chowder fist algorithm with a discussion of salt

Chowder is deeply satisfying and dead easy. Here's my algorithm:

Chowder is big chunks of POTATO and OTHER THINGS in a broth built of FAT, ONION, WATER and CREAM.

• POTATO is any somewhat starchy variety because you want it to fall apart a bit and thicken the soup. I like Russet and Yukon Gold.
• OTHER THINGS can be any or all of seafood or flaky white fish, corn, bacon.
• FAT is butter, bacon drippings or, hell, even coconut oil.
• ONION is a yellow or white variety and not too sweet. Could also be French shallots in a stretch.
• WATER is, well, water of course, but if you have a bottle of clam juice and are making a fish/seafood chowder, throw that in too.
• CREAM is heavy or whipping cream (otherwise it will curdle) with the addition, if you are making corn chowder, of some "corn-cream" made by grating some of the ears of corn.

Here's how I make about 4-6 servings (about 1 pound of chowder per serving which, I assure you, is not too much).  Measurements are mostly in terms of the volume of my clenched fist (about a cup). Making this is very relaxing (despite the clenching).

• 1-2 thumbs fat
• 1 f (ie. one fist) chopped coarsely onion
• 3 f potatoes peeled and cut in wedges
• 2 f of the other thing(s)
• 1 f heavy cream
• salt and pepper

Put a large, heavy bottomed pot on medium heat. If bacon is one of your other things, add to pot and cook slowly to render out the fat. (Put the bacon bits aside to add back at the end.) Sweat the onion in the fat. Add the potatoes and water to just cover.  Bring to a boil and simmer until spuds are almost tender. Add other things and cook until other things are falling apart (if white fish) or about 10 minutes.  Add cream and season with salt and (generously with) pepper (see below).  Turn off the heat and, with the lid on, let the chowder get comfortable for about 20 minutes.

The Salt

With a dish as simple as this, adequate seasoning is essential.  Salt is the not-so-secret secret ingredient. Now, if you look at the ingredients, you'll notice that, with the exception of bacon and maybe canned clams and the butter, nothing is salted. So how much salt would I expect to add to this?  My rule of thumb (thanks Julia Child) is about 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon salt per pound of unsalted food.  A pint of water is a pound and two of my fists are about a pint (two cups).  There are six fists of ingredients in the list plus the water, which is going to be about another 4 fists.  10 fists is about 5 pints so I would expect to need at least 5 x 1/2 tsp of salt, which is just shy of 1 tablespoon.

If that scares you, measure out your tablespoon into a little bowl and add it a 1/2 tsp at a time. Stir well between additions and keep tasting until you find yourself thinking, "Dear Lord, that is delicious.  I must eat an entire bowl immediately!" My guess is there won't be any salt left in your bowl.  In fact, you may have even gone beyond.

oven fried potato chips (crisps)

More quarantine food! Pre-heat the oven to 375 or 400 F. In that pre-heating oven place a large cookie sheet with walls or roasting pans or a few cast-iron skillets. Meanwhile, slice two or three potatoes into 1-mm-ish-thick slices (thicker than potato chips or crisps). When the oven is hot, put a layer of olive oil into the pans and give it a minute or two in the oven to get very hot. Pull out the pans and line them with a single layer of slices of potato only very slightly overlapping. Generously salt and pepper. Return the pans to the oven and check every five minutes. The chips are done when the median chip is half brown! Remove from the oven, cool, put on a plate with a paper towel (to absorb excess oil) and add taste sands like hot flakes, cayenne, brewer's yeast, tajin, etc.

duck and potatoes

pre-heat the oven to 450 F (230 C). At the same time, heat some water to boiling. Par-boil two (or more) medium potatoes, cut into pretty small pieces, in the boiling water for, say, 5 minutes. While the potatoes are par-boiling, put a cast-iron pan (or two if necessary) into the oven to heat with the oven. Drain the potatoes and put them, olive oil (plenty) and salt (plenty) into the pan and put it back into the oven. Toss these with a spatula every 5-ish minutes.

