Soups and Stews: Part 2

Alice's family is from Scotland, where this recipe has been around in one form or another for about 500 years.  Obviously,  this is a crowd pleaser. And it much more palatable to folks than Haggis ever will be!  If you skim some or all of the chicken fat off the top you can pretty much call this health food. If you don't,  well. . . .you know.

Cock-a-Leekie Soup

2 whole chickens, either whole or cut up in quarters or halves. About 5-6 pounds.

½ lb carrots sliced

4 quarts water, approximately

Seasoning Salt to taste, start with 1 teaspoon.

1 cup white wine

1 cup of old fashion oatmeal

3 large leeks, washed, cut in half lengthwise, then sliced into half moons, 1/8 inch thick.

This is not an easy soup to make, but it is well worth it, especially if you’ve got Scottish heritage. I cannot emphasize too much how important is to WASH the leaks. Wash them under running water after you’ve split them down the middle. Peel back each layer. Wash, wash, wash.

Sprinkle chickens with seasoning salt on all sides. Roast at 325 degrees for 1- 2 hours, turning once. You want them nice and golden. When they can be pulled apart at the joints without too much effort, put in them in a large stock pot and cover with about 2 inches of water. Pour all the dripping from the roasting pan into the pot. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 30 minutes. Use some of the simmering water to deglaze the roasting pan, pouring it into the pot.

After 30 minutes or so, remove the chicken back to the roasting pan and let cool for a while. Strain the broth if you need to. After the chicken is cooled enough, pick the meat off the bones and shred it up with your hands. You want it really broken up, like good pulled pork barbeque.

Add the meat back to the pot along with the carrots, oatmeal and wine. Simmer for 30 minutes until the carrots are done. As soon as they are done, turn the pot off, and stir in the leeks, let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then dig in!

This is great with nice fluffy scones!

Soups and Stews: Part 1

Winter Beef Stew

I have a new beef stew that I've made 3 times so far this winter. I stole/adapted it out of Garden and Gun. 

¼ cup high-quality olive oil divided

2 large carrots, diced

2 large yellow onions, diced

4 ribs celery, diced

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 lbs. beef cut for stew

2 cans diced tomatoes

2 bay leaves

2-3 cups chicken stock divided.

4 tbsp. high-quality Worcestershire sauce

10 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped, or 1 tablespoon dried

2 tbsp. Dijon mustard

Salt and black pepper to taste

In a large cast-iron Dutch oven or stock pot, sweat carrots, onions, celery, and garlic in half the olive oil over medium-high heat until translucent. Remove veggies. Add a little more oil if needed, then brown the beef, working in batches if necessary. When beef is browned, drain off oil and add bay leaves, tomatoes, half the chicken stock, Worcestershire, thyme, and Dijon mustard. The stew should be slightly soupy. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to low, simmering until beef is soft and tender, 1-2 hours, adding more chicken stock as needed. Remove Bay Leaves. Depending on the tomatoes and Worcestershire, you may not have to add salt.

Serve over rice.

Feeding the Servants

Our daughter Catherine is President of Lutheran Campus Ministries at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Charleston.  A couple of weeks ago, she was part of a group of about 22 that took part in a Servant Weekend in Aiken.  They put a whole new roof on a house, and worked in a food pantry, among other things. They left to go back to the Holy City on Sunday morning, and had to pass within a couple of miles of our house, so we invited them over for a lunch. Now these are young adults from The Citadel and the College of Charleston, and when we feed such college kids we generally try not to provide food they'd get in the cafeteria or the local pizza joint. This is the second year we've done this so we kinda-sorta had good idea of what they'd like. This is the menu we offered:

