Chowdah/Chowder--Cook-Off 20

[Susan in FL]

Just so's weah cleah: clam cakes in RI means clam fritters, deep-fried walnuts of clammy goodness. It's the classic side for chowdah heah.

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Well I'm glad you 'splained that about Clam Chowderrrrr.

[Chris Amirault]

No clams in Australia?

I'm thinking that tomorrow night we may need to make an ethnographic trip out to Iggy's Clam Shack for some visual aids.

[Adam Balic]

There are very few species of commerically harvested clams in Australia. The most common is the rather small (often tough, bitter and sandy) "pipi".

[Jensen]

There are very few species of commerically harvested clams in Australia. The most common is the rather small (often tough, bitter and sandy) "pipi".

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It's very easy to get any clam to be sandy since they're filter feeders. We used to put all of our clams in a 5-gallon pail filled with sea water and then sprinkle either crumbled crackers or oatmeal on top. If left for a few hours, the sand is replaced by the oatmeal.

Hmmmm. Does that make them grain-finished?

[Chris Amirault]

So, even though this is a cook-off and not an eat-off, since I had this wicked cool ideah to show you about clam cakes and chowdah, tonight me and my girls piled into the cah and went down to Iggy's at Oakland Beach in Warwick RI.

Iggy's is open all yeah round cause we like eatin' in the rough around heah no mattah what the weathah. We stahted with -- what else? -- a stuffie:

For you knuckleheads out theah who don't know a stuffie from a weinah, that's a stuffed quahog shell, with the meat from the quahog chopped up real good with buttah and some pahsley and gahlic and peppah and maybe some dill if yoah kinda snooty. This one was real pissah.

So, Iggy's has red and white chowdah, but since I was raised in the greatah Boston areah, I'm nevah gonna ordah that lousy red Manhattan clam chowdah crapola. (Yankees suck!) So:

This is that thick "New England" style chowdah, not the thinner Rhode Island chowdah, which doesn't have cream or milk in it. It was awesome. Seriously.

Of course, this is Rhode Island heah, so we had clam cakes to go with the chowdah:

The clam cakes wah wicked good, too. You can see the chunks of clam cause they get kinda brown on the outah paht and kinda chewy on the inside paht.

And I couldn't get back in the cah without some fried clams, right? Yeah! Course I'm right! You know they were belly-on, cause only loosahs get clam strips, which completely suck, and they wah wicked sweet:

I usually have them with lotsa tahtah sauce, but these were so awesome I just put some salt and lemon on 'em and ate 'em all. That wasn't hahd!

And whatdya think I washed it all down with? Yeah! A Yaht Club birch beah!

[tejon]

That's one wicked pissah post, Chris.

[Megan Blocker]

Wicked awesome. Oh, fried clams...oh, clam cakes. I need to make a visit to New England...I feel the homesickness washing over me. Thanks, Chris!

Edited March 10, 2006 by Megan Blocker (log)

[little ms foodie]

Chris that was quite an education! thank you!!

Chowder night Seattle style! My in laws came over and everyone participated in the chopping. We did the recipe out of 'The Best Recipes'

First we had kirs with proscuitto on bread sticks, blue from Spain and Salumi oregano salami

Next up were crab cakes on greens with lemon vinaigrette. My first time making crab cakes from scratch- very tastey!

and the main event....Chowder!

the recipe called for 7 lbs of cherrystones, I used 4lbs and it was plenty. We also used a bit more bacon cause we love it!

All was good. served with a rosemary herb bread also.

[ChefCrash]

Iggy's is open all yeah round cause we like eatin' in the rough around heah no mattah what the weathah. We stahted with -- what else? -- a stuffie:

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chrisamirault,

Funny, even the sign says Chowderrr. Most states offer free speech therapy you know.

[mizducky]

So, even though this is a cook-off and not an eat-off, since I had this wicked cool ideah to show you about clam cakes and chowdah, tonight me and my girls piled into the cah and went down to Iggy's at Oakland Beach in Warwick RI.

