Well Shoot — I'm A Heck Of A Cook

[tex]

Hi All,

Have you ever started to cook something and before you finished, it somehow turned into something else?

That just happened to me. I intended to simply cook some coarse ground pork (I had a package in my freezer left over from stew season). I planned to freeze it in serving-size portions, and then later I could nuke it with rice, or potatoes, or whatever, for a few quick and easy meals.

Everything was going fine until I started seasoning it — just seasoned salt seemed a little bland, so I added some diced onions, and then I thought a few diced potatoes would be nice. Then it looked as though it needed some diced celery, and the first thing I knew, I was looking at a pot of stew. So I guess I might as well add a few more ingredients to finish it right — some bay leaves, a can or 2 of stewed tomatoes, a can of hominy, and a can of Rotel, at least.

The high was 84 degrees today, a little warm for stew, but at least I got rid of that package of meat that I didn't know what to do with. This may be associated with a problem I frequently have when posting on the board — I get side-tracked too easily. Maybe we'll have a late cool spell one of these days.

Love,
Tex

[MaggieRedwings]

Oh Tex,

You have met your match here. Small pot of soup always winds up feeding the neighborhood when I get going. Just freeze in portions and you will be fine.

We had snow and low 30s - what a contrast.

Love, Maggie

[JeanIrene]

Tex, your stew sounds good. The hominy sounds like it would add a nice change. I never think of hominy, and I've liked it whenever I've eaten it. Think I'll pick some up and see how it goes down. I really like fixing large portions of things and having a supply on hand so I'm not tempted to eat something I shouldn't.

Jean

[tex]

Jean,

I used to enjoy adding colorful items, such as green, red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, but these days, many of my friends (like me) don't tolerate bell peppers very well, so I decided to cut them out. It dawned on me that we rarely eat hominy anymore, so I started adding it to my stews, instead. It isn't as colorful, but at least most people can eat it.


Maggie,

Yep, your soup and stew season lasts a lot longer, for sure. What a contrast in temperatures. It's unseasonably hot and dry here. Yesterday, San Antonio broke a record set in 1894, with a high of 95, and it was 99 in the valley, at the southern tip of Texas. We had a weak norther blowing here in Central Texas, so it only got up to 84.

Love,
Tex

[wmonique2]

Tex,

You have the mark of a CHEF! Using your imagination when you cook...that's a very good thing!

What's hominy? I see it on the shelves at the super...is it corn?

Love,

Monique

[tex]

Monique,

Naw, chefs know what they're doing.

Hominy is corn that has been steeped in tanks with heated water containing enough lime to remove the pericarp (shell or skin) from the kernels after several hours or more of soaking (up to 24 hours, depending on the details of the process — newer tortilla plants use steam to finish the job much faster). The lime dissolves the pericarp. If the process is stopped before all the pericarp is removed, the corn is then rinsed, and it can wet-milled to make masa (which is used to make tortillas or tamales). Masa can also be dried and then pulverized or reground, to make masa flour. The remaining pericarp contains corn gluten, which acts as a binder to hold the tortillas together.

If all the pericarp is removed, the end result is hominy (corn without the shell), and the germ (the pointed end that contains the viable part of the seed) is also usually removed, when making hominy. The Indian/Mexican dish Posole is usually made from hominy on which the germ usually remains intact (IOW, only the pericarp is removed).

Hominy is much more digestible than whole corn, because the human digestive system cannot digest the pericarp of corn. That's why whole kernels of corn will pass through intact.

Love,
Tex

[jgivens]

Tex, you would be pleased that I have a potato and bacon soup simmering on my stove. It also has celery, onions and carrots in it. I am making it with chicken stock that I made from chicken feet (because they have so much collagen--I'm told it will be good for my gut). Chicken feet are extremely gross and when I make stock from them, I feel like I am making broth from someone's fingers that keep flopping around when I give it a stir. Can't wait to throw them out and not think about them after the fact. They DO make delicious stock. You have to be careful where you get them. If I had to clean them, there would be NO WAY I would do it, but they are cleaned and they are clean animals that the feet come from. You have to know your farmers.

It is snowing (Lake Michigan effect) here today and has not broken 30 degrees. As sick as I am of winter, you can have your record highs and drought. That just sounds gruesome to me.

