Batter-Splattered

turkey chowder with pancetta and crimini

I forgot to tell you about Memorial Day. It seems so long ago, but humor me.

You'd think someone with a food blog would get all seasonal and haul out the grill and the bratwurst and the steaks and the fruity pies, but oh no not me.

I eschewed the outdoors and the sunshine and instead hauled a turkey out of the freezer and roasted it up. I don't know what came over me. It just happened. Unorthodox, I know. But we did eat the chowder while sitting in the late evening sunshine on the back porch and I did do lots of gardening both while the turkey was roasting and the next day while the chowder was, er, chowdering.

TWO turkeys have been taking up valuable space in my freezers ever since Thanksgiving of last year, when the local grocery store gives you a free turkey everytime you spend $50. Awesome. Who could turn that down?

But once the holidays are over it takes awhile to be in the mood for turkey again. For me, it's about -- oh, let's see -- FIVE months before I can look at a 15-pound turkey again. And plus, it was cheap. These criminal gasoline prices have really put a crimp in my food budget. I really only had to fork over dough for the pancetta for this recipe. Everything else was nice and inexpensive.

I kept it simple. No stuffing. No pies. Just the turkey and some mashed potatoes with gravy (also very frugal eating).

What I was really looking forward to was making things with the leftovers.

Like this recipe for turkey chowder with wild rice, pancetta, and crimini mushrooms. Except I used brown rice rather than wild because it would have taken an hour alone to cook up the wild rice, on top of the chowder prep time and cooking time, and geez, it seems to me like turkey leftover recipes oughta cook up in two shakes of a turkey's tailfeathers.

Refer to the original recipe if you want to get all fancy and use wild rice and make your own turkey stock. I'm too lazy for such things. What follows is my simpler version of the recipe.

It turned out beautifully:

Turkey Chowder with Pancetta and Crimini

Makes 8 main course servings

For extra flavor, add leftover (plain) gravy or stuffing to the soup. If using stuffing, stir in one to two cups half an hour before the end of the cooking time. If using gravy, add it just before the soup's done.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 3-ounce packages sliced
pancetta (Italian bacon), diced
12 ounces crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, sliced (about 5 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup ( 1/2 stick) butter
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, chopped
1/2 cup chopped shallots
1/3 cup all purpose flour
10 cups turkey stock or chicken broth

3/4 cup brown rice (I used Uncle Ben's quick cooking)
1 teaspoon fresh or dried crushed rosemary
2 to 4 cups chopped cooked turkey meat (reserved from carcass)
1 1/2 cups frozen corn kernels
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Chopped fresh Italian parsley

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until browned, stirring often, about 8 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer pancetta to paper towels to drain. Add mushrooms to pot and cook until beginning to brown, about 8 minutes. Transfer to medium bowl. Add butter to same pot. Add carrots and celery. Cover; cook until vegetables begin to soften, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add shallots; stir until soft, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle flour over and stir 1 minute. Return mushrooms to pot. Mix in broth, rice and rosemary; bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium-low, partially cover, and simmer 15 minutes.

Add pancetta, turkey meat, and corn to soup. Simmer until rice is tender. Stir in cream. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide soup among bowls, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

Fast White Bean Stew

I needed something quick and easy to use up what was leftover from our Easter ham of greed and gluttony but all the recipes I referenced called for a hock and an hour and a half of simmering. Not exactly conducive to a quick and easy after-work dinner. Plus, the dog got the hocks. It would have been cruel to deny her the opportunity to gnaw those bones to a nub.

But then I found this recipe for Fast White-Bean Stew, described as being full of hearty cannellini beans, baby greens, and baked ham. Pretty tasty stuff.

Has anyone else had a hard time finding a good can of organic cannellini beans? Or is it just me? The first can I tried was so lacking in flavor that I haven't bought another can since, but then I bought this other kind and it contained little bean bits rather than whole beans. How do you rinse bean bits? It's gross because you get about three inches of foam on top of the beans in the colander.

As I was preparing this stew, the very first step had me in doubt. A quarter-cup of olive oil sounded like way too much to saute the garlic in, but I trusted in the recipe writer and I glug-glug-glugged all that oil into my pot.

Turns out, I should have followed my gut instinct because it was way too much oil. It ended up pooling on the surface of the stew. If there's anything worse than bean bits, it's pooling oil.