(remainder of post snipped to conserve bandwidth)

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Geez, Chris, just tear my heart out and throw it on the floor, why don'tcha? Oh god, am I now jonesing for fried clams and clam fritters--which, even if they weren't strictly off my menu right now, and it weren't already ten p.m. here, would still be damn difficult to find in this town. *sob*

[Susan in FL]

chrisamirault,

Funny, even the sign says Chowderrr. Most states offer free speech therapy you know.

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A fine post and great looking food, Chris, even if you don't know how to talk right.

Wendy, absolutely awesome! I could practically see the tastiness of that food in the pictures.

[johnnyd]

Iggy's looks wicked good - deserves a spot on the Fried clam thread.... which gives me an idea: who is going to start the New England Chowder Crawl thread for summer '06?

[Rachel Perlow]

So, even though this is a cook-off and not an eat-off, since I had this wicked cool ideah to show you about clam cakes and chowdah, tonight me and my girls piled into the cah and went down to Iggy's at Oakland Beach in Warwick RI.

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What's a Doughboy? Hmm, it's only three hours from me...

[slkinsey]

Funny, even the sign says Chowderrr. Most states offer free speech therapy you know.

It's all about balancing the language. We from New England leave out some of the Rs to make up for all the extra ones people are using in other parts of the country. Indeed, so careful are we to balance the R usage in American English that we will occasionally balance the Rs in the same sentence, to wit: "I went up the packie with Liser and Petah to get some tonics."

[Chris Amirault]

What's a Doughboy? Hmm, it's only three hours from me...

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Probably four, actually, Rachel. A doughboy is a slab of fried dough that's been slathered in sugar and cinnamon. It is insanely good. We would have had some except I had to be conscious to drive the girls home.

Meanwhile, I'm still on the hunt for quahogs. The second Whole Foods store in town was a bust as well -- but at least the fishmonger knew what they were.

[Grub]

Here's my effort -- Salmon Chowder:

Based on a Clam Chowder recipe from FoodTV Canada's Mike Smith. That recipe starts out with cooking the bacon -- so I set some of that aside for garnishing. That's a really good idea, I think. Crispy bacon does wonders.

Bacon -- it does a body good. Heh.

I went a tad overboard with the parlsey garnish -- I tried placing two big sprigs decoratively in the soup, but they kept turning over and sinking. I didn't like how the thyme looked; black specs floating around like that -- next time I think I'll BG it instead.

[Danno]

Gorgeous Jason & Rachel, making me very hungry! Nice thinking!

I thought we would get this party started by casting some aspersions as to what is and isn't a chowder by creating a new chowder, borrowing  from two distinctly American culinary cultures, New England and New Orleans.

I present to you Oysters Rockefeller Chowder. Rachel will post a more exact recipe shortly.

Start by sauteeing some chopped up salt pork or bacon. We used bacon.

In your mini prep or food processor, finely chop up onion, celery, scallion, and a clove or two of garlic.

Clam Juice is essential for that chowdery taste.

Get some oysters.

Wash and spin up your spinach. You could use frozen spinach instead.

1 and 1/2 cups of milk topped off with a large ladle of chicken stock.

Hit the pot with some flour to create a light roux, and then saute the chopped vegetables with the bacon and flour.

Chop up your spinach and get approx 2 tablespoons of anise-flavored liquor ready. Traditionally Oysters Rockefeller calls for Pernod or Herbsaint but I used Ouzo instead. You could also use Sambuca.

Chuck the chopped spinach into the pot with and wilt it up.

Hit it with the stock, milk, anise liquor and some clam juice to taste.

Cook the soup until it thickens and sticks to the spoon, then take it off the heat and hit it with the oysters and stir 'dem up real good.

Finished soup. Finish with a splash of heavy cream, season with salt, pepper, chervil (and/or some tarragon), and some grated fresh nutmeg to taste. Hit with some grated parmiggiano reggiano.

Chowda in the Bowl.

Extreme Chowda Closeup.

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[JAZ]

I used Sara Moulton's Smoky salmon chowder recipe -- with a few variations. Click here for a description and some step-by-step photos, but here's the result:

[Megan Blocker]

That looks great, Janet!

