Stews and Soups: Clam Chowder

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
4 sprigs thyme, chopped and stems removed
1 bay leaf
Salt to taste
4 medium potatoes, scrubbed and diced
2 cups half-and-half
2 (10-ounce) cans clams (drained and juice reserved)
2 (8-ounce) bottles clam juice
2 cups of frozen mixed veggies, thawed
1/2 teaspoon sugar
salt to taste
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions

Drain the canned clams over a measuring cup and reserve the juice. You will need 3 cups reserved juice in total, so add the 2 bottles of clam juice to make a total of 3 cups. Set aside the juice and the clams separately.

Heat a large pot over medium heat.

In a blender, combine 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 celery to make a smooth paste. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil to the heat pot and saute the paste until for about 3-5 minutes.

Add the potatoes, 2 remaining minced garlic cloves, 1 remaining chopped celery stalk, thyme, bay leaf, and salt. Saute until tender and fragrant, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the clam juice, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered until the potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes.

Lightly boil half and half with garlic, onion, bay leaf, and thyme. Do not allow half and half to scald or bubble over.  Strain the milk of the seasoning.  Add the seasoned half and half and clams to the soup pot, and heat gently for a few minutes to cook the clams.

Add the thawed mixed veggies and continue to cook until heat through

Taste for salt and pepper. Adjust seasoning as necessary. Serve hot.

Bread Basket: Cheddar Biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups flour
2 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup half and half
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 egg
8 strips bacon, cooked until crispy and crumbled (optional)

Directions

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large bowl add the flour, baking powder, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.

In a small bowl combine the half and half, butter, cheese, and bacon (optional).

Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients into the well.  Mix gently with a wooden spoon. The dough will be wet and sticky.

Using a 1/4 cup measure or ice cream scoop, portion the batter onto a parchment lined baking sheet or non-cooking sprayed foil, leaving an inch or so around each biscuit.

In a small bowl, beat the egg with a splash of water and then brush this mixture on the top of each biscuit.

Bake in the oven until the biscuits are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean, 20 to 22 minutes.

Stews and Soup Du Jour: Chocolate Chili con Carne

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 lbs lean ground beef
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 onion roughly chopped
2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup green grind seasoning (optional)
1 can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup tomato paste
8 ounces tomato sauce
1 cup beef broth
1-12 ounce bottle Guinness stout
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can light kidney beans
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can dark kidney beans
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
4 ounces of semi sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Directions

In a large stock pot, saute 2 tbsp of brown sugar, onions, celery, garlic, and green and red peppers in olive oil until onions are translucent. Do not allow garlic to burn. 

Add ground beef until it has browned thoroughly. Strain off excess fat before proceeding to next step.

Add the green grind seasoning to the beef and saute for 5 minutes over medium heat

Add the Guinness and let boil for 1 minute.

Add the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and the beef stock and stir thoroughly.

Add all remaining ingredients and stir to mix well.  Bring the chili to (what I like to call) an energetic simmer, then reduce the heat to low.  Covered and continue to simmer on low for MINIMUM of 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The longer the chili simmers the more the flavors get a chance to marry.

This works out great in a crock pot, too!

Remove the bay leaves and serve.  Garnish or serve with any of the following: cornbread muffin, sour cream, diced red onions, green pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, fresh chopped cilantro.  I'm pretty boring though.  Just give me a cornbread muffin and a spoon and I'm a happy camper!

LET'S GET COOKING!

My Newet Love Affair...

I'm a proud Haitian American and I've traveled the Caribbean quite a bit tasting and enjoying the cuisine, experiencing the culture, and getting my business butt kicked running a cargo business my partners and I foolishly embarked on. Caribbean cuisine is a beautiful kaleidoscope of many many flavors. The indigenous vegetation, blended with culture and flavors dragged in due to the African slave trade and East Indian indentured servitude, sprinkled with the flavors of the of the European occupying forces, and topped off with the immigrant cultures from the middle east and the orient all results in some of the best food I've ever tasted in my life!