But in spite of that, this is still a really good and fast stew, as the name implies. I wouldn't hesitate to make it again as written below.

 

Fast White Bean Stew

Serves four

2 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 T extra-virgin olive oil (for the stew), plus 1 t (for the toasts)
1 (14- to 15-oz) can stewed tomatoes with juice, chopped
1 3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 (19-oz) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (3 cups)
1/2 lb. baked ham, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 (5-oz) bag baby romaine or baby arugula or baby spinach (10 cups loosely packed)
8 (3/4-inch-thick) slices baguette

Cook garlic in oil in a large heavy pot over moderately high heat, stirring, until golden, 1 to 2 minutes. Add tomatoes with juice, broth, beans, ham, and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes. Stir in greens and cook until wilted, 3 minutes for romaine or 1 minute for arugula.

While stew is simmering, preheat broiler. Put bread on a baking sheet and drizzle with some olive oil. Broil 3 to 4 inches from heat until golden, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes.

Serve stew with toasts.

 

Lentil and beef chili

This is a really good chili recipe, but not your average chili recipe. Lentils instead of beans, packed with vegetables -- leeks, onions, red bell peppers, green peppers, green onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes... There is ground beef but it takes a backseat to all those veggies and if you wanted to go strictly vegetarian, you can add more lentils and leave the beef out altogether.

This is really easy to throw together. It simmers for an hour and a half. Because we were impatient to dig in, I didn't cook it quite as long as I probably should have -- the lentils hadn't quite softened up completely -- but I think I like them better that way anyway. It gives it a little more texture and bite, rather than being mushy.

This is definitely one of those dishes that tastes better the next day and even better the next next day and so on and so forth.

Lentil and Beef Chili

Serves 6

1 pound ground beef (or to go vegetarian, skip the beef and add an additional 8 oz. lentils later)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
2 leeks (white and pale green parts only), chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
4 green onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped

8 ounces lentils
2 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon chili powder
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons dried marjoram, crumbled
2 teaspoons dried oregano, crumbled
2 teaspoons dried basil, crumbled
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup grated Parmesan
Sour Cream

Heat heavy medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add ground beef and cook until beef is brown, crumbling with fork, about 5 minutes. Drain well. Heat oil in heavy 3-quart saucepan over medium-high. Add onion and next 5 ingredients. Sauté until onion is tender, about 8 minutes.

Add beef, lentils and next 8 ingredients to saucepan. Cover and simmer until lentils are tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 1/2 hours. Stir in Parmesan. Simmer, uncovered, until mixture is thick, about 15 minutes. Serve, passing sour cream separately. 

How to be a lazy cook or in the alternative: White Chicken Chili

Let's say you have a whole mess of ladies and their dogs and kids coming over for potluck lunch on a Sunday afternoon (our own football-free Super Bowl party) and you only have a few hours to prepare and really need to spend it giving the house a good scrub but still want to cook up a big pot of something warm and filling but not too heavy.

Well, do I have a dish for you!

White chicken chili.

It's so cheating a chili that I'm a little ashamed to admit that it starts with this, a packet of McCormick's white chicken chili seasoning. You add some chicken breasts and thighs cut into bite-sized bits. Then some broth (instead of the water recommended on the package). Then some cans of cannellini beans. And unless you get fancy and add something like tomatoes or corn, that's all there is to it. You just let it simmer on the stove for awhile and let all the flavors settle in...

And right now, all the food snobs are surfing off in another direction. But they're probably looking for a make-it-from-scratch version of this recipe (if you have one, send it to me to make on a lazier day!).

Not only were my bathroom and kitchen extra specially squeaky clean for the ladies, but this chili also had all of them savoring every bite with their eyes closed and asking for the recipe.

Not bad for something that's such a cinch.

And lemme show off some of the leftovers left behind by the ladies:

Tiramisu above and fudge below:

My husband's gonna be so pleased to come home from his own football-filled Super Bowl party to find these treats waiting for him to dig into.

Fisherman's Stew

My cousin emailed me this recipe with a simple directive: Try this.

I did and I emailed her back the next day to give her a simple directive of my own: send me more recipes.

All you have to do to create something wonderful out of this recipe is throw the first 10 ingredients together in a pot. I couldn't believe how good it tasted at that early stage. It was all I could do to stop myself from eating big spoonfuls of it straight from the pot. The white wine and the tomatoes and shallots all come together wonderously.

