New England Clam Chowder on the Fly

Clam chowder is one of my absolute favorite things in the world. When I was young and set in my ways (as opposed to now when I am slightly older and set in my ways), I would pretty much always order the same thing to eat when I went out with my parents: grilled cheese and clam chowder. And I mean New England clam chowder. If there is one thing that will vamp up my New Englander pride more than anything else, its the superiority of our chowder. Thick, creamy and delicious with big chunks of tasty veggies and clams...that's how a chowder should be.

That being said, it occurs to me that I don't think I have ever made clam chowder before. I know my mother has a recipe for a low-carb chowder (made when we were all on the Atkins diet a million years ago), but I don't think I ever even made that recipe. Despite that, Sunday night my mother mentioned that she had collected the ingredients for clam chowder and Monday night I found myself flying blindly, yet somehow confidently, into my first attempt. Clam chowder is a passion of mine, surely I could just make it by instinct.

I searched the fridge and freezer for bacon but none was to be found. That was really my only setback for the evening and easily solved when my father suggested rendering some salami he was currently slicing up for a pre-dinner snack. Once I had something to sautee my veggies in, I chopped up 3 peeled potatoes, 6 stalks of celery, half an onion, 3 peeled carrots and a partridge in a pear tree. Everything got mixed up with a spoonful of minced garlic. Once all the veggies were nicely mixed up and starting to get their cook on, I poured in water/clam juice that I drained from my large can of clams and set everything to simmer for a while.



In the large soup pot, I started to make my roux. I melted two whole sticks of butter (this chowder sure wasn't going to be healthy but it was going to be rich) and whisked in about a cup and a half of flour until it was thick and smooth. I slowly whisked in Half and Half until I got the consistency I wanted.

It was around this time my mother came into the kitchen and said "Do you know what you're doing?" and I answered honestly, "Nope."



I turned the heat off of my roux and made a little over two cups of clam broth using some clam base, which I kept set aside. I kept checking my veggies while they were simmering away until I could easily slice a large hunk of potato with a spoon. Then, one ladle-full at a time, I added my veggies (including the clam juice), my clam broth and the now-drained can of clams to my roux. I turned the heat back on and kept it on just long enough for everything to mix up and heat through. While I was mixing I added fresh cracked pepper, garlic salt and a little Old Bay seasoning. Right before turning off the heat and serving, I stirred in a bit of red wine vinegar.

Although I can never be 100% pleased with my cooking results, I was pretty excited more than anything else about the consistency. I wanted a nice, thick chowder and that's what I got. It needed a bit more seasoning, but that can always easily be adjusted bowl by bowl, whereas trying to thicken a chowder after its done would probably end disastrously. I've had it for lunch the last two days and is the perfect thing for a dark, rainy Connecticut December.

Honestly, I think the thing I am most disappointed in is my pictures for this entry. Since renewing my blog mojo I have been looking at other blogs and the photos I have been seeing make me understand why people use the term "food porn". Maybe I should stop using my cell phone and break out an actual camera.

I think this post might be the closest entry I have so far to being an actual recipe, since I did try to mention measurements when I could. Question for my reader(s) for the future: would anyone actually use a recipe if I tried to write down what I was doing during one of my "flying by the sea of my pants" cooking adventures?

Five Bean Soup

There is something beautiful about soup. It involves a lot of my favorite things about cooking. I love that you can take a whole bunch of different ingredients and bring them together and have them blend into something new and wonderful. I love that soup can be easy or complicated, thick like stew or a simple broth. This five bean soup was certainly on the easy end of the scale.


All I had to do was saute onions, carrots, celery and garlic in a pan. Then I added that with all the ingredients you see pictured to the right in chicken broth with some barley. Season with a couple bay leaves and some dried basil.


It came out thick and delicious and very filling. If you used a different broth it would be vegetarian in a snap. I'm not one for tomatoes and my mom doesn't like carrots, but with so many other things in this soup it's easy to forget what you don't like and just focus on the tastiness of the whole.

That reminds me of something else I like about soup...I can use it to hide healthy things that I don't normally like under a tasty tasty disguise.

Butternut Squash Soup

For a few days, there were two lovely butternut squash sitting on the table just begging to be turned into something delicious. Considering the fall weather, I figured a nice thick, creamy soup would be the best choice.

I started by cutting each one in half, generously rubbing some butter and dusting a bit of ground cloves on each piece. I covered each piece in tin foil and put them in a baking pan with a bit of water on the bottom. After about an hour in the oven at 350 degrees I had soft, falling apart squash that was nice and moist.


While that was cooling, I chopped a ton of vegetables. Two carrots, two onions, three or so stalks of celery, four red potatoes (although maybe only three would have been enough) and about a handful of garlic cloves (I really like garlic). I sauteed those up with some butter, salt and ground pepper in the cast iron pan until they started to soften. I wish I had had a bigger pan...that was a lot of vegetables! Cooking them took longer than it should have and making sure everything was evenly cooked without tossing veggie pieces all over the stovetop was annoying.

I ended up peeling the skin off of the squash and then chopping it up. It was so softened that when I tried to scope the meaty bits out of the skin it just kept falling apart.

All the sauteed veggies and the oven roasted squash went into a big pot with about 7 cups of chicken broth, just enough to cover everything. I also did some seasoning at this point. Just some bay leaves, more ground cloves, more pepper. Unfortunately, my nose was still very stuffed when I made this soup, so cooking was still difficult.


Considering how soft the squash was after being pre-cooked in the oven and how soft the vegetables were after their slow saute in the pan, I only had to simmer the whole shebang for about half an hour before I deemed it ready to be blended. I had to blend it in sections because their was so much. It took at least four full batches in the blender to go through all of it. (I may have overfilled twice as well, leading to the dogs getting a free snack). I added a little heavy cream each time to add to the creaminess.

After all of it was blended and back in the pot there was a preliminary taste test/smell. My mother was home but she found it difficult being my surrogate nose, probably because I asked questions that made sense in my head, like "Does it smell balanced?" that for some reason didn't make sense to her.


It was a bit bland at first, but after some fiddling, it turned out SUPER TASTY. I kind of just had at it with the spice cabinet so I can't be exact with what I added, but I know it involved garlic salt, cinnamon, oregano, nutmeg, ground pepper. In retrospect those sound weird to all be together, but I wanted it to taste like autumn and in the end it did.

My one stupid mistake? I forgot to take out the bay leaves before blenderizing. D'oh! Oh well, little bits of dried spice bits in an otherwise awesome soup are forgivable....right?

One last thing. When I talked about blocking knitted squares, I shared a picture of my dear dog Ben cowering under the ironing board because it was windy out. Well, it was windy while I was chopping vegetables for this soup too, and Ben likes to be as close as possible to his humans when he is scared.

This picture may be a little hard to figure out, but this is Ben squeezed between the counter/oven and my legs. The angle is from my point of view looking down at him, while he looks up at me with his big puppy dog eyes.

Until next time!