There will be weeks of  marathon of mixing, stirring, slicing, dicing, creaming and blending. It was time to make meals that are simple to prepare, have a limited number of ingredients and are even better the second time around. Corn Chowder is one way to do that.

Chowder is defined as any of a variety of soups, made with milk, enriched with salt pork and thickened with flour. It has been around since the sixteenth century when it was considered “poor man’s fare”. The word chowder may come from the French chaudiere, a pot used by fishermen in France to make a hearty fish stew by cooking fish with milk and vegetables, or it may come from jowter the Old English term for a person who sells fish.

Made with bacon, potatoes, corn and milk, the soup I made was chowder without fish because the closest fish to my pot was a twenty minute drive through the snow and eliminating trips to the market was part of my new resolve. I’m confident that the recipe police will not come to my post holiday kitchen to give me a ticket. Here’s how I made it:

Corn Chowder

Although traditional chowder is flavored with salt pork, I used half a pound of bacon cut in half-inch strips to give the soup a smoky taste. I cooked it in my large stockpot over medium heat until the fat had rendered, about ten minutes. I added two medium onions to the pot and when the onions were soft and translucent, I stirred in one heaping tablespoon of flour.

After the flour had cooked for two minutes, I stirred in two cups of water and one pound of unpeeled, yellow potatoes that had been washed and cut into half-inch cubes. When the water began to boil, I lowered the heat, covered the pot and cooked the soup. When the potatoes were tender, I added one pound of frozen corn kernels, three cups of whole milk and one Knorr vegetable bouillon cube. I heated the soup, without letting it boil, and simmered it for five minutes to cook the corn. Topped with a handful of chopped, flat-leaf parsley and a big grind of black pepper the soup was ready to serve in bowls that had been heated in the microwave.

I served the bowls of steaming chowder with wedges of hot corn bread that I had baked in a cast iron skillet and then slathered with butter. This dinner made us forget that the thermometer read minus two and it was good enough to turn the most persnickety recipe police officer into a lifelong friend. Best of all there was enough soup for dinner the next evening and lunch the day after that.

Chowder has become a winter staple and I make a vegetarian version by using a couple of tablespoons of unsalted butter instead of bacon. When gluten intolerant friends come to dinner, I leave out the flour and serve a bowl of saltines for the more tolerant diners who want to thicken their chowder by crumbling crackers into their soup. Corn chowder is transformed into fish chowder by adding, after the potatoes are tender, three quarters of a pound of mild white fish, cod or haddock, cut into one inch chunks. The soup is simmered until the fish is cooked, about five minutes.

If the recipe police have invited themselves to dinner, I replace the corn with two cans of clams and the water with clam juice and serve a most presentable clam chowder.

Click here to download and print an ingredients list and recipe.

  Click here to receive an email notification of my next post and to subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen. 

Ciabatta more than three days old was too hard to eat until it had been softened. I cut it in quarter-inch chunks, added it to a green salad, poured salad dressing onto it, waited five minutes and then enjoyed it. On Monday, Italian French toast was the recipe of last resort to use the stale end of the loaf. Charles cut the ciabatta into four one-inch thick slices and put them into a single layer in a shallow baking pan. I mixed together one egg and two thirds of a cup of milk, poured it over the bread and refrigerated it for three hours while we were at the market choosing food for dinner. When we got back to our apartment, I sauteed the now very soft bread in butter over medium heat until it was golden on both sides. I put the finished pieces into the toaster oven to stay warm while I sauteed one sliced banana in a bit more butter, and made a small fruit salad with the remaining pear, a few strawberries, a teaspoon of orange blossom honey and a squeeze of lemon juice. This meal was sunny enough to counter the gray sky and chilly wind blowing in from the sea.

Our son Matthew arrived Monday evening for a three-week visit and I made dinner to welcome him. Because we had started the Italian French toast before going out, we were late getting to the market and there was less fish than usual. Angelo Cappucio, my favorite fish vendor, waved to me and showed me his last piece of salmon. Timing and friendship are everything at the market.

