Salmon chowder with saffron

I am not sure I have ever had a really good chowder. Stuff one usually gets in restaurants is heavy and very thick. As a result I have been avoiding the chowder for quite some time. This changed today.

Jasna brought home a beautiful fillet of fresh salmon. It is the season, and we have been fortunate to have a good supply locally. I decided to hit the web in a hunt for ideas. Given that I am just coming over a bad cold, I thought a somewhat spicy fish stew would hit the spot. As I was poking around the recipes, a salmon chowder recipe seemed to stand out. It had no thickener in it! And it used 1/2 lb of bacon, yet it claimed it was light. I was not quite buying that!

I decided to lighten the recipe up substantially by skipping the cream and the bacon, and I enriched it by using miso paste. The result was a truly outstanding dish that we polished off with giant smiles on our faces. It was light, yet not too light. Spicy, yet not too spicy. Comfort food, yet it tasted and looked really fancy. Definitely a keeper recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 potato, about 1/2 lb, peeled, cubed to 1/2 inch pieces
• salted butter, 1-2 TBS
• 1 onion, diced; I used a red onion
• garlic - 1 tsp or so dry, or a couple of cloves, chopped
• red and/or  yellow bell pepper - between 1/2 to 1 cup, diced to 1/4 inch
• 1 ear of corn worth of corn kernels
• 1-2 dry bay leaves
• a pinch of gochu, Korean chili flakes, or regular chili flakes
• 3 cups or so milk
• 1 tsp saffron
• 1 TBS white miso paste
• salmon - about 1/2 lb or so, boneless, skinless, cut into 1 inch pieces, seasoned with salt and pepper liberally
• 2 green onions, chopped
• lemon juice to taste

Procedure:

• Boil salted water in a small/medium pan, and cook potatoes for 6 or so minutes, until they are just tender. Drain.
• In the mean while, melt the butter in a pot - I used a 3 quart chef's pan, which tends to be my go-to pot. I usually replace butter with cooking oil, avocado being my favorite.
• Once the butter bubbles, add onions, garlic, pepper, corn, bay leaf, and a pinch of gochu or cili flakes. I've even added a bit of cubed rutabaga. Cook on medium heat until it softens.
• Add the milk, miso paste, and optionally saffron. Cover, bring to boil, still on medium heat. Watch the pot because milk likes to boil over.
• If you want to lighten the dish even further, replace up to 3/4 of the milk with dashi or kelp water. That shoots umami through the roof and ligtens the soup considerably. In my opinion that is definitely an upgrade.
• One day I will test how the soup turns out completely without milk.
• Blend with immersion blender or in a stand-alone blender and transfer back to the pot. I prefer to use a blender because I like the smooth texture and the color that comes from saffron.
• Add the potatoes, bring to boil, lower the heat to a mere simmer, cover, cook for about 5 minutes.
• Uncover, increase the heat to medium, add the salmon and turn the heat off. The salmon will be cooked in about 3-4 minutes.
• Add green onions and lemon juice to taste, adjust the seasoning.

Eat with:

• I suggest a side of vegetables that one could also use as garnish. For example, I made blanched turnip greens sauteed with garlic and yellow bell pepper. It worked well.

Souffles with sour creme

Soufflés! I love to make it when we have guests. One reason is that making a soufflés is a very easy way to impress almost anyone. After all, soufflés is supposed to be super hard and no ordinary mortal is supposed to attempt making it. The other reason is to dispel that myth. In fact, I find making soufflés easy and quick. It really fits my definition of trivial food.

My favorite way to make soufflés is a variation on Wofgang Puck's kaizerschmarrn recipe. The sour cream or creme fraiche really makes a big difference. In fact, I started using sour cream in savory soufflés recipes with great success. It also works vey well with chocolate, though I'll admit that chocolate souflés is not my favorite.

Ingredients for 6 6oz-ramekins 

Base:

4 egg yolks

3 oz = 85g sugar for the base

a splash of Grand Mariner. Frangelico works too, and so does rum.

