Vikings Win Despite Coach, I Eat Chili w/ Corn Fritters

It occurs to me that Coach Childress could not get a waitress from the dining room into the bar. Sad. Now we have to keep the coach.

A high point of game day was eating corn fritters as a side w/ chili. You can use your regular pancake recipe and add an extra egg and lots and lots of corn.

Sweet Potatoe Pancakes

When you have leftover squash or sweet potatoes, add them ( already mashed) to your pancake mixture. Adjust the consistency w/ the addition of some more milk, if necessary. You know how good butter and maple syrup are on pancakes? - they are even better on sweet potatoe pancakes.
Serve your leftover ham on the side, of course.

Naughty and Nice - Finnish Fish Soup

Another great cold weather soup is the Finnish version of fish soup - kala mojakka(sp) - that includes potatoes, carrots, onions, celery and fish in a milk broth, seasoned primarily w/ allspice. Gently boil the vegetables in water that becomes a wonderful broth until they are about done( 2o - 30 min), add milk or cream by 1 / 3 or 1 / 2, bring to simmer, and add fish portions ( 2 -3 inch)to poach for 5 minutes at the end. Ladle into bowls, strew fresh ground allspice over all, add a pat of butter to each, and serve w/ a rustic and/or whole grain bread. Fresh chopped parsley as garnish and flavor enhancer, too.

Simple, clean, healthy. An somewhat austere soup made auspicious and delicious by the generous addition of allspice.

My great Aunt Sofia would use whole black peppercorns and whole allspicecorns, which would sink to the bottom of the soup pot, and a whole northern pike including bones and head which produced a lusty barbaric flavor. She would suck on the tiny hard white inner eyeballs of the northern pike for hours, rolling them in her mouth like jaw breakers and her eyes would twinkle as she would tell stories, sometimes naughty.

Leftover Paella

I have an upcoming Christmas Dinner piece in the Compass Magazine ( of the Mille Lacs Messenger) about Paella - recipe, photos, etc... .

Leftover Pealla makes a rich and savory soup - simply add water/chicken broth and red pepper to taste and dunk w/ a rustic, crusty bread. Artisinal breads from Abbey Bakery or the New French Bakery are available locally - usually frozen if you are not in a bigger city - and are an excellent bake and serve product. Get some for the season - great for an appetizer base, too, sliced into rounds and toasted on a tray in the oven.

The ubiquitous cream of chicken wild rice soup is a bit more interesting w/ the addition of curry powder. Chef Glenn D'Amour of Izaty's a few yrs ago would do that. Best Chef they ever had there. Too bad Izaty's has gone the way it has.

A Great Date on the Coldest Day of The Year, with Snow

A bonus of frigid cold weather outside is frost patterns on the window. Snow drifts are like waves frozen in time. Beautiful.

Curried pork chops with peas and rice was a great supper during the blizzard last night. Hot and sweet, exotic. And simple. Season pork chops w/ salt, pepper, cayenne and garlic and brown in oil in frying pan, add heavy cream and a couple of teaspoons of curry powder ( or more to taste) and bake in the oven for about a half hour.

Have a date cake that you got at a church bake sale with plenty of softly whipped cream, for dessert.

Venison Chops Explained and a Simple Recipe

I made the many bean soup w/o meat, but when I eat it I garnish a bowl of it w/ a quarter inch dicing of liverwurst. Excellent.

Stay w/ the venison roast recipe( a couple of posts back) - it is great. When you make the marinade, shake it up in a jar or food processor it so it is all in one - an emulsion.I think the normally dry venison benefits greatly from the amount of oil in the recipe. Remember that you must keep the pan covered during roasting. Check it a couple of times to make sure that the liquid( marinade) is still liquid - add more marinade or water as necessary. Remember that you start the roast w/ a cup of the marinade. There should be liquid( au jus) in the pan to serve w/ the roast.

Venison chops - steaks from along and either side of the back bone correspond to ribeye( prime rib), t-bones, porterhouses, New York strips- and you should cook them accordingly. That means medium rare for me - venison steaks will definitely be dry if you over cook them. You can compensate somewhat for that by frying them in a pan( I use black cast iron) in vegetable oil and butter on medium heat - a little less heat than you would for beef steaks.

Definitely saute onions first till clear and soft( med low heat so they don't burn) and mushrooms( your choice, but recommended) half done and move the onions and mushrooms to the perimeter of your pan. Chops should be an inch to an inch and a half thick, seasoned w/ salt pepper and garlic. Turn heat up to medium. Add a little more oil and butter to the middle of the pan and place the chops in the middle of the pan, fry 3 or 4 minutes, turn over for about 3 more minutes - you can test for degree of doneness by cutting a small slit in the top of the steak - remember that they will keep cooking after you remove them from the heat to the serving platter so get them off the heat a little early.

A rule of thumb in professional kitchens is to remove steaks from heat when they are cooked a half step under how the steak was ordered. You can always cook a steak a little more if a guest requests it, but you can't cook it less.

Now for the good part. When you remove the steaks from the pan, turn up the heat to medium high, add( your choice here) a quarter cup of either cognac( brandy), red wine, or even water, and when it boils and reduces a little( 1 minute), add a couple pats of butter( cold preferably), swirl and stir and pour the sauce along w/ the onions and mushrooms over the steaks on the serving platter.

Have some good bread for dunking - you will all fight over the sauce on the platter.


Any decent red wine works - Cabernet( Bordeaux), Burgundy( Pinot Noir), Merlot, Shiraz, etc -you don't have to pay more than 10 bucks a bottle - drink the same wine that you cook with - Sutter Home or Mondavi are widely available even in stores up North and are about 7 or 8 bucks a bottle. Wine is cheap these days.

If you cook chops like this it's like a rekindled or new love affair w/ venison. Good luck.

Bread, soup, cookies on a cold day

When the wind is blowing cold from the NW and the snow is horizontal and the temperature is dropping it is a good day to bake bread and cook soup.

The bread is a hearty peasant style w/ white and whole wheat and rye flour and it is a many bean soup.

A venison roast is thawing and will rest in a marinade to be roasted tomorrow.

Cookies too. It is a good day to bake cookies. Chocolate chip w/ half whole wheat flour and hazelnuts.