Peanut Corn Chowder: Comfort Food for the College Cook

This was one of my post-Thanksgiving meals. My two college student eaters flipped out. It was hard to get them to share. If you are a stove cooker, you can see that this is an easy recipe. If you are a rice cooker cook, you can see that this is easily adapted.

For rice cooker cooks, you can probably leave out the celery and just use the frozen chopped onions I recommend. Don't add the cream till the end, after the soup has stopped boiling. Otherwise, it can curdle.

Confession: I used milk because I didn't have the luxury ingredient.

Isn't it great to know that you can make comfort food yourself? Without the overly-solicitous parent?


PEANUT CORN CHOWDER


2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups canned corn, drained
1 cup light cream or half-and-half
Salt to taste

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped celery and onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter until it has melted.

Return the pan to the heat and gradually stir in the stock and corn. Bring to a boil, stirring. Reduce the heat to medium-low and sim­mer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add the cream or half-and-half and heat gently. Add salt to taste.

Ladle into warm bowls, garnish with celery leaves and serve.

From The Best American Recipes 1999 edited by Fran McCullough and Suzanne Hamlin (Houghton Mifflin). Originally copyrighted 1998 by Trisha Meckler and published in More White Trash Cooking (Ten Speed Press).

Remember: ask Santa for a rice cooker!

The recipe, incidentally, is from More White Trash Cooking.This is a wonderful book, a work of folklore, in fact, that should be studied by every student. While I wouldn't eat the potato chip sandwiches, I would eat some of the other recipes. It's a great read.

Gifts for the College Cook

I start thinking about gifts for my two College Cooks way ahead, because it's hard to think of good--or even halfway decent--ones. Example:

Me to Miss Em: What do you want by way of presents?
Miss Em: More burritos and soy milk for next semester.

Do frozen burritos and boxed soymilk count as presents? Of course, we are happy to provide them, but presents are fun for the giver.

I have a few plans for my College Cooks, but will not divulge them at the moment. If you ARE a College Cook, here is what you should request. And, parents and other relatives, these are gifts that will be used.

First up, I will recommend the little pdf or ebook Frugal Son and I put together.

This is a virtual stocking stuffer, I guess. Trust me, it's very helpful. If your giftee wants the Kindle to read it on, you can get it from Amazon. If you are sans Kindle, check out the pdf. It's only $2.99, the lowest price permitted by Amazon.

The Kindle has gone down in price, I think!

As for cooking equipment, this is not the time to go for Global knives or Calphalon pots. So cheap but good is my motto. I have recommended these items before, but they have proved their worth in my family.

Knife:

Rice Cooker (everyone is surprised by how cheap these are):

I don't think you need to have recommendations for measuring cups and the like. For dishes, I would go for Corelle. I've started using these myself because they are light and unbreakable (or almost).



Wow! Under $60.00 for the whole shebang. Under $30.00 if you skip the dishes and let your student use the remnants of various sets that may be inhabiting your cupboards.

Any other gift ideas for the College Cooks in your family?

College Cooking: First-Hand Experience

Mr FS and I took a long-planned trip to visit Miss Em, our very own college cook. A few days before our visit, we received an email: I need 35 more burritos and some frozen ratatouille. We were happy to oblige.

It was our first visit since move-in day. We realized that the kitchen area is soooo tiny and so hard to work in that preparing ANYTHING is an ordeal. We realized that our cookbook WOULD be great: mix some stuff in your rice cooker and voila: a meal. Yes, we were wise to rely on chopped frozen onions and peppers.

Still, as I've mentioned before, Miss Em has used her rice cooker for rice and oat groats, both of which she cooks in quantity and refrigerates. The bean and cheese burritos have made her first semester as a college cook so easy.

It took us (Mr. FS, really, since I fell asleep early that night) about an hour to make the 30 burritos. Talk about a good return on time investment.

If you don't have a family willing to make and transport a semester's worth of bean burritos, make them yourself. OR check out the cookbook Frugal Son and I put together, which makes college dorm cooking possible and maybe even enjoyable.

From Amazon, if you have a Kindle. Or from us (see upper-right)if you want a pdf.

