A Life, Lived: Sunday Slow Soupers # 12 Five Islands Seafood Chowder

February 08, 2009

Sunday Slow Soupers # 12 Five Islands Seafood Chowder

This week the Sunday Slow Soupers became chowderheads, directed on our journey by Sheena and Terry. The soup that they selected is their favourite recipe for seafood chowder.

I was curious to try this because I have never been a fan of chowder - whenever I've had it before I have found it to be too rich and heavy. One of the things Iwanted to do was to take the recipe that Sheena had provided and try and make it a wee bit more low cal. I'll print the recipe as given by Sheena and put our 'tweaks' down below.

Paul and I made half of the recipe today for lunch. It came together and tasted wonderful! This is a chowder that will make those other chowders green with envy! *smile*

Sheena writes that this recipe serves 12, and leftovers do not freeze well. Unless you are feeding a crowd either cut the recipe in half, or divide and freeze a portion when you get to the ‘may be prepared ahead to this point and frozen’ bit.

Five Islands Seafood Chowder

1 cup butter
2 cups chopped onion
4 cups chicken stock or clam juice
2 cups chopped celery
6 carrots – chopped
2 tsp salt (now that we watch our salt intake I greatly reduce or omit salt)
¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
2 lb haddock fillets – or cod or red snapper or salmon, cut into chunks. I usually use part salmon and part a white fish.
4 cups whole milk
2/3 cup all purpose flour
2 cans baby clams
1 lb cooked small shrimp (reserve a few shrimp for garnish)
1 lb crab (I sometimes omit the crab unless it is in season (i.e. cheap) or I am making the chowder for a special occasion)

In a large saucepan or soup kettle melt the butter.

Add onions and cook over low heat for a few minutes until soft.

Stir in stock, celery, carrots, salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until carrots are tender.
Add fillets, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

(May be prepared ahead to this point and frozen; thaw and reheat before continuing to next step)

Stir enough of the milk into the flour to make a smooth paste.

Gradually stir paste into the soup, then stir in remaining milk and simmer until the mixture thickens slightly.

Just before serving stir in clams, shrimp and crab, leaving on stove for long enough for these additions to heat through.

Taste and adjust seasoning.

Our alterations . . .

We also only made half of the recipe but instead of using 1/2 a cup of butter, used 2 tablespoons. We added some herbs de Provence (about 1/2 a tsp) and some crushed chili pepper (about 1/4 tsp) while the carrots and celery were cooking. We also used 1 % milk. For the seafood we used a combination of shrimp, scallops, and haddock - I didn't have any crab on hand and clams give us the 'willies'.

Posted at 01:44 PM in Cooking, Seafood, Soup/stew/chili, Sunday Slow Soupers | Permalink

Comments

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Sounds good,Jerry.

Posted by: Candi | February 08, 2009 at 01:59 PM

You silly willy's!
First oysters... now clams.

Posted by: sandi @ the whistlestop cafe | February 08, 2009 at 02:18 PM

Jerry-I usually feel the same way about chowder as you did. You saw I only used 2 Tbsp butter also and low fat milk, and I loved this chowder. I thought I would need to add some spices to it also,but found it was good as is.

Posted by: Cindy Ruth | February 08, 2009 at 02:54 PM