutes until the chicken is no longer pink.

Raise the temperature and bring the liquid to a boil after adding all your vegetables.

Allow the vegetables to soften, and the eggplant to go a bit brown.  Then add in your chopped basil and cilantro.

Serve hot over rice, and eat it with a spoon in the traditional way.  I’m having some of the leftovers for lunch today.  I’m rather excited about it.

Related articles

• Phukett Green Chicken Curry (nuttykitchen.com)
• Chickpea and lentil curry (carolynchan.wordpress.com)
• Pork, Pineapple and Bamboo Shoot Curry (thenutritionguruandthechef.wordpress.com)

Spicy Spring Carrot Soup

Happy Easter!

It’s spring.  Well, I shouldn’t say that.  It’s spring in some parts of Canada.  Here in Newfoundland we are still clearing up snow from our blizzard last week.  In most parts of the country the markets are full to bursting with new spring vegetables: tender carrots, tiny potatoes, fresh peas.  Here in St. John’s it’s time to clean out the dregs of our winter supply, and most produce around here is either flaccid or unripe.  So we make soup.

This soup will be served as a starter at our Easter dinner on Sunday.  If a soup could be considered to be light and fluffy, it would be this one.  In fact (and I may have texted this to the Pie when I made it), I bet if you put the Easter Bunny in a blender and heated him up he would taste a lot like this soup: sweet, a little bit spicy, a hint of ginger, and chock-full of carrots.

This recipe is simple, and takes very little time.

I have here 2 bunches of “new” carrots (which in reality were bendy and dried-out), 4 Bosc pears (which I unsuccessfully tried to ripen for three days), a handful of mildly hot peppers, and 2 onions.

Chop those puppies up and toss them in a pot.  Add a whole carton of chicken broth (about 4 cups, or a litre), and top the rest up with water.

Chuck in as well a few teaspoons of minced ginger (two will probably do it, as the minced stuff is wicked strong) and a healthy dollop of dijon mustard.

Add in a few tablespoons of sweet chili sauce as well.

Simmer that like crazy until all the vegetables are tender.

Remove it from the heat and use an immersion blender (or a regular blender) to turn it all into an orange pulp.

If you’ve picked a really hot pepper for your soup, you might want to serve it with a dollop of sour cream, or maybe some green onions for garnish.  It’s also lovely just as it is.  You can freeze it easily and bring it out whenever you need a taste of spring.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

I was talking to Cait over GoogleChat the other day and she was scarfing down some cream of broccoli soup, a dish I adore.  She rubbed it in a little bit that she had some and I didn’t.  So I figured I’d blend myself up a batch.  And I thought that you could, too, if you wanted to.

Start with some onions.  Dice them up pretty finely.

Chuck them in a large pot with some garlic and a bit of olive oil and butter.  Let that cook on medium-high heat until the onions are translucent.

While that’s going on, you can start on your broccoli.  I used three heads of broccoli, chopped up, including the stems.  Use a vegetable peeler to get rid of the tough skin.

Then I also sliced up about two stalks of celery.

And cubed up several small potatoes. I leave the skins on for texture and vitamins but that’s up to you if you want to remove them.

Those go in the pot too, as well as about 4 cups chicken broth (you can use vegetable broth if you are feeling vegetarian).

Cover that and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes, until everything, including the potatoes, is tender and squishable.

Then remove it from the heat and use an immersion blender or a food processor to blend the soup to your ideal of smoothness.  I like mine a little chunky.

Then you can add in your flavourings.  The first is obviously some form of cream or milk.  You can use sour cream or yogurt or coconut milk or soy milk or whatever you like.  I’m going to go traditional here and use some heavy cream.  We keep it in a small Nalgene bottle because then we can see how much we have left and we don’t have to deal with the cream crusties on the mouth of the carton.

Dijon mustard is also a popular addition to this soup.  The Pie hates mustard but as long as I use it in moderation in things he doesn’t mind.  It definitely adds to the taste.

