Instant Karma Broccoli Chowder

"Instant Karma" was playing on the car radio and I asked Mr. Rosemary what he thought "instant karma" meant.  His first response:  "Love at first sight."

Now that's not the real definition of instant karma, John Lennon's version or not, but that's what I thought of today as I made this chowder:  It was meant to be, especially on a frigid day like today.

As we were headed out the door this brisk morning, layering ourselves in our barn clothes to much the horse stalls, Mr. Rosemary told me the thermometer read 10 degrees.

Pretty dang cold.

After we finished our chores (and it was indeed dang cold!), he told me that he'd misread the thermometer without his glasses on:  It really had said minus 1.0.  Now that's real dang cold.  (Sometimes it's better not knowing actually how cold it is.)

Soup is the only cure for that many degrees of frigidity!

I'm still in the post-holiday mode of lightening up, though, and where I would ordinarily make broccoli soup with cream, or at least half-and-half, I adapted a recipe I had plastered to the fridge earlier in the week for a less rich soup from Eating Well.

This soup gets its thickening from a little flour and potatoes and the creaminess from  non-fat yogurt. (The original recipe uses reduced fat sour cream.  I also subbed chicken broth for  vegetable. I also used whole fat cheese; just less of it.)   Of course all the good effort was probably negated when I had a piece of buttered beer bread on the side  -- the beer bread's for another post -- but, after all, it is my karma.

Broccoli Chowder
adapted from Eating Well
makes 6 (1 cup) servings
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, peeled and diced
1 large potato, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon AP flour
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
28 ounces chicken broth
1 bunch broccoli, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup non-fat plain yogurt
1/4 teaspoon salt

Heat oil in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium high heat.  Add onion, celery and carrot and cook, stirring often until the onion and celery soften, about 5 minutes.  Add the potato and garlic; cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes.  Stir in flour, dry mustard and cayenne; cook, stirring often again, for another 2 minutes.

Add broth and cut up broccoli; bring to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat to medium.  Simmer, stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes.  Transfer 2 cups of the chowder to a bowl and mash and then return to pan.

Stir in cheese and yogurt and cook stirring until the cheese is melted and the chowder is heated through.

Broccoli Grape Salad -- A New Waldorf

Broccoli has to be the chameleon of vegetables. It can change as much as Anne Hathaway’s dresses did at the Oscars this week! It can be raw or cooked, chopped or whole, sweet or spicy, in everything from soups to salads to casseroles and main dishes. I really can’t think of a bona fide dessert with broccoli in it, but this sweet Broccoli Grape salad, a riff on the traditional Waldorf Salad, just might make the cut.

It’s a lighter version of the classic Waldorf Salad, the traditional mix of apples, celery and walnuts in a mayonnaise dressing, with broccoli standing in for the apple. Waldorf Salad was mandatory on my mother’s Thanksgiving Day menu. My job was to make the salad dressing. No mixer, no food processor, not even a whisk. Just me stirring and stirring and stirring with a fork, getting the sugar well blended into the mayonnaise.

“Is this good, Mom?” I’d ask.

“Stir a little longer, honey.”

And after a little while, I’d ask again, and she might send me back sighing to my task again. But sooner or later I got it. And I got how much lemon juice to add. If it was too soupy, I’d have to add more mayo. It was a cooking lesson I really didn’t want just then; I wanted to eat the hors d’oeuvres in the living room with the grown-ups and slurp on my Shirley Temple!

Maybe that memory is why I decided to use honey in this dressing instead of the sugar it called for. The original recipe also added sunflower seeds for crunch. But I used dry roasted peanuts instead. I also cooked the broccoli just a little to take some of the raw crispness out of them. Just the right crispness. A nice twist on the Waldorf. I think Mom would approve.

Broccoli Grape Salad
Slightly adapted from Light & Tasty, September 2006

4 cups fresh broccoli florets, cut in small pieces
1-1/2 cups seedless red or green grapes, sliced
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup reduced fat mayonnaise
¼ cup fat-free plain yogurt
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts

Cook the cut up broccoli in a covered dish with ¼ cup water for 3 minutes on high in the microwave. Drain in a colander and run cold water over the broccoli.  Toss the broccoil with the grapes and raisins.  Mix the mayonnaise, yogurt and honey for the dressing.  Pour over the broccoli mixture and toss till everything is evenly covered.   Add the peanuts just before serving.  Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.
Makes about 8 3/4 cup servings, about 150 calories each.

Money from Broccoli: Broccoli "Coins" & Walnut Salad

I really hate to waste food. If a recipe asks for a half of a pepper, I’m thinking immediately what I might do with the rest of the pepper. (Sometimes, it’s “Oh, just chop the whole thing and put it in.”) Same with onion. I know those things can always go in a frittata or a soup, and I often save broccoli stalks for just that very reason. But when I found a recipe that actually specified using the stalks and “save the florets for another use” I had to read on.