I made chowder tonight...corn chowder, based on this recipe from Epicurious. I used only regular potatoes, since I'm not a big sweet potato person. It was really good, but if I make it again, I'll probably deglaze the pan with some wine or sherry before adding the stock. The best part about the chowder was how pretty it was...with the celery, the red pepper, the carrot...very colorful. And tasty.

[Susan in FL]

That is pretty.

[gini]

Made Salmon and Dill Chowder last night. It came together really quickly and was mighty tasty. Of course it was tasty - it had bacon in it!

[Chufi]

Chirs, thank you so much for taking us for a virtual dinner at Iggy's.. those clamcakes have an uncanny resemblance to these things!

Anyway, I also made chowder tonight. I was very intimidated by the giant clam held up so elegantly by Susan in Fl upthread.. so I was very happy when JAZ made a chowder in her blog that looked like something I could do.. I followed basically the same recipe, but added chopped fennel and celery to the vegetable base, a lot of sherry (because JAZ added alcohol as well, I took her lead ), and because the soup... sorry... chowder ended up so rich, I added both lemon juice and lemon zest. It was rich, but delicious. Because this was the main (or actually, only) thing we had for dinner, there's quite a high ratio of salmon to liquid in the serving:

[purplewiz]

Hi -

These cook offs are always interesting, even if I don't actually cook anything, because they usually inspire at least some research into the topic. In this case, I wanted to figure out what, exactly, would be the defining aspects of "chowder".

After looking at several hundred recipes, the answer seems to be: a chowder is what someone says it is .

The biggest modes of commonality seem to be: inclusion of diced potatoes, thickened by flour, inclusion of cured pork (bacon or salt pork most commonly), a cream/milk base, some form of seafood, and roughly chopped ingredients. But even all of these don't seem to be required - I've found recipes for vegetarian corn chowder, clear broth chowder, lots of recipes for chicken mushroom chowder with no seafood or potatoes, some thickened with rice instead of potatoes.

The trait most common found is the rustic, hearty aspect to the soup - to borrow the advertising phrase, it's a soup that eats like a meal. So given that, I took aspects from several recipes that looked appealing and put together a salmon spinach chowder:

Roughly chopped celery, onions, and carrots (the carrots should have been cut somewhat smaller), garlic, bacon fat, chicken stock, thickened with flour and simmered until tender, then half a pound of chopped spinach, a mess of salmon in large strips (because I expected them to break up some and planned for it), and a cup of half and half, heated through until the salmon was cooked. Garnished with the diced bacon.

It made a warm and hearty dinner.

Marcia.

[snowangel]

My kids love clam chowder, so that was on the menu tonight.

Russet potatoes, milk, canned clams (!), the clam juice and onions sweated in fabulous bacon from the meat market in New Ulm, MN. Diana fished out some of the potatoes and took the immersion blender to them.

Scallions on top, plus cracked black pepper. A loaf of crusty bread fresh from the oven with some great butter.

[Chris Amirault]

Stage one of tonight's chowdahfest. Instead of getting a few pounds of clams, I kind of lost it at the store and came home with an entire sack of clams:

Yes, friends, that's 100 clams, about 25 pounds, there in that sack, wild cherrystones (bigger than littlenecks, smaller than quahogs) that had been harvested yesterday in Long Island Sound off the coast of Connecticut. Each clam was about 1/4 pound, a little smaller than a medium apple and a little bigger than the base of a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale:

First off, I needed to clean the outside of the clams.

Then, I set up my steaming rig:

Stockpot with two cups of water, then the steaming rack, then a simple flat basket to hold the clams. I steamed about 20 clams at a time:

As they opened up, I plucked them out:

Working over a bowl, I shucked the clams, being sure to save every drop of the liquor. From that 25 pounds of cherrystones in the shell, I got about 2 1/2 pounds of clam meat:

And, after straining the broth and the liquor in the shucking bowl, I got eight cups of stunning clam juice:

Of course, the chef enjoyed a few -- well, more than a few -- treats while he toiled:

These happen to be among the best, briny-est, sweetest clams I've ever had, so I'm expecting a fantastic chowdah later tonight. More soon!