Summer Corn Chowder!!

By now, if you're a fan of Panera's Summer Corn Chowder, you realize that the summer is slipping away too quickly, and they're just not afraid of breaking all of our hearts. It doesn't look like they're bringing it back this year at all. So I took matters into my own hands and scanned Pinterest for some copycat recipes. There are lots there, so I combined two or three of them, and have just the thing to tide us over-- or at least to feel like we broke up with Panera first. Maybe this tastes TOO good, or the vegetables are TOO fresh, but I'm pretty confident you'll be happy.

Kickass Summer Corn Chowder!

Heat 2 Tb. olive oil with 1 Tb unsalted butter and add a whole onion and one celery finely diced. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until both are nice and soft.

Stir in 3 Tb. flour and cook for 3 to 5 more minutes.

Add 5 cups of vegetable broth and 2-3 diced potatoes. I used a couple of russets and a couple smallish Yukon golds. They both cook down nicely. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Then add 4 c. corn kernels (I used frozen), 1/2 each of a red and green bell pepper, finely diced, 1 c. half and half, about 1 Tb. minced flat leaf parsley, salt & pepper to taste. Cover that bad boy up, lower the heat, and let it simmer for at least 10 more minutes. The longer you can wait, the better, since the potatoes start to thicken the broth more. If you're lucky enough to have some roasted green chiles, throw about 1/2 c. of those chopped bad boys in there too!

Serve with a little parsley garnish on top and some crusty bread with butter. This is no longer something that's just for summer, and we're no longer captive to the whims of the Panera seasonal menu!

BONUS: I get to stay home with the dogs and cats and have all the seconds I want!

Bánh Mì Chay for Lunch!

I've been craving a good vegetarian Vietnamese sandwich for eons now. A few weeks ago, I visited my parents who live in Albuquerque. When running errands, my mom and I ended up at Talin World Market, an absolute godsend for stocking up on Asian groceries in these parts. Its lesser-known neighbor, Talin Supermarket (the white building on the south end of the parking lot) is actually a little deli that serves bánh mì and other Vietnamese delights. Their vegetarian sandwich is stuffed with marinated, sauteed tofu, cucumber, cilantro, and thin slices of fresh jalapeno. Back at home, I've found the fresh baked bolillo loaves at the local Mexican grocery have exactly the right crispy crust and light crumb inside for a fantastic bánh mì, so my lunch plans were set!

Bánh Mì Chay!

2" chunk of an English cucumber. Thinly sliced.
1/4 c. cilantro
julienned carrots
1 fresh jalapeno chile. Thinly sliced.
Mayonaise
Maggi or Bragg's or other soy sauce
1/2 package of extra firm tofu
1/4 c. vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce

Slice the tofu block in half lengthwise, and marinate in the vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce. It can be for as short as 10 minutes. This was a new ingredient for me. I took it at my mother's insistence, and she almost always uses it to marinate tofu. It's a bit like a sweet, dense soy sauce. If you don't have any, I'd probably just use soy sauce with a little bit of sugar dissolved into it.

After marinating the tofu, brown it in a pan with a little vegetable oil. Turn it so that each side gets browned. Remove from the pan and drain on some paper towel. Then slice into uniform slices. Mine were about 1/4" thin.

Prep the bread with some mayo on each side. Not to much here. I used Japanese Kewpie mayo, because using our Veganaise seemed a little weird to me.  Then give it a squirt of Maggi or Bragg's or soy sauce. Again, not too much. I basically drew a line in soy across each side of the sandwich. You don't want to saturate either side!

Then pack it with your fixin's. I laid out the tofu slices on one side of the bread, then layered carrot shreds, cilantro, cucumber slices, and chile slices on the other and squeezed it shut. I actually used a tiny serrano chile from the humongous harvest I had all summer last year. I have a TON of tiny, fiery serranos in my freezer still. My mouth is burning, but it was totally worth it!

When I do this again (probably tomorrow), I'll probably pickle a little of the carrot shreds with some cucumber shreds in some rice vinegar and sugar and salt. My only complaint today was that it was just a tad dry. But I am thrilled I won't have to wait until my next road trip to ABQ to enjoy one of my favorite things!

New Summer Food: Bun Xao Chay

After a month in Vietnam, I've picked up a couple of tricks and dishes. I tried to keep an eye out for things I could replicate/duplicate once I got home. My aunt made Bun Cha Gio Chay (I'll try making it when it gets cooler so I can fry spring rolls without dying of heat), my cousin made a vegetarian version of Banh Xeo for me, and we went to countless restaurants and food carts all over the southern half of the country.

