Shift of Tow

Poor Melissa and I have been in a bit of a rut when it comes to food, which is bad enough when you find yourself eating stir fry for the third night in a row, but really a problem when you realize you’ve had Cook Out more times in the past week than you’ve had food you cooked yourself, often with milkshakes. In the past we’ve solved this problem by implementing Project Recipe-A-Week*, which means cracking open some cookbooks, looking for an unfamiliar recipe that sounds good, and then making it. The last time we did this, we ended up adding black bean soup to our repertoire. Given the fact that I’m at home these days and Project Recipe-A-Week sounded like a great blog topic, we’re giving it another shot. This means you, dear reader, are going to get pictures and a recipe each week until we tire of it.

This week we settled on corn chowder, and looked through the Foster’s Market cookbook (one of my favorites) and another book I have called 1001 Lowfat Vegetarian Recipes. The Foster’s corn chowder recipe has roasted red pepper, which I do not love, so we used the one we found in 1001 LVR—a book that I’ve used a few times with middling (pasta salad with mozzarella) to excellent (portabella bruschetta!) results. We chose corn chowder because there’s a lot of sweet corn and potatoes right now at the farmer’s market, but much to my shame I ended up using store bought vegetables (and one homegrown herb) to make the entire thing. I couldn’t even use my farm share onion, because it had a rotten spot right in the middle. The ingredients are:

2 cups fresh (or frozen, thawed) whole kernel corn (I used fresh)
1 medium onion, diced
Vegetable oil
2 c. stock (I used vegetable stock)
2 c. cubed potatoes
½ c. sliced celery (what an odd measurement! I used two stalks)
½ tsp dried thyme (I used about a teaspoon of fresh)
2 c. milk (or half and half) (we used skim milk and it was great)
Salt and pepper, and parsley or chives to garnish (I didn’t use garnish)

Here’s a picture of the meez, as a friend calls it:

You can see the fresh thyme from the garden on top of the celery and potatoes.

Here’s how you make it:

1. Sauté corn and onion in a bit of vegetable oil in a large saucepan until the onion is tender.



2. Process half of the corn and onion in a food processor along with all of the stock, and then return it to the saucepan.



3. Add potatoes, celery, and thyme and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender (about 15-20 minutes). Add some salt and pepper, if you want it.



4. Add the milk and cook until it’s hot.

I served it with some smoked mozzarella and tomato salad (mix smoked mozzarella, some tomatoes, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of olive oil, a little wine vinegar, and maybe some basil). We both loved it.

*Poor Melissa absolutely does not think of it this way. I, on the other hand, cannot think of a solution to any problem without sticking a “Project” in front of it and capitalizing the rest of the words. Hyphens give it that extra project punch.