I bought a bunch of carrots with feathery greens, four tender-skinned new potatoes and a kilo of the fava beans that marked the arrival of spring in the market. Fava beans are in the same category of food as artichokes, corn on the cob, lobsters and crabs – when you have finished eating any of these things, the pile of debris that remains is larger than the initial serving, apparently disproving the law of Conservation of Mass. In any case, after more than an hour of shelling, blanching and husking a kilo, a bit more than two pounds, of fava beans I had 147 grams, about five ounces, of edible beans and a large bag full of inedible pods and husks.

We expected Matthew on the eight o’clock bus, so I put three thinly sliced new potatoes into a shallow baking pan, drizzling on two tablespoons of olive oil, dusted the top with dried oregano and black pepper. I put them into the toaster oven. The temperature dial on the toaster oven is in centigrade so I turned the dial to point to ‘seven o’clock’ and hoped for the best.

I simmered two thinly sliced carrots with a pinch of salt in a quarter of a cup of water. When the carrots were tender and the water nearly evaporated, I added the blanched, shelled fava beans and  a teaspoon of butter to the pan and turned off the heat.

Matthew arrived at 8:20 and after quick hellos and hugs all around I cooked the salmon while Charles and Matthew made plans over glasses of wine. Here’s how I did it:

Salmon Steak

I heated a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet, dusted both sides of the salmon with freshly ground pepper and put it into the pan when the oil was shimmering. I cooked it over medium high heat for six minutes on each side until it had browned but the center was slightly undercooked and still pink so it wouldn’t be dry. I peeled off the skin and seasoned the steak with a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice to finish it.

The potatoes were tender with crisp edges, the orange and green of the carrots and fava beans said, “Welcome Spring!” and the salmon was scrumptious. Made with ten ingredients – potatoes, fava beans, carrots, salmon, olive oil, lemon juice, butter, oregano, salt, and pepper – dinner was simply delicious.

To receive occasional emails from me,  click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.

We had been living in Singapore for two years, enjoying an incredible variety of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indonesian food. Our first meal in Stockholm was gastronomic culture shock. There were endless varieties of meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, breads and berries artfully arranged on a breakfast buffet. I began by tasting a little bit of almost everything. When I tasted the thinly sliced, cured salmon I was expecting salty lox and was surprised by the fresh, slightly sweet, dill flavor and delighted by the sauce that accompanied it.

I went back to the buffet for a second helping and knew that I would order it at every meal until we left Stockholm. A friendly Swede at the buffet table explained that what I had fallen in love with was called gravlax. She explained that the word gravlax is a combination of two Scandinavian words – grav meaning grave and lax meaning salmon – and was in fact a description of how fishermen in the Middle Ages prepared salmon by salting it and burying it in the sand, above the high tide line, to ferment. Fortunately the salmon on the buffet had been cured with salt, sugar and fresh dill in a refrigerator rather than fermented in sand. It was a lovely shade of orange, thinly sliced, served with buttered brown bread and a sweet mustard, dill sauce called hovastarsas. Months later, after we had recovered from our trip half way around the world, I remembered my salmon binge in Stockholm and decided to try to make gravlax. It was a remarkably simple process and I make it frequently.

Salmon and trout are in the same family with the distinction that salmon migrate and trout don’t. Salmon come from both the Atlantic and Pacific and may be either wild or farmed. Varieties of salmon include: Chinook, Coho, pink, sockeye, steelhead and chum. Gravlax can be made with any variety of salmon, and I choose the variety based on guidance I get from Alex, the guy behind the fish counter at my market.

The last time I made it was for a dinner party to welcome our friend, Kay, back from her recent trip to Sweden. Following Alex’s recommendation, I chose a one-pound fillet of steel head.

I prepared it three days before the party so that it would have time to cure. Here’s how I did it:

Gravlax

I put the salmon, skin side down, over an inverted shallow bowl to make it easy to find any bones, and used a pair of kitchen tweezers to pull them out. I combined three tablespoons of granulated sugar, three tablespoons of kosher salt and two teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper for the dry marinade. I put the fillet, skin side down, on a large piece of plastic wrap, spooned a thick layer of the salt-sugar-pepper marinade onto the salmon flesh, topped it with a generous layer of fresh dill leaves and then wrapped the salmon, marinade and dill tightly in the plastic. I put it into the fridge in a shallow bowl to cure.