One of my favorite things that I couldn't wait to make at home is a cool beef noodle salad called bun xao. If I'm correct in my tiny knowledge of the language, bun refers to the rice noodles, and xao suggests the stir-frying of whatever protein is in this. I've made it now with both vegetarian beef and chik'n chunks (I use Trader Joe's meatless beef strips and Quorn chik'n tenders. Morningstar used to have a Meal Starters steak strips that's similar to the Trader Joe's, but I haven't seen it lately).

Bun Xao Chay

Heat 1 Tb. veg. oil and add a minced clove of garlic (or 2!) and some lemongrass. Because I haven't been able to find fresh lemongrass here, I bought lemongrass paste in a plastic tube next to the flat pack herbs in the produce section. I used maybe 2 Tb of the paste-- add it to the oil and garlic and saute for a bit. Be careful not to burn the garlic. Then add your protein-- and continue sauteing until it's browned and coated in the lemongrass mixture.

In the meantime boil a pot of water. When it's boiling, add 1/2 a package of rice vermicelli noodles. Turn off the heat and let the noodles soak for 3-5 minutes. Once they're tender, drain them completely. It's fine if the noodles cool while you're prepping everything else.

The dressing is a vegetarian version of nuoc mam-- substituting low sodium soy sauce (preferably Vietnamese soy sauce, but we can't have everything) for the usual fish sauce.

Nuoc Mam Chay (also great with cha gio chay)

(all of this can be adjusted to taste, esp. the hot stuff)

1 minced garlic clove

juice and pulp of 1 lime

2 Tb. rice vinegar

2 Tb. low sodium soy sauce

1 tsp. garlic chili paste (the stuff like Sambal Oelek, not Sriracha)

1 tsp. sugar

1/4 c. warm water

The rest is lettuce, mint, thai basil, cilantro, shredded carrots, thin slices of cucumber, bean sprouts, and crushed peanuts.

Assembly is a little messy. Usually each component is placed independently, rather than tossed together. Put down the greens and herbs, then a pile of noodles, then the protein and finish with bean sprouts and crushed peanuts. I topped mine off with some finely sliced jalapenos that went red on the plant. They were sweet and had just a little bite of heat. My relatives would probably throw on a ton of those tiny red and green bird's eye chilis. This is my humble approximation.
I topped everyone's serving with about 3 Tb. of the nuoc mam chay. I also added a little of my own pickled carrots and daikon radishes (just let them marinate in some rice vinegar, sugar, water and a little of those finely sliced chiles for at least an hour-- up to a couple of days). Pickled veggies were always present at every meal! I'm thinking of sauteing tofu with the garlic and lemongrass next time. We've had it twice in the past two weeks, so I guess everyone else likes it too!

Farmer's Market Feasting

Nearly a year ago exactly, Zips and I discovered the Albuquerque Downtown Grower's Market. And on a spur of the moment flash of madness, on Saturday we got up at 6 in the morning, to drive three hours to visit it again. We were reminded how much we love farmer's markets with their crazy abundant variety.

We picked up a dozen ears of corn, carrots, peaches, grapes, potatoes, lavender...

A basket of these adorable pear-shaped yellow tomatoes...

And if you go, you must swing by the booth belonging to Black Bird Pies. They often give out sample bites of pie (this time it was their sweet potato pie)...

...and they have the most amazing fruit juices. Again, Zips chose watermelon papaya and I picked the thai basil lemonade and the raspberry sage lemonade. They were all equally awesome (and inspired Zips to concoct Sweet Basil Watermelon Water with our feast).

When we got home (after swinging by Bella Luca on the way home. I'll have to write about their cannellini and greens that I ordered!), we decided to gorge ourselves to celebrate the end of another summer, and rather than just fix the usuals for our Sunday dinner, to make everything with some new recipes.

I already have a great recipe for peach pie, so decided to branch out and make peach galettes. The peaches we got were the size of plums, but they actually yielded more fruit than I expected (I could have more than made a pie!)

Peach Galettes

I used a different dough recipe for the crust-- but now that I've tried it, I think I'd just stick with my usual pie crust recipe, just roll it out a bit thinner. The dough recipe was 1 1/4 c. flour with 8Tb. butter and 1/4 c. ice water. It only gave me 2 crusts, so I had to half it and make a third galette when I had excess filling. If I did it all over again, I'd just use a regular pie crust recipe that would probably give me 4 galettes.