Pork Chops

Rice & Mushroom Gravy

Deviled Eggs

Grilled Squash

Kale Casserole

Brocolli Salad
Weaver D's Sweet Potatoes
Green Beans

Lime Jello-Pineapple Salad

 Slow Roasted Roma Tomatoes with Feta & Olives

Sour Cream Dinner Rolls

Chocoalte Layer Cake with Ganache Filling and White Chocolate Butter Cream Icing

Appalachain Stack Cake

Do-it-Yourself Trifle with Pound Cake, Boiled Custard and Blueberry-Blackberry Filling

Most of these were tried and true recipes, but the kale casserole originally used spinach.  It turned out very well, getting rave reviews, especially from some of the Cadets (along with  the Stack Cake and the Lime-Jello Salad!).  One really cool part was that pretty much all of the veggies and (the blackberries!) were from South Carolina! W. P Rawl's here in Lexington, Beechwood Farms in Greenville county, Callaham's Orchard in Williamston,  and a roadside stand in Marion County.

They got here about 20 minutes earlier than we had planned, but we still got things together pretty much on time.  It was great and they were a fantastic group of young adults!  We really enjoy groups like this. With these guys and gals as our future leaders,  folks, things are gonna be just fine!

Simply Southern Supper

This summer while I was recovering from knee replacement surgery, I had a lot of time on my hands. I watched a whole lot of cooking shows that I wouldn't normally watch. I was also able to thoroughly read and re-read some cooking magazines, cookbooks, and foodie books.

One of the books was John Besh's My Family Table. It is a very good book that I highly recommend, especially if you are cooking for a family. He talks about making family meals that are both simple, fun and delicious. He advocates not roasting a chicken for Sunday dinner, but roasting a whole ovenfull of food: two chickens, a roast, and maybe some side dishes. That way you can have some now, some for leftovers later in the week, and some to freeze for when you don't have time to cook, or to use in other dishes.

I also re-read Donald Link's Real Cajun, and Bill Smith's Seasoned in the South.

Other reading material that I persused well and truly was from the Southern Foodways Alliance's early publications, from their Cornbread Nation series and from their Oral Histories. Celebrating the row crop farmers, BBQ pit masters, all good stuff. With all of this reading and viewing and thinking,  I had a VISION, (choral music from the Holy Grail, please) and a remembrance of long ago.

THE VISION: I came up with a idea for something I like to call Simply Southern Suppers.  The goal would be to simply eat well with friends. It doesn't have to be 5 course meal.  It doesn't have to be gourmet, or fine china. It's just sitting down to the table with good food, good conversation and good folks. It doesn't have to be all good friends. One of our all-time favorite things to do is cook for Catherine & Stewart's friends and cohorts.   Maybe it's just acquaintances who might one day become good friends one day!

The remembrance: Back in 1970's my mother and grandmother made a whole bunch of blue denim placemats. They were fashioned to resemble a pair of jeans and the pocket held a red bandana napkin. I asked Mama Glenda about them, and she brought them down, about 40 of them. She couldn't remember why they got made, but thinks it was BBQ wedding shower for someone. But anyway, they look pretty cool, and I thought they would look great on a red checkered gingham table cloth. However, our dining room table is 14 feet long, and I couldn't find a tablecloth near that big. So . . . . I bought 15 yards of it on sale, and Alice made the tablecloth! Looks real purty, don't it?

So the goal is to have a fairly simple menu, but make it good. If it's a complicated dish, we'd try to do most of it ahead of time so we could just heat it up, or pull it out of the fridge, depending.

Here's the first nights' menu:

Green Tabasco Chicken (simple, 3 ingredients)

Oven Roasted Boudain (very simple)

Pennies from Heaven (made ahead)

Spinach Casserole (assembled ahead)

Sourdough Bread (made that day)

Assorted Pickles

Athena Cantaloupe (cut that afternoon)

Not Fried Green Tomatoes (made earlier that afternoon)

Butter Cake with Mocha Butter Cream Icing (made before and frozen, assembled that morning)

A Good Time was had by all.  It was little bit more than I had originally envisioned, but we're going to work on that.