Just before dinner, while the tiny, new potatoes cooked, I made the sweet mustard sauce. Here’s how I did it:

Sweet Mustard Sauce

I used a whisk to combine two tablespoons of Dijon mustard with one teaspoon of honey, one tablespoon of white vinegar, three tablespoons of grape seed oil and a quarter of a teaspoon of salt. When the mixture was creamy, I stirred in three tablespoons of chopped, fresh dill.

To serve the gravlax, I discarded the dill leaves and gently scraped off any excess black pepper. I used a knife with a thin, sharp blade to slice the salmon as thinly as possible, at a 45-degree angle from the top of the fillet toward but not through the skin.

At dinner we shared memories of sunny days in Stockholm and stories of unexpected food discoveries, all unforgettable, whether they were as delightful as gravlax or as disastrous as sea cucumbers – but that’s a story for another day.

I made a mushroom soufflé for lunch to thank a friend who took care of my mail while I was away. We chatted about my adventures in Italy and her experiences with late winter in Vermont while the soufflé baked. A soufflé sounds complicated but it is just a seasoned white sauce lightened with egg whites that is baked. Here’s how I made it:

Mushroom Souffle

I sauteed a 500 g of sliced mushrooms, (I was lucky enough to have chanterelles but any mushrooms will work), in one tablespoon of butter, omitted the lemon juice and thyme, and seasoned them with salt and pepper.

I pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees F/ 200 degrees C, buttered the sides and bottom of a one and a half litre, ceramic soufflé mold and sprinkled in a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese.

For the white sauce, I melted three tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan, stirred in three tablespoons of flour and cooked the mixture over medium heat for two minutes. I took the pan off the heat and used a wire whisk to stir in one cup /350 g of boiling milk, a pinch of salt and a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. When it was smooth, I put the pot over medium heat, stirred constantly and boiled it for one minute before I removed it from the heat.

I separated four large eggs and beat the yolks into the warm white sauce and then added the sauteed mushrooms. I beat the egg whites, along with a pinch of salt, until they were shiny and formed soft peaks.

I stirred in about a quarter of the egg whites and then used a spatula to gently fold in the rest along with a 1/3 cup / 60 g of coarsely grated Swiss cheese. I turned the soufflé mixture into the prepared mold, sprinkled a tablespoon of grated Swiss cheese on top, put it in the oven and immediately turned the heat down to 375 degrees F/190 degrees C. In forty minutes the top of the soufflé was golden and stood 2 inches /5 cm over the rim of the mold. Remembering the rule that it is the diners who wait, rather than the soufflé, I served it immediately.

Mushroom Souffle List

• Parmesan cheese
• butter
• flour
• milk
• salt
• cayenne pepper
• four large eggs
• sauteed mushrooms
• Swiss cheese       Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

There are leafy greens that I can’t identify near the familiar bunches of parsley, mint and basil. I bought a few small potatoes, one zucchini, and bunches of parsley and mint from the vendor who waited patiently as I figured out the correct combination of coins to pay him.

The fruit stalls are filled with citrus – blood oranges, mandarins, ordinary lemons and two-fisted, lumpy Sicilian lemons. One stall had five small containers of wild strawberries. They were three times as expensive as the more familiar cultivated ones but I couldn’t resist the extravagance.

The fish section of the market is the most lively.

The loud calls of men selling fish and seafood fill the air with promises and banter that I don’t understand.

The metal tables are filled with squid, cuttlefish, three kinds of shrimp, cockles, mussels, sea urchin, octopus, fish filets, mustard-yellow dotted eels, small pink fish, and silver striped black striped fish. A large piece of fish ready to be sliced into steaks sat beside the up-ended head of the swordfish it came from. I decided on swordfish for dinner because it would be the simplest to cook. I used my fingers to indicate that I wanted a one-inch thick steak. I’ll deal with boning, skinning, filleting and cleaning the less familiar fish another day.

The vendors who sell ripe and green, brine and oil cured olives, also sell heads of garlic, and capers and anchovies preserved in salt.