The filling was 6 c. of sliced peaches tossed with

2/3 c. sugar

big dash of cinnamon (1 tsp.)

small dash of ground cloves (1/4 tsp.)

small dash of nutmeg (1/4 tsp.)

1 Tb. flour

juice of 1/2 lemon

Place the peach filling in the center of each crust about an inch from the edges and then curl the crust around the filling. If you get greedy like me, you can stack the peach filling a bit more after you've created the edges of the galette. You can even drizzle in a little of the juice. Just don't over-do it like I did and get the bottom of your crust soggy even before baking it.

Then bake at 400 for about 30 minutes.

Zips sliced up the yellow tomatoes, sprinkled some of our sweet basil over it and drizzled it with olive oil. Then scooped out some of our locally grown watermelon before juicing the rest of it and adding some chopped sweet basil to the juice (it was delicious!). I cubed the potatoes and carrots and roasted them with some olive oil and rosemary from our garden.
But another high point and new discovery was corn pudding. Corn Pudding. Two words I never imagined together. I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I had no concept of what it would taste like. But nothing about it looked bad, so I gave it a whack and am so glad I did!

Zipper's Corn Pudding

2 or 3 ears of fresh corn-- de-kerneled

2/3 c. milk (most recipes call for whole milk. I used soy milk. It was delightfully light and fluffy. Perhaps when I try this again with the southwestern variation, I'll use whole milk to get the full effect before experimenting more)

1 egg

1 Tb. flour

1 tsp. sugar

salt + pepper

Handful of basil or cilantro (I used basil-- about 8 or 9 leaves chopped)

Pulse half of the corn kernels in a food processor. I did this until I had a kind of sweet corn mush. Then add the processed corn to the rest of the kernels, the dry ingredients, and the basil or cilantro.

In another bowl, mix together egg and milk, and add this to the corn mixture. Then pour into a baking dish and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. I finally got to use these little individual pans for like the second time in ten years!

It was an amazing feast-- that has left us both plagued with food ennui. I'll have to think up something quick to make life worth living after having eaten this sumptuously! Isn't that what summer's for?

Garden Rosemary Potatoes

With our move less than a week away, Zips and I spent a little time digging up spuds under the sunshade in the backyard this afternoon. Not only did we want to enjoy our premature mini-harvest, we also plan to take our cultivated dirt with us. What with packing and moving, raking up the backyard and returning our garden plots to a solid patch of sand, we figured we ought to enjoy the fruits (tubers) of our labors. As you can see, I couldn't keep Zips from supervising the digging up of the yukon golds.

I had already dug up the plants that looked sickly or dying. But with the rest of the plants still looking so good and growing strong, I never imagined some of them had a cluster of fully formed POTATOES!

Bijoux also had to get in on the action.

All in all, here's the full harvest. I almost don't recognize the backyard when I look from my bedroom window, since all of my greenery in the smaller raised bed is gone.

They were enjoyed with dinner (along with some brussels sprouts and quorn turk'y roast) with some rosemary trimmed from the garden wall (and olive oil, salt and pepper).

Tiny Yukon Golds, Salsa Verde, and other Summer Magic

I know it's probably not the smartest thing in the world to plant a whole bed of baby yukon gold potatoes in the middle of summer in southern New Mexico, but I was so excited when I saw them for sale at our local garden/hardware store, I couldn't resist. Even more thrilling was when they emerged from little eyelets into full grown plants. Almost ALL of them!!

Now I'm just waiting around for them to grow grow grow those magical tubers. Hopefully their harvest will happen to coincide with when we have to move (about two weeks). The other day I noticed a couple of the plants was looking wilty-- okay more like on death's door, so I couldn't resist feeling around its roots and voila!

Potatoes!!!!! Now I realize they're not going to win any ribbons at the state fair, but it brings back that amazing feeling I had when we had a plot at the community gardens in Indiana, and I grew a whole row of potatoes, soybeans, more tomatoes than I knew what to do with, celery, brussels sprouts, and what not (see the earliest postings, it's part of why I started this blog). I GREW FOOD in the GROUND! And I'm going to EAT IT!

One of my summer readings is Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She writes in the very first pages "We wanted to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles up out of the ground." I understand that sentiment, even after living only 2 years in the dry southwest. But it's nice to see that we can indulge green-thumbed desires here. Knowing that we'll have to pack up and move a little ways down the road, we're trying to emotionally part with the lovely backyard that we fell in love with, and planted all our tomatoes, lettuces, basils and catnips in pots.

