Manhattan Vegetable Soup
Manhattan Clam Chowder without the clams? Certainly! Manhattan Vegetable Soup has the bold flavors you'll want, with the option of being vegetarian. Free recipe download.
Instagram (visualrealia) photograph of ingredients for Manhattan Vegetable Soup
Cream-based clam chowders have been around since the mid-1700s, with the newer tomato chowders not appearing in print until the 1930s. (Although some argue that early versions were known as Coney Island or Fulton Market chowders, which were available in the 1890s.) While these newer soups typically have "Manhattan" in their titles, they most likely came to fruition via Portuguese immigrants in Rhode Island.
As a fun side note, the New England versus Manhattan debate over which soup reigns supreme can get pretty ugly. In 1939, a Maine legislator introduced a bill to make the addition of tomatoes into chowder an offense!
For a number of years, one of my daughters was following a vegetarian diet. Not wanting to miss out on the wonderful taste of clam chowders, I worked on a clam-free version. Without the clams or clam juice, I needed to make sure other tastes were bold enough so the hungry soup eater would be more than satisfied.
If it's not important to keep the recipe vegetarian in your household, feel free to use a chicken broth instead of the vegetable broth; we have a wonderful neighborhood meat market that offers their own broths, so I'll typically go that route now that we no longer need to avoid meats.
This recipe is very adaptable; adjust to add your favorite or seasonal vegetables.
Download a one page printable pdf of my recipe by clicking here. Enjoy!
Grilled Salsa
Homemade salsa can't be beat... unless you grill some of the vegetables first.
Fresh summer vegetables from Pennsylvania's Adams County, and I'm sure your area, make some specific recipes jump to our minds. For our family, one of our favorite summer treats is a fresh, homemade salsa. There are as many recipes for salsa as there are people making it, and my version seems to change every time I make it.
That variety is a positive thing; I use my recipe as a road map. Start with a basic plan, but pick the best looking, freshest ingredients and adapt the map to fit the produce. The downloadable recipe below can be a starting point. Use what you pick up at your local market. (My ingredients were from the always wonderful Adams County Farm Fresh Markets in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.)
While raw veggies in a salsa are great as is, grilling some can add some depth to the texture, color and taste. I tend to use both grilled and raw ingredients, and will even use both versions of the same ingredient. (Particularly the tomatoes; grill some and leave others raw. In this batch, the larger tomatoes are grilled while the small ones were raw.) After prepping the vegetables, the ones to be grilled are placed on the grill rack and pulled off as each reached the perfect stage. The attached recipe notes my suggestions, but adapt to your preference.
For the tomatoes, for example, I tend to pull them off when the skins begin to pull loose. At that stage, it's easy to remove them with your fingers or tongs.
After doing a rough chop of the grilled and raw vegetables, the salt, olive oil, vinegar and lime juice are added.
I've found the best flavor to be after chilling the salsa for a few hours, but certainly eaten with a day or two. If your family is like mine, you won't have any problems finishing this treat during the first sitting.
To download an easily-printed pdf file of the recipe, click here. Let me know what you think or note what you do in your salsa recipe below in the comment section.
Beef Jerky
Wait... You don't have a jerky recipe? Better grab my recipe.
Don't worry too much about storage. You'll be eating this right away.
Beef jerky has always been a welcome treat, but taking one look at the ingredients list of commercial jerky quickly dulls the appetite. By using a high quality, local meat and a flavorful marinade, an excellent jerky can easily be made that will ensure you that the end result is something you'll look forward to.
The marinade discussed below and available via the download link is appropriate for one pound of meat. In the case of beef jerky, I pick up very thinly sliced steaks from a local, trusted butcher.
2 tsp Brown Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Onion Powder
1 tsp Dry Mustard (Powder)
½ tsp Garlic Powder
⅜ tsp Cayenne Pepper
¼ tsp Black Pepper
¼ cup Wine, Cider, Etc.
¼ cup Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
2 tsp Liquid Smoke
¼ tsp Tabasco Sauce, adjust as preferred
For ease in preparation, mix the dry ingredients in a one gallon ziplock bag.
Add the remaining liquid ingredients and mix well. Place the beef or other meat into the bag, being careful to separate any slices as much as possible. Marinade in the refrigerator 8-12 hours or longer, tumbling the bag occasionally to expose all areas of the meat.
Dehydrate for several hours, turning the beef slices every few hours to ensure drying on both sides. Store the jerky in the refrigerator to ensure safety.
Download a printable pdf file of the marinade recipe by clicking here.
Molasses Milo (Sorghum) Cake
The local Union Mills Homestead offers their own stone-ground flours, and spotting milo flour put me in pursuit of a worthy baked item with the flour. I think we've come up with one.
I'm fortunate, living in the southern part of Pennsylvania, to live near many sites linked to early America and its history. In some cases, there are related links to older or different products dealing with the foods we eat. The milo flour in the attached cake recipe is one such exmple.
Just over the Mason-Dixon line in Maryland is the Union Mills homestead, complete with an operating brick grist mill that provides the area with stone ground cornmeal and flours. On one visit, I picked up a small sample of milo flour, a new item they were experimenting with. Milo is a drought-resistent sorghum grain. Sorghum cereals are used for livestock feed and syrup-like sweeteners. Its flours are gluten-free and high in protein and fiber. While it can have a bit of a gritty texture in baked goods, this can be used effectively in the right recipes.
One downside to milo in baking is its tendency to make crumbly cakes and cookies. The great folks at Union Mills warned me of the issue, and suggested that I mix the flour with another, rather than using only the milo. In addition, they found that adding coconut oil in recipes with the sorghum was beneficial. While coconut oil is high in staurated fat, its lauric acid seems to have much less of a negative impact than many other saturated fats. Milo flour is shown beside more traditional flour in the photograph below.
Recipes utilizing a high proportion of sorghum flours are not overly abundent, but I found a cookie recipe on the Whole Grains Council web site that looked enticing:
http://wholegrainscouncil.org/recipes/snacks-desserts/molasses-sorghum-cookies
The recipe originated in Sara Baer-Sinnott's "The Oldways Table." It was excellent, although as expected, crumbled quite easily; definitely worth working with for its nice, dark flavor and unique texture offered by the milo flour.
My first attempt was to add the coconut oil and try it as a bar cookie; the effort was again tasty, but difficult to hold together. It was very light and cake-like, so I went with its strengths and moved to a cake format by adding another flour: both cake and/or bread flours worked suitably, and created a low-rising cake that can be eaten as a finger food, as are most brownies. No icing is needed, although a dusting of confectioner's sugar is a nice touch.
If served with no powdered sugar, each of the twelve suggested servings yields 227 calories. Yeah, saturated fat is high. Splurge!
I've become a fan of the cake, and it's become a regular snack item here in the house. Feel free to download the recipe in pdf form here:
http://visualrealia.drupalgardens.com/sites/g/files/g389126/f/201511/MiloCakeRecipe.pdf
If you can't find sorghum flours locally, those in the area will enjoy a visit to Union Mills to pick up some directly.