I’m having the extended family over next weekend and want to serve a truly outstanding New England clam chowder. I’ve tasted great versions up in Maine and Cape Cod, but have little luck locally.
Can someone provide an outstanding recipe for me? Thanks!
Maine clam chowder is a fairly simple dish.
For 8 servings:
Fry 1/2 pound salt pork in a large pot until it has rendered some fat and started to brown. Add two large onions, chopped, and fry until the onion is soft and the pork crisp. Add the broth from 50 quahogs to the pot and bring to a simmer. Add 8 cubed peeled Maine potatoes and cook until still firm but done, about 12-15 minutes. Stir 2 pints of whole milk into the chowder and season to taste with salt and pepper. Heat to simmering again and mix in the meat from the 50 quahogs (halved or quartered if they’re large). Let this continue to cook at a bare simmer for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
It’s best if you let it age for an hour or so at this point, kept warm over a VRY low flame or in a low oven. Reheat before serving until it begins to steam (it will curdle if it gets near boiling). Serve with a pat of butter in each bowl, with toasted common crackers.
The above cribbed and adapted from the essay “Down East Chowder” by John Thorne, collected in SERIOUS PIG, North Point Press, 1996.
Uke got it, and you got it.
May I introduce an imposter?
First, not an imposter. It looks like we get the term from chaudree. That’s a French fish soup.
Okay, on to the imposter:
From Melville’s Moby Dick:
This is rich stuff, but you sure can’t use it as a recipe.
Melville’s chowder is not the dish that survived the test of time and got enshrined as a classic.
Purists will shudder at the presence of cracker crumbs (the pounded ship biscuit), and they will also shake their heads at the idea of tiny clams instead of quahogs.
The purists are right.
–From Sokolov’s “Why We Eat What We Eat” (1991) Summit Books.