Corn Chowder

Here is another of my mother in law's recipes, Corn Chowder. It's a hardy fill you up on a cold evening recipe. Take it that we have had a very mild winter in Arkansas, but still when it is yucky rainy outside, I like to have a hardy soup, stew, or chowder for dinner. This recipe calls for kielbasa sausage but you could really use any kind of chopped up meat that you like.

Corn Chowder

5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced

2 (17 oz.) cans of creamed corn

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

2 Tbsps. butter

2 c. milk

16 oz. kielbasa sausage, chopped

Boil potatoes until tender. Drain and return to pot. Add the creamed corn and cream of mushroom soup.

In a separate pan, sauté the onion and bell pepper in the butter until tender. Add the potato mixture. Stir in the sausage and milk; cook until heated but do not boil. Serve.

Wild Duck Gumbo

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As I have stated before, you will find a lot of Creole/Cajun recipes here. Well, here is another one: Wild Duck Gumbo. I bought a book over the summer called “In a Cajun Kitchen” and was introduced to teal duck (no clue). I have a coworker that is an avid duck hunter so I asked him what it was. Next thing I know is that 3 months later he is telling me that he has some duck for me in the freezer. Crap, what am I going to do with duck when I’m not a fan?
So, I start digging in cookbooks and looking online and I found one, but to my dismay it didn’t have okra in it. What? Gumbo has to have okra or it’s not gumbo. The name of the dish came from the African word for okra; ki-ngombo. How can you have gumbo without okra? So, I added okra and now its gumbo. Yea!
People look at me strange and tell me to move there when I say that I love Louisiana. My response is that I would if I could. I figured out the other day why I love it and the food so much. It’s a true melting pot of cultures and there is an aura of mystery about the whole state. The culture is also a draw for me. I was watching a tv show the other day that was about the Creole/Cajun culture and noticed that it is a lot like the family that I grew up around. I noticed that the cookbook that I’ve previously mentioned talked a lot about family and knowing the family stories and traditions. I’m used to sitting at my family reunions and listening to the “elders” talk about the old ways and how things were done. Love it. My last post was about my Aunt Dotty and she was the greatest to get the old stories from. The best (and saddest) I remember is her talking about the raft that was carrying supplies to the camp during the Flood of 1927 and it flipping. Their ice, lemons, and sugar to make lemonade went floating away. Every time I heard it, it made me heartbroken.
Anyways, here is my take on Wild Duck Gumbo. I hope you like, my family and I did.




Wild Duck Gumbo

6 wild teal duck breast
½ c. cooking oil
2/3 c. all-purpose flour
1 lb. smoked sausage, sliced
2 c. chopped onion
1 ½ c. chopped green pepper
1 ½ c. sliced celery
2 Tbsps. minced fresh parsley
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes
1 ½ c. frozen cut okra
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsps. Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ tsps. pepper
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 Tbsps. Cajun seasoning
2 quarts water
Hot cooked rice


In a Dutch oven over medium heat, brown duck in batches in oil. Remove and set aside. Discard all but 2/3 cup drippings. Add flour to drippings; cook and stir over medium heat until brown, 12-14 minutes. Add sausage, onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add next nine ingredients; mix well. Cut duck breast into cubes and add; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 60-75 minutes or until duck is tender. Simmer 5-10 minutes or until heated through. Remove bay leaves. Serve with rice.

Chicken n' Dumplins and Aunt Dotty

Chicken n’ Dumplins and my Aunt Dotty; I cannot think of one without thinking of the other. My Aunt Dot made the best Chicken n’ Dumplins, ever.  The dumplins were the perfect size with just the right fluff and bite to them. I recall being in her kitchen in England, AR and seeing dumplins rolled out over every inch of countertop that she had and flour scattered.

Aunt Dot could not cook in small portions. Everything that she made was enough to feed a small army. I remember my Mom telling her not to cook so much and her reply was that she didn’t know how. I found this strange, but later found out that she used to be a cook on a Mississippi river boat so she had to cook in huge portions. I guess when you do that for so long it kind of sticks with you. Also, she was the oldest of nine children on a farm so she grew up cooking in large portions with her mother.

I have asked my cousins how she made her dumplins and no one seems to really know. Below is my recipe with two versions of dumplins, both of which are really similar to Aunt Dotty’s. Yum!

Chicken n’ Dumplins

1 3 lbs. whole chicken

4 c. water

2 c. chicken broth

1 carrot, chopped

1 medium onion, cut in quartered

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. black pepper

1 c. milk

In a large pot or Dutch oven place the whole chicken and add water, chicken broth, carrot, onion, celery, and salt. Bring to a boil, cover and lower heat. Simmer for 1 hour or until veggies are tender and chicken is fully cooked. Remove chicken and set aside to cool. Remove the carrot, onion, and celery pieces from the broth and discard. Save the broth. Pull apart the cooled chicken into bite size pieces discarding the skin and bones.

Dumplins I

2 c. all-purpose flour

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

3 Tsps. shortening

1 c. buttermilk

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; cut in the shortening until the mixture is like coarse meal. Add buttermilk, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for 4 or 5 minutes. Roll dough out until it is 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 2-inch squared dumplins with a knife or a pizza cutter.