My cousin says that although the fish can make this stew a bit expensive, it's easy and fast and yummy. It's pretty versatile. She used orange roughy. I used halibut. We both used shrimp instead of mussels. Neither of us had fresh parsley so we skipped the 'sprinkle with' step at the end.

None of the photos I took were quite right because of our lack of daylight (so I'll throw in a photo of an old stepstool -- my cousin and I both have one) so you'll just have to trust me when we say:

Try this.

Fisherman's Stew

Serves three if it is your only dish, about five if it is just a little cuppa.

2 T olive oil

1/2 c minced shallots

1/2 c finely chopped red bell pepper

3/4 c dry white wine

1/2 t salt

1/2 t dried basil

1/2 t black pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 bay leaf

1 lb grouper or other firm whitefish cut into 5 pieces

1.5 lbs. mussels (scrubbed and debearded) or 1/2 lb shrimp (peeled and cleaned)

2 T chopped fresh parsley

Heat oil in a large dutch oven  over medium heat. Add shallots and bell pepper. Cook for 5 minutes. Add wine and next 6 ingredients. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Nestle the fish into the tomato mixture then top with mussels, or if you're using shrimp, nestle them in with the fish. Cover and cook for 8 minutes. Shake the pan twice to stir but do not uncover the pot until after the 8 minute mark passes.

Check that the fish flakes easily -- cook a little longer if you need to. I did. Discard any unopened mussels. Discard bay leaf. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley.

Venison Black Bean Chili

Garden of Eating is hosting a comfort food cook-off and I thought I'd jump right in. They want to know what people eat during this bleakest stretch of winter when the days get short, the nights get cold, and the going gets tough.

Living here in Alaska, I know a thing or two about bleak, short, cold and tough, and when I think of comfort food, it needs to stick to your ribs and be made of simple and inexpensive ingredients thrown together in a pot and eaten by the bowlful. Don't pull the little spoons from the drawer. Oh no. You want one of those big 'uns.

As for the venison called for in this recipe: if you're not me (and I don't think you are), you might not have a freezerful of moose (pity) and so you could use beef or even chicken in this recipe, unless of course you want some moose in which case stop on by because do you have any idea how long it takes a household of two to work its way through an entire moose? Even a small one? Well, I'll tell ya. It takes a long, long time.

I decided on venison chili for tonight's comfort food dinner -- it's something I make often. Sometimes with ground moose. Sometimes with diced-up moose steaks or a roast. This recipe full of healthy junk like beans and lean meat and bell peppers and tomatoes, and so even though it's stick-to-your-ribs fare, you'll still feel like you ate well for dinner.

I make this in a pot on the stove and let it stew for an hour or two but you could also throw all the ingredients into a crockpot, turn it on low, and let it crock for 8 to 10 hours. It goes without saying that it's even better the next day.

Here's the nice version:

And here's the naughty version:

It's pretty versatile. If you don't have a bell pepper, you could add an extra can of tomatoes. You could use kidney beans instead of black beans. Really, just go crazy.

Venison Black Bean Chili

Serves four

2 pounds venison roast, cut into bite-sized pieces

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 large onion, chopped

1 packet chili seasonings or mix your own using a recipe such as this -- stir in a couple of tablespoons of the mix

1 t ground cumin

2 to 3 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed, the number of cans depends on whether you like  your chili saucy or not. If not, then add all three cans to take up some space and thin out the sauce

1 can chili-style chopped tomatoes, undrained

1 bell pepper (yellow, red, orange, green, it's your choice), chopped

1 cup chicken broth

1 6-ounce can tomato paste

1 16-ounce can refried beans

Salt and pepper to taste

If desired, garnish with sour cream, sliced green onions, and shredded cheese

You can throw all of the ingredients except the tomato paste, refried beans, and garnishes into a crockpot on low, cover and cook for 8 to 10 hours. Uncover and stir in tomato paste and refried beans and salt and pepper to taste.

Or you can saute the garlic, onion, and bell pepper in a little olive oil until the onion is wilty then stir in the seasonings and the chopped venison and continue sauteing until venison is browned. Then add the black beans, tomatoes, bell pepper, and broth. Let it simmer for an hour or two then stir in the tomato paste and the refried beans. Really, you can eat this whenever it tastes ready. Easy peasy.