In addition to my tiny potato excitement, Zips is thrilled to be growing several tiny tomatillo plants. When we had our garden plot in Indiana, we had more tomatillos early on than we knew what to do with. I wrote long ago about our "salsa verde crudo." But now Zips has perfected her Salsa Verde:

Zipper's Salsa Verde Perfecto

2 lb. tomatillos (husked, rinsed, chopped)

1 medium onion

1-2 whole serrano chiles

1/2 c. cilantro

1-2 cloves garlic

juice of 1 lime

salt & (secret ingredient) ground celery seed (or celery salt)!

Chuck everything into your food processor and chop until everything is well combined. It may help to start chopping the harder foods first (onion, garlic, chiles) then add the juicy parts that you wouldn't want to accidently liquify (tomatillo), before adding and adjusting the cilantro, lime, ground celery seed and salt. I've never posted a photo of our Salsa Verde before, because we usually eat it all before I've had a chance (I once posted a photo of an empty glass bowl). But we've discovered that this actually keeps in the fridge pretty well, and if the serranos start off too spicy, it actually mellows in the fridge.

The other magical summer staple that Zips has utterly perfected lately is her heavenly guacamole. The magic, in our case, is in the molcajete she bought me last christmas:
I had a revelation (way too late) that those little black plastic tripod bowls that you sometimes get salsa in at Mexican restaurants are, basically, fake molcajetes. So this is a rough, heavy mortar and pestle made of volcanic stone that you season by grinding rice and rock salt until the inside starts to smooth out. Then you grind raw garlic cloves, cumin, salt into a paste and let it sit 24 hours. If you aren't driven mad with how good it smells, it will give your guacamole the most amazing flavors. We use avocado, lime, and just a little onion, tomato, cilantro, serrano, and garlic and a dash of salt (no measurements you cry? tweak em till it's perfect!). If we have a bag of the local tortillaria's chips, and we make both of these, it will be a good night indeed!

Local Veggies for the Broken-Hearted

This week marks the end of summer "vacation" and the beginning of fall semester. Before it gets too crazy again, Zips and I darted out of town for one last weekend adventure, and ended up in Albuquerque for their downtown farmer's market, and up to Santa Fe for a sweet vegetarian restaurant and a delightful French documentary.

We stayed the night at a hotel in downtown ABQ that I wouldn't recommend-- to anyone. ever. unless you want insomnia and a broken spine-- but the only perk is that when we stepped out of our door Saturday morning, the Albuquerque Farmer's Market was literally across the street! It was so lovely to see piles of produce in addition to local crafty stuff. There were apples, grapes, peaches, eggplants, onions, bell peppers, garlic, carrots, potatoes, O MY!

My heart breaks that our garden won't yield a tomato larger than a ping pong, and that our only thriving investment is a sweet basil plant that heroically refuses to die. How magical that these things grow. How tragic that they won't grow in our backyard! In any event, we splurged on peaches, some grapes(!), a bunch of purple carrots (purple!), some crispy, tart apples (that look like they actually grew on a tree, not in some lab somewhere), and a lovely bag of yukon gold potatoes. I am so jealous of the potato lady. Growing potatoes was my favorite!

The traffic at the farmer's market seemed to come to a dead standstill at the tent belonging to Blk Bird Pies-- an adorable couple who were selling all manner of tiny pies, and also servings of Watermelon Papaya juice, and lemonade with purple basil (the third was hibiscus-something or other, we'll try it next time!). We saw everyone carrying around and sipping these juices, so we had to come back and try them. They were so delicious, and I'm now utterly obsessed with the idea of infusing some thai basil or lavender or something the next time I make a lemon shake-up!

The other happy discoveries for the weekend were, in addition to the fact that The Screen at the College of Santa Fe was playing the enchanting documentary, The Beaches of Agnes, we ate at the equally enchanting Tree House Pastry Shop / Cafe.

It is an all-organic, entirely vegetarian, local food restaurant. Like D'Lish in Sedona, it was such a luxury to look at their menu board and know I could order anything!

For whatever reason, I played it safe and ordered the Black Bean Quesadilla-- I've never dreamed of putting black beans inside a quesadilla-- but it was really good!

But Zips won hands-down for this tempeh-lentil-hummus wrap and salad. After a weekend of sketchy dining out, this was the real winner. She was generous enough to share it with me, and neither of us was hungry for the rest of the night!

We're going to try to duplicate it in our future lunching endeavors! The Tree House is also a full bakery that does wedding cakes and the like, so we had to splurge for cupcakes: chocolate and caramel with pink sea salt (in the cutest little boxes ever).

