Curried Vegetable Chowder of Epic Proportions

Live for them. Love them. I have been a customer of theirs on-and-off for years. When I can afford it, I get shipments of organic vegetables DELIVERED to my house and then life is GOOD, people! Now, due to financial constraints, I am on the every-other-week delivery cycle with Boston Organics. Life is still good...BUT sometimes you have to figure out what to do with a bunch of organic vegetables QUICK before they go bad. This is what I did the other night and it was a thing to rejoice!

Curried Vegetable Chowder
(of epic proportions!)

In fridge/freezer/pantry I found:

• 2 carrots
• 1/4 head of cabbage
• 2 red potatoes
• 1 sweet potato
• broccoli (yuck)
• collard greens (yum)
• 2 onions
• 1 red chili pepper (not sure what kind, but i think it was this)
• a few cloves of garlic
• spices: curry powder, cinammon, cumin, salt, pepper
• olive oil

I also found a large portion of frozen veggie stock I had the foresight to make earlier that week. For a detailed description of how to make your vegetable ends into usable stock, read the play-by-play here.

A quick thing I will add to that epic is leave the skins of your garlic and onions on and also when you take the skins off in your regular cooking, throw em in your stock bag. EVERYTHING goes in except for lemon rind because that will make your stock bitter and inedible. Everything else, fair game. Im talking potato peels here, folks. Also an addendum to Tony's post is - add a shit ton of salt (Can I say shit on the internet? I dunno. I'm sure Dave will bleep me out if need be). (Ed. note: You sure can say shit on the internet. -dave) Like more than you think you need. Just TRUST me on this.

Anyway, now that you have an awesome veggie stock at your disposal, you can move on with your life and make better career choices :). Also, it cures acne.

Things I bought at the store for the curried chowder: Fresh ginger and organic half and half. Amazing! Let's start cooking.

So...take a massive pot and heat up some olive oil. I made a huge pot of soup which I have been eating for days and let me tell you, it gets better every day. So, I probably added about 4 tablespoons of oil to the pot, 2 tablespoons of curry powder, two teaspoons of cinnamon, a teaspoon of cumin, 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and a couple of fierce grinds of black pepper and then turn the heat on low. After the oil spice mixture begins to warm (you can tell by the smell), add the onions, sliced and let them sweat on low while other things happen. I grabbed the ginger, broke off about a half inch, peeled it, minced it, threw it in the pot. Sliced the chili pepper, seeds and all, into the pot and give it a stir. Peeled and minced the garlic, about three cloves, into the pot. At this point in time, your house should be smelling so good that you just cant function.

OK, so stir your aromatics that are in the pot and add the 2 red potatoes diced (don't need to peel, just take out any eyes) and the sweet potato, peeled and diced. Turn the heat up to medium, cover and get those potatoes cooking. Peel your carrots and chop them. I sliced them and found the rounds to be a little imposing, you may want to dice them to the same size as your potatoes. Add them to the pot, stir, make sure nothing's burning, move on. Next, grab that quarter of a head of cabbage, take off the outer leaves if the look suspect and cut off any areas that are starting to brown, shreddddd the cabbage by slicing it thin and throw into the pot, stir. Take your broccoli (yuck), about two big stalks, and start slicing at the top of the florets so the little nibs separate individually and make this heinous vegetable palatable. NO bias here. Once all your florets are macerated, chop a little of the soft, upper part of the stem and save the rest to put into the stock bag. Into the pot, stir.

Okay, folks, we're almost ready. Can you feel the excitement building? Grab your collards and slice about a cup's worth (2 inches, how does one measure collards?), into the pot, big stir, life is good, go grab your stock. Add about a quart of the veggie stock into the pot until the vegetables are covered, but just showing underneath the surface. Add another 2 teaspoons of curry powder (yes, really) another dash of cinnamon, a teaspoon of salt a few more fierce grinds of black pepper an cover. Bring up to a boil and let this mixture boil, covered for about 15-20 minutes until potatoes and carrots are tender. Once this happens, turn off heat and add your half-and-half slowly until you achieve the desired creaminess. I didn't use much-maybe about a cup in total. Stir and taste. Mixture should be just creamy, slightly curried, spicy, delicious and totally like whoa. If this is not the case, add more salt and pepper, maybe another shot of the half-and-half and try again. If it's not amazing at this point then I just don't know. Maybe it's karma from a past life...shake your first at the sky, discard and order pizza.