A spatula that looks like a putty knife sat on a large platter next to a mound of tomato paste made from sun dried tomatoes. I bought an herb blend marked Herba Tipico Siciliano and a small quantity of salted capers to experiment with.

The smoky smell of peppers and onions roasting on a small charcoal grill at the end of the lane perfumed the air. This was the only stall where a woman was working. Her husband was in charge of roasting and negotiating sales and her role was limited to wrapping a pepper after I had paid for it.

The cheese man tempts every passer-by with a sample. He reaches across the cheese case to offer samples of smoked mozzarella or provolone on the tip of his huge knife. When I pointed at the creamy cheese studded with red peppers, he used that same knife to create an instant sandwich with the cheese, bits of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil and a crust of ciabatta bread. His smile was at least as sweet as the cannoli I bought from him for our dessert.

My heavy market bag made it easy to resist stopping at the stalls with almonds and walnuts, blocks of almond paste, dates, dried fruit and chocolate bars from Modica that are seasoned with black pepper, ginger, orange or chili. I considered menu possibilities as I walked home until I was distracted by a young girl trying to perfect her skating technique in the Piazza Doumo. By the time I finished unpacking the groceries, I had decided to marinate the swordfish and then bake it. Parsley would flavor a mixture of vegetables, and the wild strawberries would top the already perfect canolli. Dinner was meraviglioso! Here’s how I did it:

Lemon Swordfish/Pescespada Limone

For the marinade, I combined two teaspoons of lemon zest from the lumpy Sicilian lemon, with a tablespoon of lemon juice, a tablespoon of olive oil and a generous grind of black pepper. I covered both sides of the swordfish with the marinade and left it for half an hour while I prepared the vegetables and pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees.

I baked the fish for approximately 12 minutes, until it flaked easily with the tip of my knife. Fish continues to cook after it is taken out of the oven so it is important not to overcook it. I topped each serving with a tablespoon of freshly squeezed blood orange juice.

Vegetable Medley/Verdura Mescolanza

I cut two medium potatoes in quarters and parboiled them in salted water. While they cooked, I julienned two medium carrots and one zucchini. When the potatoes were nearly tender, I added the carrot pieces to the pot, and cooked them for another minute.

I melted a tablespoon of butter with a teaspoon olive oil in a frying pan and added the drained potatoes and carrots and the uncooked zucchini to the pan. When the potatoes had begun to brown and the zucchini was tender I added six small whole tomatoes and a handful of parsley leaves. In a couple of minutes the tomatoes were heated through and the parsley had imparted its flavor and dinner was ready.

The cannoli, cut in half and garnished with wild strawberries, followed the main course after a reasonable interval.

Swordfish List

• lemon
• olive oil
• black pepper
• orange juice

Vegetable Medley List

• potatoes
• carrots
• zucchini
• butter
• olive oil
• tomatoes
• parsley leaves

To receive an email notification of my next post, click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.

Our refrigerator is tiny, and I am trying to be mindful and use every bit of food I have before it gets green and fuzzy with mold. Everything is wrapped in either paper or a white plastic bag and that means that I frequently unwrap and rewrap the same leftover more than once. I have augmented the minimun number of bowls and containers by re-cycling the blue and green plastic cups from the gelateria and four of them where filled with the remainder of a steamed potatoes aand carrots from our first dinner party and there were also bits of mushroom salad and artichoke salad.

I thought that swordfish carpaccio would  pull all of the odd bits of food together. When we had finished lunched and washed up there were fewer packages in the fridge and more empty small bowls in the cuppboard. Lunch was a culinary success, a successful use of leftovers and certainly a dietary success. We ate a small amount of swordfish seasoned with lemon and olive oil and lots of vegetables. The carpaccio was a breeze to make. Here’s how I did it:

Swordfish Carpaccio

I put the swordfish in the freezer for twenty minutes while I prepared a simple maninade that consisted of equal amounts of lemon juice, olive oil and capers, about a tablespoon of each, a pinch of oregano and a pinch of dried chili flakes, one scallion thinly sliced, a handful of chopped fresh parsley leaves and a grind of black pepper.  I cut the fish into thin pieces and stirred it into the marinade. After thirty minutes in the fridge, it was ready. I served it with the potatoes and carrots that had been warmed to room temperature by the sun, a couple of small plum tomatoes and a bowl of simple Italian cracker.  It was a perfect lunch to eat as we watched the boats sailing by. (Sorry to add that last line but it’s true, Charles and I can see the sail boats in the Mediterranean from our table.)