Sadly though, I now have a crazy phobia of cooking Caribbean food and serving it to folks not legally required to like me!  Slowly but surely I'm learning all the dishes I grew up eating like du riz a sauce pois (white rice with bean soup), du riz a pois (rice and beans), griot (fried pork), and banan peze (fried plantain), just to name a few.  My uncle married into a Trinidadian family and I've been lucky enough to still be able to enjoy in America so many dishes that I loved eating while living in Trinidad (while screwin' around with that stupid boat).  Shark and Bake, roti, channa and potato, curry chicken, doubles, curry mango, stuffed baked. YUMMMMM!!!! Thanks to my Trinidadian family my Caribbean cooking skills are expanding past Haiti and south into Trinidad. 

But you do know what I love about my blog? Aside from the fact that it's forcing me to exercise my eyes and hands, getting me to write again and exercise my creative writing muscle, but it's also forcing me to cook again.  I have had some serious physical therapy sessions just from chopping vegetables! I sweat like I'm in a sauna.  Thankfully, someone is ALWAYS by my side making sure I don't pass out or chop off my fingers. My double could be quite dangerous at times...After an afternoon of cooking pots, pans, and dishes remain to be cleaned...by some well fed soul...luckily, my family takes pity on me, and let's me prop my feet up while they wash. Thank God for handy helpers! 

But through cooking I've discovered a passion laying dormant within me.  I've always loved food and flavors and all that good stuff.  Who doesn't like a good meal?  I've also never been afraid to get in the kitchen and whip up something for a crowd...but not until now, after my stroke, through my rehabilitation process, my crawling my way back to being "normal" have I actually felt moved...finally happy doing something...anything. Is this making any sense?  I feel almost a sense of urgency to memorialize all of those recipes I loved from my mother's kitchen, I feel it's my duty to get past my phobia and force some folks to taste my Caribbean food to make sure it's right, not just good.  I feel a special urgency to do it now...

So I'm doing it now...but I'm also doing all those things I also have done well in the past and get rave reviews about just to make sure my ego is sufficiently stroked in between cooking disasters. :-) So today's dish of the day is a pseudo-Italian offering, Spinach and Turkey Penne Pasta! ENJOY!

Extraordinary Entree: Spinach and Turkey Penne Pasta

Ingredients

1 tablespoon  olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 pound ground turkey
Alfredo Sauce (try this recipe)
1 pound penne pasta
2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided

Directions

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite.  Pasta will become al dente during final cooking stage. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the starchy pasta water.

Heat oil in large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic, onions, and fennel seeds and sauté until translucent, about 7 minutes. Add ground turkey. Sauté until cooked through and beginning to brown. When completely cooked, adding spinach in batches and tossing until wilted.

In a separate pot prepare or heat the Alfredo Sauce, and bring to simmer.  Add pasta to the Alfredo  sauce. Cook over medium heat.  Add the meat-spinach mixture and toss until completely coated with the sauce.

Stir in 1/2 cup cheese and enough cooking liquid to moisten. Transfer to large bowl. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheese; serve.

The Deli Counter: Tuna Salad

Ingredients

1 (6 ounce) can albacore tuna (I use water packed tuna)
1 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup light olive oil mayo (add more if you like)
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp Vidalia onion salad dressing
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
Pinch of salt to taste

Wheat wrap
1/4 cup match stick carrots
1/4 cup broccoli slaw
Swiss Cheese

Directions

1.  Combine all ingredients, cover and chill.
2.  I like to garnish my tuna salad with a mixture of broccoli slaw and and match stick carrots, with Swiss cheese, inside of a wheat wrap.

I Prefer Fish That Tastes Like Chicken...

Light, flaky, and not to fishy.  It wasn't uncommon to hear me say, "I prefer fish that tastes like chicken..."  That's what I use to say after some bad experiences with fish.  The closer it tasted like chicken (according to my immature palate), the more I liked it.  I had a few bad experiences as a child with some bad fish, and that was the end for me for quite some time.

