Media Crema, Broccoli Soup, and I Shoulda Blogged 'Em Rellenos

I didn't know anyone canned cream! I assume it's half and half based on the name. I asked Nestle if it was half and half and had a few other questions but their response was very cookie-cutter and didn't address my specific concerns. That's okay. My main question was whether or not I could cook with it. They didn't answer that directly but did include several recipes that included baking and simmering with Media Crema.

It's got less than one carb per tablespoon, not bad. I don't buy cream because it's too pricey here and if I buy it out of town where it's cheaper, it frequently goes bad before I can use it. I never know when I'm going to need it so having it canned in the pantry is great!

Shake can well before use! It doesn't say so on the can but I learned that it was necessary.


Eight Minute Broccoli Soup
If you read my blog, then you may be experiencing déjà vu. Yes, this is pretty much the same recipe as the formerly published Eight Minute Tomato Soup. I made this broccoli soup for my dinner tonight and it was easy enough to take a few pix as I went along.

I should add that this was going to be Eight Minute Cauliflower Soup until I realized I only had frozen broccoli in the freezer.

3 TBS butter
1/2 a medium to small onion, chopped
1/2 a small bell pepper, chopped
14 to 24 ounces fresh or frozen broccoli (the more broccoli the thicker the soup)
3 to 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
4 cups chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock
1/4 cup of white wine (optional)
1 cup whipping cream, or half & half, or 1 can of Media Crema
Salt and pepper to taste
Sour cream or a few teaspoons of heavy cream to garnish (optional)

Saute onions and bell pepper the butter until soft. Add chopped garlic and saute a minute or two more.

Add four cups of your Preferred Stock or use canned broth instead. If using white wine, add it now. Add your fresh or frozen broccoli and bring soup to a boil and then simmer for seven or eight minutes or until broccoli is soft.

This is one of the very rare times that I tolerate overcooked broccoli but, since you will be pureeing it, crisp broccoli is not ideal.

Using a kitchen wand, puree soup to your desired consistency. Some people like a few more chunks, others like it much smoother. If you don't have a kitchen wand just puree the soup in a blender in small batches and return to pot.

Add the cream, salt, and pepper, return it to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for eight minutes.

I know, crappy photos. The light in my kitchen is awful. And I was shooting after dark.

The broccoli soup was for me, but hubby thinks I'm punishing him if I try to give him something like this for dinner. For him, I had planned chiles rellenos. I've never made them before and didn't know how they were going to come out so I didn't plan on blogging the recipe and didn't take photos of the process.

I don't personally like chiles rellenos, but people around here get positively ecstatic at the very thought of them. I made these using Monterrey jack cheese and ground venison. I won't blog the recipe right now but if you really want to know, then buy a 27 ounce can of Ortega whole green chiles because I used them and the recipe on the back of the can to make these. Except for the addition of meat, I changed nothing. Wes loved them! He happily ate several with our homemade habanero salsa. Considering I've never made them before, I thought they came out really pretty. Okay, the photo is lousy but they really were pretty, I swear. The next batch should be much improved.

Eight Minute Tomato Soup

Think what you like about Suzanne Somers and her diet books, the woman has some excellent gourmet recipes! Her eight minute tomato soup recipe is especially tasty and very simple. This recipe comes from her Fast & Easy book, although I have altered it a tiny bit.

I have insomnia something fierce. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and soup just sounded so good and soothing. I pulled 3 packages of frozen chicken stock out of the freezer and got to work.

Ingredients:

4 cups Chicken or Turkey Stock
1/4 to 1/2 an onion (depending on how heavily seasoned your stock already is with onion), diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. basil
Sea Salt to taste
Crushed red pepper to taste
fresh ground black or white pepper to taste
One 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 cup of heavy whipping cream or half and half
2 TBS butter

In a pot, saute diced onion in butter until soft then add garlic and saute for a minute longer. Add stock and tomatoes and puree with hand wand or puree in blender then pour back into soup pot. Add all remaining ingredients except the cream and bring soup to a boil then lower heat and simmer for eight minutes. When eight minutes is up, add cream and heat through and then your soup is done!

