Tsumommy's Clam Chowder

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 slices bacon, chopped (maybe 3 or 4)
2 stalks celery, finely diced
1 small onion, finely diced
½ tsp kosher salt
2 bay leaves
8 small yellow potatoes, diced small with skin on (¼” cubes)
2 Tbsp flour
8 oz clam juice
1 cup half&half
½ cup milk
¼ cup white wine
1½ pounds clams
Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

Cook the clams. Clean them. Dice them (fairly small). Set them aside. 
 
In a stockpot over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon.
Add the butter. When it’s nicely warm, add celery, onion, bay leaves & salt to the bacon/butter mix.  Cook until veggies are soft, stirring continuously.
Sprinkle the flour in and mix carefully, stirring constantly, making a roux.
 
Add cubed potatoes and the liquids: clam juice, half&half, milk, white wine.
Simmer until potatoes are soft. Stir as needed. Do not boil.
Add the diced clams. Heat the mixture up again. 
 
Serve. Add pepper to taste in the bowls.
Serve with crackers, and perhaps white wine.

Verdict: Really good! Makes enough or 4 or 5 servings.

Zucchini flour

You may have heard it called Amish flour or troops flour before. It’s a Staple in Amish and Mennonite household for generations. It was also embraced in the 1940’s during rationing. 

It's a low-carb, gluten-free flour. Or it's good for just stretching your flour, or for using up all those zucchinis that grow so quickly. You can substitute zuke flour for coconut flour 1:1.

There’s probably fancier ways of doing this out there, but here’s how I learned. It's pretty easy.

You let your zucchini grow, oversized zucchini will give a milder-flavored flour. Peel with a carrot peeler, into thin even strips. If you shred the zucchini (cheese shredder or food processor), it will dry faster, but take more space and be messier.

You can use the skins and seeds if you’re using small-to-medium size fruit; if you’re using a great big one, leave skins and seeds out.

Dehydrate the zucchini. It must be absolutely dry, paper dry, crispy dry. It’s essential. If in doubt always dry it more; any moisture will ruin it during storage

Then run the dried strips through a food processor until you have a powdered consistency. It will be a marbled green looking power if you kept the skin. The texture should be similar to a good quality whole wheat flour. If it’s not fine enough for you, sift the flour. You can run the siftings through a coffee grinder and sift again.

That is zucchini flour. Three large zucchini is about four or five cups finished.

It can be used to replace up to ⅓ of the flour in most recipes without any change to the finished products. It acts as a thickening agent for gravies, great for breading fish. I’m told it makes good tortillas or naan bread. It also makes great dumplings and brownies.

Store in air tight jar or vacuum pack it; adding a desiccant (silica) packet to keep humidity down. Do not store the flour in the refrigerator (too much moisture) and use within 6 months for best quality. Alternatively, store the sliced/shredded zucchini in the freezer and process it when you’re getting ready to bake.

So this is free, sustainable, easily produced on site and it has a mild taste. Most people wouldn’t pick up on it. It cuts our flour usage by a third. You can make flour with sweet or regular potato, other squashes, and with pumpkin. I just find myself zucchini is the least flavored. Plus we get overloaded by the darn things. 

Dairy-free Peach & Scotch Bonnet Pepper Ice Cream

Combining a little bit of heat with sweetness and vanilla.

Equipment

1 Ice Cream Maker
1 Blender or immersion blender

Ingredients
4 large egg yolks
⅔ cups cane sugar
1 can coconut milk
1 can coconut cream
¼ teaspoon salt
1 TBSP bourbon vanilla flavoring
2TBSP + 1 oz brandy (We used Courvoisier)
1½ pounds of sliced fresh peaches (We started with 2 pounds of frozen fresh peaches, and ate about half a pound in preparation.)

Instructions
Prep your ice cream maker so that it is ready to make ice cream.

Prepare Scotch Bonnet pepper:
• Mince very, very fine.
• Soak in brandy in 2 TBSP brandy for a few days.
NB: I started with a dehydrated Scotch Bonnet pepper. I chopped it fine & rehydrated in brandy, marinating it for a week, mincing it finer after rehydrating. Next time: consider grinding dried pepper to powder & marinating the powder.)

Prepare peaches:
• If frozen, thaw.
• Stew gently in a medium saucepan over a low heat until softened.
• Divide in half. Blend half to pretty small texture. Stir in 1oz brandy.
• Cut the other half of the peaches into small pieces. (Recommended: keep stewing these until they begin to get soft.)

Prepare Custard:

• Combine egg yolks, coconut milk, sugar, and salt in a blender and process until smooth.
• Pour mixture into a medium sauce pan, and heat over medium low just until steamy. You should see little bubbles forming around the edge of the pan. Do not boil.
• Strain peppers from brandy. Stir in the finely minced, marinated pepper, reserving brandy.
• Continue to cook the coconut milk mixture until it has thickened to the consistency of a thin custard that will coat the back of a spoon. This will take longer than you expect.
• Remove the mixture from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract, brandy from peppers & blended peaches.
• Re-blend again until smooth.