And finally, you are going to need a shot or two of Worcestershire sauce.  That goes without saying.

So add in whatever you like.  Feel free to adjust to your personal taste.

Give it a stir so it’s all nicely mixed in.

And serve.  With crusty bread on the side and chives to top, or, if you are a real cream of broccoli fan, more grated cheddar cheese than is really sane.

That’s it, that’s all.  Easy, huh?

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Moose and Mushroom Stew

I’m not sure if I’ll ever really get used to the concept of eating moose.  But when in Newfoundland …

This is a roast from Fussellette’s dad, and I followed her instructions as to what to do for the basics of the whole thing.  The rest was sheer fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants moose stew madness.

So you plop the roast into your slow cooker.  Then you add your vegetables, like an onion, and/or some potatoes. I had some rather sad-looking broccoli and cauliflower in the fridge, so that went in with an onion. Then you add in a package of dried onion soup.  I’m not usually one to add pre-made mixes to things, but these were my instructions.

Then we need some fluid.  You could add in chicken broth.  Or beef broth.

But I had some mushroom broth in the fridge so I used that.

Which meant that I felt obligated to use some dried mushrooms as well.

I turned it to high and left it for a while.  Later on, I added some frozen green and yellow beans and some wild rice.

And near the end a sprinkle of Bell’s Seasoning. I know it’s for chicken and fish but it’s got my name on it and I couldn’t help myself.

Eventually the meat is done and you gotta pull it out and tear it off the bone before chucking it back in the stew. It won’t be difficult.

Your dog can help.

And there you have it — moose and mushroom stew. Served with toast.

O Canada: Quebec Three Bean Soup with Bannock

When you type in searches for French-Canadian soups on the internet you get a plethora of results.  ”Plethora” is one of my favourite words.  That and the Spanish “desafortunadamente,” which gets me every time.

Jess sent me this beauty, passed down from the Iroquois nation.  I decided, however, that the ingredients were slightly too close to the hodgepodge I made earlier, and I want to give you guys some variety.

There are also a ton of recipes out there for a yellow split pea soup that is quintessentially French-Canadian.  Turn the peas green and you get pea soup from the Maritimes.  Thicken it up a little and steam it in a wee bag and you get pease pudding from the Atlantic.

I dislike all pea soups.  Sorry.  You won’t see one here.

If you happen to Google “French-Canadian bean soup” you get further interesting results.  Apparently, Arthur Flegenheimer (who went by the name of Dutch Schultz), was a rum-runner and all-out nasty mobster during Prohibition in the US in the early part of the 20th century (as a bit of Canadiana for you, pretty much all the contraband booze smuggled onto American soil during that time came from Canada, which wasn’t really into teetotalling).  Anyway, while using the men’s room at a New Jersey hotel, Schultz was repeatedly shot.  It took him about two and a half hours to die of his wounds, and when the police arrived to arrest the dying man, one of the officers recorded his words.  One sentence involved “French-Canadian bean soup.”  Who knew?  These words have been turned into all sorts of literature, most notably that of Hunter S. Thompson.  Weird stuff.

But we’re making soup here, not discussing books.

I cobbled together a recipe from here, here, and also from Jess’s suggestion above.

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

First, I got myself some local fall vegetables, some sweet potatoes and an acorn squash.  Use whatever squash you like.  Or none at all.  Soups are pretty fluid, both conceptually and literally.  Ha.  Ha.

Slice up your squash and remove the seeds.

Slice up some sweet potato too.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.

Roast them until they’re browning at the edges and fragrant, about 45 minutes.  Remember to flip them every once in a while.

Meanwhile, drain and rinse 3 cans of beans.  I used romano, white kidney, and chickpea.  Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) seem to be consistent throughout these recipes, so I would make sure to use that one.  But other people use cannelini beans and lima beans and whatever else they have on hand.