8 oz = 225g of the best full fat sour cream you can find (TJ organic, Humboldt organic)

a handful of raisins, preferably soaked in rum for 30 mins, then drained.

zest and juice of one lemon

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 TBS four, one TBS also suffices

Meringue:

4 egg whites

1.5 oz = 40g sugar for meringue

Optional: 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Optional and recommended: a handful of roughly chopped hazelnuts, sliced almonds, or pecans.

butter and sugar for ramekins

Preparation:

Start preheating the oven to 210 or 215C (425F), depending on how hot your oven runs.

Mix all the ingredients for the base, starting with egg yolks, sugar, and liqueur, then add other ingredients. You can make the base a day ahead and keep it refridgerated.

Next butter the 6 ramekins. You can melt some butter and brush them on the inside, or you can be lazy like me and smear the butter with your fingers. Coat the inside of each ramekin with sugar - simply put some sugar into a ramekin, swirl around, and then dump the sugar into the next ramekin - as demonstrated in this video.

Next is meringue. I find it that meringue withstands folding better than just whipped egg whites. To make meringue, have egg whites at the room temperature for best volume. Add them to a clean bowl. Any fat in your bowl will cause problems whipping the egg whites. My preference is a copper bowl, but any clean bowl will do. Add the cream of tartar if you have it, and beat the egg whites, slowly increasing the speed of the mixer. When the eggs are starting to foam and and are about to form soft peaks, add the sugar gradually.  Beat the meringue to a soft peak.

Gently fold the meringue into your base. Add a bit of meringue first, fold it in, then add the rest. Avoid tapping on the bowl - we want to keep those little bubbles in the meringue, they are responsible for soufflés rising.

Fill each ramekin. If you are using the nuts, sprinkle the nuts on the top. Place the ramekins on a baking sheet, and put the baking sheet into the hot oven.

Bake for 10-15 minutes - in my new hotter oven it takes only 10-11 minutes. The perfect souffles texture is still very moist in the middle, but not runny. Serve and eat right away - as the soufflés cool down, it will fall because the air bubbles will shrink. In my opinion these soufflés need no sauce. If you insist on the sauce, Wolfgang Puck recommends strawberry compote, or plum compote.

Soufflés can be stored in a fridge - I cover it with plastic wrap. I warm it in the microwave for about 30 seconds before eating. That may inflate it a bit, but it will be far from what one gets straight from the oven.

Note:

I have had decisive success using this recipe as a starting point for savory soufflés. The main difference is that one uses no sugar. Coat the buttered ramekins with parmesan cheese, use no sugar in the base, and use no sugar when whipping egg whites. My favorite flavoring for the base is to use about 1/2-3/4 cup of thick creamed spinach or creamed kale, and I tend to add a 2-3 TBS of ground parmesan or other cheese. The baking time remains the same.

The savory souffléss is heavier than the dessert soufflés, so it may rise a bit less. But it should still rise nicely.

Savory sour dough cumin pancakes

Once we discovered sourdough pancakes, there simply was no other way to make them. Kind of. Neither of us is too fond of excessively sweet food, and adding even maple syrup to pancakes was always met with a bit of a frown. We started to experiment with savory pancakes, inspired by my correspondence with Kekoa and Cynthia who have been enjoying their life at 9000 feet of elevation. 

One day our sourdough starter needed feeding, and I was contemplating what to do with the starter that I would otherwise be destined for garbage. I craved something flavored with cumin, and the result were pancakes that we just had to make again, and for which we had to record the recipe. The texture is a bit chewy, it reminds me of Korean pancakes, and I think I like that better than the more standard American pancakes.

Ingredients:

• sour dough, roughly one cup
• ground cumin, roughly 1.5TBS
• ground coriander, roughly 1/2 TBS
• salt, a good pinch
• optional - gochu, ground korean chili, a pinch
• one egg
• soy milk, milk, or water - roughly 1/2 cup, to achieve the desired consistency
• flour, roughly 1/2 cup, I used freshly milled whole wheat, to achieve desired consistency
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 cup of melted coconut oil, or another oil, even butter. I think this is optional.

