Hearty Fish Chowder

Finally, I have something to cook! I seriously spent all of $5 on this recipe, so as long as you have a few staple foods at home you can make it just as easily as I did. It just takes about 45 minutes overall to put together and cook. Sorry I haven't added anything until now; I've been surviving on dishes that I've already blogged about. This idea came to me after I bought a package of Tilapia at a regular (not even Super) Wal-Mart, as a last-ditch effort at eating something healthy before I could afford to go buy groceries this week.

Ingredients:

3 frozen or thawed Tilapia fillets
5 red potatoes, washed and cubed
2 carrots, chopped
1/2 sweet onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, diced
1 cup frozen corn (you can add more if you like, this is just what I used in this particular recipe)
1 can Cream of Celery soup
1 Tbsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp basil

Put all the chopped vegetables (potato, onion, garlic and carrots) into a large pot and just cover with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes are almost fork-tender.

Add all other ingredients, covering the pot with the lid tipped to let out a little steam. Simmer on low for about 15 minutes, until fish is cooked and soup is well-mixed into the broth. The fish will break apart and distribute itself nicely into the soup, as long as you mix it well a couple of times as it's cooking.

This is my bowl of hot fish soup served with a buttered slice of my artisan bread. Yum! I estimate this batch of soup will make about 8 servings.

Lamb Neckbone Stew Again

I took a few more photos of the process this time. This stew will serve about 6 people and is very thick and hearty. The original recipe can be found HERE. It takes about 25 minutes to prepare and I had all the vegetable ingredients at home (remember the sort of things I said you should always keep in your cupboard, like root vegetables and frozen peas and corn), and the Lamb was in a reduced meat bin so I got a little over 2 pounds for about $7. The baby was actually able to enjoy herself for quite awhile in her playpen, lying on her tummy and talking to her toys until after I was finished preparing this.
This is what I mean by "cubed" potatoes, cut into large chunks:

A good tip in case you are trying to really stretch out ingredients when you don't have enough of something (say you only have half an onion, or only 3 carrots when you need 4) is to chop them into smaller pieces. If you take less of something and make it looks smaller it ends up getting spread out more, so every bite of the finished product gets a little.


Remember, start this stew by 10am and cook it on low all day to make your house smell wonderful and eat a lovely dinner by 5 or 6pm. Goes great with crescent rolls.

Oxtail Stew

The last two nights were filled with leftovers and cheater meals, like McCormick spice mix chicken wings. But today I am finally trying something new, which means I need to follow a recipe. Actually, I'm combining two recipes I found for Oxtail Soup/Stew; one from Stephanie O-Dea's Make it Fast, Cook it Slow, and the other from Vol. 14, #3 of Renaissance Magazine, along with a few additions of my own.
My husband went on leave Friday afternoon and will be home for two whole weeks! So he watched the baby this morning while I got an early start on this recipe, which will take two days.
I thought it would be pretty cheap to prepare, assuming ox tails were a beef part about as desirable as tongue or hock, but I was wrong. I got 2 1/3 pounds of ox tails at just over $10, given them being $4 something per pound! Both the recipes I had called for 3 pounds of ox tails, but I'm a cheapskate so I altered the recipes to approximate the amount of meat I actually had available. I'm using my 7 quart Crock Pot (the lid on which broke yesterday and is now being held together by super glue until I buy a new crock pot today).

Ingredients:

2-3 pounds ox tails
1 pound (or about 7) carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
5-6 small red potatoes, cut into inch chunks
1 1/2 stalks celery, sliced down the middle then chopped
12 oz. worth of canned diced tomatoes
1 cup dry white wine (like Chardonnay)
1 can low sodium beef broth
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
3 green onions or 2 leeks, chopped into rings (leaving out the last inch or two of dark green)
3 fat garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning (or, barring that, a few shakes worth to cover the meat of parsley, rubbed sage, basil, and oregano)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin (I only had cumin seed so I ground the 1/2 tsp up with my mortar and pestle)
3 sprigs rosemary
a sprig of fresh oregano, if you have it
sea salt
black pepper

Pour the olive oil into the bottom of the Crock Pot and rub it around with your fingers to cover the bottom. Rinse off the ox tails then plop them in on top of the olive oil. Cover with all the ground spices and 2 of the sprigs of rosemary, as well as a few shakes of sea salt and pepper. Pour in the beef broth, wine, and spread the tomatoes on top of all that. Add the vegetables and top with a few more shakes of sea salt and pepper. Break up the last sprig of rosemary and pull the leaves off the fresh oregano and scatter over the top.
Cover and cook on high for 5 hours, then turn off and let cool. Put the crock pot (just the ceramic part) into the refrigerator overnight to let the fat congeal and rise to the surface. In the morning, scrape off the fat (and throw out), then put the pot back into the heating element and cook on low for 6-8 hours to reheat and allow the flavors to mesh and the meat to get nice and tender.

Second Day: Skim the fat off the top, trying to get around the vegetables as best you can, then start it up again on low.
End result: Bloody delicious! The meat was falling off the bone...yum!

Meal's Beef Stew

Hooray for the Crock Pot! A mom's best friend. I used the 30 minute nap the baby was taking around 10:30am to put this one together for later tonight. This recipe changes almost every time I make it, depending on which spices I feel like throwing in, but this is the base of my amazing beef stew. Or soup....sometimes it's not so stew-y....

Ingredients:

1 lb. (or thereabouts) stew beef, cubed (I buy the package ready-made at the store)
5-6 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 lb. frozen peas
1/2 lb. frozen corn
8 baby red potatoes or 4 large
1 sweet onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 celery stalk, halved down the middle (long way) and chopped
2 beef boullion cubes (or one can beef broth)
1/2 tsp rubbed sage
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp oregano
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. Lawry's seasoned salt
1 tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
5 cups water (4 if you're using a can of beef broth)
3 Tbsp cornstarch

Get out your large Crock Pot for this one! Make sure the beef cubes are about inch wide pieces. It's up to your taste whether to peel the potatoes or not; sometimes I do, but today I didn't, since I was using baby potatoes and it's just too much work to peel them. Leaving the skins on retains the vitamins anyhow.
Pour the liquids into the pot first, then add the boullion cubes and spices. Throw everything else into the pot and mix well with a wooden spoon. Cook on low in the Crock Pot for at least 7 hours.
My mom always said whoever finds the bay leaf in their bowl has won the prize, so we say the same thing at our house.