Salmon and corn chowder

You never know when or how your body will turn on you.  It might not be now, it might not be tomorrow, but someday we'll all experience that unhappy event in some way or other.  Some time after moving east last year, I developed, out of the blue, an allergy to shellfish.  It was quite a shocker since crab, shrimp and lobster are some of my very favorite foods.  When we first arrived in New England  I ate as much lobster as I could find and in as many ways as I could think of: lobster mac and cheese, lobster omelets, lobster quiche, bacon, lobster lettuce and tomato sandwiches....But when this kind of thing happens, there's not much you can do about it except avoid the foods that cause you trouble.  In that spirit, this chowder, which would have been made with lobster, will henceforth be made with salmon.  And that's ok.  Salmon is every bit as luscious as lobster...

I'm so happy soup season is here.  Chowders are my favorites---they're so satisfying and chunky, almost like white stews.  Feathery dill and fresh corn off the cob firmly ground this chowder in summer (we have 3 more weeks!), but the creamy base heavily loaded with quartered potatoes and hunks of salmon---maybe some herbed rolls on the side?---gently suggests fall.  As an added bonus, this soup provides one more option for eating more of that super-hero of health foods, salmon.

Salmon and Corn Chowder
3/4 pound salmon, skin off, cut in large chunks
1 pound new potatoes, skin on, cut in quarters or eighths, depending on size
3 ears of fresh corn, kernels removed.  (reserve one cob)
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
2 cups whole milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp tomato paste from a tube
salt and fresh pepper
a bunch of fresh dill

Add just enough water to cover the chopped potatoes in a pan and simmer until they are tender but still firm.  Add the corn kernels and simmer for another minute or two.

Meanwhile melt the two tablespoons of butter in a large soup pot and saute the onions until translucent. (I actually forgot the onions this time, but you won't).  Add in the tomato paste and the flour and stir for a minute.  The dab of tomato paste will delicately tint the soup pink, and is just there as a nice visual echo of the salmon.

Pour in 2 cups of milk and whisk until it's combined.  Add in the potatoes, corn, and their water.  Add in one of the corn cobs, broken in half.  The cob magically imparts an extra 'corny' flavor to the chowder, you'll be amazed.  Season with salt and pepper and bring up to a simmer.  The chowder will have thickened a little bit by now.  Add in the salmon chunks and simmer for just a minute, then turn off the heat and cover.

After the chowder has cooled you can refrigerate for several hours or overnight.  When you are ready to eat, remove the cobs, bring the chowder back up to a simmer and check the seasonings.  At this point I break up the larger chunks of salmon.  Add a little more tomato paste if the chowder isn't pink enough for you.  Add more milk if it's too thick, and be sure to taste and season well with salt and pepper.  Scatter in the chopped fresh dill just before serving.

I love soup for dinner because it gives you an excuse to eat biscuits or a big hunk of bread along with it.  File this one under fresh, healthy, hearty, beautiful, elegant, comforting, make-ahead, family, fireside, cozy, dinner-in-a-bowl.  Who needs lobster?

Lemon chicken with buttermilk dressing

My starting point for this recipe is Ina Garten's Parmesan Chicken which comes from her Family Style cookbook.  She serves salad greens on top of her Parmesan coated chicken.  I've added some lemon and a creamy buttermilk dressing.  I defy you to find someone who doesn't like buttermilk dressing.  It's just in our dna.  This is a lovely meal to celebrate the end of summer with, and a real crowd pleaser.

For the buttermilk dressing you can use a small food processor, a blender, or a whisk.  Mix together about equal amounts of buttermilk, mayonnaise, and sour cream.  Add in the zest of 1 lemon, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, a finely minced clove of garlic, salt and pepper.  Parsley or chives give a bit of green.  Be sure to taste this as you go and adjust if necessary.  Pour the dressing in a little jar and refrigerate till needed.

I like to buy chicken cutlets, which are thinly sliced pieces of boneless skinless breast, but you can use  tenders for this as well.  Regular breasts are too thick, so I wouldn't use them unless you want to be bothered pounding them out.  You want thin, tender bites of chicken, not rubbery chunks.

Put a cup of buttermilk in one pan, and a cup of creadcrumbs, lots of grated parmesan, the zest of one lemon, chopped parsley, salt and fresh pepper in another.
Put your chicken cutlets in the buttermilk until you're ready to cook.  
Pour about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a saute pan and preheat to medium high.
Lift the chicken breasts from the buttermilk and dredge in the crumb mixture, making sure they get completely coated.  Saute them in batches till golden on both sides.  Remove to a cutting board as you cook the rest of the chicken.  Then slice the breasts into 4 or 5 slices, and carefully lay them on top of your salad greens.  Drizzle the buttermilk dressing over the top of the salad and chicken.

chocolate chip frangipane with bittersweet ganache

All is right with the world in our neck of the woods this morning.  The turkeys are out feasting on all the fallen acorns, and the morning light is extra clear.  The storm turned out to be nothing more than a lot of rain and some gusty wind.  It was actually kind of pleasant, and we took a couple of walks to the beach during the day.  It was quite a build up for such a small event, but I guess it is better to be safe than sorry, and I know some areas did get hit much harder.  It feels like the storm has formally ushered in fall, there's a long golden slant to the sunlight this morning and a slight chill as the leaves are rustling in the last vestiges of Irene.  I had to go looking for some polar fleece ...