Dumplins II

1 c. milk

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. baking powder

2 c. all-purpose flour

Combine milk, oil, baking powder, and salt. Start adding the flour; may need more or less of it. Dough should come together but still be sticky. Turn dough onto a well-floured surface. Roll the dough out until it is 1/8-inch thickness. This is very sticky dough so make sure there is plenty of flour so that it won’t stick to the surface or rolling pin. Let rest for 1 hour. Cut into dumplins with a knife or a pizza cutter about 2-inches square, no larger.

Bring broth to a low rolling boil and drop in the dumplings, one or two at a time. Cook for 10-15 minutes stirring occasionally so dumplins don’t stick together. Add the chicken, pepper, and 1 c. milk, cook for 3 minutes. Serve.

Hamburger Potato Hash and Skillet Cornbread

Here lately I’ve been trying to think of things different to cook for dinner. I can only do so much with chicken and so much with ground meat. So I started thinking back to things that my Momma’ made while growing up….. Well, I thought of what my family calls mixture, which to most people is a breakfast hash; this led to the thought of what my family calls hash, which is like a hamburger potato soup. But wait, in all of my cookbooks and online recipe sites that I go to I have never seen anything like it. It is so simple that you would think that it has no flavor, but it does and it’s great if you are living on a budget. Now, when I think of this recipe I immediately think of some good skillet cornbread sans sugar. (Sugar ruins cornbread, ack!!!)

There are several ways that this meal can be eaten.

1)    Just put it on a plate and use the cornbread to sop up the juices.

2)    Mash the potatoes with a fork kind of like mashed potatoes with onion and hamburger meat in it and just eat the cornbread. This is how I eat mine.

3)    Or lastly, mash the potatoes as previously stated, but crumble your cornbread in with it. This is how my Dad always ate it.

For your veggie, if you must have one, do a small side salad, but I think it’s just fine to have the hash and cornbread.

Hamburger Potato Hash

1lb ground beef

1 onion, chopped

6 potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 clove garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

4 c. water

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot over med-high heat, brown the meat until done; remove, drain grease, set aside. Add onion, potatoes, garlic, bay leaves, just enough water to cover with 1 inch or about 4 cups, and salt and pepper to taste. Boil until the potatoes are tender. Add the browned meat to reheat. Remove the bay leaves and serve on a plate.

Skillet Cornbread

1 ½ c. cornmeal

½ c. flour

½ tsp. baking soda

2 Tsps. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 egg

1 ¾ c. buttermilk

¼ c. vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 425F. Place an 8-inch cast iron skillet in the oven while it is preheating with the vegetable oil in it. Mix dry ingredients. Add the egg and buttermilk. Pour the batter into the skillet with the oil. Bake for 30 minutes.

Crawfish Chowder and Louisiana

As you will be able to tell thru out my blog, I am going to be posting lots of Cajun/Creole recipies. I love Louisiana and I am hoping that one day I will be able to live there (maybe my husband's job will make that possible). Some of my fondest memories occured there and I love the culture. Being from Arkansas, I get a little bit of the Cajun "Southern" culture. One of which, food is the center of everything.... weddings mean food, baby showers mean food, funerals mean food, tailgating means food (Geaux Tigers!). We look for any excuse to cook and eat. I myself love a good family reunion or potluck.
There is a resturant in downtown Little Rock by the name of the Flying Fish. The first time that I ate there I ordered the Crawfish Chowder. Yum Yum! Creamy, crawfishy, hardy, extremly filling. I fell in love. So I came home and started searching. I found something super close to theirs. This recipe uses corn like Flying Fish uses but when I make it I ommit the corn. It's amazing.

Crawfish Chowder 
                                                                                    
1/3 c. vegetable oil                                                             
1 1/3 c. red potatoes (Peeled and Cubed 1”)                                     
1/2 c. bell peppers, diced
2/3 c. yellow onion, diced                                                           
2/3 c. celery, diced
2 tsp.salt                                                                                                 
1/2 tsp. pepper                                                                 
1/2 Tbsp. dry basil
2 tsps. Garlic, minced                                                           
1 c. chicken broth                                                                               
1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. Cajun seasoning                                                                           
1 q. half and half                                                                                   
2/3 c whole kernel corn                                                                         
1/2 lb. pre-cooked crawfish tails  (110/150)                                 

Pour oil into cooking pot, add potatoes and cook on medium heat. Stir potatoes until half cooked. Add bell peppers, onions and celery to potatoes and continue to cook on medium heat. Stir potatoes and veggies continuously until ¾ cooked. Add salt, pepper, basil and garlic and mix completely.  Add chicken broth, flour and Cajun seasoning and mix thoroughly until product thickens. ***Be sure to stir continuously to prevent sticking or burning. *** Add half and half and mix with a whisk over high heat for 10 minutes. Lower to medium heat and add crawfish meat and stir continuously.  As product continues to thicken, add corn and continue to mix. ***To test for proper thickness, tap the whisk on the side of the pot. If the product runs slowly down the side of the pot, you are ready to go. *** Remove from the burner and continue to stir for 5-10 more minutes.