Serves 8

Ingredients:

3 ½ to 4 pound haddock or cod
2 inch cube fat salt pork
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cups potatoes, sliced
4 cups hot milk
1 tbsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Preparation:

Take cut up fish and add in three cups of water, then cook until it is done. Then cut the pork into tiny pieces and fry it until it reaches a golden color. Then take away the pork scraps. Add onions to the fat and enough water to cover the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until they are almost tender and done. Then add in the fish, the milk, the seasonings, and the pork scraps. If you wish, simmer it all for ten minutes. Now you are ready to serve it ! Serve with some pickles and some crackers.

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6 serving

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp. dry sherry or nonalcoholic wine
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 3 ½ cups defatted chicken broth
• 3 ½ cups peeled and cubed potatoes
• 2 large carrots, sliced
• 1tsp. dried thyme
• 1 tsp. dried dill
• ½ tsp. dry mustard
• ¼ tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/8 tsp. ground celery seeds
• 2 ½ cups frozen whole kernel yellow corn
• 1 cup whole or 2% low – fat milk
• 12 ounces skinless salmon fillets cut into ½” cubes
• ½ tsp. salt (optional)

Preparation:

In a big  pan, add in the onions, sherry/wine, garlic and 2 tablespoon of broth. Cook this over a medium heat for nine minutes, or until the onions are  tender and golden. (If you feel it is necessary, add more broth)

Then add in the potatoes, the carrots, the thyme, the dill, the mustard, the pepper, the celery seeds and the rest of the broth.  Then bring this all to a boil. Then lower the heat, cover and let it simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are almost tender, and remember to stir.

Then add in the corn and 1/2 cup of the milk. Cover this and let it simmer for about ten minutes, or until the potatoes are nice and tender.

Take about half of this mixture and put it in a blender. Blend until it becomes pureed. Then once again, return the mixture to the pan. Then add in the salmon and the rest of the milk. Let it simmer for about eight minutes and season to your taste. You may now serve

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Serves 6 people

Ingredients

• 4 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 medium – size ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound),
• peeled, cored, seeded, and chopped, or 1 can
• (1 pound) low – sodium tomatoes, chopped, with
• their juice
• 1 teaspoon dried basil, crumbled
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled pinch cayenne
• Pepper
• ½ cup dry white wine or chicken broth
• 3 cups water
• ½ pound cod or other white fish fillets, cut into
• Bite – size pieces
• 2 tablespoons minced parsley

How to Prepare:

1. In a large heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil over moderate heat; add the garlic, tomatoes, basil, oregano, cayenne pepper, and wine, and cook, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
2. Add the water, cover, and bring to a simmer – about 3 minutes. Mix in the cod and cook, uncovered, 5 minutes longer. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with the parsley.

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Serves Eight

Ingredients:

• 10 scallions, chopped
• 6 medium – sized potatoes, cubed
• 4 medium – sized carrots, diced ¼ cup butter
• 2 7 – ounce cans minced clams
• 1 ½ cups dry white wine
• 2 cups Fish stock * (see recipe below)
• Teaspoon dill weed
• Salt to taste
• 2 cups fresh or frozen peas
• 3 cups light cream or milk

How to Prepare the Vegetable Clam Chowder

Clean and chop the scallions, discarding the roots. Peel and cube the potatoes. Peel the carrots and dice them. Heat the butter in a deep skillet and lightly sauté’ the scallions. Drain the minced clams and set aside. Add the clam liquid to the skillet, along with the wine, fish stock, potatoes, carrots, dill weed, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Stir in the green peas and continue to simmer for 10 minutes longer. Add the drained clams and the cream. Cook, stirring constantly, until the soup is heated through.

Serve immediately.

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At one time, Coastal New England‘s chowder was a simple combination of fish or clams with water, pork, and onions, thickened with flour. The Portuguese prepared a richer version using olive oil, tomatoes, peppers, and garlic. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a true New England chowder was a milky stew, served with water biscuits or hardtack of a rock like texture that was meant to be crumbled and soaked in the chowder as filler. Salt cod substituted when fresh fish was unavailable. Lobster, once considered a food of the poor, has become a luxury and is served here at its simplest boiled. A true down easter prefers his lobster boiled or steamed, flavored with nothing more than the sea water in which it cooks.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound salt cod
• 1 pound fresh cod fillet, skin removed
• 1 pound halibut fillet, skin removed
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 4 cups heavy cream
• 2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
• ¼ pound fresh pork fatback
• 2 cups peeled, diced, waxy potatoes such as Yukon Gold
• Freshly milled black pepper
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

How to Prepare

Soak the cod water and cover for 12 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times. Or until the salt is gone.
Cut all of the fish in 1 ½ – inch cubes. Cover and refrigerate.
In a soup kettle, melt the butter over moderate heat.
Add the heavy cream, milk, and thyme and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, dice the fatback and cook over moderate heat until rendered golden brow.
Drain on paper towels and set aside on a warm part of the stove.
Add the potatoes to the chowder and simmer until the potatoes are almost fork – tender.
Add the fish and simmer for about 10 minutes, until just cooked through. Season to taste with pepper.
Serve the rendered pork on the side and let each guest sprinkle some over the chowder.

