Ingredients: Clam, Milk
Item Description: A perfect way to warm yourself after a cold night at sea.
Chowder? You mean clam chowder specifically, right? Well its got clams in the ingredients so that its gonna be! We've got a big bag of frozen clams, double cream instead of milk (cause i feel like it), potatoes, a massive onion, some worse for wear looking carrots, and a bit of bacon.
Right lets start with the important bit... this pack seems to say the clams are pre-cooked already so... im not sure about making stock..? But i should try i guess? Ill douse them quickly in hot water till the shells open up, and then ill see if i have to filter the grit out of the stock or if these are all clean or whatever... not sure if ive ever done this before either. But we get that a lot :)
So ive poured the clam stock into a clear bowl to... take STOCK of it, heh, and yeah... looks like theres some grit at the bottom. Time to use some foolhardy makeshift filtering device...
Behold! The colander, paper towel and bucket that is kind of too small but we can make it work if we just...
If we like... prop it up diagonally with a plastic jug and put it in the sink in case of spills... and fill the jug with water to counterweight the colander as it gets full of stuff. Alright that was a lot of work for some vaguely clam flavoured water.
Alright we've chopped up that massive onion, and once peeled the carrots and potatoes are looking just fine. Now we can chop a bit of the bacon (always cut your raw meat last if you're reusing the cutting board!)
In the pot, which ive RINSED ANY GRITTY CLAM RESIDUE FROM I'm gonna dry-fry up the bacon and onions so they get nice and browned.
once thats done we can start re-adding everything else back in, starting with the clam juice!
Just in case its not picked up much flavour, and frankly because I want to... ive added my secret weapon... some bonito flavoured noodle stock! This will add to the fishy flavour.
Next i'm removing the clam meat out of the shells and putting them as it cooks. Some people like to put the whole shells in, or so i hear, but im not a big fan of surprise rocks in my soup.
Next we can pour in the cream... i didnt even measure i just poured in whatever looked right. Thats the magic of cooking that SOMETIMES works!
While it simmers (or... whatever its doing, looks kinda crazy back there) I picked what kinda seasonings I felt like... some ground pepper and some sage leaves from my garden!
Looking good... many recipes say to use flour to thicken this up, but with the fairly concentrated stock, double cream and potato chunks I think its fine as-is.
It's so flavourful and delicious! Its creamy, a little salty from the bacon, and deeply savoury from the seafood stock. It's not "fishy" or "oceany", apart from the literal fruits de mer, the clam meat. The potatoes really make it for me, they pair perfectly with a creamy stew and soak up so much flavour.
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