Using canned stewed tomatoes or canned tomato sauce is just fine--it will just change the texture. The change in taste will be minimal.

How much you puree your soup is up to you, some people want it chunkier and some want it smoother.

Top with a little sour cream if you like and serve.

Click here to go to the more printer friendly version of Eight Minute Tomato Soup.

Variation on this soup:
Instead of adding canned tomatoes use cooked broccoli, cooked cauliflower, or a combination of the two and puree well. It makes for a thicker version of this soup and it's absolutely delicious.

Cooking Without A Camera -- Canned Axis

It's certainly faster to cook without my camera, but oh how I wish I could show you photos of the processes I describe. My photos tend to be more concise and make more sense than I am or do! Ah, well, my camera will get repaired eventually.

Today I updated my Stir Fry Recipe because I learned an awesome trick that gets me a much better sear on the meat used in the recipe. All this time I thought I couldn't get a good sear because I simply couldn't get my wok or pan hot enough, which I can't, but I found a way around this issue and thought you might benefit from it as well.

What I'm excited about today, however, is that I'm canning venison again! Woot! It's not much, 3.75 pounds that turned out to be just enough to fill three quart jars, but I love having canned venison in the pantry and I fully intend to can much more next time hubby takes a deer. A side benefit of canning venison is that it means less of my limited freezer space being taken up by packages of frozen meat.

I don't like White Tail Deer meat. Never have. It's too gamey for me and I can't eat it. I didn't grow up eating it and never developed a liking for it. But this.... this is Axis! And Axis is certainly a little gamey, but not like White Tail. Axis is delicious. And it's amazing canned! The gaminess of the Axis disappears when I can it. I use a *hot pack and can it in homemade Venison Stock or Beef Stock. It can, however, be canned in tomato juice. I'm eager to try canning White Tail in tomato juice to see if it's more palatable to me. I have yet to try canning White Tail at all and for all I know I may discover that the canning process helps enough with the gaminess of it that I can eat it no matter what kind of liquid I can it in.

Canned venison looks disgusting. All canned meat looks disgusting if it's canned in a glass jar. Canned tuna would look just as horrible if Bumblebee or StarKist used glass jars. But canned venison doesn't taste anything like it looks. It's tender and wonderful and has many delicious uses--as does the broth it's canned in. You know the texture of really tender brisket? That's what canned venison does, but without the grease, fat and smoky flavor.

Add it to stir-fry and use the broth as a base for your sauce as well as part of the liquid to used to cook your rice in.

Add it to a rich brown gravy that you've made using the broth it's canned in and serve it up like you would pot roast or pour it over noodles or rice.

Add it to barbecue sauce and serve it on bread or buns.

Mix it with mayo and minced onions and make and serve it like you would tuna fish or chicken salad. I hear rabbit is good served this way, I've never tried it though.

Throw it on a sandwich.

Crumble it over Top Ramen noodles.

Use it in anything you'd use shredded beef in or anything you'd use leftover roast in.

Season the meat with taco seasoning and cooked onions and serve it in tacos or in a wrap.

Combine with seasonings and refried beans for burritos.

Add to stock and vegetables for a nearly instant soup or stew.

Use it in any casserole that you'd normally use beef in.

Season and use in empanadas.

Use meat and broth to make your stroganoff!

To sum up, canned venison is very tasty and fills up your pantry, not your freezer. This is a big plus for the spouse of a hunter! It's also a great way to utilize all those stray pieces of perfectly good venison meat that aren't quite right for steaks. Yes, you could grind them into burger meat, but once you taste this you may not want to grind up quite so much of your deer meat every year.

*Raw packed Axis is still quite tasty but very unappetizing to look at once it's canned because you don't add liquid to the meat when you raw pack it so, as the meat cooks down in your pressure cooker/canner, you are left with a lot of space in the jar and some rather hideous looking liquid. I much prefer the hot pack and broth. It's still ugly, but not nearly so ugly. And it's definitely practical to have the venison or beef stock right there with the meat when you open the jar.