Swordfish Carpaccio LIst

• swordfish
• lemon
• olive oil
• capers
• oregano
• dried red chili flakes
• parsley
• scallion
• black pepper

To receive an email notification of my next post, click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.
Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Noah cooked the rice and cut the carrots and avocado and I went to the market to get yellow tail tuna and ‘crab with a k’.  Crab with a k or krab is also called imitation crab meat or seafood sticks. Krab originated in Japan and is a type of processed seafood made of ”Surimi” or finely pulverized white fish.

Along with the fish, I found pickled ginger powered wasabi and seaweed sheets called nori in the Asian Food aisle of the well-stocked grocery.

Ella made sushi hand rolls and Dylan opted for peanut butter. Noah and I made sushi for everyone else. Here’ how we did it .

Sushi Rice

Noah combined one and a half cups of sushi rice and two cups water in a medium sauce pan. He brought it to a boil, reduced the heat to low and simmered, covered, for twenty minutes until the water was absorbed.  After the rice had cooled in the pan for ten minutes, he turned the rice into a large bowl and stirred in one third of a cup of Japanese seasoned rice vinegar.

We readied the other components:

• carrots cut into matchsticks
• tuna and avocado cut into strips a quarter of an inch on a side
• krab pieces
• a bowl of  toasted and black sesame seeds
• wasabi powder mixed with water to make a spicy, hot, pale green paste
• pickled ginger in a small serving bowl

and then we set up a do it yourself sushi bar.

Although Ella found the wasabi too spicy, the rest of us enjoyed amazingly clear sinuses for the rest of the day.

To receive an email notification of my next post, click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

After a couple of tranquilizers, her trembling and quaking disappeared along with her appetite.

On the other hand, her human traveling companions, that would be me and Charles, shared an inspired salmon salad that combined poached salmon, ripe olives, mixed greens, feta cheese, red onions and Clementine’s. Proof  that careful ordering is as important as careful cooking.
I don’t have a recipe for this salad (yet), but I look forward to combining fresh fish and citrus from the market in Siracusa as soon as I can and sharing what I learn.

To receive an email notification of my next post, click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.

Yep, a FISH burger! Made with minced cod, this burger is delicious, an excellent low-calorie source of protein, a good source of omega – 3 fatty acids, a good source vitamin B12 and B6, and niacin. When you taste it, you will forget the health benefits and simply enjoy dinner and the movie.  Here’s how I did it.

Cod Burger

I sautéed, over medium heat, two stalks of celery, diced, and one medium onion, diced, in a tablespoon of butter until the onion was translucent and then cooled it to room temperature.  While that cooked, I cut a one pound filet of cod into quarter inch dice and added to the fish a handful of panko (about a quarter of a cup), one egg, a teaspoon of Old Bay Seasoning, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, a squeeze of lemon juice, half a teaspoon of salt and five grinds of pepper and the now cool, sautéed celery and onion.

I shaped the fish mixture into six burgers and coated the burgers with more panko.   After cooking for five minutes on each side in a mixture of vegetable oil and butter the burgers were golden brown.  Served with a green salad and oven fries, dinner and the movie were perfect.

Notes: Plain or seasoned bread crumbs can be substituted for panko (Japanese bread crumbs); you can substitute herbs, hot sauce or spices for the Old Bay Seasoning; be bold at the fish market, salmon burgers are great as are haddock burgers; and, of course the movie selection is totally up to you.

Experiment and share your success here!

To receive an email notification of my next post, click here and subscribe to the newsletter from Carol’s Kitchen.

White Burger List

• 2  stalks of celery
• 1 medium onion
• 1 T butter
• 1 pound cod filet
• 1/4 c panko
• 1 egg
• 1 t Old Bay Seasoning
• 2 T mayonnaise
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1/2 t salt
• 5 grinds of black pepper