Procedure:

If you are using cast-iron pan, start preheating the pan on medium heat.

Mix everything together very well in a tall enough bowl so that the content doesn't splash around. Adjust the amount of flour and/or milk to achieve the desired consistency. I like my batter pretty thick.

When the pan is hot, add just a bit of high-heat oil such as avocado oil. Add the batter, about 1/4 cup per pancake, and cook then on one side until the batter shows bubbles, then flip and another minute or two on the other side. Keep the heat low enough so that the pancakes do not burn.

Eat with:

Guacamole, hummus, vegetable purees or sauces, cottage cheese, any cheese, really, smoked salmon... Use it as starch in your meal. Or eat it straight as a snack.

Buckwheat pilaf

Buckwheat is hardy grass like plant that used to represent a large part of diet in areas where harsh climate or low-fertility soil did not support growing wheat. It is also delicious, nutritious, has low glycemic load, and has no gluten. But most of all, it is delicious.

One can use buckwheat groats in soups of course, buckwheat crepes are amazing, there is a dish called zganci for which I need to record a recipe one day, we put cooked buckwheat groats into home-made sausages, and of course buckwheat gives bread an amazing flavor.

But here, we focus on a simple buckwheat pilaf. It's great as a starch in your meal, and it is cooked so fast that you can make it with your scrambled eggs in the morning. The look below may not be most appealing - do not be mislead, this is top-shelf kind of food in my opinion.

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS cooking oil. My preference is coconut or avocado oil, by far.
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• Optional: 1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely.
• Buckwheat groats, non-toasted. About 1/2 cup for 2-3 people. I find toasted groats, sometimes sold as buckwheat kasha, awful as they seem to retain no bite when you cook them.
• 1 cup of chicken/vegetable stock, or water.
• 2 tsp dry marjoram
• A pinch of allspice
• Salt to taste.

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan on a medium heat, add onions when the pan is hot - well before it smokes.
• Cook the onions on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to brown, or at least until they become translucent.
• If using garlic, stir in the garlic and cook for 30 secs
• Add buckwheat and stock.
• Rub in the marjoram and add allspice.
• Cover, bring to boil, and cook on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes.
• When done, the groats will have just a little bite to them. Taste and adjust the seasoning as desired.
• Note, if there is just a bit of liquid left in the pan when the buckwheat is cooked, the groats will soak it. If there is lots of liquid left, it is better to pour it away.

Variations:

• Fry chopped mushrooms along with the onions.
• Stir in scrambled eggs for a complete meal.
• Use half millet half buckwheat. If you don't have a fast-cooking millet, which in the USA you likely will not have, start cooking millet first and add buckwheat when the millet is almost cooked.

Tomato lentil soup and many other soups

My initial encounter with lentils was forgettable. That was when all I knew were French lentils for which I thought they were simply too much trouble to cook and yielded too little flavor. My opinion changed drastically especially when we encountered red lentils and mung lentils. Nowadays, I rarely make a soup without lentils, I see them as a much tastier and healthier thickener, especially when one blends the soup.

The main trick I learned about cooking red or mung lentils is to start cooking by washing and soaking the lentils when I start cooking. By the time I am ready to use them, they have usually doubled or tripled in size, making the cooking process easy. Of course you can soak them in a closed container in a fridge, overnight, or starting in the morning for an evening meal, or even over a couple of days if your plans change. This is what I do with dry beans - I leave them soaking in the fridge for at least one day, sometimes three days, depending how the cooking plans go. Lately I tend to put two kind sof beans into the fridge to soak, in separate containers, of course, and then we cook them as needed in a couple of days - it's handy to have soaked beans or lentils readily available.

This recipe is for a super basic yet uber tasty variety of thick soup that I could eat pretty much every day. I see it as an example where basic cooking with a few good ingredients mops the floor with fancy stuff that many if think represents good cooking. On top of all, this soup is a complete meal, and works for people with gluten intolerance, diabetis, of candida overgrowth. This soup makes incredible leftovers. In fact, I think it is better the next day.