We even tell you how to make burritos in the book. See the recipe here.

Eggs for the College Cook

EGGS just seem to be in the air these days. On the College Cooking front, I have this report. Always on the lookout for stove-free cooking options, I discovered this little item.

Really, this is silly. However, I spotted one at Goodwill for 99 cents, so I bought it. It's definitely worth 99 cents. I put some of the beaten egg for a pasta frittata I was making in each side, cooked for a minute, added some cooked pasta and cheese, and finished it up. Then I folded it closed: tada! a very pretty fake omelet.

I think this would actually be good for microwave-only cooks: there is little clean up, really; it produces an attractive item (so important for solo eaters); it can accommodate all kinds of leftovers, and so on. Next time I use it, I'm going to try beating the eggs IN the contraption, for even less clean up.

Can you think of any other uses for this little item?

Migas: More Corn Chip Cuisine

A few days ago, we posted our recipe for egg-filled burritos. No stove required. Amazing to learn that you can cook eggs in your rice cooker. That recipe is also in our ebook (see above right to order), which outlines our whole system: 20 ingredients, some condiments, 14 meals, no stove, no chopping, (almost) no mess. If you have a kindle, you can order from Amazon!

Here is a recipe not from the book: it uses one ingredient common to the college dorm that is not among our crucial 20: the humble corn chip.

Have you ever heard of migas? I learned about them from one of Martha Shulman's cookbooks. Maybe this one.

Migas are eggs scrambled with corn chips. Easy and good.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
handful or more of corn chips, stale OK
Cooking oil
¼ cup frozen chopped onions
¼ cup frozen chopped peppers
½ cup cheddar
Rotel
Salt and pepper to taste



Two large eggs will make a large serving. Start by adding one to two teaspoons of oil to the rice cooker and let it heat up for a minute. Add ¼ cup onions (more if, like me, you love onions) and then add ¼ cup frozen bell peppers to the oil and let them cook. Season the vegetables to taste with salt and pepper or, as always, use Cajun seasoning. When they have cooked for a few minutes, crack your eggs directly into the rice cooker and stir thoroughly (be sure to use a wooden or plastic stirrer to protect the non-stick coating) until the eggs have cooked through.

Before the eggs are done, throw in the corn chips and, if you want, salsa. Stir a bit more, then serve. No matter how you do this, it's good.

If all you have are eggs, salsa, and chips, it's still good. Remember: salsa has onions and peppers already. the work's been done for you.

Do you cook with corn chips?

Thomas Keller Soup Favorite in Your Rice Cooker

Oh, what a deceptive title. It is all over the blogosphere: Thomas Keller likes Progresso lentil soup. The source of that rumor (or fact) is Food and Wine: Keller's partner, Laura Cunningham, describes what they eat at home:

I wish I could say we cook at home, but we've been too busy; oatmeal, bread and cheese, yogurt and Progresso lentil soup have been the favorites this past busy year.


Isn't it great to know that you can eat what the great chef and restaurateur eats--and you don't need a stove. So, get some Progresso lentil soup and heat it in your rice cooker.

To add some bulk and nutrition, throw in some noodles or rice and some frozen spinach. You might need a bit of water or broth too.

This is what it looks like, courtesy of Amazon:

I've seen a lot of the lentil recently at Big Lots and Dollar Tree for a dollar or a little more. Don't tell Thomas!

Roger Ebert's Rice Cooker Book: Disappointing, Alas

Don't even read beyond the title. I am sooooo disappointed. I requested that the library order this book and I got a call when it came in. Opened with anticipation....and there's just not much there. Most of the (mediocre)recipes are on his blog, and recipes make up only about 20% of this short book.

You do get Ebert's wit and wisdom, but that too is mostly stuff from his blog. I will desist, because you can read the reviews on Amazon.

I wasn't going to mention this at all, but I did write about the book several times.

So, if you want a rice cooker cookbook, the best is probably

If you're looking for a simple system to begin cooking in a restricted situation (like a dorm), check out our little tome. There are a number or rice cooker recipes there.

P.S. I still love Roger Ebert.