Black Girl Chef’s Whites

Corn and Sweet Potato Chowder

Summer has come and gone, and fall is upon us.  I love fall, when the weather gets cool and crisp.  Well, since I am back in Southern California, I’ll use my memories of life in NYC for the temperature.  My neighborhood does have a lot of trees that change color and lose their foliage, so while it may be 80 degrees, the red and yellow leaves begin falling gently to the ground.  The squirrels scurry about burying acorns, only to forget where they hid them. Yes they’re rodents, but they are cute rodents!

The bounty of produce in summer includes some of my favorite fruits and vegetables, but fall has it’s own luscious bounty.  Winter squashes, all sorts of potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, apples, pears, persimmons, quince, pumpkins…too many to name here.

When a cold spell hit, for all of two days, I wanted something warm and comforting in my belly.  I had just made 8 quarts of chicken stock the previous weekend, so soup came to mind.  In my freezer was a giant Costco size bag of organic corn. Oh yes…corn chowder.  If it was still summer I would have used fresh corn, but frozen works just as well.  But in the interest of doing something different I decided to try using sweet potatoes instead of the usual white potatoes for my chowder.  Salty bacon, sweet potatoes and corn…yeah that would work.  At least I hoped it would, since I was developing this recipe for the first time.

Lucky for me and you too, it turned out to be rich and scrumptious.

Chowder Ingredient Still Life

Corn and Sweet Potato Chowder

5 slices bacon, thinly sliced

4 TB butter

1 medium onion, small dice

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 medium sweet potatoes (yams), small dice

2 quarts chicken stock

1 large sprig fresh thyme

6 cups corn kernels, thawed if frozen

1 cup milk, half and half or cream

In a large stock pot over medium high heat, saute the bacon until crispy.  Remove and reserve the bacon.  Melt the butter in the rendered bacon fat, then add the onions. Cook about 5 minutes, until the onions have softened.  Stirring constantly, add the flour, salt and pepper.  Cook for 2-3 minutes, until lightly golden.  This is a basic roux, which will help thicken your soup.

Browning Roux

Add the sweet potatoes, and stir about 1 minute, until they are covered in the roux.  The mixture should be fairly dry at this point, as the flour will have absorbed the fat.

Sweet Potatoes and Onions in Roux

Add the stock and thyme sprig, stirring well to mix all the ingredients together.  Don’t worry about removing the leaves from the thyme sprig, as they will come off as the soup cooks. When the soup is done you can remove the bare twig, as that is NOT edible. Bring the stock to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Cook for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.

Thyme Sprig in Stock

Add the corn kernels and cook about 10 minutes for the flavors to meld. Turn off the heat, then stir in the milk, half and half or cream. If you want the soup to be very rich use cream.  I used milk and it was still delicious.

Corn and Sweet Potato Chowder

Serve your soup with crusty bread and a nice glass of wine.  OK, you don’t have to have the wine, but I sure enjoyed mine!

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Lamb Kofte

As a fairly new food blogger, I am constantly learning as I go along.  Developing a recipe – no problem.  Styling and taking photographs of my plates – working on it.  But lesson #1 is to never try and cook, photograph and blog while your toddler is home.  The terrible two year old is in a fabulous daycare during the week, so I can work in relative peace.  I say relative because I still have my 77 year old mother to deal with, but she has an active social life, and does her own thing.

I fatefully decided that I could cook and interact with my daughter last Saturday. She is at the point where she plays well by herself, and does not need constant supervision.  Unless it gets really quiet, then I know she is up to something.  The kitchen is open to the family room, so I can keep an eye on her while she plays or watches a DVD.  But occasionally she would head to her room to play, and it would get quiet.  Too quiet.  So off I would go to make sure she wasn’t twirling the cat by the tail or drawing a portrait on the wall with crayons.  Then back to the kitchen I would go to keep working on my recipe for lamb kofte.  But while checking on my daughter and cooking my recipe, I completely forgot to take pictures of each step of my recipe!  I always try to have step by step photos so the average person can see what I am doing and feel confidant following my recipes.  So that said, the only picture you get is of the finished product.  Luckily this is a simple to make recipe, and easy to follow.