Meanwhile, cut diagonals into the fat on a duck breast and paint it with molasses (or maple syrup, or nothing sweet) and salt. After the potatoes have been going in the oven for 20 minutes, push potatoes aside and put the duck into the pan, fat side down. Do 12 minutes that way, and 6 the other. Pull it all out, let it sit for 5 minutes, then slice the duck thin and serve. Preferably with cranberry sauce and a salad or green vegetable. Serves 2 to 3, depending on appetites.

oxtail stew

Fry some oxtail (I used half a pound) in butter, turning until it is brown all over. Add mirepoix (finely chopped onions, carrots, celery) and fry some more. Add some thin stock (I used leftover turkey stock from Thanksgiving) and wine and simmer the oxtail for two hours. Add coarsely chopped (chunks of) root vegetables (I used carrot, parsnip, turnip, potato), one heck of a lot of salt, pepper, and probably also thyme and bay leaf. Also add a roux made by browning a few tbsp of flour in a few tbsp of butter. (At this point I let it cool, put it in the fridge, and finished it the next day.) Give it one more hour of simmer until the root vegetables are tender, pull the meat from the bones, mix, and serve.

This came out very, very good with root vegetables in a rich gravy. I made it meat-as-garnish, with much more vegetable than meat, but that is a fully tunable knob. Apparently to make it more Caribbean, you should add tomato, cloves, allspice, and a chile pepper.

corned beef hash

corned beef and cabbage

(The secret ingredient is pickling spice.)

"vegan" mashed parsnips

As our loyal reader knows, we love to mash vegetables here in the F,NRS NYC office. Recently, parsnips have come under the masher, to good effect. I only post it here because we mash these babies for Liz and Lisa, who eat kosher and therefore can't have milk or butter in the mash (if it is to be eaten with chicken, as it so often is), and Liz needs the recipe. These mashed are vegan so that we can all eat meat, if you know what I mean.

Before starting, if you want them garlicky, put many peeled cloves of garlic into a dish with many tablespoons of olive oil and put it into a low oven (say 300 F) to soften and sweeten. Then cut up—no need to peel, as far as I am concerned—parsnips, potatoes, and carrots into substantial chunks for boiling. I usually go something like four parsnips for every potato and carrot, but mix it up! Boil the parsnips for 30 minutes and the carrots and potatoes for 20. That is, you want the parsnips very done. Save some of the cooking water (remember, no milk will be permitted). Mash it all with the garlic and olive oil from the oven (or just plain olive oil if you don't want to go garlicky), insane amounts of salt and some pepper, and just enough cooking water (not much) to get them mushy.

These mashed parsnips are so sweet, you can't help asking: Parsnips, where have you been all my life?

hot pot

The Tragintyres—who have adopted the customs of their home country the Netherlands—taught us this one this summer: Cut up a few potatoes and similar vegetables (tonight we used carrots and cauliflower, but you could use beets or turnips or parsnips or cabbage, of course) and boil them to tender. Meanwhile, saute bacon, then onions, and then finely chopped greens (we used kale that had been blanched). Mash the boiled vegetables with cream, butter, salt and pepper; then add the sauteed part and mix it up. Serve.

This is meat-as-garnish, kid-friendly, hearty, simple, and delicious.

latkes

I love potato pancakes. It turns out their preparation does not involve rocket science. Grate four potatoes and one onion (prepare to cry). Mix with two eggs, a few tbsp of flour, and a whole heck of a lot of salt and pepper. Fry large, flattened spoonfuls of the mixture in plenty of hot olive oil until very dark brown, turn, and make the other side dark brown too. Serve with sour cream and smoked fish, or apple sauce. These quantities make about twelve pancakes (serves about four).

As you proceed with the frying (with two pans doing two or three at a time), you can preserve the cooked pancakes on paper towels in a 170 F (80 C) oven.

An expert variation is to drain the shredded potato, let the starch settle out of the drained liquid, and mix it back in, but that may qualify as rocket science. One night we added shredded celery root, to good effect.

herring and potato salad

For lunch today, the 'fuzz made a salad of boiled new potatoes, smoked herring, and fresh arugula. She dressed it with lemon juice, olive oil, shallot, salt, and pepper. That was a beautiful use of our Heidelberg farmers' market fare.

pot roast

Now this is not rocket science:

• few tbsp fat (I used rendered bacon fat)
• few lbs beef (I used the cheapest chuck the 'fuzz could find)
• few onions, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, etc
• salt, pepper, water

Sauté one chopped onion and the beef in the fat, turning occasionally, until the beef is brown. Then salt and pepper it very generously, add some water (I used less than 1 cup), and put in a 300 F (150 C) oven. After 2 h add vegetables, maybe peeled and quartered. Cook for another 1.5 h for a total of 3.5 h. Drain and serve with sautéed greens or equivalent, with some of the pot liquor as a sauce. Serves at least two per lb of meat.

