Secret Ingredients

I add pineapple to my chili and because I ate the powderiness of kidney beans, i puree them ... gives the chili just the right amount of body.

I also love rice or quinoa cooked in chicken broth and lemon juice.

Here's one of my favorites.

http://kcbs.com/pages/8138.php?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=finnan+haddy

I like finnan haddy prepared this way,

Lay the fillets in a baking dish
about 4 or 5 cups a basic flour/milk margarine white sauce over it with spices (pepper/parsley) and cover it with tinfoil and bake it till the white sauce has absorbed the flavor of the fish.

Goes good with a baked potato and corn on the cob or choice of veg.

Or you can just bake the fish with a few cups of water than take the drippings and make the white sauce from it.

The first time I was given whitefish to pan fry I was told to dredge it in flour first. Well we were camping and I didn't have any flour but I did have one of those just-add-water "complete" pancake mixes so I used that instead. It tasted great. I've used pancake mix ever since.

I, on the other hand, haven't breaded (whatever) any fish in my life.



Although I admit to smothering them with transluscent onions and pepper and mustard and lemon.



Not to be fish arrogant from this end... but just to say, fish dishes vary.



Viva the internet.

It wasn't what I think of as breaded, osso, just a little crispy on the outside. It's a cold water fish, I think, and has a fair bit of fat as a result. I use a teflon coated pan lightly sprayed with cooking spray and the fish's own oil does the rest.

I par boil fresh mackerel for only a minute to take out the grease and fishy taste before I bread and fry it.

My mother used to dip it in egg and flour and then burn it with margarine so I kind of have an aversion to mackerel, that and her fried egg plant.

It would sit on my plate for an hour before I would be excused from the table.

My mother was a good cook and I wish that I had some of her recipes but they were in her head.

She taught me to make Norwegian meatballs.

Weird she fried them in margarine too but somehow the burnt margarine helped the flavor. She also used potato flour to make them firm.

I think she used nutmeg in her meatballs but I prefer ginger in mine.

Then she would always serve the meatballs over egg noodles.

She also used to serve us fish balls with a white sauce they were canned I forget the Norwegian name she called them.

"Kiltie flisk" or something like that.

My dad always made a fish chowder. He called it kulamauka(a fin name for the chowder, i spelled it phonetically) It was really good, we always used pickerel in ours.
Another house favorite was peas on toast. white sauce and canned peas on buttered toast.

A nice way to use up left over white rice is add a little milk, sugar and vanilla it make a nice quick desert.

I also like milk poured over red jello, weird huh?

Old people like jello but I do too...

I think I sounded too negative about fish that has been floured... I do actually like it, but it's not what I've done with the fish one gets in California... fresh wild salmon, for example. I have quite a weakness for good fish and chips. but I've not cooked that myself either.

I saw on the local news here in Maine that they just found a way to extract lobster meat mechanically from a lobster without cooking it first.

Ok, here is my lobster stew recipe...

"In Maine" a chowder has potatoes, that seems to be the distinguishing feature between lobster chowder and lobster stew...

Lobster stew has only lobster.

First you need some drawn unsalted butter.

If you don't know what drawn butter is well you take real unsalted butter and microwave it briefly on low in a pyrex measuring cup until it just becomes a liquid let it sit at room temperature until all of the cream settles to the bottom. Then skim the oil off the top leaving the cream at the bottom. It is the oil that you use in this recipe, the oil is the drawn butter.

You put some of the drawn butter in a frying skillet. The size of the skillet is dependant on how much stew you plan to make. A very small skillet can make one single bowl of stew very nicely.

The amount of drawn butter depends on how many serving you are going to make.

One serving should have 3 to 4 tablespoons of drawn butter. The reason why you use unsalted butter is because salt breaks down oil and makes it smoke before the lobster has released it's color.

You toss some lobster in the drawn butter and fry it until the red comes out of the lobster. If you leave any cream in the oil it will burn and turn black before the oil turns red.

Once the oil is red then you add a spritz of sherry to the hot oil and lobster for flavor. CAREFUL, the oil will flame up as the alcohol burns off. Keep your face and hands away when you add the sherry.

Once the oil flames up with a plume of fire then you add a bit of milk, cream and canned milk (not too much canned milk).

Heat it up till the dairy mixture turns white, NEVER boil the stew.

Then serve...

Just increase the ingredients to make more servings.

You just need to get the red out of the lobster but don't over fry the lobster or it can become tough. It will turn the drawn butter bright red before it makes the lobster tough...

Enjoy.

Salt and pepper at the dinner table and oyster crackers or saltines are a nice touch...

How much peanut butter do you add to the chili?

For chili - cocoa, molasses, & tequila

OK - try some sour cream (couple of big spoons full). I add this to stews too. Add it at the end, just before thickening. Mix till there are no lumps. It'll smooth and round out the flavors. You'll end up with a full flavored chili or stew.

Great tip. I always like to top my chili with a spoonful of sour cream too but I never thought about mixing it in. I'll try that next time I'm in the mood to make chili.

what do you put in your american chop suey?

a friend of mine the other day gave me their recipe for american chop suey. it is quite good. I used to just dump spaghetti sauce into pasta with some ground beef and call it chop suey but I have learned that chop suey is a bit more involved than that, anyone care to share this recipe?

Oh yea I think my mom would make her chili with sour cream, I can't remember. Probably because I ran to play instead. I love cumin in my chili. I love the taste. yummy.

Chop Suey

stewed tomatoes whole ( drained)
bay leaf (one or two)
elbow macaroni (small package)
onion
green pepper
(mushrooms optional)
ground beef
pinch of salt and pepper

prepare pasta al dente
chop onions and peppers (mushrooms) in large slices and fry with ground beef and bay leaf on high heat to brown them a bit,
when done frying mix all ingredients in large pot and heat on stove on medium low heat add salt and pepper and stir.