Carol gave us a culinary assignment. Here it is:
Since we all love spending ti in the kitchen, it is time to share some of our creativity. Share your variation of an already published recipe that is a good fall offering. Share the recipe, share why you made the changes you did, and your critique of the dish you created. Share photos as well.C
Christy's post is here and click right here for Carol's.
Last February, I went to my first Kellogg Elks crab feed. Coincidentally, I had also recently started making soup stocks that bubbled in the slow cooker for as many as five days. With Harley's permission, I brought home bags of crab shells from the feed and I made quarts of crab stock.
Last week some time, I took out a couple of quarts of crab stock with the idea that I'd make some kind of chowder. I consulted the World Wide Web and discovered that Rachael Ray has published a recipe for tilapia chowder. You can see Rachael Ray's recipe by clicking right here.
Now, I am cutting back on my consumption of meat, of animal protein. I'm not eliminating it, but I want to see if cut back if it might help my kidney numbers stay stable or maybe even improve.
So, the first thing I decided was that my chowder/soup would not have chorizo. To give my version a flavor foundation different than Rachael Ray's, I used crab stock. I'm not sure chorizo and crab stock would go together well and I wanted the flavor of the crab to be prominent in my dish -- so I ditched the chorizo.
When I went shopping for a few ingredients for this chowder/soup, I suddenly decided I didn't want to add fish to it. As I perused the produce area, I suddenly had the bright idea to use cauliflower instead of tilapia, thinking the crab stock was going to give the chowder enough of an ocean flavor and that the cauliflower would, in fact, sweeten the chowder a bit.
So, I chopped up an onion, cut up the rainbow baby carrots I had on hand, sliced up four cloves of garlic and dumped them into the Dutch oven where I had heated up some olive oil.
When the onions, carrots, and garlic were soft, I added in chopped potatoes, a proper amount of chopped cauliflower, a 15 oz. can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, and a quart of crab stock.
I brought all of this to a boil and then let it simmer for quite a while until the potatoes and cauliflower were tender and not mushy. I then added some Old Bay Seasoning since I love Old Bay mixed into crab cakes. I also added salt and pepper to the soup/chowder.
As this chowder was getting close to being done, I suddenly realized that I didn't want a broth-y chowder. I wanted a creamy, thicker chowder. I went online and read up on how to thicken a soup and the idea that most pleased me was to pour heavy whipping cream to the soup. A ha! I just happened to have a pint of heavy cream in the icebox, so I put in a quarter of a cup and then a little more and my chowder was just what I wanted: creamy, low on animal protein, tasty, and nice feeling in my mouth.
I ate about three or four bowls of this dish over the next couple of days and I liked it more when I added more pepper to it. Others might like to put pepper sauce, like Frank's, in it to perk it up.
I don't have any pictures of this soup, but I guess if you look at the picture on the Rachael Ray page and block out the chunks of fish and imagine it as a creamy chowder with cauliflower florets, it looks pretty much the same! 😉
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