Updated Stock Recipe

As I learn more about cooking and as I refine my recipes, I must come back here and make the updates. Tonight I updated my Stock Recipe. I also added a link to a real chef's stock making tips.

Wine, Vinegar, and Food

They will tell you that you should neither cook with wine you wouldn't drink nor make vinegar with wine you wouldn't drink. I had my wine snob days, but location and finances have taken away the luxury of being a wine snob. Now I buy wine based on alcohol content (I need it to be low) and whether or not it has a screw cap or cork. I need it to have a screw cap. I don't drink anymore but I still buy wine for vinegar, sauces, and stock. The Livingston Cellars white to the left has an 11.5% alcohol content and the red has 9.5%. These are ideal for making vinegar. I could buy Earnest & Julio Gallo wine in gallon jugs for around $9 but the wine snob in me still lingers and I can't quite bring myself to do it. I won't even look at the boxed wine. Yeah, guess I'm not entirely wine tolerant yet.


In a perfect world, I'd buy much better wines than these $6/1.5 liter bottles. However, these wines Make Excellent Vinegar and they do a great job in my stocks. Their screw caps are a must because, since I don't drink wine, these sit in the fridge for extended periods of time. Also, with the screw top bottles, I can save the bottles and use them for vinegar storage later on down the road. Pasteurized vinegar will keep for a LONG time.


Don't let wine snobs make you feel bad for using cheap wine in your cooking (or in your drinking, for that matter). It still beats using water and it's still going to give you better flavor than you'd have otherwise. Speaking of which, if you cook soups and stocks in a pressure cooker, you may have noticed that they tend to come out kind of flat, a cup or two of wine in your pressure cooked soup/stock (after it's done) will really liven it up. Just bring it to a boil for a few minutes if you need to remove the alcohol. I don't use the pressure cooker anymore to make stock, I don't like what it does to it, but sometimes I end up with broth in the pressure cooker that I don't want to throw out and that's when this tip comes in handy. But back to your wine snob friends, if they just can't stand your use of cheap wine, then give them some empty bottles to save their wine leavings in for you.

While I was writing this post I found This Other Use for Empty Wine Bottles that really made me laugh. Talk about cheap!

The cheapest, fastest, and tastiest.... Stir Fry

We had beef and broccoli stir fry today. The brown sauce I use is based on This Recipe. It took me a long time to find a brown sauce I liked. I like this one because it's just the right consistency and doesn't have too much soy. I like PLENTY of stir-fry sauce when I cook because my favorite part of stir-fry is sauce-soaked rice. This sauce recipe is a good base for any kind of Asian cooking you are doing. It can perk up and thicken a soup or be used as a sauce over veggies and rice. It can also be used in your Top Ramen noodles instead of the enclosed seasoning packet. You won't be sorry for throwing out the Ramen seasoning packet and doctoring your own ramen noodles, they can make quite a meal. Wait until you try your Ramen noodles cooked in Your Own Stock instead of plain water!

If you do a lot of stir-fry or Asian style cooking, you can double or triple the sauce recipe and store it in a jar in the fridge (which makes it easy to grab, shake, and pour) for a week or so and use as needed.

Recipe for Stir-Fry Sauce:

3 1/2 TBS Cornstarch
1-2 tsp. grated ginger depending on your tastes, I like a lot--we buy a Hand Of Ginger "in town" and keep it in the freezer, it's the only way for us to keep "fresh" ginger in the house. Your palate will never know the difference and that hand will last you for a long time.
2-3 cloves minced garlic
3 TBS brown sugar depending on taste. Hubby likes his sweeter, I like mine less so, but the brown sugar is key to the recipe. I don't like enough so that I can taste the sweet, 2 tbs. is plenty for me. But without the sugar, the sauce really suffers. You can subsitute any sugary substance for brown sugar--honey, molasses, agave nectar--whatever works for you.
1/4 tsp. Chinese hot mustard if you've got it
1 1/2 cups chicken, beef, or turkey stock (use bouillon cubes or canned broth if you must--but don't use just water if you can help it or your sauce will be blah). Don't be afraid to use chicken stock with beef--it tastes marvelous. Beef stock would be better with beef, but any stock is better than none in this recipe.
1/3 cup soy sauce