Dice up an onion.  I have two halves of a red and a white so I’m going with that one.

Chuck the onion in a large saucepan with some minced garlic and some dried herbs, such as basil, and sauté until tender.

Dice up some carrots and celery and add those to the mix.

Plop in the beans as well.

Add 1 can diced tomatoes.

When your roasted vegetables are ready, peel off their skins, cube them up, and chuck them into the pot. Don’t fret too much about cutting up the squash super small — it will fall apart and smush itself as it simmers in the pot.

Cover with vegetable or chicken stock and season with salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and allow to simmer for 30-40 minutes.

Now for the bannock.  As a child, on every field trip we went that involved learning some aspect of Canadian history (the Goldrush, the Fur Trade, the Potlatch, the Salmon Fishery …) we ended up making bannock on green peeled sticks over a campfire.  Every.  Time.

As a result, bannock in my mind will forever taste of ashes and stick.

But you can make it in a skillet too.  To avoid the taste of raw stick and ash.

Apparently, bannock is a Scottish flatbread, stolen from the Romans so very long ago.  If you squint your eyes you can kind of see how the Latin panecium can be bastardized into the Gaelic bannock.  Sure.  But remember that so many different cultures make a form of flatbread.  It’s some form of grain or bean flour plus water and heat and boom – flatbread.   The First Nations people of Canada, in the course of their various interactions with European settlers (good or bad), adopted and adapted bannock such that it is also recognized by many to be part of a bunch of First Nation food traditions.  Because it’s bread.  Everyone eats bread.

Some recipes for bannock use dried milk powder and shortening to fluff up the bread, but I firmly believe that this should be a flatbread, made with the barest minimum of ingredients.

So.  Dry ingredients.  Mix together 1 cup flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, and a pinch of salt.

Add enough water to form a dough and mix thoroughly. This will be dependent on the moisture content of the air and your flour. I added probably half a cup to this one. You want the dough to be slightly tacky.

Divide the dough into appropriate serving sizes and flatten into patties.  Feel free to wrap a patty around a stick and shove it into a fire.

Or you can slip the patty onto a hot buttered skillet and fry, flipping halfway through, until both sides are golden brown.

Serve with honey, butter, jam, salsa, soup, spaghetti … whatever you want. It’s bread.  It’s flexible.

More Words on Bannock

Art of Manliness: Baking in the Wild

Family Oven: Bannock

M.E.C. on Bannock

WikiHow on Bannock

Roasted Chicken and Rice Soup

So I made a roasted chicken to go with our poutine from earlier, and the Pie and I ended up, in the events of that week, forgetting about the leftovers completely.

So let’s make some soup for those busy periods in our lives (which, this term, is pretty much every day).

Pop your carcass and any other bits of chicken you have, skin, bones, everything, in a large pot.  Cover it with 1 litre chicken stock and the rest with water.  Bring that to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Let that bubble away for about an hour.

Remove the pot from the heat.  Set a large colander in a larger bowl and pour the contents of the pot into the colander.  This makes getting the wee bits of non-meat out of the broth easy.

Pour the strained broth back into the pot.  Strip the chicken of bits that you want in your soup, and chuck those bits in with the broth.

Chop 1 carrot and 1 onion and add those in.

Add 1 cup rice.

I was going to add a can of tomatoes to this, but it turned out I didn’t have any (which was kind of a shocker, considering that I normally have about four on hand).  Instead, I had a little over 1 cup pumpkin purée, left from the Pie’s first attempt at pumpkin pie, so I added that in.

Sprinkle on some herbs (I used oregano) and add salt and pepper.  I also added a pinch or two of chipotle seasoning.

Put your pot back on the heat and simmer it for about half an hour, until the rice is cooked and the carrots are tender and everything is hot and yummy.  Taste, and adjust your seasonings if necessary.

Serve hot or freeze for later on.  It’s that simple!