If you don’t know or haven’t realized by now, Seafood and Crab can go with just about anything. You can find it in Sushi, Cold Noodle Salads, Cheese Dips for chips or crackers and Sub Sandwich’s like the photo I’ve got here in this article. The list goes on and on. Of course it isn’t real Crab Meat though either. It’s made from imitation crab which consists of mostly Alaskan Pollock, egg whites and red food coloring. I guess the Pollock is what classifies it as “Seafood” even though there isn’t any real crab. But the recipe for Seafood and Crab is not so confusing and serves as the basic front line for dozens of other recipes to boot. Here I make a real basic sub sandwich that would normally have Tomatoes, Banana Peppers and olives on it as well if I were using a bigger loaf. But I use the basics just to show you how you can still get your fix by just using a few ingredients.
Seafood and Crab Ingredients:
2 cups Imitation Crab meat
2 chopped Green Onions
1 chopped Garlic Clove
1 cup Mayonnaise
1 tbsp Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Just mix all the ingredients together at once in one bowl and add the Seafood and Crab to your favorite recipe or dish.
Bacon Clam Chowder just makes sense, doesn’t it? I know this soup is most appreciated in the colder months of the year, but I just couldn’t resist. Personally I could have it prepared like this anytime and still love it. Also, there’s just something about putting a hot chili or creamy soup in a large toasted bread bowl that just screams, “Let’s Eat”! So if you’ve got this on the menu when I sit down to eat, you know what I’m ordering.
This Clam Chowder, in my opinion, is much more flavorful than standard recipes. The three most important ingredients in this soup that really make it pop are the onions, the clam juice and of course our beloved, Bacon. These ingredients make the Clam Chowder unmistakably delicious. It’s true, the only other vegetable I add are chopped Russet Potatoes, but I find the extra addition of Celery and Carrots aren’t necessary, in order to bring the full color and flavor of this recipe about. Though you are more than welcome to add them if you’d like, it really doesn’t matter. It’s just a personal preference, that’s all. I think you could even get away with adding corn if you wanted to.
Clam Chowder Ingredients:
4 strips of bacon sliced into 1/4 pieces
1/2 Chopped Onion
1 tsp Sugar
2 tbsp Butter (Salted or Unsalted)
2 tbsp White Wine (Cooking Wine or Red Wine is fine)
1/2 cup Flour
2 cans of minced clams with juice
1 qt Heavy Whipping Cream
2 Chopped Russet Potatoes (or your favorite)
1 tbsp Black Pepper
Salt to taste
2 tbsp Fresh Chopped Parsley
Absolutely Babysit this soup. It’s very temperamental, in my opinion. On Medium High heat, cook your bacon and onions. Season with a shake of black pepper and add the sugar to help caramelizing the onions. Then add the butter and Cooking Wine. Once that has melted, stir in the flour and almost immediately add the clams. The cream will follow shortly after, a half cup at a time to start, then bring to a light boil, stir and add another half cup. Once half of the quart of cream has been added, you can add the rest all at once. Stir really well, then taste it for seasoning, then add the pepper and your taste for salt. Now the potatoes can go in and you can reduce the heat to a simmer, stirring frequently. It’s very important to keep from burning the bottom. Using a thicker pan will help this tremendously. Once the potatoes are cooked, 10 to 15 minutes, add the parsley and serve your Clam Chowder in a bowl, cup or toasted bread bowl.
Lets nail down the issues most people have with making Tempura, starting with buying it in a box. For the most part, you’re just buying a box of flour with a fancy picture on the front that shows you how good it could look if you buy their product. But does that make sense? You’ve got flour at home in your kitchen, right? Oh, maybe you need the directions on the back of the box. Wait, that doesn’t make sense either because you’ve got the web at your finger tips. You can just look it up. So here we are, you and I, and we’re going to get through this together.
Tempura in a Box
The truth is that no matter what the contents of that Tempura box are, flour, corn starch or whatever, the box directions are WRONG! Sure they give you a few pointers from step 1 to 3 but they don’t talk about a few key issues you will have if you don’t mix it in the right order, if you just use regular tap water or if you don’t keep your batter ice cold. That’s right. If you ignore any one of these 3 things, your Tempura is not going to turn out right.
Tempura Ingredients:
1 egg yoke
1 cup Tonic or Seltzer Water, Carbanated is the key
1 cup Flour
Mix the ingredients in a bowl over the top of another bowl full of ice water
Stir the liquids first, then add the flour and don’t over mix; leave it lumpy
Use ice cold Tonic or Seltzer water, not Tap, to get the batter to poof up
Watch the video tutorial and follow these simple instructions and you will have perfect Tempura, every single time.
