Using the chicken stock that I made yesterday, I put together a simple chowder, again adapting a recipe that originally called for turkey. Made with some of Karen's favorite foods, including bacon, wild rice, and sweet corn, I thought that this soup would make for a nice "Welcome Home" meal.
Before starting to work on the soup itself, I had to prepare some wild rice. I had just enough wild rice in my pantry for this recipe, though it looks like I will need to put in an order to Minnesota for another 10 lbs bag. After the rice finished cooking, I put it aside and started the work on the soup. I started by browning up some bacon my trusty Dutch oven. The recipe called for pancetta, but unfortunately Safeway is a bit challenged when it comes to specialty items such as this.
After browning the bacon, I drained it on paper towels and removed some of the excess fat from the cast iron pot. Then, I threw in some cremini mushrooms and cooked them for a few minutes in the rendered fat.
After the mushrooms were cooked down, I remove them from the Dutch oven and began softening some diced celery, carrots, and shallots in melted butter. I cut down the amount of butter called for in the recipe in half, since I didn't see the need to use an half a stick of butter for this. After the vegetable mixture had softened up a bit, I put in some flour. As I had reduced the amount of butter, I also reduced the amount of flour proportionally.
After the roux had cooked for a couple of minutes, I returned the mushrooms to the pot and added the chicken stock and some dried rosemary.
Once the stock and vegetable mixture came to a boil, I lowered the heat and simmered the soup for 15 minutes or so. Then, I added in wild rice, the reserved bacon, the meat from the chickens that I used to make the stock, and some sweet corn.
After allowing the soup to simmer for another 10 minutes to meld the flavors together, I added the final ingredient, a cup of heavy cream, to finish off the dish. I tried some of the soup with a simple garnish of flat leaf parsley.
The chowder was delicious, very hearty with a nice silky finish. It'll definitely keep you warm on a cool, autumn evening.
As I was making the chowder, I was simultaneously baking some Amish friendship bread using a starter that Karen gave me.
Does anyone want any bread starter?
5 comments:
You should move back to Boulder. Our Safeways have pancetta!
That last one was from me. Stoopid fat fingers.
No worries about the double post, Dr. No. I attribute your fat finger syndrome to the water retention due to your salt intake from said Safeway pancetta.
I do. I do. Want a starter, that is. Thanks for the friendship :)
Ta-da! Now you have a starter! :)
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