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Recipe: lobster corn chowder

I’m wearing pants. PANTS! We’ve had cool, rainy weather this week in Colorado. Well, the cool isn’t such a reach for this time of year, but the rainy is. My oven and stove have seen more use in the past few days than they have all summer thanks to the cooldown. One of the recipes I tried recently was a knock-my-socks-off gem of a soup. I love it because it is at the intersection of summer and fall. Summer, because of the ingredients and fall, because it warms you from the inside to fight off the chill outside. I’m talking about lobster corn chowder.

two whole lobsters and two tails

cooked (steamed)

extracting the lobster meat, saving the shells, and catching the juices

Because I reside in a landlocked state far far away from Maine, I bought frozen cold water lobsters. My fish monger only had two, and I needed three, so I supplemented with two petite lobster tails (also cold water). These were not cheap, so this is clearly a soup for special occasions or when lobsters grow on trees. I’m smiling at the thought of lobsters growing on trees. The thing I love about this recipe is how you use every part of the lobster – the meat and the shells and the dribbly juices. Makes me feel a little better about the price. Then the other main component is corn, which is dirt cheap right now and sweet as can be.

cream, wine, lobster meat, lemon, corn, celery, leek, bacon, potatoes, parsley, pepper

cut up the lobster meat

slice the green and white parts of the leeks (keep them separate)

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Recipe: bolognese sauce

This weekend’s storm dumped 14 inches of snow on our local hill and almost as much at our house. For the first time in a long while, we were able to ski tour right out our front door, through the neighborhood, and to the trails. The snow swallowed the usual sounds and echoes, leaving the mountains extra quiet, soft, and contemplative.

it snowed all day saturday

poof balls of snow everywhere

What happened next? We lost an hour of sleep and hit the slopes the following morning along with ALL of Boulder County. I generally avoid the resorts on weekends, but we’ve been so starved for powder that it’s hard to pass up even on a Sunday morning. It was totally worth it for the powder stashes. By twilight, I realized that the time shift meant I had one less hour in the evenings than I’ve been used to. Oh, but then there is the lure of evening dinners on the deck when faces are still lit by the glow of a sun that has long dropped behind the mountains. It’s all good in my book, the book of Jen.

In anticipation of the storm (I follow the snow forecasts like a boss) and of Jeremy’s return from travel this weekend, I decided to tackle a recipe that is long on stove time and big on returns – bolognese sauce. It’s one of my favorites and sounded perfect after an afternoon of ski touring. I looked at several recipes before remembering that I had this book on Italian cooking that I bought on a lark in my last year of college (uh… 21 years ago). It’s by Marcella Hazan and her bolognese recipe looked spot on. Also, David Leite sang the praises when he made it. Word.

carrots, celery, onion, butter, white wine, diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil, milk, veal, beef, pork

small dice

carrots, onion, celery

If you’re in a rush, then this bolognese sauce is not for you… or perhaps it is. Maybe it’s just what you need. This is a time investment and the return is a deep, rich, developed flavor that comes to those who are patient enough to simmer and stir and simmer and stir and simmer, simmer, simmer. I chopped my vegetables in a small dice because I wanted them to break down in the sauce, but if you like chunkier sauce, then go for a larger dice. The recipe calls for vegetable oil, but I used olive oil instead and it worked just fine. Oh, David cautions against using cast-iron pots for the sauce because the reaction of the metal to the acidity turns the sauce an unappetizing color. He uses enameled cast-iron in his post and I used stainless steel.

sauté the onions in butter and oil

sauté the diced vegetables

add the meats (pork, veal, beef) and brown

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Recipe: italian-style beef and porcini stew

We check the weather forecasts and the weather outside of our windows all the time. Is it snowing? Is it going to snow? How much? Will it be warm and then cold? What direction is the wind coming from? What are the road conditions? We have to pay attention to these things, not just for our own recreational purposes, but because travel in Boulder Canyon can get downright dangerous when it snows heavily (this can happen during upslope events when the wind blows up the mountains from the flats) or when the snow hits a warm ground and then the temperature drops resulting in powdery snow on top of a slick of ice. The latter happened on Thursday. It took us 90 minutes instead of the nominal 30 minutes to get to Boulder because there were two accidents in the canyon.

which is why we prefer to stay in the mountains when it snows (iphone)

The same weather that can cause so much stress on the road or in town can bring a lot of joy to those of us who love it in the mountains. But it was short-lived as the weekend was warm and windy. They say the snow will be back soon. I hope so. I plan to be ready for it with this heady, hearty stew full of beef, porcini mushrooms, vegetables, herbs, and wine.

basil, tomato paste, pearl onions, bay leaf, rosemary, carrot, celery, garlic, grapeseed oil, red wine, dried porcini mushrooms, salt, pepper, onion, pancetta, beef chuck, diced tomatoes

soak the porcinis in hot water (save the liquid!)

That’s a long list of ingredients, but the prep is what takes the most effort. Once the prep is completed, the cooking is pretty straightforward and then the oven time is just you doing other things while the oven does its job. As with most recipes, but especially for the ones with a lot of ingredients, I think mise en place is essential for avoiding mistakes and reducing any heavy swearing in the kitchen. When you drain your porcinis, make sure to save the liquid and give it a pass through a fine-meshed sieve to catch any non-mushroom particles. Also, peeling pearl onions is pretty time-consuming. That was the first thing that made me think they weren’t worth the trouble.

porcini liquid, cubed beef, porcini mushrooms, onion, garlic, celery, pancetta, carrot, pearl onions

fry the pancetta

season the beef with salt and pepper

sear the beef on all sides

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