Capt. Charlie’s Seafood Chowder: I found a new recipe for my fish! It was right in front of me all the time; the yellow pages of the phone book. Look under restaurants and find one that advertises that they will cook your catch. The best of both worlds. You get to catch the fish, have a great day on the water, eat your fresh catch, and then the best part, NO CLEANING UP AFTER DINNER! Boy, what a life. Well, there really are restaurants in coastal areas that will cook your catch, but if you still insist on the old fashioned way, here’s another recipe for you to try:
Like most of my recipes, the amount of ingredients differ depending on the volume of food you intend to make and also on the taste that you prefer. They are flexible so you should be too. Just experiment and have fun.
Start the chowder by melting a stick of butter in a pot. The size of the pot depends on how much you intend to make (I can’t tell you everything). To the butter you should add one diced onion and one stick of celery diced and stir (this is called sautéing). When the onion is transparent and the celery is soft you are ready to add the other ingredients. Add your fish chunks first(Any nice mild white fish will do). If you have some shrimp you could add them to the butter next. By the time you stir once or twice, the fish and shrimp will be cooked enough. If you have some oysters, put them in now. The butter is hot and just bubbling, the shrimp are not quite cooked and you probably added the oysters. As soon as you have added the fish you should add whole milk, enough to not quite cover all your ingredients, and stir until the milk is warm and almost bubbling. If you have some scallops, put them in now. OK, here is the great part, add heavy cream (whipping cream) at least as much by volume as the milk that you added. This will thicken as it warms and it really makes the chowder rich, rich, rich, rich…….. OK, you understand I guess. Be sure that you turned the heat down before you added the milk because you do not want to scorch the milk or the cream. Add salt and pepper to taste.
You could stir constantly over a very low heat to keep it from scorching, or you could use a double boiler and then you wouldn’t have to stir so much. If you don’t have a double boiler, you can make one by putting a large pot of water on the stove and bringing it to a boil and on top of this pot place a round bottom bowl, either stainless or Pyrex, and put your ingredients in the bowl. Congratulations, you just made some fantastic chowder and learned how to make a double boiler, all in the same recipe.
If you don’t like some of the ingredients that I mentioned, then leave them out or if you have some other seafood that would be good, add it..crabmeat, lobster, whatever. Be creative and enjoy the fruits of the sea.
Good fishing, good cooking, and good eating,
Capt. Charlie