Kofte are cigar shaped lamb sausages popular throughout the Middle East.  Different countries vary the spices and types of chile pepper used, but the recipes are all basically the same.

Spicy Lamb Kofte

1 medium onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic

1 cup flat leaf parsley leaves

1 1/4 tsp aleppo pepper* or 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp sea salt

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cumin

2 lbs ground lamb

In a food processor, pulse the onion and garlic until finely chopped.  Add the parsley, aleppo pepper, allspice, salt, cinnamon and cumin.  Pulse until combined.  Add the lamb and pulse just until well mixed.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Divide the lamb mixture into 12 portions.  Form each portion into a ball, then roll into a cigar shape.  Place the sausages onto a baking sheet sprayed with non stick cooking spray.

Lamb Kofte can be grilled or broiled also.  Skewer each sausage, then grill or broil 5-8 minutes, turning occasionally, until done.

Bake the kofte for 20 minutes, turn over, and cook another 10 minutes.

Serve your kofte with pita bread, hummus, chopped tomatoes and chopped onions.  Rice pilaf is also a nice side dish with the kofte.

*Aleppo pepper is a mild, bright red pepper with a fruity, balanced flavor.  Aleppo pepper can be found in Middle Eastern stores.  It can also be ordered online at these reputable spice merchants.  I recommend added it to your spice collection.

Penzey’s Spices

Vann’s Spices

The Spice House

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Gourmet Magazine survived for 68 years, through all sorts of trends in the food world.  Each page was filled with lush photography, interesting recipes and lots of information about how your food gets to your table.  Gourmet wasn’t about being a food snob, it was about being a food lover.

When I heard about Conde Nast Publications decision to close Gourmet, I went to my stash of dusty back issues I owned.  Flipping through the pages I was struck by the beauty in the magazine, the inspiration I felt reading the articles and recipes, the rumbling of my tummy as I got hungry looking at the pictures.

Reading Gourmet allowed me to travel to places I probably will never be able to with my single mom, sandwich generation reality.  Small Italian towns such as Basilicata, where Chef Evan Kleinman literally soaked up the local flavors with freshly baked bread.  I traveled to Malaysia and learned more about Nonya Cuisine, a cuisine born of the marriage of Malay women and Chinese men.  An article in the July 2006 issue reported on the advent of the farmer-chef, chefs who grew their own produce to be used in their restaurants.  Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in upstate New York  defined fast food as “the farm to the kitchen without obstacle or delay.”  I love that.

In an article in Crain’s New York Business, former Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl discussed some of the misconceptions about the magazine.

“People keep talking about it as this sort of high-end place for rich people when we were the magazine that did articles about tomato workers being slaves and problems with how chickens were being killed.  We were running a lot of very serious journalism.  I don’t know what will happen.  We pioneered writing about farmers and issues from the field, and we wrote about genetic engineering when nobody else was touching that. We wrote about trans-fat and it was important for me to do that. Whether other editors will decide to start doing that, I don’t know.”

Conde Nast will keep publishing Bon Appetit, which is more about the recipe than the whole experience of a particular food or culture.The  Crain’s article had this telling quote regarding Bon Appetit;

Magazine consultants have said Bon Appétit likely survived because advertisers have moved toward food titles that reflect the more affordable sensibility it has.

“Bon Appétit has a larger class within the mass audience where Gourmet has become more of a class by itself,” said Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, School of Journalism.

Gourmet indeed was a class by itself.

In what I consider a related story, Scripps Networks Interactive announced that they would be replacing the luxury-lifestyle channel Fine Living with a new cooking-focused TV channel called the Cooking Channel.  This is great news to me, as I rarely watch The Food Network anymore because so much of the programming is cooking competitions, celebrity chefs and crap.  Yes I wrote crap, and meant it.  There are only three shows I will bother to watch on occasion; Ina Garten, Paula Deen (she’s funny with her butter loving self) and the Neely’s.  I admit I like the Neely’s because they are so damn cute together, but I also like their “Down Home” Southern cooking.

