#63 Add 5 new tricks to the rotation - Progress Update

I guess the first item to deal with is what exactly do I mean by "Add 5 new tricks to the rotation"? Well, when I first started living on my own, I was ignorant in many areas, specifically cooking. I could "cook" hot dogs, hamburgers , and popcorn. That was basically it with the exception of my Voodoo Pasta which I had made exactly once. In fact, I had an early conversation with the secretary of my graduate program about how to cook bacon (I wanted to know if I needed to add oil).

As you can see, I was pretty much hopeless. But I did have the Voodoo Pasta trick in my toolbox and slowly but surely I began to branch out. Tacos and Spaghetti were easy enough. Shake and Bake and BBQ porkchops and chicken soon followed. When winter came along I asked my Mom for her chili recipe and I think I do a decent job with it. But... then I sort of stopped. For the past 5 years, whenever it's been my turn to cook, you could pretty much bet it was going to be Voodoo Pasta, Tacos, Spaghetti, or a Pork/Chicken with rice and a frozen veggie. And Mom's Chili every weekend it was cold. While composing my list I decided it was about damn time I figured out how to cook a few more things and add these items to my dinner rotation.

Where to begin? My wife loves to cook (she's awesome at it) and has a crapload (less than a shitload but more than a bunch) of cookbooks sitting on top of the refrigerator. I was quickly intimidated by words like "mince" and "puree". I felt a bit lost and even though I had a vague notion of picking up a book recommended in The Flog I still felt a bit scared of cookbooks.

Then a few nights back I was checking out my wedding photographer's blog and noticed a comment from an old high school friend of mine. Out of curiosity I visited her blog, which as fate would have it had a post that started by referencing her husband's blog, The Common Culinarian. While scanning through some of the posts, I found a recipe for Chicken and Corn Chowder. After reading through the post I thought to myself, I CAN DO THIS! Despite the foreign words such as riced, caramelized, and dried tarragon I thought I could pull it off.

I printed out the ingredients and sprang to the kitchen. Whoo-hoo! We had extra virgin olive oil (what's with the extra virgin? Does that mean it's never had oral sex?). We had butter, carrots, and celery. We had frozen corn and chicken broth. It was all coming together. Sure I would need to run to the store to get a few things, but this was looking very promising. I was a bit concerned about the whole milk (we only had skim milk) and thought I'd better check with The Common Culinarian. I im'ed my friend, and as luck would have it, she wasn't around but the chef himself was! He walked me through what the hell riced meant and what the hell caramelized meant. He was a bit unsure about how the skim milk would turn out. I was planning on going through with it but then I decided to call my wife. She told me that the buttermilk we had in the fridge would be a better option.

With that, I ran to the grocery store. I came back and laid out all my ingredients. Thank god the pots we have had the size of em on the bottom because I had no idea what a 2 1/2 quart pot looked like!



Next I had to start cutting everything up. Man I have no knife skills. I wish I had mad knife skills like Hung from Top Chef. I mean look at this guy:



Regardless, I hacked up the onion, carrot, and celery in a manner that probably isn't even close to a dice, dice, and riced.



Next I attacked the chicken. The chef and my wife said to use a fork, but the good lord gave me fingers for a reason. Here is where I encountered my biggest problem. The chicken smelled so good I started eating it. Alot of it. I downed an entire leg and wing. At that rate I knew I would soon be full so I hurried up and got a cup of chicken and tossed the rest of the bird into the fridge. I also looked at the bag of huge potatoes I had purchased and decided 3 big ones would equal about 5 small ones.



Well with everything cut it was time to start cooking. The olive oil and butter was easy enough and then I cooked up the carrots, celery, and onions until the onions started to get a bit brown on the edges. I tossed in the potatoes (whoops! too many! Ah well... I enjoyed some raw potatoes....) and garlic.



At this point, I got a bit worried as I was waiting for the potatoes to brown on the edges because I noticed stuff was getting stuck on the bottom of the pan. I dunno if this was supposed to happen or not. Anyways at that point I said the hell with it and dropped everything else into the pot (save the buttermilk) and cranked up the heat.



Once I had a boil, I cranked her back down to what I consider a simmer (how I do my chili) and set a timer for 30 minutes. At the 30 minute mark I checked the potatoes and decided to give it another 5. It smelled very good. Once those 5 minutes were up I added in the buttermilk and got myself a bowl!



One word: delicious. I was expecting it to be good, but this was great. There was a certain flavor that I hadn't experienced before (probably the tarragon?) and I loved it. I was a bit sad that I still felt full from the chicken and raw potatoes I pounded while making the soup, but you can bet your ass I'll have another bowl tonight. Oyster crackers tasted great with it.

So many thanks to the chef over at The Common Culinarian. This was a great dish that I'm happy to add to my rotation.