It's back to college this week, so while we still have a growing girl around to help us polish it off, I thought it might be a good time to make this.  I've wanted to make this all summer, but fruit just kept getting in the way. 

Almond and dark chocolate is a killer flavor combination.  Frangipane is a fluffy, almond  filling for tarts and other stuff like that, but it's most often paired with fruits and jam.  Substituting dark chocolate for the fruit just takes it to a whole other level.  It consists of a basic crust in a tart pan, filled with the chocolate chip frangipane, and topped with a dark chocolate ganache.  

Martha Stewart's No Fail Crust
makes 2 crusts

2 1/2 cups flour

2 sticks cold butter, cut in pieces

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1/4 cup ice water, plus more if necessary

• Put the flour salt and sugar in a processor and pulse to combine. 
• Add the pieces of butter and process until grainy.  
• While pulsing, add in the ice water, starting with 1/4 cup, just until the dough holds together when pressed between your fingers. 
• Empty the bowl of the processor onto a sheet of plastic wrap and bring it together into a dough.  
• Cut the amount in half, shape into disks, and wrap each disk in plastic.  
• Refrigerate for 2 hours before rolling out one of the disks for this tart.    

For the fragnipane:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 cup almond flour
3 tablespoons dark rum
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

• Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
• Mix in the rest of the ingredients, blend well.
• Pour into your pie shell, and bake at 400 for about 35-40 minutes, until the tart is golden and firm to the touch.

Almond flour can be found in most supermarket baking aisles these days.

I tested out another new extra dark chocolate chip this one from Guittard.  I still like the Nestle 
dark chocolate chip better.

For the ganache:

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

• Heat the cream in a bowl in the microwave or on the stove till simmering.  
• Take off the heat and add in the chocolate.  
• Let it sit for 10 minutes, then whisk until it's combined and glossy.  
• Let cool for 5 minutes, then pour over the top of the tart, smoothing if necessary.

This is so good.  Those 3 tbsp. of rum, the almond, and the bittersweet chocolate make for a very adult taste.  The college kid agrees.

Baking up a storm with cardamom, pears and plums

It looks like Irene will have calmed down quite a bit by the time she reaches us, but even so, the high winds of a strong storm are bound to bring down trees and branches, and whenever that happens, the electricity tends to go out.  Forget batteries and bottled water---I'm doing some emergency preemptive baking so we'll have something to sustain us while we watch the rain pound down. 

First it's a quick pear and plum crumble to use up some of the fruit that's somehow managed to escape being baked already.  I know what you're thinking---hasn't she made about a dozen crumbles already?---well, yes I have, but I'm trying to show you how versatile they are, and remember the Mario Batali clip about scorpacciata?  That applies to crumbles, too.  Pretty soon I'll be ready to move on.  But not just yet.
Beautiful pears are starting to show up in the stores, but all by themselves they can be a little bland, so I added in a couple of plums for color and a punch of flavor.

You know the drill by now...the base formula for a crumble topping requires a cup of flour or flour-like substance, 5 tbsp sugar, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp of spice, and a 1/2 cup nuts.  Then you're going to rub in 6 tablespoons of soft butter with your hands until the dough is crumbly.  For the fruit part I usually don't add anything but maybe a squeeze of lemon or a touch of flavoring like vanilla or almond extract.  If the fruit is extra tart I'll toss it with a little brown sugar.  You can add in a bit of flour for some thickening, but I usually don't.  I like the runny fruit juices.
This master formula can vary in a million ways.  The flour can be part oats, part wheat germ, part whole wheat pastry flour, corn flour, whatever floury stuff you want to use.  The spices and nuts can be shuffled any way you like.  The butter is pretty standard, but even that can be fiddled with.  Today I used:

• 1/2 cup of ground almond meal for half of the flour.  
• dark brown sugar
• sliced almonds 
• 6 tbsp soft butter
• ground cardamom*

I peeled and sliced 3 pears, and sliced 2 plums and added them to my baking pan.  I added the juice of 1/2 lemon, and that's it.  I topped the fruit with my crumbly dough and baked at 375 for 45-50 minutes.  This crumble serves 4, but you could double it and bake in a 9x13 pan or any large shallow baking dish.

