Corn Chowder

I know I said I’d make clam chowder since I now live in the Boston area, but the truth is, I don’t like clams.  I love corn, though, and with it being corn season right now, what could be better than sweet, creamy, delicious corn chowder?  As the weather cools, nothing is more satisfying than a big, warm bowl of soup.  Feel free to double or even triple the recipe, since corn is so abundant right now, and freeze it in individual or family size servings to enjoy throughout the winter. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

3 ears of corn
1 medium onion
2 large Yukon gold potatoes
2 large carrots
3 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
2 Tablespoons of cream

The first thing we need to do is cut the corn off of the cob. 

Can you use frozen corn?  Um, no.  Not if you want chowder with lots of great corn flavor.  Now, I’ve seen a couple of tv chefs use a bundt pan for this task, claiming it’s this amazing secret that makes it so much easier because it catches all the corn.  Me, I just use a plate.  Do you get a few errant kernels?  Sure, but certainly not enough to warrant washing a bundt pan.  There’s always enough room to throw another plate into the dishwasher.

Once you’ve removed the kernels, place the corn cobs into a large pan. 

Pour in 8 cups of water and 1 ½ teaspoons of salt.  Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover it, and let it simmer for one hour.  After that time, remove the cobs.  You can scrape them with the back of your knife if you want to get even more goodness out of them.  When all is said and done, you should have about 4 cups of golden, fragrant, corn stock. 

If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and chop your onion, carrot, and celery.  I always use the leaves on celery, especially in soups.  They impart so much flavor.

In a pan, (I just rinsed out the one I made the stock in) melt 3 Tablespoons of butter over medium heat. 

When it’s hot and bubbly, pour in the vegetables.  Sprinkle on a pinch of salt and stir. 

Cook them for about 5 minutes, continuing to stir, and add 3 minced cloves of garlic. 

Stir and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.  The onions should be nice and translucent, but nothing should be browning.  Time for our fabulous stock.

Now, dice up 1 ½ potatoes. Peel or don’t peel, it’s up to you.  I’m lazy, so I just leave the skin on.  That’s why I buy the Yukon golds.  I like to do mine fairly small so that they cook quickly and don’t take up too much room on the spoon.

Ok, so here’s my secret to thick, creamy chowder.  Take the other half of that potato and grate it.  Grating it allows it to completely break down as it cooks.   

Throw all the potato into the pot and stir it in.  Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.  You need to stir every 5 minutes or so, especially toward the end, or it will begin to stick to the bottom of the pan.  When the 30 minutes are up, the soup should be nice and thick and everything will be perfectly tender.  Time to add the corn.   

This is also a good time to sprinkle on some fresh cracked pepper.  Stir it in and bring the soup just to a simmer, then cover it and remove it from the heat.  Adding the corn at the end, allows it to stay slightly crisp and keeps it from getting tough and chewy.  Leave it for 10 minutes and you’ve almost reached perfection.  All that’s left now is the cream.  It wouldn’t be chowder without it. 

Stir it in and serve.

The soup has the perfect balance of sweet and savory.  The corn is crisp and tender.  And each bite will make you want to do a little dance. 

What’s your favorite soup to make as we head into the cold months?     

Puffy Muffins

After eating granola bars every day for breakfast for two weeks, I decided I needed to actually cook.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for granola, particularly in bar form which is so easy to just toss in my backpack as I run out the door to math class. Can't be late for math class. No, really, can't. Freaking class is packed and the rows are closer together than movie theatre rows, and they fill up from the edges inward. If I want to actually find a place for my ass (without having to first drag it in front of the faces of 8 people) I need to get there early.

Muffins are quick and easy (can mix and bake in the time it takes to do a load of laundry) and freeze really well. Perfect for eating in the car on the way to school or work. And these ones use yogurt for the liquid component because I forgot I already had yogurt and bought more.

Blueberry Muffins:

What you need:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup yogurt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (use fresh, if you can)

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. (totally remembered to this time)

Zest your lemon. If you don't have a lemon zester (and I don't), you've got a couple options. A vegetable peeler can work, but a small sharp knife is my preference. Mostly because I find that when I use the peeler, I take of more than just the zest. With a knife, I've got enough control that I don't end up with any of the white pith, which is extremely bitter.

And since my brain is totally broken by math, I realized as I was zesting with my paring knife that optimal zesting occurs when the knife is coplanar to the plane tangent to the lemon's surface. That is, the slope of the plane on which the knife is cutting is the derivative of the curve of the lemon.

See? Broken.

For those of you whose brains don't think in terms of calculus: Hold the lemon in one hand and with the other, keep the knife flat on the lemon and do small amounts at a time.

Chop the zest as finely as you have the patience for.

Juice the lemon.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest in a large bowl and then make a well in the middle.

In another bowl whisk together the lemon juice, oil, vanilla, yogurt and egg.

Pour the wet mixture into that well in the dry mixture. Mix the mixtures. But don’t do it with a whisk. Why not? Well, because this is more of a dough than a batter and your whisk will end up looking like this.

Use a wooden spoon or a spatula, and you'll eventually end up with a very squishy, sticky dough-like batter.

Gently fold in 1 cup of blueberries with either the spatula or your hand.

The strong acids in your yogurt and lemon juice start reacting pretty much instantly with the bases in your baking powder and soda, and these things start rising as you’re spooning the batter into the muffin tins.

If you’ve got more than a cup of berries, sprinkle the last few on top of the muffins.

And if you’re feeling totally wacky, sprinkle a forkful of sugar over top of each, too.

Seriously, puffy. After only a few minutes.

Bake these for 17-19 minutes or until a piece of spaghetti stuck into the biggest one comes out clean.

Remove muffins from the pan as soon as you're done folding the laundry, and put them on a wire rack to cool. I didn't use muffin papers, so they do need to sit in the pan for a bit after they come out of the oven. If you use the papers, you can move them to the rack right away.

Wrap them individually and put them all in a large freezer bag until you need breakfast on the go. Like tomorrow.

What do you eat for breakfast when you have to eat in the car?