Monique--hominy is indeed, corn. I'm surprised you don't see more of it in Georgia! I guess y'all are big on grits, though. I will be coming to Atlanta in a couple of weeks to celebrate our granddaughter's 4th birthday. The first week in April is usually a gorgeous time to be in Georgia and to travel there.

[tex]

Jane,

I agree that chicken feet should make superb stock. I'm not sure that I could bring myself to use them though, because we always had chickens when I was growing up, and trust me, chickens aren't particular at all about where they walk. And nothing delights a free-ranging chicken more than to scratch through every pile of cow manure that they can find, searching for undigested grain.

I would assume that farmers who raise free-ranging chickens these days keep them isolated from pastures where cattle or hogs roam, in order to remove the yuck factor. And as you say, proper cleaning should also take care of that little issue.

Hmmmmmm. Bacon and tater soup? That sounds good. I'll have to try that when winter rolls around again.

Tex

[wmonique2]

Jane,

What do I know about hominy? Precious little. They feed corn to ANIMALS in Europe, not people! When I went to Italy recently, my niece complained that she couldn't find corn NOWHERE. If you tell Europeans that you eat corn, they look at you as if you were a savage Cro-Magnon

Jane, where the heck you find chicken feet? I was L O L so hard when I read your post and Tex's answer! I can guarantee you they are not in cities like ATL...and you're right if I saw them floating in a pot, I'll barf for sure

Love,

Monique

[wmonique2]

Tex,

Thanks for the expansive explanation on hominy. I only saw it in cans at the super. Does it come like frozen or fresh? I probably can eat it since I cannot eat corn. I eat corn products but not whole corn. Too harsh on me. I'll check the frozen food section and see if I can find it...


Love,

Monique

[brandy]

Hi Monique,

We like Bush's white hominy that comes in a can. You should be able to find it in your super market in the canned veggie area. In my family it is traditionally served on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day dinners.
We're from Philadelphia....I'm thinking it's an old Indian tradition. Brandy

[JFR]

Hmmmmmm. Bacon and tater soup? That sounds good. I'll have to try that when winter rolls around again.

Tex

Tex,

It's still winter in Vermont. There's about 12" of new snow on the ground right now with a few flakes still falling. I am ready for winter to end.

Jean

[maestraz]

Laughing so hard about the chicken feet discussion. I will never, ever forget the time, during college, when I came to CT to my (now husband) Italian boyfriend's house to visit. A pot of pasta sauce was simmering on the stove, heavenly smelling. Before dinner, my now-91/yo FIL reached into the pot with a pair of tongs and out came....chicken feet. I about passed out. Good sauce, though. I make my sauce from scratch, but no chicken feet for me!

My FIL also once served bunny in pasta sauce on Easter Sunday and only fessed up that it wasn't chicken AFTER I ate it.

[Deb]

I'm in the same boat as you, Jean. Windchills in MN are sub-zero. We've had at least a couple of feet of snow since the first of March. Last year temps on this date were in the 80's. Thank goodness I got out of here for a while this winter but.....why did anyone settle here in the first place????

[tex]

Monique,

I doubt that you will find it frozen, and it doesn't actually exist fresh (since it's cooked, by definition). But because it's already cooked, it automatically qualifies to be sold in cans, and that's the only way I've ever seen it lately, in supermarkets. I'm thinking that in the past, it used to be available dried, in cellophane bags, similar to pasta, but I haven't seen any of those in years. I'll bet that you can still find it packaged that way in New Mexico, because that's where I first noticed it packaged that way, in stores in some of the small Indian nations there. In cans, I like Bush's brand, also, but there are others.

And Brandy is correct, making posole originated with the Aztecs, so it's strictly a Western tradition, originally concentrated in Mexico. Corn has always been part of the native diet in the temperate zones of both North and South America. And as Brandy also pointed out, the Indians introduced the first European settlers to corn, early on, and it was a part of the first Thanksgiving. According to National Geographic, the first Thanksgiving was a 3-day feast, in which the Plymouth Colony and the local Indians shared meals of venison, corn, shellfish, and cranberries (no wheat or soy. ).

Do Europeans eat soy? Soy was strictly used for feeding animals in this country, until the 1930s, when some unscrupulous individuals decided to promote it as food for humans.

Tex