It's My Happy Heart You Hear: December 2008

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Corn Chowder and Biscuits

It seems that I have a bit of a comfort food theme lately...

I love holidays because it's an occassion for me to pull out all the stops and make everything just-so. I like cooking fancy meals, and making a wide array of desserts and side dishes, but this year was simply too stressful to do all of that. I really wanted to have a simple and relaxing Christmas, so I resisted the urge to complicate everything.

Wanting dinner to be simple without sacrificing any of the deliciousness we all aniticipate with a holiday meal, I decided, after some counsel with my mom, on Corn Chowder and Biscuits. We had never tried the recipe before, but it turned out great, and was so fast and simple.

Read the notes following the recipe to see what I changed.

Corn Chowder

2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 bunch fresh celery leaves
3 (15 ounce) cans cream-style corn
1 can whole kernal corn
1 cup water
1 (12 fluid ounce) cans evaporated milk
2 T butter

Place butter in a large stock pot over medium heat. Cook pepper, onion and celery leaves until just tender. Stir in creamed corn, corn and water and bring slowly to a boil, stirring frequently. Stir in milk and heat gently, without boiling. Serve hot.

Notes:
-I did not have celery leaves, so I left them out entirely. Someone said you can use a few teaspoons of celery seed instead, but I haven't tried it.
-My mom has since made this recipe, and she included crumbled bacon on top. She said that it added a lot to the flavor. Our guests were vegetarian, so I didn't do this, but it sounds like it'd be good to me.
-We served it with cheddar cheese and sour cream on top.

I think that the perfect compliment to almost any soup is a good biscuit, which in my experience can be hard to find. Somewhere along the way I heard of a great tip regarding biscuits that I tried on this occassion, and it worked perfectly, resulting in the flakiest home-made biscuits I've ever had. I've included it in the recipe.

Rolled Biscuits
3 1/2 C All Purpose Flour
2 T Baking Powder
1 t Salt
12 T Unsalted Butter, Frozen
1 1/2 C Milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Grate frozen butter (with a cheese grater) into a bowl. Place back into the freezer.
Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
Cut in the grated butter gently with a pastry cutter or a fork. For easier blending, only add a third of the butter at a time.
Make a well in the center of your flour/butter mixture and add all the milk all at once. Stir just until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently and quickly, about 8 to 10 times, until the dough comes together. Roll out with a floured rolling pin to about 1/2 inch thick.
Cut with a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, place on an ungreased baking sheet, and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. If desired, rub the tops with butter after removing them from the over.

Notes:
-The secret to flaky biscuits is COLD butter. The colder you can keep your butter, and the less you can handle your dough, the better. Grating the butter is simply a way to incorporate your butter faster and with less handling than the traditional "cutting in" method. And after all, the cutting in is the least fun part of making biscuits anyway. If you want to make your grating even faster, then just whiz it up in the food processor. (That was mom's idea. I have to give credit where credit is due!)
-This made about 20 3 1/2" biscuits. With a smaller cutter, or rolled thinner, you could definitely get a lot more. Also, if your husband isn't stealing the dough to eat every time you turn around, you could get a few more.

I unfortunately didn't get to take pictures of either of these when I made them because I always feel odd taking pictures of food when we have friends over. Next time though, I promise.

The soup is so fast to make, and while it's heating, why not whip up a batch of biscuits? So good, and perfect for a cold winter night. Let me know if you try it!

Comfort Food

Hubby had to swipe a taste

The other night I made one of our favorite meals for dinner. I can hardly stand to have a great recipe and not share it with everyone, so here I am. This one is pretty much the best when it comes to fool-proof, just plain good, home cooking. We have it at least twice a month, and we always keep the ingredients on hand (they're all very basic) so we can whip up a batch whenever we are in need of something that is just so yummy you can't stand it.

Don't be afraid. Baked Mac-n-Cheese is so easy, you'll be giving up Kraft in no time. I've included some mouthwatering pictures to tempt you. Your hubby will love you forever.

Best Ever In the Whole Wide World Mac-n-Cheese

2 T. Corn Starch
1 t. Salt
1/2 t. Dry Ground Mustard
1/4 t. Pepper
2 1/2 C. Milk
2 T. Butter
2 C. Shredded Cheddar Cheese
8 oz. (2 C.) elbow macaroni, cooked and drained

Combine first 5 ingredients in a medium saucepan, and cook over medium heat. Once mixture starts to bubble (boil) allow it to continue for 1 minute. Remove sauce from heat and stir in shredded cheese. Combine with macaroni in an oven proof dish. Bake at 375 degrees until the top is a little bit brown and bubbly, about 30 minutes.

Notes:

-I added ham to the batch I made on Sunday night. It's super yummy, and I wanted to use up some of the left over ham from Christmas. Be warned that if you put ham in the mac and cheese, it will be a little bit more runny because ham retains a lot of water that comes out in the cooking process. Just let it cool and everything will firm back up, but it looks a little different than when you just make it the regular way.

-I almost always double this recipe. If it's just for a side and there aren't many of you, one will be enough, but the leftovers are sooooo good, it never goes bad if you make a little extra. This recipe, doubled, fits perfectly in a 9x13 dish.

-My mom sometimes makes this with bread crumbs on top. I have a strong aversion to any bread that is even the slightest bit soggy, so I don't do that, but I've heard that those with less of a gag reflex really like them.

I guarantee you will love this. Just try it! It's the best comfort food, and so easy and basic.

Reminicing

I love clemetines. So much, in fact, that I'm slightly obsessive about them. As soon as I see the shoddy looking crates at the grocery store I can't help but to buy one, no matter what. I stand there for a while, choosing the crate that will deliver the sweetest, juciest, brightest orange clemetines known to mankind. I take them home, and begin eating them in pairs and triplets. There's only two of us here, so I have to eat about six or seven a day if I have any hopes of finishing them before they rot, or shrivel into a dry, tasteless little lot.

But this isn't the obsessive part. Each time I peel a clemetine, I peel it entirely, meaning that there is no whiteness left on the entire thing. No strings, no pithy white residue. Nothing except clementine.

I remember eating oranges when I was younger, and even a teenager. My mom always offered to peel them for me and my siblings. Yes, that's right. Peel. While most mothers would get out a knife and cutting board and cut the orange into large juicy wedges in around 15 seconds, my mom would stand over the garbage, peeling every last fleck of white off of those oranges. It was a labor of love, one that I never really noticed until I was peeling my own.

It takes time to peel an orange, especially when you're peeling four of them, and you're in the middle of making a meal, people are stopping by, or any of the other general craziness that exists in a house with four young kids. But a peeled orange is so much better. It's the only way to really enjoy it, without the distracting displeasure of rind and white stuff in your mouth. Just orange.

So thanks for all those countless oranges, Mom. Know that I did appreciate them, and now that I'm 2200 miles away, I miss them.

Some days I'm just a little homesick. Maybe it's more of a longing for simpler times. Someone to peel your oranges for you.

And I guess the apple really doesn't fall too far from the tree. I can only imagine that my citrus cleaning obsession will carry over to the time when we have kids. Although I know they won't appreciate it, I'll know how much better their experience is because I spent the few minutes. And maybe some day they'll know that I did it because I cared.

I know this is random, but this is why I made a new blog: So that all the random stuff can be neatly packaged in a little separate entity, and you won't have to root through it to see how we're doing. This will officially be my last apology for anything I write. Let it be known.