Refrigerate the mixture for 2-4 hours, or until the custard mixture is very cold.

Churn Ice Cream:
Pour cooled mixture into ice cream maker and churn until partly/largely frozen. This should take about 30-40 minutes.
When you’ve finished churning, the ice cream will have the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Pour into freezer-safe container. Make some openings in the soft ice cream and pour stewed peach pieces in to make ripples of peaches.
For soft-serve style ice cream, serve immediately. For a harder scoopable ice cream, place in the freezer for 2-3 hours.
Take out and place on the counter for 10 minutes to soften for serving.

This is actually pretty good.

Classic Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

½ cup uncooked rice
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
¾ medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cloves garlic, minced
¾ pound lean ground beef
1 cup diced fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 bell peppers, tops and cores removed
¾ cup shredded Monterey Jack (substitute a goat cheese for the dairy intolerant)
Freshly chopped parsley, for garnish

 

Instructions

Step 1: Prepare the oven. Preheat it to 400 degrees.

Step 2: Cook the rice in a small saucepan according to package instructions.

Step 3: Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, saute the onion for about 5 minutes until tender. Add in the tomato paste and garlic. Stir and continue to cook for another minute until aromatic. Add in the ground beef, breaking up the meat using a wooden spoon, and continue to cook for 6 minutes more until no longer pink.

Step 4: Stir in the cooked rice and the diced tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, and oregano, then simmer for about 5 minutes until the liquid slightly reduced.

Step 5: In a 9 x 9 inch baking dish, put the peppers on the bottom cut side-up. Drizzle with oil and spoon the mixture to the peppers, incorporating up to half the Monterey Jack cheese. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese neatly over the tops.

Step 6: Use foil to cover the dish and place it inside the preheated oven. Bake for about 35 minutes until the peppers are soft. Remove the cover and bake for another 10 minutes until the cheese is bubbly.

Step 7: Remove from the oven and garnish. Serve warm.

TJ's Mediterranean Pasta Salad

INGREDIENTS: 

-full bag of fusilli noodles (black bean noodles or lentil noodles work great, and make this dish gluten free!) 

Handful each of

-kalamata olives

-roasted marinated red peppers

-artichoke hearts

-frozen corn, A half a bag

-chicken, 6 tenders or thighs. Or 3 chicken breasts. 

-8 cherry tomatoes

-1/4 red onion

-5 radishes

-1 clove elephant garlic, or a few cloves regular garlic

To taste 

-goat cheese

-Parmesan cheese

INSTRUCTIONS 

In a skillet, cook off finely diced garlic with butter, till translucent.

Add seasoned chicken (I liked garlic salt and pepper) when half cooked, start shredding it with two forks. (If it starts out frozen, cook in fryer till fully defrosted, finish cooking in pan and shred)

Place chicken and garlic in a separate bowl with frozen corn, and let residual heat thaw corn.

Cut cherry tomatoes to preferred size and blister in pan till umami flavour is strong. Roughly chop remaining veggies, fresh and marinated.

Do not waste any oil from the marinated veggies, as this will be our sauce. 

Mix everything thoroughly into a large bowl sprinkling in the cheeses to preference. Season with salt and pepper to taste, mushroom salt pairs nicely.  

Balance is important. Especially with the marinated veggies as the oil is important and also filled with flavour.

Sue’s Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:

1 pound uncooked red or purple potatoes, diced large (golf ball size)
3 cups uncooked leeks, chopped
3 cups kale, chopped
1 bratwurst or sausage per person (optional)
1 TBSP canola oil
3 cups low-fat milk (1%? 2%?)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
Pepper to taste.


Instructions:

• Cut potatoes into golf-ball size pieces. Spread on microwavable plate, cover & cook on high until tender, about 6 minutes.

• In stockpot, heat oil over medium heat. When it’s warm, add chopped leeks, chopped kale & salt. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. 
 
• Dice the sausage (if you're using them) and fry over medium heat.

• Add cooked potatoes, milk & nutmeg to stockpot and reduce heat to medium low. Mash potatoes into small chunks. Simmer until flavors blend, about 5 minutes.

• Serve in wide bowls, perhaps with crackers or toast. Garnish with pepper, finely chopped green peppers.

• Enjoy. 
 
COMMENT: Also works with rice milk instead of dairy milk; makes it vegetarian.

Vegetarian; no sausage.

Not vegetarian; with sausage.

 

Sourdough Light Rye

Ingredients: 

2 Cups sourdough (Give or take) 

2 Cups bread flour

1 tsp salt 

1 1/2 TBSP gluten flour 

2 TBSP milk powder 

2 TBSP butter

Warm water, as needed (1/4 cup, Give or take) 

Directions: 

Load it all, water first, into the mixing bowl.

Mix it well. You want a firm dough, not a sloppy dough.

Let it raise in a warm place. Double.

Cut in half. Shape into small loaves.

Cut shallow slices in the top.

Raise again, briefly. 

Bake at 350 until it's done. Until it's brown. (20 minutes?) 

Results: