New Orleans Gumbo

Quickie update with a favorite recipe!!  Enjoy!

New Orleans Gumbo

I made this gumbo just a couple of weeks before taking a trip to New Orleans. We ate gumbo in the French Quarter, and I was thrilled to find that my gumbo was just as good! Try to find file - it really helps with the traditional flavor.

Ingredients

6 strips center-cut bacon, diced
14 links (1 tray) regular breakfast sausage links, diced
6 T flour
2 onions, chopped
1.5 C celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 14oz cans diced tomatoes
1 8oz can tomato sauce
6 C chicken broth (or use bullion + water)
1 T salt
1t. black pepper
1 T parsley flakes
2 t creole seasoning (Tony Chachere's)
2 T file (ground sassafras) - can do without, but try to find it!
10 drops hot pepper sauce
1 lb frozen okra, sliced
2 chicken breasts, cubed and pre-cooked
8 oz container crab meat, with juice (lump or claw)
1.5 C shrimp, peeled (raw or cooked) (or like 2 lbs...)
3 T worcestershire sauce

Directions

Makes a whopping 18C of soup - use your biggest stock pot!

1. Saute diced bacon and link sausage in a soup pot over medium heat until cooked. Remove meat and save to add to soup at the end. If needed, add some EVOO to make drippings equal to appx. 1/3C. Add flour and whisk well to incorporate. Turn heat to very low and whisk constantly until the roux is very dark and fragrant - 20 to 30 minutes. (I usually skimp on this and just do it on medium for about 5 minutes)

2. Add onion, celery and garlic and saute 5-8 minutes or until turning translucent.

3. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, broth and all seasonings and simmer for 1 hour.

4. Add all meats and okra and simmer 20 minutes.

Nutritional Data

Servings Per Recipe: 18

• Calories: 164.6

• Total Fat: 7.0 g
• Cholesterol: 77.6 mg
• Sodium: 862.0 mg
• Total Carbs: 7.5 g
• Dietary Fiber: 1.5 g
• Protein: 17.9 g

Not Sushi, Spring Rolls!

Another recipe makeover, this time another jewel from Heidi Swanson.  I really love her stuff.  I just wish I always had her ingredients on hand!!  This time, I made over her Avocado Spring Rolls recipe.  I wish I could have just made hers, but I didn't have any tofu or fresh oregano, so I just ended up stuffing my wrappers with sushi filling.  They tasted just like sushi, but without the seafood flavor from the nori.  The rice papers are ridiculously chewy and sticky - which may be a plus or a minus, depending on your sensitivity to texture.  I liked them just fine, although they were more work than regular sushi, and I kind of missed the nori.  Oh well, we must have options!!

edit - I ate these last 3 after a few hours in the fridge, and the wrappers were quite firm and hardly sticky at all - a much better texture than they had fresh.  If you aren't a fan of sticky, just chill them and try again!

Serve these as a healthy alternative to deep fried appetizers at your next party, or pack 2 or 3 with your lunch along with a salad or miso soup!

Not Sushi, Spring Rolls!

28 Spring Roll Skins (Banh Trang) available at Asian grocers, and in well stocked Krogers (1 package is plenty)
7 Cabbage leaves (see instructions)
2 avocados
28 pickled ginger slices

1 C diced, cooked chicken thigh (about 2 medium, 130g, 4.5oz)
3 C cooked sticky/short grain rice
3 T seasoned rice vinegar

Preparation:

Peel the outer few leaves from the cabbage, then remove the core to loosen the next several leaves.  Try to peel 7 leaves off, leaving each intact as much as possible.  Rinse each in cool water - leaving them damp - then place in a large microwave-safe bowl - nesting them is fine.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and heat on high power for 5 minutes.  Remove from microwave, but leave covered to continue steaming while you prepare the other ingredients.

Slice both avocados in half, remove the seed by striking sharply with a large knife, then twisting, and scoop each half out of the skin with a large soup spoon.  Place all 4 halves cut-side down on a cutting board, and slice each half into 8 pieces (there will be a few extra slices, so don't use the smallest pieces!)

Place cooked rice, diced chicken and seasoned vinegar in a mixing bowl and mix well.

Quarter each cabbage leaf by slicing out the center stem, then cutting each leaf into about 4 equal pieces.  This won't be terribly precise, but it's fine.

Assembly:

Fill your cabbage  bowl with warm water, gather all your ingredients near by and place a large cutting board in front of you.  One at a time, take a spring roll skin and dip it into the water for about 3-5 seconds.  It should still feel stiff when you remove it.  Place it on your cutting board and layer a cabbage quarter, 2T of rice, a slice of avocado and a piece of ginger on the edge nearest to you.

