Kitchenette

Oh, Internets!  I have not abandoned you, I swear!!

I realize that I have gone nearly the entire month of February without a single post, and am fully aware that if it weren’t from my very talented husband and his giant sweet tooth, you would’ve been left with nothing.

And I am SORRY!

While you have all been delighting me with your recipes and photos and concoctions, I’ve been barely scraping by just keeping up with The Project, let alone photographing and blogging it.  I’ve been on antibiotics for the last month treating my never-ending sinus infection, and one unfortunate side effect is that I don’t want to eat.  At all.

We’ve managed to stay on top of things, though, and to date have created 63 of our 366 recipes for the year.  Go us!  I managed to photograph a few and am planning on posting them really soon, as March is nearly upon us!

I feel like a bit of a loser posting yet another soup recipe, but lest I remind you, it is still winter here in Chicago, which means soup is still (always) on the menu.  And besides, I felt sick, and the only thing that sounded good was a big bowl of CHEESE.

I wanted a smooth soup, so we broke out the boat motor (aka a hand blender) on this one.  It spewed orange soupiness everywhere, to the point where I am still finding little specks of it in places I never knew existed, but man was it good!  I think it would be equally tasty, though, if you skipped the pureeing and left the veggies in their chunky state.  We used a sharp white Cheddar cheese (the orange in the photo comes from the pureed carrots) and topped it with some croutons we had lying around because, again, sick and lazy is the name of the game.

In other news, my first Daring Baker post is scheduled to go up tomorrow, so I really need to get cracking on that.  Also, Mr. K and I are heading off just now to our first of four knife skills classes.  The ever-fabulous Mr. K signed us up at our local community college as a Christmas gift, and it is finally here!  We plan on sharing a few tips and whatnot on the blog, so stay tuned!

Cheddar Cheese Soup
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

6 tbs butter
1 c diced onions
1 c diced celery
3/4 c diced carrots
1/4 c all purpose flour
4 c poultry stock or broth
1 c heavy cream or half-and-half
2 c Cheddar, grated
1 tsp dry mustard

1. Melt butter in a soup pot or Dutch oven.  Add onions, celery, and carrots and cook until tender.
2. Sprinkle with flour and cook for 3-4 minutes until golden brown and fragrant.
3. Slowly whisk in chicken broth and bring to a boil, whisking constantly.  Reduce the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes.  Puree until smooth and return to a simmer.
4. Stir in heavy cream or half-and-half, Cheddar cheese, and dry mustard.  Reduce heat to low and stir until cheese is melted.  Do not let the soup boil - if it gets too hot, the cheese will separate or curdle.
5. Season to taste with Worcestershire, hot sauce, salt, pepper - whatever your heart desires!

In my (Mr. K’s) opinion, our dutch oven is the best $39 I’ve spent on a kitchen appliance. Before I get to why, though, I should probably explain what one is to those of you who haven’t heard of it. And, why I ended up getting one for my wife for Christmas.

A Dutch oven is at its core a large, heavy pot. In the last Christmas season, the linked Dutch Oven was actually called a casserole. The best known ovens are made by Le Creuset, which makes a 7.25 quart Dutch Oven that retails for about $225. Since I didn’t really want to spend more on a Dutch oven than our stand mixer (which technically was a wedding present, but still), I picked up the 6.5 quart Tramontina at Wal-Mart - at the time, the only store selling it.

Dutch ovens are typically made of cast iron, but Tramontina, Le Creuset and other oven manufacturers now bake an enamel coating onto the cast iron. This is done for a couple of reasons - it’s easier to clean food off of an enamel surface, and baked enamel doesn’t require seasoning. With bare cast iron you have to season the oven (which pretty much means “bond fat to the cast iron by heating it up at high temperatures”) to prevent the pot from rusting, the food from tasting like iron, and to make the pot nonstick. (See here for more info.)

Dutch ovens can withstand temperatures of up to 800° F as the enamel is bonded to the cast iron. Compare this to your typical nonstick cookware, which is oven-safe to 450° or so (find out your cookware’s oven-safe temperature by going to the manufacturer’s website). The Tramontina Dutch oven is rated to 450° F (because of the plastic resin knob), but if the knob is replaced with a stainless steel knob, for all intents and purposes the Dutch oven becomes oven-safe to any temperature.

In addition to our pot being larger than the 4 quart stockpot we used to use, it’s also heavy. As in, 15 3/4 pounds heavy. Fill it with food, and it may very well be impossible to lift (work those biceps, people!). It is easily 3 times as heavy as the next heaviest pan we own. So what do we use it for?

1.) Soup and chowder. Enamel coatings don’t quite have the properties of non-stick coatings, so as a result you get those “brown bits” when browning meat in a Dutch oven. Those brown bits come in handy when you’re making soup, because that’s where all the flavor is!

