South Texas Potato Corn Chowder

Most of my culinary reinterpretations originate with a dish I try at a restaurant or a recipe I come across in random places. The dish I call South Texas Potato Corn Chowder came from a grocery store recipe card highlighting the store-brand ingredients. I particularly like soups in the winter and began to identify ways to make this one more to my liking.

The original is rather bland and the only texture in the chowder came from the corn. I added cubes of real potato, diced jalapeno, and garlic. And I added bacon which instantly improves it.

South Texas Potato Corn Chowder

1 C chopped onion

2 t diced garlic

2 C chopped or crumbled cooked bacon

1 can (15.4 oz) whole kernel corn

1 C sour cream (I prefer regular)

4 medium jalapenos diced

2 tabasco peppers diced

2 C ¼” potato cubes (I use southern style frozen hash browns)

2 C instant mashed potatoes

Salt and pepper to taste

In a 3 quart saucepan cook the bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon but reserve 4 TBS of the bacon fat in the pan to cook the onion, garlic, peppers, and potato cubes. If there is not enough bacon fat, supplement with butter or grapeseed oil. Cook the onion, garlic, peppers, and potato cubes until the onion is translucent and the potato cubes are soft. Add the corn, including liquid, bacon, and 5 cups hot water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium. Add sour cream and stir until sour cream is dissolved. Add potato flakes and stir until dissolved. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes.

For my personal taste, I actually add more peppers because I love the flavor of peppers and I love the fire. Many recipes and every cooking show host will say to remove the seeds from the peppers, “because that is where the heat is.” I say that removing the seeds is for wimps, but if someone cannot tolerate overly spicy or hot foods, take the seeds out (and send them to me). The peppers will still flavor the dish as well as with the seeds.

Instead of instant potatoes, I sometimes use boiled potatoes. When I do this, instead of the diced potatoes in the initial fry/saute I reserve several potatoes that I cut into several larger chunks that I add to the mixture just before removing from the heat and serving. The rest of the potatoes I mash as I normally would but without adding salt, pepper, or any other seasoning. When it is time to add the potatoes to the chowder I start with about 3 C of mashed potatoes then gradually add more potatoes until I reach the consistency I like.

Soups with creamier consistencies tend to lure us with their rich hearty satisfaction. This chowder definitely fulfills this expectation, but it also surprises with the peppery tingle.

The Passion of the Kitchen

Recently I watched Julie and Julia, the movie adaptation of the book by the same name describing one woman’s goal of cooking all of Julia Childs’ recipes from her original cookbook in the span of a year. As much as I can empathize with Julie’s desire, if the scenes detailing Julia’s rise to kitchen stardom had not been included I would have turned the movie off in the first thirty minutes. Despite the unlikability of the focal character, her desire to do something daring in the kitchen struck a chord in me.

Each week,  I spend one quarter of my weekend making my food for the coming week as I rarely have time each evening to cook food from scratch. After gaining nearly 20 pounds from eating out multiple times a week during my last round of graduate school, I determined to never do that again, and cooking and pre-packing my meals for the coming week not only helped me lose those twenty pounds, but keep them off. Nevertheless, the idea of cooking, sometimes multiple, new recipes each evening seemed especially fascinating to me as someone who goes to the grocery store once (only by necessity twice) a month. I do not do a weekly menu; I do a monthly one.

Still, as a person who LOVES to cook and to teach others to cook in the way I learned from my grandmother and mother (smell is EVERYTHING), the idea of doing something challenging such as cooking a new recipe (the steps and ingredients of which I normally take as suggestions rather than directions) each night absolutely fascinated me. I have a wide variety of cookbooks ranging from the 75th Anniversary Edition Joy of Cooking to collections of recipes from various churches and high school classes. My favorites are those collections of recipes real people use on a regular basis. I know they are good because people shared them when they had the opportunity to give the one recipe they knew was good.

Discussing the value of taking on such a challenge, my roommate and I brought up a number of ways such a challenge could be taken and what ways we would do it differently. While the idea caused me to reflect on what kind of cooking challenge I would undertake. Living in Austin, Texas is vastly different than a borough of New York. I drive past a dozen grocery stores each day, but none of them are an easy access off and on the interstate routes I travel. That is why I only go to the store once or twice a month. If I lived in NYC, based on what I have seen in the apartments of the friends I have visited there, I would have to shop and cook each day; that is not my reality.

In the week that followed, the more I reflected on the idea of some kind of cooking challenge the more I realized I do not need a challenge to demonstrate my passion in the kitchen. My weekly meals and the other meals I prepare for friends from time to time all come from the passionate cook within. It exists in every dish I make and that is what I want to sustain.