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS of coconut oil, or any other cooking oil. Coconut and avocado oils are my favorite.
• One onion, chopped. I prefer sweet onions, but any kind will do.
• A knob of fresh ginger. Peeled and chopped finely. I like quite a lot of ginger here, maybe even 1/4 cup.
• Two garlic cloves, chopped finely.
• Tomato sauce, 1-2 cups. Use the best sauce you can make or buy. If you buy tomato sauce, I recommend highly looking at ingredients: Look for a very short list with no sugar or corn syrup on the list, and with not too much salt - onions, tomato, salt, and maybe a few spices is all that is to a tomato sauce.
• Soaked mung lentils/dal, about 3/4 cup to 1 cup. Soak the lentils for at least half an hour to an hour at a room temperature, or in a fridge up to three days.
• One packet, about 8oz, of extra soft tofu. If you are using another kind of tofu, chop it up.
• Chicken or vegetable stock, quantity as needed.
• 1/2 TBS gochu - the sweetish not too spicy Korean dried chili. You can use a smaller quantity of chili flakes, or simply skip that.
• Optional: 3-4 chopped celery stalks.
• Salt, pepper, to taste.

Method:

• Add the oil to medium-sized pot and heat it on medium heat.
• When the pot and oil are hot, add chopped onions, a pinch of salt, and a grinding of black pepper. Watch out for salt if your tomato sauce contains lots of salt.
• Soften the onions, stirring occasionally, on medium heat.
• When the onions start to brown, add chopped ginger and garlic. Stir and cook for a minute.
• Add tomato sauce. turn the heat to medium high and bring the sauce to boil.
• Mix the lentils into the tomato sauce, and add some chicken or vegetable stock. The quantity depends on how thick or thin you want the soup to be. You could start with about one cup and then adjust as needed.
• Add celery stalks. 
• Add tofu. If using extra soft tofu, break it up with a spoon.
• Cover, bring to boil, reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for 20-25 minute or until the lentils are cooked. You can leave them with a bit of a bite or not, your call.
• If the soup is too thin, cook it uncovered, and if it is too thick, add some more stock.
• When the lentils are cooked, adjust the seasoning.

Serve as is in a bowl, optionally garnished with cilantro, and you can add some cooked beans if you have them in the fridge. If you are up to it also garnish with chopped raw garlic - I think it goes deliciously with this soup. Here is what we did today - we do like cilantro!

Variations:

• Green onion works great as a garnish too.
• Red lentils work great. You cab reduce the cooking time to 10-15 mins.
• Spit peas works great too. I also soak it and I think it cooks for about the same amout of time as mung lentils.
• Use chick peas or any other kind of bean, I think the light-colored beans are more appealing. When using beans, I coarsely grind the soup in a blender or with an immersion blender.
• If you choose to use green or French lentils - or any kind that has more skin, grind them too, otherwise the skin dominates the texture.
• If you don't have tomato sauce, use some tomato paste, and add extra stock because the paste will thicken the soup considerably.
• You can also add buckwheat groats, or steel-cup oats, or even millet. You'll have to adjust the amount of liquid and cooking time.
• You can add additional vegetables or use them instead of celery: cauliflower, chopped celeriac, chopped potatoes, chopped kale or collards, chopped broccoli, shreded savoy cabbage or plain green cabbage and so on.
• If you want a non-vegetarian version, you can go extreme and stir in chunks of braised pork belly, or chunks of cooked pork hock. Or cook the soup with some smoked meat, e.g. turkey drumstick or pork chops.

Stove-top carrots (and parsnips, and squash)

When my colleagues mother from Turkey was visiting Waterloo, Ontario, I first had carrots fried slowly in olive oil and served with yogurt. It was memorable, the combined sweetness from carrots, peppery hint from olive oil, and tartness from yogurt came together perfectly. I had to learn how to make it.

Thankfully, making this magic does not require spending years in a school of witchcraft and wizardry. All it takes are good ingredients and patience to cook the carrots slowly. Using a good pan helps, too. I have had success with cast iron, stainless steel, and ceramic non-stick.