2.) Frying meat. Okay folks, a little bit of high-school physics: cast iron holds its heat better than stainless steel. If you’re trying to fry chicken in a skillet, you’ll find that it takes a while for the oil to come back up to heat again after you drop in the chicken. That’s because the temperature of the oil drops when the chicken is added, and so does the temperature of the skillet. On the temperature rebound, nonstick pans and skillets are prone to reheating meat unevenly, possibly resulting in both undercooked and burnt meat.

When you toss chicken in a Dutch oven, the temperature of the oil drops, but the temperature of the Dutch oven does not. As a result, you get more even browning of your meat.

3.) Deep frying. Okay, I admit, I haven’t come up with something to deep fry yet… but four quarts of evenly-heated vegetable oil at 350° is good for something, right?

4.) Braising. A sufficiently large Dutch oven is big enough to hold a whole chicken. Combine that with a lid that weighs 2 pounds, and you find that nearly anything stews in its own juices very well.

5.) The infamous no-knead bread. You know the one…the one that everyone’s talking about. It calls for a “6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic)” - a.k.a. a Dutch oven!

Is it possible to cook without one of these? Sure. But if you get one, you’ll find that the flavor of your dishes will go up - and at $39, ($59 at Target, for whatever reason), it ends up being quite the deal.

Note from Kitchenette Jen:

Isn’t my husband adorable? Who else would be so crazy about a Dutch oven? I mean…seriously!

Mr. K is a huge kitchen gadget nerd, so expect his equipment reviews to become a regular thing around here. No one is paying us to say good things about any of these products (although, we’re not above selling out to the corporate machine…any takers? Anybody?)- we just happen to like them and use them a lot.

In the spirit of Dutch oven goodness, I bring you this recipe for Chicken Tortellini Soup. Mr. K and I visited the great state of Alaska last summer and were lucky enough to go on an all-day wildlife cruise. The first mate on the ship was in charge of preparing lunch, and he delivered the absolute most amazingly delicious chicken tortellini tomato soup I have ever had. I have been trying without success to recreate it ever since. This is the closest I have come so far, although it’s still miles away from the Alaska soup.

If anyone knows of a fabulous tomato-based tortellini soup recipe, send it my way!

Tortellini and Chicken Soup
From SparkRecipes

2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp olive oil
2 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 pkg cheese tortellini
47 oz chicken broth (give or take, vegetable broth would work as well)
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1 pkg fresh baby spinach
1/4 c chopped fresh basil

1. Saute garlic in olive oil in large pot or Dutch oven until fragrant.

2. Add chicken broth and chicken. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat for five minutes.

3. Add tortellini and cook per package directions.

4. Add tomatoes, spinach, and basil and cook until spinach is wilted. Serves 8.

Mr. Kitchenette: What are you doing?

Me: Sitting here trying to motivate myself to write about the chowder.

Mr. K:  Which chowder?

Me:  What do you mean which chowder?  How could you forget the chowder?

Mr. K:  You mean the ham chowder?

Me:  The chowder from God chowder.

Mr. K:  The bacon fat and other things chowder?

Me: The very same.

Okay, so… about those New Year’s resolutions…  I’m pretty sure they don’t involve this chowder in any way, shape, or form.  If you are somehow still sticking to yours… you might wanna stop reading now. But if you’re a good old-fashioned red-blooded American who has, by definition, already given up on said resolutions, have I got the recipe for you!

This recipe feels as though it has been in my family for generations, even though it’s really only been about seven years.  I can remember my mom making it for me when I came home on college breaks, and it is the quintessential comfort food.  I’m sure she marked the recipe specifically for me because it contains everything I love (and carrots).  The carrots belong in parenthesis because, see, I have a confession to make…

I do not like vegetables.  At all.

Yes, yes, I know.  I am starting a cooking blog and you readers out there just might, at some point, expect to see a vegetable or two.

Don’t get your hopes up.

However, hailing as I do from Kentucky lineage, it just wouldn’t be right to start up a cooking blog without dousing at least a vegetable or two in bacon fat.  Twenty six years of living have convinced me that bacon fat is the great equalizer of all vegetables.  Carrots?  What carrots?

Come on, people.  You owe it to my ancestors to try this recipe.  You won’t regret it.

Cheesy Ham Chowder
adapted from Quick Cooking (now known as Simple & Delicious)- Sep/Oct 2000 issue

10 bacon strips, diced
1 large onion, chopped
1 c diced carrots
3 tbs all purpose flour
3 c milk
1 1/2 c water
2 1/2 c cubed potatoes
1 15.25 oz can whole kernel corn, drained
2 tsp chicken bouillon grannules
Pepper, to taste
3 c shredded cheddar cheese
2 c cubed fully cooked ham

1.  In a Dutch oven or stock-pot, cook the bacon over medium heat until crisp.  Remove to paper towels to drain.

2.  In the drippings, saute the onion and carrots until tender.  Stir in flour until blended.  I like to let the flour mixture get a little golden in color.  Gradually add milk and water.  Bring to a boil.  Cook, stirring often, until thickened - about 2 minutes.

3.  Add the potatoes, corn, bouillon, and pepper.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are tender - about 20 minutes.  Add cheese and ham and stir until cheese is melted.  Stir in bacon.