Corn

Corn and chicken soup

Posted by Gary

Want to skip the story? Here’s the recipe.

Corn and chicken soup

Hello Reader,

I’m posting again this weekend. 😊

I hope you enjoyed last night’s pork chop, pickled vegetables, and crispy capers.

Tonight, I made Mum’s sweet corn and chicken soup. It is the first time I’ve made this soup.

Mum made this soup when I was a boy, and while I’ve lived away from home since 1993, I know she continues to cook it for Dad, my brothers when they’re visiting, and my daughters. It’s one of Mum’s better-known soups.

I decided to cook it a little differently.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • One can of corn kernels
  • One can of creamed corn
  • 1–2 chicken thighs
  • Stock
  • 1–2 eggs
  • Cornflour
  • Cream
  • MSG
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Sesame oil

Instructions

Chicken

  1. Dice the chicken thigh meat into bite-sized chunks.
  2. Please place them in a bowl and add salt, pepper, MSG, and sesame oil.
  3. Massage the chicken pieces with the seasoning and oil.
  4. Place the seasoned and lubricated chicken pieces into a vacuum bag.
  5. Seal the bag.
  6. Cook for 2 hours at 76 Â°C in a water bath.
  7. Open the bag and empty the chicken and juices into the soup broth.

Corn soup broth with chicken pieces

  1. Empty the cans of corn into a saucepan with the stock.
  2. Bring to a slow simmer and cook for twenty minutes.
  3. Add the chicken to the saucepan and simmer for about 10 minutes.
  4. Break the eggs into a bowl, and beat them lightly, leaving white visible.
  5. Blend cornflour with some water to make a slurry. Pour the slurry into the egg mixture.
  6. While the soup is at a slow boil, pour the egg mixture in and stir until strands of coagulated white egg appear.
  7. Before serving, add cream and reheat slightly.

Plating up and serving

  1. Ladle soup into vacuum bags for meals later in the week. Vacuum seal the bags and refrigerate or freeze them.
  2. Spoon the remaining soup into a bowl.
  3. Give thanks to the Lord.
  4. Enjoy with a spoon.

Thoughts on the meal

The advantage of separately cooking the chicken means it can be cooked days in advance.

The soup was as good as Mum’s. I’m going to do this again and again and again.

Final thoughts

  1. Do you like corn and chicken soup?
  2. Do you ever modify family recipes?

Footnotes

Sous vide cooking the chicken allowed me to ensure the chicken’s pasteurisation and achieving tenderness. It’s a bit of a faff for people who don’t have a water bath and water heater circulator. You can cook the chicken in the soup broth. That’s how Mum does it, and it’s always delicious. I like to do things differently when I can.

Corn kernels are the fruit, and there are roughly 800 kernels in 16 rows per ear of corn.

Creamed corn combines corn kernels with the residue from pulped corn kernels scraped from the cob.

Corn and chicken soup
Corn and chicken soup
Corn and chicken soup

Cooking corn in another way

Posted by Gary

Cooking corn inside a chook is a new one for me

Cooking corn isn’t difficult, especially if it’s fresh. I posted about cooking a cob in aluminium foil some weeks ago.

Tonight, I tried cooking corn in another way and using a similar concept. This time instead of keeping the husk on and wrapping it in foil, I inserted the corn into a chicken’s main body cavity and protected the exposed portion with some aluminium foil.

I also made a video of how I prepared the chicken and the sweet corn. I apologise if you interpret the video of being suggestive of anything but cooking.

Please do me a favour

I think I’ve managed to work out how to use e-mail lists for sending post notifications and newsletters. I’d love it if you would sign up using the ‘form’ in the sidebar (if you’re using a laptop or desktop) or at the bottom of the post (if you’re using a mobile device).

By subscribing you’ll receive a personalised e-mail from me and from time to time, apart from the blog post I’ll share something new, like my ideas for a cooking book sometime this year.

Preparing tonight’s dinner

The last two days have seen maximum temperatures in Canberra hit 41 Â°C. Today it cooled down to 32 Â°C and this afternoon it cooled right down to 18 Â°C. It’s ridiculous weather.

I was worried having the oven on may make my living area too hot. It turns out, I needed the oven on to keep warm.