Ingredients:

• Carrots: washed, scrubbed, cut into about 1/2 inch pieces. Use the freshest ripest tastiest carrots you can get your hands on. Quantity: 2lb or as much as you want.
• Extra virgin olive oil: Something reasonable to cook with, no need for anything fancy. Quantity: enough to generously cover the bottom of the pan, and more if needed.
• Salt: a pinch or two, adjust as needed

Method:

Heat a pan on medium heat. The pan should be large enough to accommodate carrots comfortably, a single layer is best, two layers is OK. Cover the bottom of the pan with oil. Start adding carrot pieces a bit at a time so that the pan doesn't cool down. Sprinkle with salt as you are adding carrots. Mix well to coat carrots with oil. Add more oil if needed. Cover, cook on low to medium heat for 1/2 hour, until the carrots are soft. Uncover. Keep cooking on medium heat until carrots start to brown and caramelize. 

Serve slightly warm with a dollop of good yogurt. Add more olive oil if you feel like it.

Variations:

• Parsnips can be mixed with carrots, or cooked on their own.
• Butternut squash works very well. You can add the depth of flavor by first frying onions or leeks, or both, in the olive oil before adding the squash. I have tried this with coconut oil too - while it changes the flavor significantly, it was very good.

Stove top pizza

The worst thing about making pizza, in my opinion, is firing up the oven. To avoid that, I learned how to make pizza on BBQ. Which also has to be fired up. And is somewhat messy if one is not super careful. But the BBQ pizza inspired me to try baking pizza on the stove top, and when I had adopted cast iron pans, that became a real possibility. When I have the dough prepared in the fridge, it takes me likely under 20 minutes to have a simple pizza on a plate. You can do it too :)

Dough

This is the same dough that I used in my old post about pizza:

• 1 cup firm sourdough starter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 TBS drier oregano (optional)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1-2 TBS olive oil
• water, as needed, likely just a few TBSs

In a food processor, using a kneading blade, knead all the ingredients. Add just enough water to get a soft dough, but don't go too far to make it super sticky. The kneading time in my food processor is about 5 minutes.

Take the dough out of a food processor, fold it repeatedly to form a ball, and place the ball into an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap.

You can use the dough right away, or let it rise a bit, or keep it in a fridge for up to a week.

Pizza

Take about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of dough, or whatever quantity works for you - I like pizza with a pretty thin crust, and your taste may be different. Important: The dough should be at a room temperature. Cold dough is hard to roll out and it doesn't rise that nicely when you bake it, and you risk your pizza to be super hard.

Take a clean, dry, well seasoned 10 inch cast iron pan, and set it on medium heat for 5-15 minutes, just before is smokes. While the pan is heating up, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Making a lip is your choice. I tend not to bother.

Place the dough in the pan, cover the pan with a lid, and bake for about 4-5 minutes on medium to medium low heat .The time really depends on the thickness of the dough, and on your stove, so this is one place where you have to experiment. When the top of the dough starts looking dry and shows bubbles, and the bottom starts to develop brown blisters, flip the dough over. 

What you put on the pizza is up to you. I like to spread some good tomato sauce, sprinkle it with capers, and add a few slices of mozzarella. Take it easy with the quantity of the toppings - this is a thin pizza that does not need much.

Cover the pan, and cook until the sauce is hot and the cheese is melted, for about 4-5 minutes. It is OK to check before that.

With tongs, slide pizza on a cutting board, make your slices, optionally decorate with pesto, and enjoy. It turns out this pizza goes very well with smoked salmon. This is how we consumed it.

Smoked salmon pizza

Here is my variation on the famous Wolfgang Puck's recipe: Use sauteed onions as your only topping. When the pizza is baked, cool it off a bit on a cutting board. Then spread over some sour cream that you mixed with a few TBSs of lemon juice and optionally some dill, dry or fresh. Finally, spread over thin slices of smoked salmon. If you have some caviar, use it to decorate the pizza.