Somthing HOT if you like spicy. We use a couple of dried Kung Pao peppers (crushed) or about 3 TBS of "fire oil." But you could use whatever spicy pepper you have available. Crushed red pepper is fine--start with 1 tsp. and use more or less next time depending on your taste. You could also use any minced fresh pepper that you fancied. I'm fortunate that hubby grows peppers in his garden that we can't buy here. I'm also fortunate to have Not One But Three of These Dehydrators. I love thrift stores!


Whisk all ingredients together except the stock. Add 1 TBS. of quality white wine vinegar or beer vinegar if you like a more "sweet and sour" aspect to your stir-fry--if using vinegar be sure to balance it by using the full amount of sugar/syrups/whatever. Heat stock to boiling and slowly whisk this in with the rest of the ingredients. Microwave for 30 seconds at a time until it just begins to thicken. This wakes up the peppers, garlic, and ginger. Set sauce aside to "marry up" while you prepare the rest of the dish.

Simple Stir-Fry Recipe:
Cook 2 cups of your preferred rice according to package directions. We use a cheapie rice cooker that I adore. It frees up stove top space and I don't have to worry about a timer or burning my rice. Although I do unplug the cooker as soon as I realize the rice is done--it stays hot for quite a while after it's cooked and I find that this amount of rice reaches an unpleasant consistency if left on the "warm" setting in the rice cooker for too long.
1 lb of thin sliced, bite-sized pieces of beef, venison, chicken, or turkey, put in a sealable plastic bag with a wad of several clean, fresh paper towels--the drier the meat the better the sear. WET, super moist meat dripping in juices and/or marinade won't sear properly unless you are lucky enough to have a specialty stove that will super heat your pan or wok. If you want to marinate your meat first, go ahead, but then be sure and pour off the marinade and stuff several clean paper towels in the bag and let it sit for awhile to soak up excess moisture. However, if your sauce is good and you are using tasty veggies, your meat will be just fine plain and unadulterated. Leftover meat instead of raw meat is fine, by the way--no need to sear it of course. We often make this recipe using leftover roast chicken or our canned venison (it's SO tender and delicious) and whatever vegetables we happen to have. If using pre-cooked meat in this recipe, shred it or slice it thin and set it aside until you are cooking the last of the veggies and add the meat to them in order to heat the meat.
7 or 8 green onions. Separate the green tops from their white bottoms and julienne them all, but keep them separate.

1 14oz. bag of frozen broccoli, unopened. Yes, use fresh if you like but in our area the best quality broccoli is usually frozen. The fresh stuff tends to be expensive and pathetic. Stab one side of your frozen broccoli bag a few times with a knife and then set in the microwave on the defrost setting until the broccoli is just soft enough to cut but still mostly frozen. Don't "cook" it. Cut your broccoli in strips, if you can. This isn't easy to do but the smaller, thinner strips will cook faster, be better tasting, and be easier to eat in stir-fry. We often use a frozen mixture of Asian-style veggies that are already the perfect size and shape for stir-fry, but I let them defrost a bit so they cook faster in the skillet. You can defrost them a bit by just leaving them on the counter for a while or by stabbing them repeatedly on one side of the bag (oh so cathartic) and defrosting them (slightly) in the nuker. The stir-fry veggies above are about $1.40 a bag and worth every little penny. If I bought these veggies fresh and seperately I'd not only have to prep them, but I'd have to use 'em quick before they rotted. Buying them like this is cheap, fast, and easy. The broccoli, at $1.99 a bag is still cheaper than fresh and requires almost as much prep as fresh would (for this particular recipe), but it's worth it to always have brocolli in the freezer when I need it.