Roast chicken with a cob of corn and a duck fat roasted potato Cooking corn Gary Lum
Roast chicken with a cob of corn and a duck fat roasted potato [click on the photo for a better view]

What you will need to put this meal for one together

  • a whole chicken
  • 1 cob of corn
  • one handful of olive oil
  • a small nob of butter
  • 1 potato
  • a small bunch of broccoli
  • Chilli flakes—dried
  • Sea salt
  • Cracked pepper
  • Paprika

How to put all this together

  1. Cook the potato like I’ve done before with duck fat, I also laid some stale bread on the bottom of the baking tray to absorb the chicken juices
  2. Prepare the chicken by getting it to room temperature and putting it in a baking tray
  3. Pat the chicken dry
  4. Apply some olive oil and rub it into the skin and to the outside of the cob of corn
  5. Insert some tarragon and thyme into the body cavity
  6. Follow this with the cob of corn
  7. Dress the exposed corn with some aluminium foil
  8. Cook in an oven at 180 Â°C for 90 minutes
  9. Allow the chicken to rest for 30 minutes
  10. Plate up with some broccoli

How did it taste?

The corn was well cooked and juicy. The chicken was moist and tender. I have enough leftover for lunch at work.

Roast chicken Maryland with roast corn and potato with broccoli https://youtu.be/TvFABegDKMc cooking corn Gary Lum
Roast chicken Maryland with roast corn and potato with broccoli https://youtu.be/TvFABegDKMc [click on the photo for a better view]

Final thoughts

I think it’s easier to cook corn in its husk in aluminium foil. There is no real need to cook a whole chook all the time. I prefer to cook chicken pieces.

Macaroni cheese with salmon and some Monday link love

Posted by Gary

If you liked my macaroni cheese with cheerios, here’s a recipe for an easy yet sophisticated macaroni cheese with salmon and some Canberra food blogger Monday link love.

Macaroni cheese with salmon and some Monday link love
Recipe Type: Dinner
Cuisine: Australian
Author: [url href=”http://garylum.me” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”]Gary Lum[/url]
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • Macaroni a handful
  • Salmon diced
  • Peas, corn and capsicum frozen
  • Cheese Coon grated and some grated parmesan
  • Cream a good dash
  • Curry powder
  • Panko bread crumbs
  • Spring onions
  • Avocado
Instructions
  1. Get everything ready in advance because you do this in a sequence
  2. Add the macaroni to boiling salted water
  3. Cook for about 4 minutes and add some curry powder (as much as you want)
  4. Add the diced salmon to the boiling water with macaroni
  5. Cook for a further 4 minutes and then add the frozen vegetables with the spring onions
  6. Drain everything and add it all to a bowl
  7. Add a dash of cream and stir through
  8. Add in the grated cheese until everything starts to stiffen up
  9. Transfer to a bowl and top with some more cheese and panko bread crumbs
  10. Grill until the cheese and bread crumbs brown
  11. Add some avocado to keep [url href=”http://www.notquitenigella.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”]Not Quite Nigella[/url] happy
  12. Shoot a photograph
  13. Eat the meal
  14. Wash the dishes
  15. Write the recipe
  16. Blog (verb)

My Monday night dinner

Salmon and macaroni cheese with avocado
Salmon and macaroni cheese with avocado

My Monday breakfast

Crumpets with condensed milk for breakfast
Crumpets with condensed milk for breakfast

My view as I walked to Australia Post

Woden wind tunnel
Woden wind tunnel

I love my morning coffee from Urban Bean Espresso Bar

Coffee from Urban Bean Espresso Bar
Coffee from Urban Bean Espresso Bar

Monday link love from the Canberra Food Bloggers Facebook group

I hope you’re having a good Monday

 

BIRDS EYE Salmon cakes with vegetables

Posted by Gary
Humpday dinner. Salmon cakes with corn and avocado.

Happy hump day! I hope you’ve had a good day. Well as I try to explore a minimal saturated fat way of eating I happened upon these salmon cakes with vegetables from BIRDS EYE.

birds eye logo derived from its home page
Image source

birds eye salmon cakes with vegetables box image
Image source:

 

 

 

 

 

For my dinner tonight I chose to eat two salmon cakes plus a cob of corn and some avocado.

