Winter Season's Soups for Thought

If you lisp the title is totally alliteration!

I love Chowder, so today's test recipe is from the Seafood Bounty cookbook. It's probably safe to say I didn't follow the recipe.

What I used:

250g of mixed seafood (you can just buy the generic marinara mix from Coles/Woolies)

150g of snapper fillet (chopped to approx same size as fish in marinara mix. I like fish so I put more in, could've used salmon... or any other white fish)

1 small brown onion
30g butter
300g milk (low fat)
100g thickened cream or double cream
1/2 tblspn of TM Vegetable paste
2 medium carrots (cubed/roughly chopped - can do in TM or hand chop)
3 baby potatoes (cubed, ensure larger than chopped carrot size)
Pepper & fresh Parsley (garnish/taste)

Method to my madness:
1. Add Onion to bowl, chop Speed 5, 5 seconds.

2. Add chopped carrots, and butter. Fry on 100C, Speed1 for 3 minutes.

3. Add cubed potato, TMstock paste & milk. Cook on Varoma temperature, Speed 1 reverse, for 10 minutes.

4. Place seafood in steaming basket. Varoma temperature, Speed 1 reverse, 6 minutes.
5. Use spatula to remove basket ingredients into Thermoserver. Pour on soup.

Serve: Add hand chopped fresh parsley for garnish, and a dash of cracked pepper upon serving to bowls. If you made breadrolls - perfect. If you had left over bread? grill / bake it a bit and have homemade croutons! I put garlic butter on mine and oven bake it bit before adding to soups.

You can also cook shell pasta al dente in the mix - I'd recommend add extra milk (100g-200g) Add your pasta in the bowl and steam your seafood in the Varoma (like the cookbook suggests). Pasat measure, 100g is plenty! Your chowder already has potatoes and carrots to buff it up.

Taste test - I used penne pasta (gluten free for it) - absorbs the soup better. It's not as thick as restaurant chowder but then again I didn't use flour or anything that contained gluten to thicken it. To thicken can also use the garlic croutons I mentioned? make that into crumbs and add to soup in Step 5.

I used low fat milk because I had it on hand and also thougth if I used 200g of cream I'd have to declog my arteries afterwards.

This recipe made me nearly 5 bowls of soup. Imagine what the full recipe in the Seafood Bounty cookbook makes?

Chilli Mussels - Variation

EDC recipe with adjustments: I doubled it (some stuff) & substituted a few fresh items from pantry.

Step 1 - Additional whole onion, halved. 4 pcs garlic & 2 medium red chillis (1 with seeds inclusive). Basil leaves, two sticks of rosemary. Choppe on Speed 5, 5 seconds.
Step 2 - Add 2 cans of tomatoes (I purchased the one with pre mixed basil & oregano - adds extra flavor). Add 1 Tbspn of TM vegetable paste. Add 1 Tbspn of pizza base tomato paste.
Step 3 - Then place Varoma receptacle filled with cleaned mussels (2kg) on top of locked in lid).
Step 4 - Add 200 mL of white wine by drizzling it over mussels.
Step 5 - Cook for 20 mins on Varoma temp, at Speed 1.
Step 6 - At 16 mins, pick out the opened mussels, keep cooking the rest.
Step 7 - most mussels will have opens by 20 mins mark. Serve with sauce poured on top, garnish with chopped parsley / lemon rind / finely chopped spring onions.

Note: upon testing different branded & variation (diced, whole) cans of tomatoes. Coles or the generic brand canned vegetables will be more watery. So reduce the wine accordingly.

Friday night didn't go according to plan...

It's not much to look at in
the TMServer

Borscht - generally following TM recipe.
Sadly I added 1 carrot & 1 parsnip so the soup probably wasn't as 'fine' / smooth as it should have been. Also added less water as the vegetable weight increased.

Dash of cream upon serving
& maybe a green garnish?

I only had two beetroots and that was quite enough. The carrot wasn't a great addition and was quite earthy as well. I shall remove this in future. The parsnip sweetness was drowned out, so sadly this didn't work as well as I hoped. But mom loved it. She says it's not as smooth as the one she remembers but the taste is almost there!

Yippee! so a few more tweaks and this could be the Russian Borscht of her memories! Guess what she's going to have on Mother's Day dinner? *sniggers*





Instead of planned risotto, I bought some mussels at Coles. These were fresh enough - tasted delicious. Yes there's a recipe in the EDC but it wasn't very tomato-ey, so I varied the recipe from the Recipe Community:


Chilli sauce:
4 cloves of garlic
1 red chilli (parents not into spice)
1/2 red onion
1 small brown onion, quartered
100g tomato paste
1/2 tbspn TM vegetable paste
1 can Roma tomato (whole, skinless)
300 mL of Chardonnay

Method:
1. Fine chop onions, garlic & chilli (7 seconds, speed 8)
2. Use spatula to scrape moisture off sides of bowl. Add 50mL of olive oil.
3. Sauté the mixture (3 - 4 mins, 100 C, speed 2)
4. Add tomato paste, TM veg paste, Roma tomatoes & wine. Close lid.
5. Place cleaned/de-bearded mussels in Varoma receptacle. Place on top of TM with lid. Steam (15mins, Varoma, speed 2).
6. Serve mussels in TMServer, pour in sauce.

Tip: works best if mussels can be cover or stirred & left to rest in sauce for a little while before eating.

I'm not big on the loads of fresh herbs like parsley and basil Or dried oregano - this drowns our the natural sweetness of the mussels. I thinks properly done chilli tomato/garlic sauce is the cleanest way to go.