No Stir Fruit Cobbler

Every once in a while I get a craving for something sweet. When I want something that I can whip up quickly with any variety of variation, I make my No-Stir Fruit Cobbler. The cobbler offers a variation of a cake cobbler rather than a pie-crust type cobbler. Do not count on it being low fat or low calorie. Do count on it being delicious.

 

½ C butter (use REAL butter)

1 C sugar

1 C flour (I have started using ½ C white, ½ C whole wheat especially with fruits that let me use cinnamon as a spice)
1 ½ tsp baking powder

Dash salt

¾ C milk (I often use half-and-half)

3 C fruit canned or fresh (I prefer frozen, thought it adds to cooking time)

1 C sugar

Other spices as appropriate for the fruit selected

 

Preheat oven to 325°. Melt the butter in a Pyrex baking dish (8 X 12). While the butter is melting, combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder (optional spices) and milk. Pour this mixture over the melted butter. Do NOT Stir! Spread the fruit over the batter mixture. Do NOT Stir! Sprinkle 1 cup sugar over fruit (I sometimes mix with a spice appropriate for the fruit). Bake at 325° for 50 minutes or until brown and bubbly. If using frozen fruit, it often takes an additional 20 (30-40 in a toaster oven) minutes of baking time.

The spices I use include cinnamon, apple pie spice, ground mustard, cayenne pepper, and allspice. It simply depends on what works best with the fruit I’m using. The cayenne pepper, just a dash, works GREAT with peaches and the ground mustard works really well with apples. When using apple, I sometimes sprinkle a little sharp cheddar cheese in the batter.

 

Some of my favorite fruits include peaches and blueberries (frozen), apple (sliced with my mandolin), and blackberries (fresh or frozen).

 

Over the years there the cobbler has become one of my most requested desserts, next to the Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake (just trust me, it’s wonderful).

 

Almond Apricot Chicken and Rice

When it comes to cooking, I rely on recipes more for inspiration than for actual directions. Such was the case with the variation of chicken and rice. I knew I was cooking with chicken breasts, but otherwise had no idea where the meal was going until browsing through several cookbooks. I then turned to my pantry to see what was on hand and came up with this flavorful and satisfying variation of chicken and rice.

1 package boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 9 pieces)

 

8 oz sliced blanched almonds

8 oz dried apricot

4 C frozen mixed vegetables thawed

3 C brown and wild rice

1 T red pepper flakes

¼ C diced onion

¼ C diced green pepper

2 t minced garlic

Salt

Pepper

1 stick butter

Olive oil or Grapeseed oil (to stir-fry veggies).

4 C water or chicken broth

1 C grated cheese (optional)

 

For marinade:

¼ C soy sauce

2 T brown mustard

1 T rice vinegar

1 T red pepper flakes

While the vegetables and chicken breasts were thawing, I diced most of the dried apricot slices, reserving a few to garnish the top of the dish. After dicing the apricot, I mixed it with the sliced almond, red pepper flakes, and rice (I put all the ingredients in a large lidded container and shook vigorously until the rice, almonds, and apricot pieces were evenly combined), and set aside.

I prepared the marinade and added the chicken breast pieces, mixing and turning them until they were all completely covered. Set aside to marinate for 30 minutes.

In a deep baking dish or roaster place the stick of butter and put in the oven as it preheats to 350°. Use the middle rack of the oven.

While the oven is preheating, heat up a wok or large skillet.

When the butter is completely melted, remove the roaster from the oven and place the chicken breasts in the pan. Return to the oven.

While the chicken is in the oven, add the onion, pepper, and garlic to the wok or skillet and heat until the onion is translucent. Add salt, pepper (and maybe a dash of powdered cayenne). Add the other mixed vegetables and mix thoroughly. Turn off the heat.

Remove the chicken from the oven and spread about ½ the vegetables over the chicken.

Spread the rice, almond, and apricot mixture over the chicken and vegetables.

Then spread the remaining vegetables on top. I like Monterrey Jack cheese with this dish so spread 1 cup shredded cheese over all. Then garnish with the reserved apricot slices. Finally, pour 4 cups water or chicken broth into the pan.

Cover with foil and bake for 1 ½ hours.  Remove the foil and let bake 15 minutes more until the cheese and apricots brown.

The mixture of savory from the red pepper flakes and sweet from the apricot as well as the crunchiness of the almonds gave the dish an appealing flavor profile and texture. The friends who shared in the meal enjoyed it, so in some variation (I rarely cook anything the same way twice) a fruited chicken and rice will make it into my repertoire.