1)  Growing up my mom would force my brother and I to eat fish every day during Holy Week and Fridays during Lent because we were good Catholics...I HATED THAT! (Now that I'm a non-practicing Catholic and there's no dietary restriction I look forward to engorging in sea food during the entire Lenten season.)  During Holy Week and Fridays of Lent we were forced to eat sardines, salmon, tuna...all from a can.  I was stuck bringing that crap to school for lunch that week and Fridays. At night, my mom would throw together some quick fish concoction or some crap from the freezer section that was never quite cooked all the way through.  But one day my mom hit the jackpot and bought fish sticks made by a particular fisherman and it was divine!

I was a latch-key child when I was little, so many afternoons instead of going over to the neighbor's house I'd go home and take care of myself until my parents got home from work or my older brother got home from school. We were 6 years apart, so while I was in elementary and middle school my brother was in high school.  Innywho...the next day after school I got it in my head that I could recreate the yumminess my mom made for dinner the night before.  I thought I could just break open the package, read the instructions, and cook the fish sticks myself. Oh wait! I forgot to mention...My mom made the tartar sauce from scratch that night for dinner as well. I think the instructions were on the package.  What's the point of this long-winded story about my after school snack? Well, I popped those fish sticks in the oven, mixed up the ingredients for the tartar sauce just like I saw mom do the night before. When the fish sticks were "done" and tartar sauce "ready" I was excited to dig in...only to bite into damn near raw fish in the middle and runny soupy tartar sauce on the outside! EEEEEEWWWWWWW...I gagged and gagged!!!!  Clearly, I screwed up my Mom's yummy tartar  sauce recipe and I dunno how you screw up fish sticks, but I managed to do just that! For years I became a vegetarian during holy week rather eat anything that swam in the sea!

At some point I got over my seafood hatred (because that experience soured me on ALL things that lived in the sea) and picked up a tuna fish habit. I loved to eat tuna salad spread on these crackers made by Goya.  One day, I made a tuna salad as I had many times before, I spread it on my crackers as I had many times before, and then I took one bite. :-( EEEEEEWWWWWW...Well, apparently over night I had developed an aversion to chunky white tuna and the dark meat and veiny strings that run through it. (OH I'M STARTING TO GAG JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!)  The combo of the fishy smell up my nose and the pungent taste on my tongue sent EVERYTHING I ate that day (including the one bite) out of my stomach, up my esophagus, and shooting out of my mouth like something out of the Exorcist! I was shooting projectiles of food, it seemed, for like  a good 5 to 10 minutes before I finally composed myself.  I was turning all shades of green!  OMG What a day! Well, suffice it to say that I and didn't touch tuna fish or any other fish again for another 5 years or so. This time I restricted my seafood idiosyncrasy to just fish.  Crabs and shrimp were still good friends of mine...

So years go by without me eating fish, something my mom makes at least a couple times a month, and I'd refuse.  How long though can you can say no to your mother's cooking before she lays in one  of her patented guilt trips that you only learn how to do after giving birth? You know it's my Momma...when she cooks something and her kid won't eat, boy are her feelings hurt!  Then she lays into you about the horrible labor pains, and you know wha? You can so no only but so many times before you give in...

So after about 5 long years of my mom making fish about 2 to 3 times a month and my mother promising to make me fish that tastes like chicken I relented. My mom started with cat fish nuggets...then tilapia...then cod...all light, mild, flaky options.  But then one summer I went to South Africa and stayed in Cape Town for my summer abroad program. How does one live in a sea port and now try the seafood????  IMPOSSIBLE! I ate it all: KING FISH, TIGER FISH, WHATEVER FISH CAME OFF THOSE BOATS! Then I moved to  Trinidad for a short while and enjoyed bake and shark (recipe coming soon!)...and now I'm eating Mahi Mahi and Trout...and Red Snapper! My friend Chef Ivan makes the BEST red snapper filet with a mango salsa...TO DIE FOR!!!! 

But a daughter always goes back to Mom's basics.  My first fish offering is actually a new dish in my Mom's repertoire: Oven Fried Fish (new recipe) with Homemade Tartar Sauce (not so new recipe)...enjoy my mother's recipe (that she adapted from Rachel Ray  just last year) and tell me what you think!