DINNER TIME! Cream of Asparagus and Ham Soup

We've moved and we're no longer suburban. We'll now be known as The Cheapskate Rural Dweller since we live at least a half hour from anything that could be deemed a city or suburb.

Time to ease back into the blogging grind and we'll do it with a recipe.

It's been cold up here in Northern California and it's great soup weather. Here's one I came up with this week.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 bunch of asparagus
1 cup spinach
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 medium onion
1 medium pasilla chile
1/2 pound cubed ham
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Kosher salt
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Start by putting a stock pot half full of water and 2 tablespoons of salt on the stove and bring to a boil. Cut the crown spears off of the asparagus.

Put in a strainer and hang in boiling water. Cut the rest of the asparagus into 2 inch lengths.

Slice the chile into strips, remove the seeds, and then cut into 1 inch squares.

After the asparagus crowns have boiled for 5 or 6 minutes, remove and set aside. Put the chile chunks , asparagus stalks, carrots, and spinach into the boiling water. Boil for 8 minutes and strain out all but one cup of water.

Put the boiled vegetables, the onion, and the one cup of reserved water into a blender and puree for 5 seconds.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan, add the sherry, garlic, parmesan cheese, and simmer for one hour. Stir every 5 to 10 minutes.

10 minutes before the simmer period is over, add the ham and asparagus spears.

5 minutes after turning off the heat, stir in the cream.

Serve and sprinkle the cheddar over the top.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

This Week's Menu: Smoked Tri Tip Roast and Stuffed Pasilla Chiles

Changing it up a bit this week by focusing on a side dish instead of breakfast and giving you (reluctantly, I might add) one of my best recipes. It's not quick or easy but, darn, is it good.

It's my version of our Golden State's signature barbecue entree, smoked tri tip.  You'll love it!

Super Side Dish: Stuffed Pasilla Chiles

Dinner: Smoked Tri Tip Roast

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Super Sides: Stuffed Pasilla Peppers

I like stuffed bell peppers but, for some reason, these mild peppers give me an acute case of heartburn.  The hotter pasilla chiles don't so I use them instead, just like I would bell peppers.

Here is a very good and easy recipe for them, similar to jalapeno poppers.

INGREDIENTS
3 large pasilla peppers
1/4 pound cream cheese

Slice open the pasilla chiles.  Remove the seeds inside if you want to reduce the heat.  Slide in some cream cheese.

Loosely wrap with foil paper.

Put on a barbecue grill, direct heat, with the foil open at the top for half an hour.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Recipes for a Cheapskate: Stuffed Pasilla Chiles

First harvest of 2015!

These two chiles came from this plant that I gave up on two years ago. It's a survivor, though, and it starting to to produce some great looking peppers.

The chicken wire is to prevent squirrels from eating the leaves. They don't care for the fruit but will decimate the leaves if I don't do something.

So here's what I'm going to do...

Slice an opening down the middle of each chile and cook on a comal (a hot flattop).

Once they're blistered up pretty good, try to remove the membrane that sits on the outer layer of the chile.

Fill each one with cream cheese and bacon.

Cook right on the grill on indirect heat.

Serve and eat.

It's kind of like stuffed bell peppers but I find the taste richer, a bit spicier, and they don't give me heartburn like the bell peppers do.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Keeping up Appearances

Checking into the status of the garden. First, in this era a megadroughts, how about a look at water usage? It's raining today, that's good, but we're still under rationing.

Last month's bill was $17 and change. this compared to the same time last year when we paid, well, more (the water company's website is down and I can't look up last year's bill right now). There is also a strange credit on the bill of a couple of bucks, called the "CA: LA Payment Assistance" credit, that I don't know what it's for but in water usage, we used 6,732 gallons this May and 7,480 gallons last May.

My next door neighbor, who has a large green lawn that she only waters once a week, has a bill over $180 for the same period. Yikes!

The tomatoes are busting out all over. Many fruit on our hybrid plant and cherry tomato plant. The heirloom plant is showing lots of flowers but no fruit yet.

Our chiles are doing better this year. I used this Anaheim chile in our eggs this weekend and there's some gorgeous pasilla chiles on another plant. I'll maked stuffed peppers out of them someday.

Got six ears of corn showing so far. 

The grapes are showing slight signs of smut so I hit them with some sulfur dust on Sunday.

My wife made me take the cage off of our zucchini, now it's showing signs of animal damage and I still haven't gotten any fruit. I put the cage back on, let's see how it does.

It's June. The vendor at the farmers market who sold us the dragon fruit plants told me to cut back by a third and we should see flowers by May. I did. Got lot's of new growth but no flowers or fruit yet.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Recipes for a Cheapskate: Chile Relleno Omelet

I'd given up on this plant months ago. Every time it'd grow a bit, the squirrels would come and eat it.  I hadn't even looked at it in months and, when I did, I saw these two little pasilla chiles on it.

Finally, I had a semblance of an edible crop.  Not a bunch, but just barely usable.

After harvest, I fry 'em up in a dry pan til the skin blisters.

Next, I need to scrape off as much of the outer membrane as I can.

I go out and pick a couple of serrano chiles off of our other plant.

Everything is diced up together and, with a little cheddar/jack shredded cheese mix, put into an omelet.

Here's the delicious result.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Beyond the Bell Pepper

Picture courtesy of Leslie Seaton

under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

While I will get around to planting bell peppers this season, first I wanted to plant some pasilla chile.

The pasilla chile is a large pepper, usually used in dishes like chile relleno.  It's a very mild pepper and, where bell pepper seems to generate a lot of stomach acid even though it has no heat at all for me, the pasilla leaves me without any indigestion afterward.

I was about to go to our local Latin supermarket to buy one and get the seeds out of it but my wife said she already had one so I scooped some seeds out of that.

I keep a few egg cartons on hand because our local egg ranch sells beautiful, loose jumbo brown eggs. Or they did, Friday was their last day in business so suddenly, I don't have such a pressing need to keep the egg cartons around anymore. I'm using one as a seed tray.

Fill it up with potting soil...

...put a couple of seeds in each compartment...

and water in.

I really hope these do well because I'd like to use them in place of bell peppers in many of my recipes.

Darryl

Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick

All Rights Reserved