We packed them up and had dessert at a picnic table in the railyard arts district, where an artist's market was packing up for the day. Hopefully this marks a sweet beginning to our new school semester.

Even Better Than Halloween

This weekend must've been one of the busiest of the year around here. Between NMSU's homecoming football game (where we got trounced by Boise State 49-0) (hey, last year we got trounced 58-0, so it is a kind of improvement), Halloween, a Carrie Underwood concert on campus, Dia de los Muertos, the local Renaissance Faire, if you count the early voting that ended on Saturday, my head is spinning!

So we spent Halloween giving out vast quantities of chocolates and organic fruit suckers (mmmm.. mango tango!). Saturday we went to both the Dia de los Muertos festival in Mesilla as well as the downtown farmer's market. I've never been to a day of the dead, having just heard about the holiday, and appreciating the asthetic of calavera sculptures, paper banners, and nichos or shadow boxes (take that! Joseph Cornell!).

In any case, it was amazing! The little plaza square was packed with tables and altars filled with photographs, mementos, offerings to deceased family members and pets. Often these were paired with an 8x10 printed description of the person's life and death. It was often touching, sometimes funny. One of the most memorable was a shrine that featured this skeleton decked out with a lap tray that included a portrait of its subject, along with a tv dinner and clicker. It was so personal and specific a tribute. Another invited viewers to eat a piece of their grandfather's favorite candies (those chewy caramel squares), and to ring a bell.

Then there was a woman selling sugar skulls. When I bought a couple, she directed us over to the altar she had created. It took a second for me to put together that if she had constructed an altar, that meant that she had lost someone. It was her son, who died in 2000. He was actually born the same year I was. It was a difficult and wonderful public kind of intimacy (sounds contradictory, I know). Here I was buying a decorated skull made of sweetness, sharing a stranger's grief. This makes me want to participate in a more personal way next year.
There were some that were altars for mass deaths. In addition to a large installation displaying what must've been thousands of paper cranes for the American death toll in the Iraq war, there were also at least two altars to commemorate the women murdered in Juarez.

It was pretty emotional. One of the past posters said "To Remember is to Live"-- I think that's a nice way to acknowledge how it's not morbid, but rather life affirming. One of our favorite (super LIFE AFFIRMING) booths was run by a pair of sisters (Kristi from Dexter, NM and Konsuela from Roswell, NM) who do ceramics, make t-shirts, and had several kick ass calendars. They were both such characters (think Paula Deene, then multiply by two, amplify the volume and laughter, make them arty, and park them in the southwest handing out skull lollipops!). We loved them so much, we had to come back on Sunday just to buy their other calendar. (We came too early and even hung out and waited around just for them to open up.) They even pointed out that we had to visit the booth next door and check out their cool stuff.

Which we did, but nothing could beat Kristi and Konnie.

Okay, finally. I don't mean to brag/gloat but to my friends in Syracuse, NY and Wisconsin, and even Indiana. It is the first week of NOVEMBER and I bought home grown watermelon (seedless but SUPER SWEET), tomatoes, green tomatoes, and canaloupe. And it is sunny and clear.

We are fortunate indeed!

Tomato-Rama: Part 3

Baked Oats with Blueberries for breakfast. Inspired by Dr. Stonielove (see her "branch platter"), but meddling with recipes, this batch turned out a tad mushy. I've since burned a batch. I'll post a recipe when I've figured out how I like it. Here's another unfortunate victim to melon splitting. I cry when there's too little rain. I can hardly complain when there's a little too much at once!And the GREATEST TOMATO HARVEST SO FAR THIS SUMMER.
Here's 38 Early Girls, 69 Romas
A handful of cherry tomatoes, a couple of tomatillos and various peppers.
Stay Tuned for What the Hell do I do with all these TOMATOES!!

Tomato-Rama: Part 2

Here's a more recent tomato haul. We got a ton of basil to dry too. And the baby watermelons are splitting from the erratic rainfall. We've lost four or five now, but we've tried to ENJOY what's been left of the split babies. This one was delicious, crisp, sweet. I can only imagine how it would have been if it grew larger.
Here's the LOAD of basil. I have to document it now, because the cruel Indiana winter will make this all seem like a pleasant dream!
Here's our cantaloupe (?) hiding in the straw. I figure the longer I ignore it, the bigger and more beautiful she will grow.
And we're finally growing EDAMAME!!!!!
And an even more recent tomato (plus bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, tomatillo, and basil/cinnamon basil) harvest.