Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 8

Clam Chowder

Posted by on March 13, 2011 20 comments

Clam chowder is a New England favorite, and it’s quite a treat when made properly. However, even in New England most restaurants take shortcuts and their chowder often disappoints. Luckily, it’s easy to make an exquisite clam chowder at home.

Ingredients

Part of the secret is to have fresh ingredients. Clam chowder made with fresh clams is much better than clam chowder made from canned clams. In Boston, live clams are readily available in supermarkets; those who are farther from the sea may be able to find seafood stores that carry clams. It’s worth trying at least once so you know what you’re missing!

Here are most of the ingredients: potatoes, celery, onions, butter, 1 cup heavy cream, and 1 tbsp tapioca starch mixed with 2 tbsp water to make a paste that dissolves easily in water.

Here are the clams we used. Soak them in salt water (1/2 tsp salt in the water) for a half hour or more to help remove impurities; discard the soaking water:

We also used 2 cups chicken broth, but forgot to take a picture of it.

Cooking the Clams

The object is to steam the clams while collecting the juice that comes out of the clams when they open. This clammy juice adds great flavor to the chowder.

We used a pot with 2 steaming baskets, a deep one and a shallow one, and a glass cover. We put a bowl in the deep basket to collect the clam juice:

We brought the water in the bottom of the pot to a boil, then added the clams to the top shallow basket and covered:

If you don’t have a pot with 2 steaming basket, just put the clams in the bowl in your single steaming basket.

After about 5 minutes, the clams open. Turn off the heat – they are now cooked.

Any clams that refuse to open are bad and should be discarded. Scrape out the open clam meat into a bowl. You can dice the clams if you like; we chose to keep them whole.

The juice that came out of the clams will look like this:

The clams have a surprising amount of liquid inside; we gathered about 1 cup. Note that you don’t need to extract the bowl from the steamer basket; when ready you can pour this liquid directly into the soup with the bowl still inside.

Preparing The Chowder

While the clams are being prepared, you can be working simultaneously on the chowder.

In a wok, begin by sautéing the onions in a half stick of butter for one minute:

Add the celery and stir another minute:

Then the chicken broth:

At this point dice the raw potatoes and add them to the pot. (It’s best to avoid exposing the potato to air for long periods of time. If you want to cut the potatoes ahead of time, store them in water.) The potatoes need to boil about 15-20 minutes; they should be cooked but not totally softened.

When the clam juice and clams are ready, add them too. It will look like this:

When the potatoes are cooked, add the cup of heavy cream, and salt and pepper and any other spices you like, and return to a near-simmer.

Gradually mix in the tapioca starch paste, tasting periodically until you reach a thickness you like. When the chowder is properly thick, warm, and well-mixed, you’re done:

Serve:

Conclusion

Chowder that is made with tomatoes is called “Manhattan Clam Chowder.” This concoction is illegal in New England. If you make it and live in Massachusetts, take care not to post pictures on the Internet.

We predict you’ll love this chowder. Enjoy!

Coconut Bark

Posted by on March 6, 2011 46 comments

Kindy’s son Matthias is on a ketogenic diet and she has been looking for ways to make coconut oil tasty:

I am trying to add coconut oil in every place I can think of but this is harder to do than one would think.  I want him to take 4 – 6 tablespoons a day so I can up his carbs a bit …

I am trying ‘hot chocolate’: heavy whipping cream, coconut oil, cocoa-plain, drop of stevia.  He likes it but will only take a few drinks before he is ‘full’.

Others have also asked for ways to make coconut oil palatable – for instance, Ian.

A lot of Paleo dieters have recommended coconut bark. So we thought we’d give it a try.

Ingredients

We tried several different combinations of ingredients; all of them worked well. This seems a fairly fool-proof dessert.

The basic ingredients are:

1)      coconut oil,

2)      cocoa powder or chocolate,

3)      nuts or nut butter, and

4)      a carbohydrate.

We prefer low-omega-6 nuts, and low-fructose “safe starches” and sweeteners such as rice syrup or stevia. We do eat fruits and berries, but generally avoid any other sources of sucrose or fructose.

For our coconut bark experiments, we tried macadamia nuts and almond butter as our nuts, and puffed rice and figs as our carb sources. Here are a few of the ingredients we used — puffed rice, unsweetened cocoa powder, 72% chocolate, and almond butter:

For a more ketogenic (therapeutic) bark, increase the coconut oil and decrease the carbs; for a more dessert-like flavor, add more carbs.

OK, here’s what we did. I would characterize these as dessert-like and only mildly ketogenic.

Chocolate, macadamia nuts, almond butter, puffed rice

Ingredients for this version (we used rather more coconut oil than is shown here):

Preparation is very simple. First, mix the ingredients over a low heat. We melted the coconut oil first, then melted chocolate:

Then we mixed in the almond butter and ground macadamia nuts, followed by the puffed rice:


Next, pour the mixture onto a shallow aluminum-foil covered plate, and put in the refrigerator or freezer to cool. We put them in the refrigerator for ten minutes, then sliced the bark into pieces while it was still soft, and then moved it to the freezer for ten minutes to finish:


Chocolate, macadamia nuts, almond butter, figs, raisins, cocoa powder

This differed from the previous mix only in that diced figs and raisins replaced the puffed rice, and the finished bark pieces were dipped in cocoa powder. Ingredients:

Freshly poured onto the plate:

Cooled and sliced:

Served:

Conclusion

Coconut bark is not very nourishing, micronutrient-wise, but it is tasty and it does supply the ketogenic fats of coconut oil.

