Ham & Tater Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

• ½ TBSP. extra virgin olive oil
• ½ medium onion, chopped
• 1 ribs of celery, diced
• 1 lb. Yukon gold or red potatoes, peeled and diced (approximately 4 cups)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 teaspoon roasted garlic powder
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• dash cayenne or lemon drop pepper, more or less to taste
• 2 cups chicken broth, low-sodium
• 1½ cups milk, divided
• 1½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 cup cooked ham, diced small.
  

Instructions

1. In a large sauce pan over medium-high heat, add the oil. Once hot, add the onions and celery and saute for 3-4 minutes until they start turning clear. Then add in the garlic and continue to saute for another minute or two.
2. Add the peeled and diced potatoes, salt, and pepper to the pot.
3. Pour the chicken broth over the potatoes and make sure that they are covered, adding additional water as needed.
4. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until fork tender.
5. While the potatoes are boiling, pour ¼ cup of milk in a large bowl and whisk in the flour until smooth. Pour the remaining milk in the same bowl; set aside.
6. Optional: Once the potatoes are fork tender, use an immersion blender to partially blend the mixture - you want about 1/4 blended to make a creamier soup.
7. Add the milk mixture to the pot and continue to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
8. Add the sharp cheddar cheese and diced ham. Continue to simmer until the cheese is melted and ham is heated through, stirring constantly.
9. Remove from the heat. Serve immediately with additional cheddar cheese, green onions, and bacon on top.

Bread Box Toastmaster Bread Machine

Recently, I've been disappointed with the bread results from my nice Hitachi bread machine.

I've not had a good loaf of bread in ages, possibly in more than a year. 

The bread has always been tasty, but incredibly heavy: it hasn't risen. 

 

So this week, we were visiting a store for used household goods, and I found this little Toastmaster Bread Box for $10.00; I brought it home. It came with good documentation (a good part of the value), so I read up on it. 

Two primary differences from Hitachi:  

▪️ It's a much smaller loaf: 2¾ cups of flour rather than 4 cups, and

▪️ There were two differences in the basic recipe for white bread: 

    🔸 The instructions insisted that the liquid be added first, before the dry ingredients. That's directly contrary to the way I have been doing it. & 

    🔸 The instructions called for lemon juice in a white bread recipe.

I've been making bread in bread machines for decades, even researching and inventing new recipes. And I've never seen lemon juice in a yeasted bread recipe. 

But I tried it, as specified. Well, mostly as specified: I didn't have lemon juice, so I used lime juice.  

  Oh, my goodness! That is the best white bread I've had in a very long time! 

 

Wonderfully open, light. Toasts remarkably well. I don't taste the lime in the bread (it was only a teaspoon), but it was really good. 

 

Ingredients: (and apparently the sequence is important): 

⅞   cup warm (80ºf, 27c) water
1½ TBSP olive oil
1    tsp lemon (or lime) juice
1½ tsp salt
2   TBSP sugar
1   TBSP powdered milk
2½ cups plain (or bread) flour
1¼ tsp active dry yeast.

Instructions:
• Put everything into the bread machine in this sequence!
• Press "Go".
• Come back in 4 hours when it's done & enjoy your bread.

Also note: Wheat bread:

Update: The 1½ pound loaf of White and Wheat, with 1½ tsp good yeast plus ½ tsp old-and-tired yeast, cooked on the French Bread #6 setting worked wonderfully. 

  

 

 

Dehydrator Beef Jerkey

Ingredients:

• 3 LB Beef (Eye of Round or Other Lean Cut)
• 2 TSP Salt
• 1 ½ TSP Black Pepper
• 1 ½ TSP Garlic Powder
• 1 ½ TSP Onion Powder
• 1 ½ TSP Smoked Paprika
• ½ Cup Brown Sugar
• ½ Cup Soy Sauce
• 1 TBSP Worcestershire Sauce
• 6 TBSP Water

 

 Instructions: 

1. Put the meat into the freezer until cold and firm, but not frozen (30-60 minutes).

2. Mix the salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, brown sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and water in a large bowl until well mixed and the sugar has dissolved.

3. Take the meat from the freezer and trim all external fat. Using a sharp knife, thinly slice the meat between ⅛” and ¼” across the grain.

4. Add the meat to the marinade, piece by piece, and mix well to ensure contact between the meat and marinade.

5. Transfer to a plastic bag, seal and refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours.

6. Remove the meat from the marinade. Let the marinade drop off and lightly pat with paper towels to remove excess marinade without wiping the meat clean.

7. Lay the strips of meat on the mesh dehydrator trays. Make sure not to overlap the meat.

8. Place in the dehydrator and cook for 3 to 6 hours at 165°F.

9. Start checking the jerky at the 3-hour mark.

10. Once the jerky has been cooked, remove from the dehydrator, and let cool.

11. Store in an airtight container and enjoy.

     

     

    Results:  Flavor is pretty nice, but the pre-sliced meat I used is far too thin.
    

 

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.