Stretch and roll the wrapper around the filling once or twice, then fold over both ends and continue to stretch and roll - it should stretch a lot, like plastic wrap, and make a nice, tight cylinder.  The ends might look wonky - try to keep your end fold-overs nice and wide, not let them bunch up in the middle.  After you do one or 2, you'll get the hang of it.  The roll will continue to soften and stick to itself within a few minutes.

Put a piece of plastic wrap on a serving plate, and fit as many as you can in a single layer, then add another layer of plastic wrap before stacking more.  These may be prepared ahead and kept in the fridge for at least 24 hours.  Serve with soy sauce for dipping.

Enjoy!

Nutritional Info - per each roll:

Calories - 95, Fat - 2.4g, Cholesterol - 3.9mg, Sodium - 44.2mg, Carbs - 8.6g, Protein - 3.2g

Curried Tomato Soup - with Canning directions

WARNING!!  THIS RECIPE IS NOT USDA APPROVED!  I HAVE BEEN WARNED THAT MY FOOD COULD CAUSE DEATH!  CAN AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

There.  That's done.

Ok - so I love Heidi Swanson's recipe for Indian Spiced Tomato Soup.  It's a bit blah on it's own, but top it with the stir-ins below and it is fantastic!!!!  Seriously, you have to have the coconut milk at least, but I try to have them all on hand to serve.  But, there are a few changes that need to be made to be able to can safely. I changed the amount of onions, no water, and also no butter - hard to can.  But the spices are the same, so it still tastes about right.

Here is my altered version:

4 qts. tomatoes (skinned, seeded (if desired), crushed - I don't bother with skinning or seeding)
4C chopped onion
1.5T curry powder
1.5 teaspoon coriander
1.5 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt (more to taste)
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Sweat the onions with 1C water (do not use oil or butter) until tender.  Add tomatoes and spices and  simmer 20 minutes or until slightly thickened.  Liquify in a food processor, blender or with an immersion blender, if desired. (I crushed my tomatoes and onions in the food processor, so I didn't need to blend mine again)

Pour into hot jars, leave 1" headspace.  Process in a pressure canner: Pints - 20 minutes at 10lbs, Quarts 25min @ 10lbs..

To Serve:
Heat soup to a simmer serve over cooked brown rice, barley, etc.  Have these on hand to serve on top:

• hard boiled eggs, chopped
• cilantro, chopped
• toasted slivered/sliced almonds
• coconut cream (open a can of full-fat coconut milk without shaking it - scoop the thick cream from the top of the can)
• lemon or lime wedges

My First Entry - Chicken Soup

Ok... now that I've decided to begin my career as a food blogger, where do I begin? I don't feel so well right now, so I decided to make a pot of chicken soup for myself. Seemed like the thing to do... Chicken Soup is also a basic staple of cooking - once you know what goes into chicken soup, it is easily converted to veggie soup, chicken stew, chicken noodle, beef stew - anything you like!

This is the same basic recipe I use for my Slow Cooker Chicken Stew and Thick and Hearty Chicken and Dumplings. I've met with a bit of resistance from people making my recipe, because of all the "wasted" veggies, and here is where I will explain the reasons.

First, we'll start with the chicken. My recipe should really be entitled, "How to make homemade chicken stock into chicken soup". If you have an older cookbook (or one that's based on an older version - like Joy of Cooking) you may have a recipe for 'stock'. Newer cookbooks usually leave that recipe out - since we can use canned broth or bullion. Stock is simply water that has something extracted into it - in our case, chicken and vegetables. This is accomplished by long boiling. Back to the chicken... it is important to use dark meat chicken for 2 reasons.

1. The dark meat of the chicken has more flavor, due to the higher fat content of the meat. People like fattier foods for this very reason. Now before you go all 'health-nut' on me, let me explain. The fat is where the flavor lies, but after we get all that flavor into our stock, the fat is removed by skimming. The same holds true for baking chicken. Even if you don't eat the chicken skin or fat, leave it on during baking. It keeps the chicken moist, and imparts flavor, but then the skin is taken off revealing succulent, tasty meat beneath!

1. The bones. Back to my cookbook reference, your stock recipe will tell you to use chicken bones left over from baked chicken. If you don't have them, the recipe will tell you to cook raw bones in oil to release the flavors before making stock. The bone marrow is considered a delicacy in many cultures and is fought over by the children. All of this flavor is needed to make a rich stock, and again - any fats will be skimmed off at the end. A chicken breast just doesn't have what it takes - no fat, no bones, not much flavor. Especially when you consider how much water we're using.

OK - enough about the chicken, on to the veggies. If you look at my recipe, you'll see that I use 1 batch of veggies to boil at the beginning, throw them all away, and use a second set for the final soup. This looks terribly wasteful - why throw away all those good veggies instead of eating them? Let me give you a real life demonstration. Why do we steam carrots (for instance)? Picture a perfectly steamed carrot - just tender enough to pierce with a fork, still a bit crisp. Most of the nutrients have been retained - that's why we steam, and don't boil - the nutrients and flavors don't leach out into the water and get thrown away. Now picture an over-done carrot. Limp, light colored, squishy, and without flavor. It's all been boiled away.

So... what if it's the carrot water we wanted to save? If you wanted to make carrot-flavored-water, you'd boil the life out of that carrot, then have nicely flavored water. That's exactly what we're going for here. We want to keep the juices... the veggies have nothing left to give after long boiling - if you ate them, they'd be squishy, life-less and vitamin-less. It's all been boiled away - into our stock.

The only other comment I have about veggies, is why I don't peel them. It's amazing how much flavor we peel away to prepare vegetables. Of course, we can't eat onion peels - they're dirty, may contain bacteria, and are tough and gross in our mouths. But the flavor can't be beat, and since we're throwing all the solid vegetables away, and we're trying for a rich bold stock, we want all the concentrated flavor we can get! So, I just cut the initial batch of veggies into chunks without peeling. (At this blog, a different result is had using the same basic techniques - she makes concentrated stock. Note the whole veggies - the same as I've described them here.) You'll see a marked difference if you make 2 batches of stock - for 1, use chicken breast and peeled vegetables, and only cook it long enough to tenderize the veggies then eat them. For the other, follow my methods. You'll never go back.

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Basic Chicken Soup

Just one more comment on the veggies. Every basic soup stock requires onion, celery and carrots. This applies to chicken, beef, fish and vegetable stocks. (Get a hold of a traditional cookbook - it will back me up) Even if you aren't partial to celery, for instance, it isn't the flavor of celery that you will taste. It's the combination of those 3 vegetables that come together to create the well-rounded, over all flavor of a good stock. Now, on to the recipe.

3 lbs chicken parts (preferably dark meat, frozen or thawed)
10 cups water
7 carrots
5 stalks celery
2 onions
4-8 cloves garlic (depending on how much you like garlic - 4 cloves will just add a touch of flavor)
2 chicken bullion cubes (this adds many various seasonings and salt - i haven't been able to discover exactly which herbs they contain, so I still use them)
1 t. salt
1 T. parsley (dried)
1/2 t. ground pepper

1. Place chicken (frozen or fresh) and water into bottom of a large soup pot. Chunk these vegetables, unpeeled, into about 2" pieces and add - 3 carrots, 2 celery, 1 onion, 4 cloves garlic (cut them in half. No need to peel the onions either, and add extra garlic 'paper' from the outside of your bulb). Add 2 bullion cubes - no need to crush.
2. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer for about 2 hours. The chicken will be done after about 1 hour, but we want to be sure to get all the veggie juices.
3. Pour through a colander over a very large bowl. Remove the chicken, throw away the veggies. Shred chicken when it is cool enough to handle, throw away any fat, skin and bones.
4. Cut remaining carrots into quarters lengthwise, then slice, mince celery, chop onion.
5. Rinse out your pot to remove any veggie skins, then put the stock, veggies and remaining spices over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook just until the veggies are tender - about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

This is the basic chicken soup. Use this exact same recipe to make beef soup - just change the meat (be sure it is in small pieces - better with bones!).

Of course, if you're just after the stock, to use in another recipe, it's ready to go after you strain out the veggies and chicken. For my "sick-day-soup" I doubled the garlic and added chunks of un-peeled ginger to the first boil to add helpful nutrients. Refrigerate the stock (before or after finishing the soup) to firm up the fats on top, then skim them off if you like. I don' t usually bother - there's not that much. For Chicken Noodle, just add about 2-3 C. of egg noodles with the veggies once the soup is boiling- they should take 10 minutes to cook.

Thick and Hearty Chicken and Dumplings

Traditional Chicken and Dumplings but made using whole wheat! It really adds a deep, nutty, more filling quality than those old white ones! This is one of my all-time-favorite comfort foods. I guess it must bring back memories, although I don't remember having it more than a few times as a kid. Just something about the parsley, I think. For more information about how I make my chicken stock, visit this posting.

Let me comment on the fat content of this recipe. You may be tempted to reduce the amount of oil called for when making the roux for the stew. Don't do it. In order for the heavy dumplings to float, the stew must by thick enough to support them. A small reduction in the roux will mean a significant reduction in the thickness. The dumplings will sink. Even if they don't completely submerge (which mine did upon experimentation) they will still be gummy inside - they should have the consistency of a well-baked biscuit. Dry and light inside. Just tell yourself that it's "comfort food day" and enjoy a little bit of oil. It's olive oil, after all... Also, whole wheat flour won't make the roux as thick - I tried that as well. The gluten is not available because the flour is not as fine.

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Thick and Hearty Chicken and Dumplings

For Stew:
3 lbs chicken parts (any parts, frozen or thawed)
6 cups water
6 carrots
4 stalks celery
2 onions
2 chicken bullion cubes
1/2 C. olive oil/drippings
1/2 C. white flour
1 t. salt
1 T. parsley (dried)
1/2 t. ground pepper
1/2 t. garlic powder

For Dumplings:
1 C. WW flour
1/2 C. white flour
1 T. parsley (dried)
2 rounded t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
3 T. shortening or butter
3/4 C. milk (a bit over full, but not 1C)

Prepare Stock:

1. Place chicken (frozen or fresh) and water into bottom of a 4 qt. dutch oven. Chunk these vegetables into about 2" pieces and add - 3 carrots, 2 celery, 1 onion (no need to peel). Add 2 bullions cubes - no need to crush.
2. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer for about 2 hours or until chicken is done.
3. Pour through a colander over a very large bowl. Remove the chicken, throw away the veggies. Shred chicken when it is cool enough to handle, throw away any fat, skin and bones.
4. Cut remaining carrots into quarters lengthwise, then slice, mince celery, chop onion.
5. Heat oil (skim stock and use part drippings if you like) in bottom of dutch oven until hot. Add 1/2 C white flour and whisk until no lumps remain. Cook over med. heat for about 2 minutes.
6. Add stock about 2 cups at a time, whisking well after each addition to remove lumps. When all stock has been added, reduce to low simmer. Add chopped veggies, shredded chicken and spices. Stir occasionally, scraping bottom well.

Prepare Dumplings:

1. Mix flours, baking powder, salt and parsley in med. bowl. Cut in shortening using pastry blender, 2 knifes, or mashing with your fingers. Stir in milk, and allow to sit for 1-2 minutes - mixture will thicken.
2. Bring stew to a slow boil. When carrots are almost tender (it is difficult to pierce with fork) stir stew well and then drop dumplings by spoon onto meat and veggies - you should get about 10. Be sure there is meat to land on - if they hit just liquid, they'll sink and get mushy.
3. Cook in boiling stew for 10 minutes UNCOVERED. Then cook for 10 minutes COVERED. No Peeking! Dumplings should have risen and be firm and fully cooked inside.
4. Serve 1 or 2 dumplings in a bowl, smothered with stew - enjoy!!

Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

Throw this yummy stew together in just 20 minutes and dinner is ready when you come home. It can be served as a clear soup or, for an extra 10 min, a creamy stew. Thighs are used for that rich dark-meat flavor, and are easy to de-bone after they are cooked.

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Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

3 chicken thighs (frozen or fresh)
3 medium potatos (regular, sweet or both)
5-6 carrots
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 cans chicken broth + extra water
1 T. parsley
2 t. rosemary
1 t. freshly cracked pepper
2 t. chicken bullion (2 cubes)

optional:
1/3 C. butter
1/3 C. flour

1. Remove skin and fat from chicken thighs, and place on the bottom of a 4 qt. slow cooker. (you can use frozen-solid chicken too - the skin and fat can be removed later)
   
2. Wash and chop into cubes potatos, carrots and onion and layer into cooker. Mince garlic and sprinkle on top.
3. Add spices and pour broth over top. Liquid should come ALMOST to the top of the vegetables. If not, top up with more broth or water.
4. Set cooker to low and cook for about 6-8 hours. Don't use the high setting for only 4 hours - the herbs and spices turn very bitter with that much heat. (I tried! If you must cook it faster, leave out all the herbs and spices until your soup comes out of the cooker - add them to your pot on the stove, and simmer about 10 minutes)
5. After 6-8 hours, pour contents through a colander over a large bowl. The chicken should be right on top and can be easily de-boned on a cutting board with a knife and fork.
6. The chicken, broth and vegetables can now be mixed back together and eaten as a clear soup OR:
7. Melt 1/3 C. butter in a heavy bottomed pot. Add 1/3 C. flour and whisk smooth. Cook for 3 min., stiring constantly. Add 2 C. stock, and whisk until smooth. Add remaining stock and bring to a simmer. Check taste, add veggies and chicken, and serve with crusty french bread or corn bread!