With the colder weather starting up, I’ve been starting to make more soups and stews. I saw that John’s Farm (http://johnsfarms.com/) was having a great sale on clams and Boston scrod and I’ve been craving fresh seafood.
I found this recipe online:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/rhode-island-clam-chowder.aspx
I modified it for what I had in the house. I wanted a hearty chowder, but I don’t like dairy and I didn’t want the flavor of the seafood to be masked by tomatoes. I added scrod filets, because they were on sale and also because I wanted the soup to be meatier than clams alone.
I used this method to make the clam broth http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/clam-broth.aspx
Ingredients:
24 cherrystone clams
1 net bag of mussels
2lbs of scrod filet
4 thin carrots
1 large sweet onion
2 each of Yukon gold, white, and red skin potatoes (6 total)
half a package of canadian bacon (4 or 5 slices)
2 cups of pino grigot
water
basil
1. Set the clams and mussels to soak for at least an hour or 2. This lets them spit out the sand.
2. Boil 2 cups of water in a large pot.
Clean and pick over the shellfish. Make sure they are alive. Discard any that are questionable.
3. When the water has boiled, add the clams and cover.
4. Let cook for 10minutes. Fish out the clams that have opened and place in a bowl. Stir the remaining clams and fish them out as they open.
5. When most of them are opened and removed add the mussels and cover. Check after 5minutes. They should cook a lot faster than the clams. Remove the opened ones and stir.
6. If any shell fish still have not opened after 20minutes of total cooking time, throw them out. Turn off the stove.
7. Pick out the meat of the shellfish and put in the refridgerator. Pour any juices back into the pot. Throw out the shells.
8. Mince the garlic & dice the remaining vegetables.
9. Chop the bacon fine.
By this point the liquid should be cool enough to pour into another container.
10. Turn on the stove and add some olive oil to the pot. When the oil is hot add the bacon.
11. Sauté until you can smell the bacon. Add the onions and sauté until they are translucent.
12. Add the celery and sauté.
13. Add the reserved clamjuice and the white wine.
14. Add the potatoes and the carrots.
Add about 2 quarts of water
15. Add basil (I think my basil was old and it really didn’t do much for the soup) to taste and let simmer for at least 2 hours. You want the starch in the potatoes to start thickening the broth a little.
16. Chop up the shellfish.And add to the pot. Let simmer for 20 minutes.
17. Cut up the fish filets into chunks.
Gently add the fish. And let simmer covered for 10 minutes.
18. Check the fish. They should be almost flaking at this point. Turn off the heat and let sit covered for at least another half hour.
19. I break up (flake) the fish lumps at this point with the back of a wooden spoon and the side of the pot.
Serve with oyster crackers.
Note: the longer you let the pot sit, the yummier the chowder gets.