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Ingredients: Serves 8

• 3-inch cube fat salt pork, diced
• 3 onions, sliced
• 4 cups potatoes cut in small cubes
• 1 quart shucked clams (quahogs)
• 2 cups boiling water
• 1 cup stewed, strained tomatoes
• ¼ teaspoon soda
• 1 cup milk, scalded
• 1 cup thin cream
• 2 tablespoons butter
• Salt and pepper
• 8 common crackers, split

How to Prepare:

Dry out pork until crisp; remove scraps. Cook onion in fat until lightly browned, remove, add potatoes to fat and stir and cook over low flame 10 minutes. Chop hard part of clams fine and add with onion to potatoes. Cover with boiling water and simmer until potatoes are nearly done. Stir soda into tomatoes and add with soft part of clam. Simmer gently on back of stove at least 30 minutes. When ready to serve add scalded milk, cream, butter and seasonings. Serve over crackers which have been moistened in cold milk or with crackers served dry.

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Every body knows what Chowder is.

For those who do not know; Chowder is a type of rich thick, chunky traditional seafood soup, of which clam chowder is the most famous and well known.

Chowder can have any of different varieties of vegetables and seafood. The name chowder also is used to describe the rich and thick soup.

If you want to know what a Clam chowder really is, you most try it. You will love it!

The traditional chowder in the USA is more often made with clams. The most popular are the New England clam chowder style.

This soup “clam chowder “is considered the most famous seafood soup of the world. And is a specialty of the states of New England in USA.

Chowder a term first used in N. America in the 1730s.

The word chowder is derived from French Chaudière, a 3- legged heavy iron pot sitting above glowing coals and bubbling with a thick seafood soup.

The dish may have found its way via French Canada to New England, where the seafood became almost exclusively clams.

Hungry colonists watched wild pigs rooting in the shore sands for clams, and they soon realized the value of those meaty clams for making their first clam chowder. A rivalry now exists between New England purists, who want their chowder made with milk but no tomatoes, and those farther south, who want their chowder made with tomatoes and water, hence a thinner brew. The latter became Manhattan or Long Island chowder, in which there is another distinction a pronounced flavor of thyme. The bits of thyme are left floating on the surface and do not detract from the soup’s eye appeal. New Englanders place their thyme in a muslin bag, which is discarded before serving.

Chowder always means a hearty soup, usually but not invariable of seafood; and clam chowder is its best- known form. Indeed, one should say forms in the plural, for New England, which along with the Maritime Provinces of Canada has for long been the main home territory of chowders; there are lively arguments about what is an authentic clam chowder. Mariani (1994) describes this thus in his excellent long essay about chowder:

By the end of the century certain New England regions became known for their various regions interpretations of chowder one might find cream in one spot, lobster in others, no potatoes elsewhere but most were by then a creamy white soup brimming with chopped fish or clams, crackers, and butter. In Rhode Island, however, cooks often added tomatoes to their chowder, a practice that brought down unremitting scorn from chowder fanciers in Massachusetts and Maine, who associated such a concoction with New York because the dish came to be called, for no discernible reason, “Manhattan clam chowder” sometime in the in the 1930s. By 1940 Eleanor Early in her New England Sampler descried this “terrible pink mixture (with tomatoes in it, and herbs) called Manhattan Clam Chowder, that is only a vegetable soup, and not be confused with New England Clam Chowder, nor spoken of in the same breath”.

Clam stock should never be weak of lifeless in flavor. This means using enough clams to produce a strong clam broth or else reducing the broth to concentrate its flavor. Canned or bottled clam broth or juice is a weak substitute for broth made with fresh clams but it can be strengthened by boiling down.

Potatoes are always used and the preference is for diced salt pork rather than bacon.

Hard – shell clams called quahogs are the ones used in chowder. Soft – shell clams or steamers are eaten in other ways.

Clams may be opened with a clam/ oyster knife, but for the tyro it may be less trying to use the following method: Arrange them on a rack or an inverted pie tin resting on the bottom of a pot with a tight – fitting lid. Add a cup or so of water and drop in the clams. Cover. Boil over medium heat until the clams open. Shake the pot once or twice during the steaming. Live clams from pot with slotted spoon or tongs and let them cool slightly before pushing out the meat with the thumb.

In preparing all clam chowders, clams should be scrubbed and well rinsed to remove grit and other particles. Nevertheless the clam juice still may be sandy, so strain through a double or triple thickness of muslin or cheesecloth. Discard sediment left in the bottom of the pot after the liquid has drained off.

Clams, even in their raw state, are somewhat chewy. Overcooked, they become almost inedible, so take care when preparing clams not to overcook.

The strict discipline over what went into chowder was finally broken when cooks turned back to an earlier version _ a fisherman’s stew of the catch of the day.

The came chowders from inland – corn, cheese, tomato, and on and on . Chowder today encompasses anything made with three common ingredients: salt pork pieces fried to crisp bits, onions cooked in the fat and potato cubes. These are the foundation for almost all chowders, seafood or vegetable.

A collection of both sea- and land – based chowders follows.

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