What to cook this in: First things first, go set your A/C on "fan" so that you've got plenty of air circulating (or open the windows if it's nice out) and take the battery out of your smoke detector.

We can't get our wok hot enough to cook our stir-fry properly so we use an iron skillet. I put the skillet on high heat until it's smoking hot, usually takes five to seven minutes. I'm too lazy to cook small portions of the food at a time so I don't get that nice sear on the meat or the scorch on the veggies that you'd get in a good Asian restaurant. You need serious HEAT for that kind of searing. I'm determined to acquire a second, large iron skillet one day to speed up the process of cooking things like stir-fry AND to help increase my chances of getting seared meat and scorched veggies! With two large iron skillets, I think I could.


Have a large container with a lid nearby, get your pan smoking hot, add a tablespoon or two of peanut or other oil, and toss the meat in. Don't turn down your heat at any point from here on. Stir-fry the meat until it's nearly done and then put it into the lidded container to keep it hot and moist. If you want more of a sear on your meat, you can cook your meat a little at a time--but you'll have to let the pan re-heat between portions.

When your meat is cooked and set aside, let the pan reheat, add a little more oil, and cook 1/3 to 1/2 of your veggies (minus the green onion tops) the same way you did your meat. They'll cook fast. And you don't really want them to "cook" as much as you just want them to get hot. Stir-fried veggies should be crisp. As you can see from my photo, I didn't get a sear on my meat or veggies. But the meat wasn't overcooked and the veggies were still crisp--although the broccoli does look a little dull. Ah, well, can't have everything.

Once your last portion of veggies is heated through, put everything back in the pan and add your sauce. Cook this for about two minutes until sauce has thickened a bit, add the green onion tops and stir well, then remove it all from the pan and put it into your lidded dish to keep it hot and moist and also to keep your food from tasting like an iron skillet.

Serve over rice adding soy sauce to taste. This recipe sounds like a lot of work, but once you get used to it, it really is fast and easy. The most time consuming part is preparing the veggies. Everything else is a snap. I can prepare and cook it all in about 30 minutes. This serves us two with leftovers for one of us to have lunch the next day. We're big eaters, this would probably serve four normal, adult eaters, if you had a little something on the side to go with it, just fine.

A key to flavor in low budget cooking

Stock. Chicken stock, turkey stock, venison stock, beef stock, fish stock, or vegetable stock. STOCK STOCK STOCK! My kitchen wouldn't be complete without it. Stock and broth are two different things, by the way. This blog entry is about STOCK!

I have yet to master vegetable stock or even touch on fish stock, so I'm not going to talk about those. Chicken and turkey stocks are my favorite and I use them almost exclusively.

I used to put celery in all my stocks 'cuz everybody said to but I don't always want my stock to taste like soup so I stopped doing it. If you are making your stock specifically for soup, then be free with the celery and don't forget to add some celery leaves as well--they contain lots of flavor. For me, the ideal all-around stock contains few ingredients. This stock can become the can't-cook-without-it base for your soup, your secret ingredient for sauce (I use it in Asian sauces and in plain ol' gravy), or diluted with water to cook noodles in or to use in the best rice ever made. And if you're making congee (oh so easy and oh so good), you must have stock.

If you make a whole chicken or turkey, be sure and save those bones in the freezer for future use!

Chicken/Turkey Stock:

Chicken or turkey bones--I prefer to use two chicken carcasses but maybe that's because I always make such a big batch of stock. One turkey carcass is always enough.
Two or three cups of white wine if you have it
One large onion, halved. I prefer to use the peel although some people say it can make your stock bitter (I can't tell that it does this)--I do cut off the big gnarly end--mostly out of habit.
Several cloves of garlic, mashed, but still in skin.
5 to 10 black peppercorns, or to taste. Just throwing in a teaspoon of pepper or more to taste is fine too. I don't like a lot of black pepper myself
2 to 3 teaspoons of salt depending on your preferences
Dried or fresh parsley if you have it. A lot.
Save your leek tops in the freezer to throw into stocks, you won't be sorry. Or toss in some green onions if you have some extra in the fridge.
Poke around the fridge and feel free to toss in some stray veggie here or there just to see what happens--turnips, squash, some herbs, or even an apple or pear.