I was a huge fan of The Food Network, and if you read my last post, know I also used to work there.  But way back then the network was more balanced in it’s coverage, with excellent shows on wine, food news, and cooking from extremely well established chefs such as Sara Moulton, Emeril Lagasse and Michael Lomonaco.  While working there, a young upstart of a chef named Mario Batali became a star of the food world, with his show “Molto Mario.”  Hopefully the new Cooking Channel will return to those lost roots.  According to The Wall Street Journal the new channel will focus on instructional shows.

Programs on the new network will be more instructional than Scripps’s more widely distributed Food Network, said John Lansing, who runs Scripps’s TV-networks division. The new channel will keep a significant number of food-related TV shows that currently appear on Fine Living, Mr. Lansing said.

The Food Network has seen its viewership grow significantly in recent years. This year through Oct. 4, Food Network programs have averaged 685,000 viewers per minute, 18% above the year-earlier period, according to measurement firm Nielsen Co. But the programming has shifted to highlight on-screen characters and competition, rather than, for example, step-by-step instructions to make a souffle.

I’m glad that they will be focusing on instructional shows, but if they continue to hire hosts by their looks and not their talent it won’t work.

I know of one very talented person who could probably make this channel the go-to destination for food lovers.  And she is just happens to be free right now.  Ruth Reichl.

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Recently I received some free samples of a few of the food products that Chef Emeril Lagasse  has on the market.  I was already a big fan of his Original Essence, a great all purpose seasoning.  In full disclosure (since I already copped to getting free stuff) I once worked for Emeril.  Many, many years ago, when I was finishing culinary school I did my internship at The Food Network test kitchens. I was then offered a job on the “Emeril Live” show, and being that my parents did not raise a fool, I jumped at the chance!  I literally had four days to fly back to San Francisco, pack my stuff, get my cats and move to New York City!  Here is a picture of me from “Emeril’s TV Dinners” cookbook, when I was much younger and had a lot less hair.

Me working hard behind Emeril

Don’t I look like a hard working gal?  Well, I was and still am, but that’s another post.  And they must have just forgotten to mention me in the caption…

As I said, I usually have a bottle of Emeril’s Original Essence in the pantry, because it really is a great multi-purpose seasoning, and I don’t always have time to make my own rubs and marinades.  A little sprinkle of Essence on chicken, pork, turkey, ground meats or veggies can make a big difference in the taste of your dish. (Damn, I’m starting to sound like a commercial!)  Anyhoo, along with the Essence I also received a sample of Emeril’s Kicked Up Horseradish Mustard.  I’m a big fan of horseradish as well as mustard, so what could be wrong?  Nothing in this case, because this mustard was quite tasty.  I had a flavor epiphany after tasting the mustard, and decided to make mustard crusted pork chops.  But not just any mustard crusted pork chops, these would be a la Emeril!  BAM!

Emeril's smiling face on his products

Mustard Crusted Pork Chops a la Emeril

*This recipe can be easily doubled to make 4 pork chops, or for a small loin roast

2 TB Emeril’s Kicked Up Horseradish Mustard

2 TB extra virgin olive oil, divided

1 1/2 tsp Emeril’s Original Essence

1 tsp unsulfered molasses

2 boneless pork loin chops, about 1″ thick

1/2 cup water

In a small bowl, mix together the mustard, 1 TB olive oil, Essence and molasses.  Rub the marinade on both side of the chops, and let them marinate for a minimum of 30 minutes to overnight.  As with most marinades, the longer the better.

Pork chops with mustard marinade

When you are ready to cook the chops heat your oven to 350 degrees F.  In a large oven proof skillet over a medium flame, heat the remaining 1 TB of olive oil.  Brown the pork chops for 4-5 minutes.

A good kitchen rule of thumb for browning is to let the pan let you know when to turn the meat.  What does this mean?  If you try and pick up the meat, and you get resistance or the meat feels stuck, let it keep browning.  When a good crust has formed, the pan will release  the meat.

Getting good browning on the chops

When browned on the first side, turn the chops over, add the water carefully to the pan, and place the skillet in the oven.  Cook the pork for 25 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees F.

When the pork chops are done, remove them from the oven.  Place the chops onto a plate, and let them rest for at least 10 minutes before eating.

Juicy pork chops!

I suggest serving these chops with buttery mashed potatoes, and sauteed kale or greens.

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