But anyway, our soup was incredible, spicy, organic, delicious, dinner, lunch, lunch, dinner. So good. Also, google the health benefits of turmeric, found in curry powder, and feel pleased with your meal choice and morally superior to others. I kid. Seriously though, this soup is amazing and life is good.

Until next time,
A

Kitchen Basics: Veggie Stock… Wait! Hear me out.

  When I was 26, I spake as a 26-year-old, I understood as a 26-year-old, I did 26-year-old things… like buy a drafty condo with oil heat. But, when I became a man, I learnt how to cook.

Luckily, said apartment is on the second floor so a lot of the drafting comes in the form of warm air from the neighbor below. (we totally luck out on this trade: we get heat, she gets footsteps - second floor is the way to go) Yet, being the cheap bastards that we are, and because oil is more expensive than the alternatives, my roommates and I rarely turn on the heat. This makes the apartment's ambient temperature a reliable 50-55º F. While this is perfect for brewing lagers, it is sub-optimal for keeping women around (or individuals of whatever gender you prefer to have naked in your room).

Here is a great way to
   1. get some free heat
   2. make your apartment smell nice (if you like warm earthy aromas that were not designed in New Jersey)
   3. save money on vegetable stock
       a. free flavor!
       b. free vitamins!
       c. use it as a base for soup
       d. use it to make rice instead of water.
       e. tc.
   4. use all the parts of “the buffalo” (by which I of course mean vegetables) which makes jesus and gaia both really happy.

Every time you bust out your web browser and open to the Mad Tasty section, save the vegetable ends in a bag in the freezer: Below I present quite possibly the ugliest picture ever posted on a food blog, in spite of my efforts to make it look like a cornucopia. Look closely (if img fidelity permits) and you’ll see
   1. carrot butts and greens
   2. three batches of cilantro we didn’t get through before they wilted beyond appetizing
   3. a large portion of celery with a similar fate
   4. a number of pieces of pepper (go ahead and leave the stem on)
   5. carrot peels
   6. ends of red and yellow onions
   7. stems of chard
   8. stems of kale
   9. something borrowed
   10. something blue

Your stock will taste a little different every time because its not a set recipe. Don't worry, it will be usable in all the same ways. You may want to remember what's in there or taste it and see what you think it will be best with. Lately, I've tended to have a lot of cilantro in the broth, so last time, instead of the chicken soup I usually make, I went with a vietnamese-style pork and beef soup. If you find you've got a lot of carrots and your broth is pretty sweet, you may want to try using it to make rice for a green curry, or maybe use it in a turnip soup. I think most people end up with a lot of aromatics and lean toward basic chicken soup, but you never know what your freezer is gonna throw at you!

I digress, in the above picture is also, a pair of garlic heads that I pulled off the top of the refrigerator. They are getting dry and will not be used. I peel these (crush method!), but you may not need to – oh that reminds me, I also take off the skin of the onion, but save that tough outer layer that you never use in your salad or stir fry.

This is a great time to clean out the fridge. You are about to boil the ƒμ¢ℵ out of this stuff so don’t worry if its wilty or if part of it looks a little slimy (I mean do your best to remove the slime). Look! I found some spinach that I bought like 5 days ago:

As indicated, put it all in a stock pot or the largest pot you have and fill it up with water. (Before I got this stock pot, I would occasionally use two side-by-side pots) Use hot water to save time boiling.

Now, make yourself a martini and start assembling your blog post.

You have a few hours. Some people only boil for 1 hour, I like to generously overshoot an hour (because I love martinis and macs). At least one friend of mine boils her stock for closer to four hours which seems a little extravagant to me.

Once you see good color and can taste that vegetable flavor, add salt and pepper to taste in the last 20 min. Strain the deader-than-dead vegetables out of your stock and put them in the COMPOST HEAP! Whoa, did we just get three uses out of these fruits of the earth? I think so!

Pat yourself on the back, but don’t forget, viri is not the plural of virus, but of man.

So in my estimation, 32 oz veggie stock costs like $3.50 and were making close to 2 gallons, and if it costs (very rough estimate) $1000 to heat an apartment of this size for the winter, that’s 10 bucks a day. So this whole process saves you $15 – $25, which is kinda worth it.