These fruit crumbles have temporarily overtaken muffins and scones as my morning ritual.  I'm sure something else will come along eventually to take its place, but until the summer and fall fruits slow down, this is my go to treat.

The first raindrops have just started and we've already pretty much decimated the crumble....

* Ground cardamom is an exotic cousin of cinnamon, and even though you're probably familiar with it in Indian cooking, ground cardamom is also used in baking.  Cardamom has a beautiful silvery color and it adds a subtle, pleasantly unfamiliar note to baked foods.  You can combine it with cinnamon if you want to.

Going stir crazy

waiting for the Hurricane Irene, tropical storm, nor'easter...

This was inspired my my fellow blogger at A Nantucket State of Mind...who is riding out the storm today.

A welcome mat for fall in the form of a potato and shallot gratin

This is my new favorite dish.   I think I'm allowed to switch favorites that often.

It's simple.  It really is.  The oven does most of the work.

It's foolproof.  Now that's rare.

It's delicious.  Have a look at the ingredients.

It's humble.  You can't get more humble than potatoes.

It's pedigreed.  It's French, naturellment.  

It's versatile.  It goes with fish, it goes with meat.  It's perfect all by itself.

It's satisfying.  Just a bit of peeling, slicing and layering results in a pretty elegant dish.

It's fun.  Layering is fun.

It gives you an excuse to get a beautiful gratin dish.  If you don't make gratins, you'd have no business owning a dish like this.

I've made this gratin several times this summer... in between all those fresh tomatoes and watermelon salads I occasionally indulged in some 'aspirational' fall cooking.  I can already tell I'm going to make lots of variations this fall, but let's start with the original.

Potato and shallot gratin
3 russet potatoes, peeled and sliced thin (they don't have to be paper thin)
2 large shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup grated cheese (I used extra sharp white cheddar)
1/2 cup whole milk  
1/2 cup cream
salt 
lots of fresh cracked pepper
fresh thyme
2 Tbsp butter 

Preheat the oven to 375.  Add a splash of olive oil to the bottom of a round, square, or oval baking dish.  Lay out one sliced potato evenly across the bottom of the pan, doubling up if necessary.  Sprinkle 1/3 of the cheese across the potato, then 1/3 of the sliced shallots, add a few thyme leaves, and salt and pepper.  Then layer the next potato the same way.  Add the third potato and top it off with dots of butter.  Carefully pour the cup of milk and cream over the gratin.

Bake the gratin for about 50 minutes until the whole thing is browned and bubbling. 

I grew up on scalloped potatoes from a box. You would pour boiling water over the dehydrated potato disks and fluorescent orange cheese powder.  In the time it took to boil that water this whole dish can be put together from scratch.
Just think of the fun you can have playing with zucchini, cauliflower, maybe some eggplant.  And lots of different kinds of potatoes.  Fennel?  Parsnips, carrots, leeks...don't forget all the varieties of cheese you can experiment with, and herbs, lots of herbs.  Then there's the breadcrumb option, and of course you could layer in ham, thinly sliced or in big rustic chunks...
Bon appetit!

Martha. When you're not hating her, you gotta love her

Probably like many of you, I have a love-hate thing going with Martha Stewart.  But if you're interested in food, crafts, interior design, or just about anything else, the woman is impossible to avoid.  Especially if you've got Martha's blog feed on your homepage. 
And I do occasionally buy Martha Stewart Living.  Mostly when I know I'll be stuck on a plane for many hours, or when I'm on a particularly slow line at the supermarket and I'm forced to stare at the cover for so long that I can't resist it.  That's how I ended up with the August issue, and it has an interesting article in it about bringing the woodlands inside in the form of beautiful moss arrangements from the lush understory of the woods around her home in Maine.  

She and her minions comb the surrounding woods for mosses, lichen, ferns and miniature saplings that then get arranged into living tableaux throughout her house.  Of course even the containers are gorgeous: she uses vintage faux-bois (fake wood) vases, antique birdbaths, and baskets.  

She explains that since mosses have no roots, you can just gently dig or pick them right up and replace them on top of soil in a pot.  She puts a layer of pebbles at the bottom of the container for drainage, then fills the rest with potting soil.  She says it all gets returned to the outdoors when the season is over.
I really like the look of these mossy planters, so I created one for myself.  I wasn't sure where I was going to find the moss, but as soon as I started looking I spotted plenty of it.  I found it growing along the side of the road, and under bushes on the shady side of our house.  I soon realized there were many different varieties depending on where I looked.
Just as Martha said, these little emerald green balls of moss came right up off the ground, no roots at all.

 I got a pretty green pot with a crackled glaze from the thrift store, and dug some dirt for the base.  Then I just arranged my moss and mini ferns around it, tucking them in.

I'm really happy with it, I think I'm going to look for other interesting shallow but wide mouth containers and make more.

 How about you, love or hate?