I limit what I put in my stock so I can use it in various recipes without being stuck with a flavor in there that I don't want--I can always add tomatoes, carrots, celery or whatever I want to the recipe I am using the stock in if I want to.

Cover your bones, veggies, and spices well with water and bring to boil then simmer for at least three hours. Once done, strain it well through a colander or sieve, then place in fridge overnight. The next day, the fat will have separated from the stock and hardened and you can just pick it off and throw it away. The more gelatinous your remaining stock is when it is cold, the better you have done. So pat yourself on the back if you have a big bowl of chicken jello. You now have a virtually fat free stock that is plum packed with flavor.

I like to freeze several 1/2 cup and 1 cup packages of stock for sauces. That whole thing with pouring it into an ice tray so you can freeze cubes of it is messy. I just buy the cheapest sealable bags that I can, pour 1 cup into each bag (a canning funnel is very handy here) and then freeze them. Once they are frozen, I stuff as many of them as I can into a gallon size freezer bag. Frozen stock, if not sealed well, will begin to dehydrate in your freezer and, if not stored well, it will just disappear. It needs, ultimately, to be stored in a quality freezer bag or container. You can vacuum seal your stock by pouring it into vacuum bags and setting the bags carefully in the freezer, unsealed. Once they are frozen they can be sealed. It's not really worth the fuss, however.

I also store stock in four cup amounts. It's about the perfect amount for a nice pot of soup--not enough to feed a large family but more than enough for you and one or two others.

Venison Stock Recipe:

Venison makes for such a strong stock that if you are going to do this, you must really like the flavor of wild game. Also, even for the most avid wild game fan, it's better to use a spike or young doe for your stock, older or bigger deer are going to have a stronger "gamey" flavor. This applies to Axis as well as White Tail. Axis stock comes out golden like turkey stock and always tastes lighter and more delicious to me than White Tail stock. Venison stock is delicious and when I can venison meat, I prefer to can it in venison stock.

On to the recipe....

You needs you some deer bones. You can crack rib bones easily with some pliers or a hammer--cracking the bones will make your stock much better. Don't go crazy, a crack here or there is fine. You don't want shards of bones ending up in your stock. If using leg bones, I find that a hammer is the easiest way to break the bones.

Add the bones you are going to use to your stock pot--a rear leg (needs a very large pot) or two front legs or five or six cracked ribs is sufficient for one batch of stock. Depends on you and how strong you like your stock. Making venison stock is really dependent on a very large pot unless you snag some vertebrae and take the time to separate them which is, actually, quite a pain.

1 large onion, halved with skin--big gnarly end removed just in case that's what those chefs are really talking about in regard to bitter stock

Pepper to taste--I prefer peppercorns but ground black pepper will do

Several cloves of garlic, mashed but not skinned

Two cups of red or white wine, I prefer white in venison stock

A whole bunch of fresh parsley or several tablespoons of dried parsley

Add water until it's all covered and refer to Chicken/Turkey Stock recipe above to finish up.

Beef Stock Recipe:

Follow the recipe for Venison Stock but instead of front legs/back legs/etc, use whatever bones you have available. If you happen to see some really cheap ribs at the store, buy them for stock. Or ask the butcher if he has some beef bones back behind the counter. I can't get beef bones from the butcher in my small town so I just buy ribs.

About carrots:

I don't like cooked carrots. And even though they add a nice flavor and wonderful color to just about any stock, I don't use them. Feel free to include a few carrots or parsnips (if you're lucky enough to get any where you live) to any of the stock recipes above. Personally, when using them, I advise not using too many. Carrots are sweet. You may like the sweetness they add to your stock, or you might be like me and just prefer not to go there.

Chef Christopher Allen Tanner On Making Stock--I can't wait to try it his way... by roasting the bones first!