The recipe comes from the very first cookbook I ever bought for myself:  Glamour’s Gourmet on the Run, by Jane Kirby. I read the magazine all the time back then and  I read the cooking column before anything else. I loved that book, and still refer to it often. It’s stained and pages are falling out but it still has a place of honor on my bookshelf. I learned a lot from that book; still do. Mostly I learned that you don’t need to follow a recipe, once you get a few what-goes-with-what concepts down. And I learned that good cooking doesn’t necessarily need to take a lot of time; fresh ingredients, not exotic or fancy ones, and an understanding of herbs and spices and various cooking techniques are far more important. (But I still love to spend an afternoon in the kitchen fussing over food prep.)

The coin shapes are really pretty cool looking; kinda like looking at cloud shapes.  I'm sure they'd be just as good served warm as a side.  Below is the recipe from the book.   Here’s what I did differently (probably learned this from the book): I added strawberries, because I had them; I used gorgonzola, ditto; I used red romaine, because that’s what’s growing in my garden, and I just used balsamic vinegar as a dressing. Oh, and I used more that just 1/3 cup walnuts.  (And I forgot to add the cheese before I took the picture.) Now, what do I do with the florets?

Broccoli Coins &Walnut Salad

from Glamour’s Gourmet on the Run, by Jane Kirby
4 stalks broccoli
1 T butter or margarine
1/3 C coarsely chopped walnuts
1 head red leaf lettuce
1/3 C crumbled bleu cheese
Oil & vinegar dressing

With a sharp knife, cut buds from broccoli; reserve for another use. Slice stalks into ¼ in “coins.” Steam for 5 to 7 minutes or until just tender. Drain and run under cold water until cool.

Heat butter in skillet. Add walnuts and sauté 2 to 3 minutes; drain. Clean lettuce and tear into bite-sized pieces. Add to salad bowl with broccoli and walnuts. Sprinkle with bleu cheese. Add dressing; toss and serve. Makes 4 servings.

Leftover Eggs? Try This Broccoli Ring

I’ve always loved coloring eggs for Easter. I was one of the little kids in the grocery store begging my mom for the latest and greatest version of dye kits. As I grew to a bigger kid, I wanted to experiment with crayons and strings and oil and all kinds of things to make my eggs unique. And even though I knew there’d be no kids around this year, no grandkids to fuss over, I still wanted to mess around with the eggs. Nothing like the aroma of vinegar in the air! Smells like Easter!

This year, I took the adult, even green, route and decided I’d try my hand at coloring with natural dyes. I’d read a couple different articles (one from Fine Cooking, one from Prevention) and decided I had enough of the suggested items to make my experiment worthwhile. At least for making egg salad sandwiches afterward.

The directions sounded simple enough: Take 4 cups of chopped or mashed fruit or veggie matter, or 4 tablespoons of spices, and cover with 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil, add 2 tablespoons vinegar (I’m guessing any kind will do) and simmer for 30 minutes. Then add your eggs and let them steep in the refrigerator several hours or overnight, turning occasionally, and you’ll end up with a veritable rainbow of egg colors.

Because I’ve been trying to maintain a compost pile, I save my kitchen scraps and I’d had some onion skins, so I set them aside for my experiment. I was intrigued by the possibilities of colors. Some of them were pretty obvious: spinach got you green eggs, grape juice, purple, coffee or tea, beige. With chili powder you got orange; with turmeric or cumin, bright yellow. There was one big surprise, though: red cabbage made blue eggs! I wish I would have had some.

What I did have were onion skins, a mix of red and yellow. I only had about two cups, so I halved the recipe, enough for half a dozen eggs, more than enough for me and my husband. The picture shows you the result: a kind of marbled yellow brown. I wrapped rubber bands around the eggs before dipping. They would have looked really cool if I’d dipped them into another color afterwards.

I declared the experiment a success and will start earlier next Easter. Then I really will have too many eggs. We often have eggs on tossed salads or will just eat a couple hard-cooked eggs for a quick lunch. Growing up, my mother always garnished cooked spinach with hard-cooked eggs and vinegar. And I really do like egg salad. My husband could eat deviled eggs every day, I think.

One recipe that makes good use of too many hard-cooked eggs and one that I’ve often made is a broccoli ring, a savory gelatin salad. I used to think that all gelatin salads were sweet and fruity so this one caught my attention a long time ago and has remained a staple, a back-of-the-shelf staple, but a favorite of mine nevertheless.

Broccoli Ring

1 pound fresh broccoli, cooked and chopped
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1 14 ½ ounce can beef broth
¾ cup mayonnaise
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
hot sauce, if desired
4 hard-cooked eggs, chopped

In medium saucepan, soften the gelatin in the broth. Stir over low heat till the gelatin is dissolved. Remove from heat. Stir in the mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, salt and hot sauce, to taste. Fold in drained broccoli and chopped eggs. Pour into a 5 ½ cup ring mold. Cover and chill several hours or overnight until firm. To serve, unmold onto lettuce lined plate, and garnish center with cherry tomatoes, additional lettuce and broccoli buds. Makes 10 servings.

Broccoli