Some would have you thicken the sauce to a gravy; I bet PMC would! Next time I might use cubed salt pork as the fat.

salmon and vegetables

Salmon, which is a gloriously fatty fish, takes well to the same treatment as those chicken thighs in "chicken and vegetables".

• Rub salmon fillets with olive oil, lay in a sheet pan (roasting pan, big cast iron frypan or what have you) and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. I allow about 200 g of fish per person, but of course we really like our fish around here. Skin on or off, doesn't matter; this treatment does nothing for the skin (you need pan frying for that).
• Nestled in the pan are "the vegetables", ie. anything that will be cooked to your satisfaction in the same time as the fish. See below.
• Fire this into a blazing hot oven (say, 450) for about 15 minutes.
• Very good with a simple yoghurt sauce: good, thick plain yoghurt, salt, pepper and optionally some ground roasted cumin (this is extremely good) and lemon zest.

I pull the fish out when it's two-thirds done; residual heat does the rest in the five minutes it takes to get things on plates and get kids to the table. "Done" for me would probably be sent back by 1 in 3 customers in a restaurant, although these same people readily eat salmon raw in sushi. Human folly!

As for the vegetables, tonight we had oven-candied tomatoes I still had in the freezer from last summer, thinly sliced red onions and kalamata olives. The onions had time to get soft and a bit brown here and there. I learned to do salmon this way from The Naked Chef, where he used blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes, dry cured olives, torn tender herbs (like basil) and anchovy fillets.

Ideas to try...soon:

• sliced potato (1/8") and onion with some thyme
• zuccini and red pepper strips
• baby beets?

chicken and vegetables

This one-step, one-pan, three-ingredient wonder is the only reason J and I survived the last two winters. Each time we made it, it got simpler till we got it down to this:

• chicken thighs (these are so much better than chicken breasts, and they are sold dirt-cheap, even if you buy the schmancy organic ones)
• potatoes, cut into pieces
• carrots or beets or parsnips or turnips or similar, or not
• olive oil, salt, garlic, thyme?

Mix everything in a metal pan so it is coated with olive oil (don't skimp on the oil). Salt the chicken (and rub with garlic and thyme if you are really feeling like going to town). Roast (in that metal pan) at 450 (or hotter; we usually do 500, but PMC thinks our oven is mis-calibrated) for 40 minutes or so, turning the veggies once or twice.

Oh hot, sweet, and crispy quasi-deep-fried, chicken-fat-flavored root vegetables!

If you want a diversified diet (huh?), add, partway through:

• brussel sprouts (which come out great but only need 25-30 minutes, not the full 40), or
• kale (which becomes crispy and slightly burned in about 15 minutes)

beef stew

To test out the electric crock pot in the house we are renting, I did the following yesterday. This recipe was completely made-up from nothing.

• two large potatoes, chopped a bit
• three medium onions, chopped a bit
• a bag of mini carrots
• a few strips of thick bacon, cut into chunks
• a cheap and nasty beef shin with a bit of meat on it
• cheap red wine, salt, pepper, bay leaf

Put the beef (with bone) at the bottom of the crock pot, then the vegetables, and cover with a 50/50 wine/water mix. Add bay leaf and plenty of salt and pepper. Leave on "high" setting for 6 hours (ie, go to work, work, and come home). Serve.

The meat, potatoes, and carrots came out really well, particularly the meat, which came out like it does in Boeuf Bourguignon. However, the liquid comes out very thin, and I could not bring myself to add cornstarch (as many on-line recipes suggest). I think when I eat the leftovers, I might make a roux with the fat, and turn the liquid into a thin gravy. Will that work?

clam chowder

I tried to convert PMC's simple oral description of chowder into the most basic possible recipe.

• few strips bacon, cut into clam-sized bits
• few medium onions, chopped to the size of clams
• few large potatoes, cubed the size of clams
• two cans clams
• half-and-half cream
• salt, pepper, bay leaf

Fry the bacon low until much of the fat has been rendered. Add onions and cook until they are translucent. Add potatoes, clams and clam liquid, a bay leaf, enough water to barely cover everything, and enough salt and pepper to make the water taste "good". Simmer until the potatoes are just cooked. Add enough cream to make it creamy and let it sit for ages (a day, in my case). Re-heat, check salt level (salty is good), and serve. Don't let it boil once the cream has been added.

The result was a good, simple, sweet (from the onions, I guess) chowder. One note: I bought high-end canned clams.