Check out my effort on Thursday night 

I don’t think anyone should think that a prepackaged fish cake is ever going to taste as good as a homemade fish cake. I cooked my salmon cakes in a small benchtop oven which is not fan forced. The cooking instructions on the packaging suggest a fan forced oven at 220 °C for 24 minutes (with a turn at 12 minutes) will give an optimum result. I cooked mine for 24 minutes (turning at 12 minutes) at 250 °C. The cakes ended up with a crisp shell and soft middle. The salmon and vegetables were well mixed and the only discernable vegetable matter was carrot. The cakes apparently contain capsicum, broccoli, carrot and onion. In addition to salmon there is white fish (whatever that is), flour, oils and thickeners. There is also potato, rice, maise, sugar, salt, xanthan gum, guar gum and emulsifiers. Gee that makes the cakes sound so attractive…NOT!

Fortunately the corn was really nice and the avocado was just ripe. I think adding some sweet chili sauce also helped. I have four cakes left. I’ll definitely eat them, I’m not into wasting money. The packet cost me $8.25. Will I buy more? I might. There’s nothing awful about the salmon cakes. I think I could make something much nicer myself but the real reason for buying something like this is cost and convenience. For anyone living alone, making salmon cakes from scratch would be potentially more expensive in produce and time. Tonight I came home from work and basically had everything cooked in my little benchtop oven and within an hour I had food in my belly.

Humpday dinner. Salmon cakes with corn and avocado.
Humpday dinner. Salmon cakes with corn and avocado.

 

BIRDS EYE Salmon Cakes nutrition information
BIRDS EYE Salmon Cakes nutrition information | Image Source

 

So would you buy these salmon cakes?

Salmon cakes with sweet corn, rice and quinoa on Thursday 23 July 2015

Rice and quinoa
Rice and quinoa

Thursday dinner. Salmon cakes with corn and rice with quinoa.
Thursday dinner. Salmon cakes with corn and rice with quinoa.

For a gallery of the Thursday dinner click on my Google Photos link and for full size versions click on each photograph.

Quick and easy one pot roast panko chicken thigh and vegetable rice

Posted by Gary

I wasn’t going to blog this. You see so many recipes for roast chicken thigh or chicken maryland on YummyLummy.com. What motivated me to blog tonight about this one pot roast is how quick and easy it was to make while I continued doing some work e-mails.

Panko chicken thigh with pea and corn arborio rice
Panko chicken thigh with pea and corn arborio rice

Quick and easy one pot roast panko chicken thigh and vegetable rice
Recipe Type: Dinner
Cuisine: Australian
Author: Gary Lum
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • Chicken thigh
  • Panko crumbs
  • Grape seed oil
  • Frozen peas
  • Frozen corn
  • Arborio rice
  • Butter
Instructions
  1. In a shallow nonstick bowl or shallow nonstick ovenproof frying pan add a lump of butter
  2. Pile on the frozen peas and corn and then a small handful of arborio rice
  3. Add half a glass of water
  4. In the plastic bag the chicken was sold in add the oil and panko crumbs and make sure the crumbs coat the chicken
  5. Add the chicken on top of the vegetables and rice
  6. Put into a benchtop oven at 200 °C or a conventional fan forced oven at 160 °C for 1 hour
  7. After one hour allow everything to rest for 15 minutes and then serve onto a plate
  8. Shoot a photograph
  9. Eat the meal
  10. Wash the dishes
  11. Write the recipe
  12. Blog (verb)

The vegetables and rice were delicious. The arborio rice absorbed all the chicken juices that dripped from the chicken as it was cooking. I didn’t need to add any salt and the rice had a lovely creamy rich flavour from the chicken and lump of butter. The peas and corn were perfectly cooked because the chicken provided protection from the heat. The panko crumbs add such a lovely crunch to the skin of the chicken.

I’ll share a confession, I didn’t use a knife to eat this meal. My focus tonight was on a piece of work I had to complete so after I shot the photograph I ate most of the rice and vegetables with a fork, peeled the crumbed skin and cloaca off the chicken and then picked up the thigh and ate all the muscle bundles. I then added the remainder of the vegetables and rice into the ‘shell’ of crumbed skin, rolled it and ate it like a crunchy rice and vegetable roll. I was that hungry and it was that delicious. It was also so easy to clean up the dishes. One ‘pot’ and one plate.

Do you have a one pot roast recipe you’d like to share?