I suppose one could mix in ketogenic amino acids, like leucine or lysine, to make the bark even more ketogenic.

Ketogenic dieters shouldn’t suppose that they need to exclude all carbs. The body needs a little bit of glucose, and the bark will still be ketogenic if the coconut oil content is high enough.

Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

Posted by on February 27, 2011 33 comments

Pho is probably the most popular dish of Vietnam. Noodle soups are extremely popular throughout the Far East, but Vietnam is known for its distinctive flavors.

Beef Broth

To start, make a beef broth. You might want to refer back to this post: Ox Feet Broth, Miso Soup, and Other Soups. It’s not necessary to start from ox feet, any beef bones will do. It’s nice to choose bones that have a lot of collagen and fat, that makes a richer broth.

Beef bones are available at a wide range of stores these days. To make our broth, we picked up $3 of beef bones at BJ’s Wholesale Club yesterday and cooked them in water for 3 hours. Today, before dinner, we warmed up a portion. Here’s what it looks like:

Rice Noodles

You’ll also need some rice noodles. We discussed rice noodles in this post: Cranky Grouch’s Spaghetti. The chief difference from that recipe is that we used thinner noodles, so it took less than 3 minutes to cook the noodles. As before, it’s important to have the water reach a boil before adding the noodles, cook briefly, and then drain the water and cool the noodles in cold water to stop them from cooking further. Another difference is that we didn’t add olive oil at the end.

Here’s a picture of today’s rice noodles cooking:

Other Ingredients

The essential ingredients are thin-sliced beef, fish sauce, a lime, and basil leaves. (You can substitute cooked shredded chicken or shrimp for beef.)

Other standard ingredients are bean sprouts (which are legumes, but low in toxicity and more like a vegetable) and cilantro. We think red onions complement the other flavors.

Some spices may also be desired, but are not necessary. Chili sauce for those who like it hot, plum sauce for those who like it sweet. Black bean sauce, garlic, ginger, salt, and pepper are also commonly used.

Thin-sliced beef is readily available at Asian markets. It’s often labeled as beef for shabu-shabu, the Japanese version of hot pot:

Here is the fish sauce and chili sauce we used. We prefer lighter fish sauces, which are translucent in the bottle; stronger fish sauces are opaque.

Here are the ingredients we used:

The lime is cut into eighths, the beef thawed; that is fish sauce on the lower left.

Making Your Pho

You can arrange the ingredients to your taste in your own soup bowl. Paul starts with some noodles, onions, and thin-sliced beef:

The broth is added hot from the pot, and the thin beef slices change color to brown within seconds. Top with sprouts and basil, and it looks like this:

Add lime, fish sauce, and spices to taste, and you’re ready to go. Here Paul has lifted out a piece of collagen and fat from the broth – this adds great richness to the soup:

It was delicious! The lime and fish sauce flavor is unique to Vietnamese cuisine and makes a great change of pace from our regular cooking.

If Chef Anthony Bourdain had come to dinner with us tonight, he might have been even more delighted than he was in this video:

Ice Cream

Posted by on February 20, 2011 58 comments

I thought I’d show how we make ice cream these days. It’s an easy dessert to make, and great for kids. They may even help in the cleanup by licking the utensils!

We’ve adopted rice syrup as a sweetener lately. The nice thing about “safe starch” syrup is that the dessert can be made as sweet as one likes, without the health concerns of fructose. With sucrose, I felt obliged to minimize the sweetness.

We’ve also begun to use lemon juice in a lot of our cooking, since the citrate offers a number of health benefits. We’ve come to like the citrus flavor and fragrance in our ice cream too.

With these innovations, our basic formula for ice cream is:

  • 2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream. Ideally, the cream should be free of carrageenan, skim milk, or other additives, as discussed in this thread.
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 2 tablespoons rice syrup (more can be drizzled on when it’s done to accommodate those with a sweet tooth)
  • 1 lemon (juice and some meat)
  • berries, nuts, and other flavorings to taste

Today we made blueberry ice cream.

Some ingredients:

In the blender, before and after:

The ice cream maker:

This has a neat design: the pot that holds the ice cream is frozen beforehand (which requires 48 hours), and it mounts on a motor and turns. The rest of the ice cream maker is stationary; a stationary paddle churns the mixture as the pot turns.

Here we are pouring in the mixture:

And 15 minutes later it’s done:

And served:

Shou-Ching is the one with the sweet tooth!

UPDATE: Calorie Counts

For those concerned with such things, here’s the calorie breakdown of the ice cream:

Ingredient Carbs Fat Protein
Rice syrup, 2 tbsp 150
Blueberries, 2 cups 170
Egg yolks, 6 246 12
Cream, 1 pint 24 780 16
TOTAL: 344 (25%) 1026 (73%) 28 (2%)

Fructose from the berries represents about a quarter of the carb calories or 7% of total calories.