Family von Smith

I love to cook, so I thought I’d start sharing some of my favorite recipes. When I asked Thommy to name some of his favorites, he said, I dunno…everything you make is good. So I’ll start with a few of my favorites. I’ll add photos as I remember to take them. If you make any of these recipes and want to send me your photos, I’ll gleefully post them.

note: ALL measurements are purely approximate.

Potato Soup
2 cups of peeled and diced potatoes
bacon (4 slices of center cut, diced)
1/2 cup of finely diced onion and celery
2T flour
2 cups of chicken stock (I prefer dissolving a tab of buillion in 2 cups of hot water)
1 small can creamed corn
1/2 cup of whole milk or light cream

In may favorite bright orange Le Creuset , render the bacon until crispy. remove it from the pot, leaving most of the grease.

Using the bacon grease, soften onions and celery. Once softened, add flour and stir and cook about 3 minutes.

Slowly add a little bit of the chicken stock, stirring to thicken it (like you would start a gravy), then add the rest. Bring to a boil.

Add potatoes and bring back to boil. Turn down the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Once potatoes have softened, use a potato masher to break down some of the potatoes, making some small chunks, and leaving some bigger chunks.

Return bacon to the pot and add the creamed corn. Let simmer another 15 minutes or so.

Turn off the heat and add the milk or cream. You can vary the amount of milk depending on your liking. (I don’t do dairy so I add just enough to make it creamy)

At this point, you can add all kinds of other ingredients…chicken, shrimp, crab meat, scallops, minced clams are all delicious. Thommy likes his with chicken, and I like mine with salmon, so sometimes I’ll cook those separately and add them to our bowls. I also like roasted sweet potatoes tossed in at the end.

Seafood Chowdah
you know what I said about adding scallops and clams to the potato soup? Yeah, that’s my newly famous seafood chowdah.

Roasted Chicken
I love roasting chicken, and do it with a variety of spices. But my all time favorite is this:

1 large chicken (large, but small enough to fit in my Le Creuset..that thing is good for everything.)
fresh basil (preferably from my little basil patch)
fresh garlic (preferably from Tom and Jan Smith’s garden)
butter, softened
olive oil, salt and pepper

Set oven to 350.

Finely chop basil and garlic and mix it into the softened butter to make sort of a paste.

After rinsing off the chicken and drying it with paper towels, loosen the skin over the breasts and thighs.

Tuck the basil, garlic, butter paste under the skin, reaching all the way down to the thighs of the chicken. Try to get the butter mix as far around under the skin as you can.

Rub olive oil on top of the skin, and salt and pepper, all over the chicken.

Place in the Le Creuset, cover and put in the oven. Bake for about 40 minutes.

At 40 minutes, you can uncover the chicken and let the skin brown during the rest of the cooking. After an hour or so, the chicken is pretty much cooked, but the longer you let it go the more tender it will become. Just check the temp with a thermometer to be sure. There should be plenty of broth in the bottom of the pot for basting. That broth makes excellent gravy too.

Chili Oil
Christine made devil’s chicken for dinner a few months ago and it was delish! It’s roasted chicken recipe with lots of peppery spice and it’s served with this chili oil. I made the oil shortly after ad have since drizzled it on chicken, green beans, brussel sprouts…

1 cup olive oil
5 jalepeno peppers (I’m not kidding, FIVE), coursed chopped seeds and all
2 T red pepper flakes.

Mix all in a sauce pan with lid and let simmer about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit overnight. Drain the oil from the peppers and you’re good to go. It keeps for a few weeks too.

Bison-basil burgers

Love burgers, love basil, love bison. These burgers are great!

ground bison
fresh chopped basil
chopped garlic

Mix the basil and garlic into the bison as you form the burgers. Remember not to handle it too much or it will get mealy…you want big “meaty” burgers.

Hand off to Thommy to grill.

I normally top these burgers with Monterey Jack cheese. So good.

Bison-Turkey Meatloaf
I love meatloaf, but mine never turned out very good. Until I tried making it with mixture of ground bison and ground turkey. The first time I made it, Thommy said it was by far my best meatloaf.

equal parts ground bison and ground turkey
a little ketchup, a little mustard, diced onion, fresh chopped basil, garlic, a very small amount of breadcrumbs, and one egg (Remember what I said about approximations)

Set oven to 350.

Mix all ingredients (handle it lightly still), and form into a meatloaf shape. Bake uncovered for about 45-60 minutes. Be sure to check the temp with a thermometer. Let rest for about 10 minutes before slicing.

Blue Cheese Bacon Potato Salad

Potato Salad (and the following Cucumber Salad) is all in the dressing. You need a little bit of creamy, a little acidity, and a little spicy:

Dressing:

Sour Cream, maybe a cup

Mayo, no more than a third cup

tiny bit of mustard, any kind really, maybe a half tablespoon

apple cider vinegar, third of cup..then taste, you might want more

finely chopped onion

Mix all of that together and let it marry for a bit before you put in on the potatoes

The rest:

I normally prefer Yukon Gold or classic white potato for this salad. I always peel them. And I chop some big pieces and some small pieces. Boil them and chill them.

Blue cheese crumbles

Bacon, ALWAYS go for center cut…more expensive, way worth it. chopped and rendered to crispy

small diced red pepper

Do I need to say this part?: Mix all of these things and then fold in the dressing. Refrigerate  for at least an hour or so to let all the flavors combine.

Cucumber Tomato Salad

Dressing:

Again, some sour cream and a little mayo. A lot of apple cider vinegar…more vinegar than sour cream and mayo.

Some salt and pepper and that’s pretty much it.

The rest:

Cucumber, tomato, red onion, maybe some feta…it’s all to your taste. I like more cucumbers than tomatoes. And I like to slice the red onion sooo paper thin that you can barely tell what it is.

Re the cucumber: Be sure to cut out the seed part so all you have is the firm “meaty” part. I like to halve the cucumber, remove the seed and mushy part, and slice them nice and thin. And I don’t care for leaving the skin on. Again, it’s all to your taste.