A Chowder to Make Yours Feel Awkward & Ashamed

A little hot sauce is comely as well — this pig looks good in lipstick! Photo by Author

New England cuisine is full of paradox & mystery. How is it New York System Wieners come from Rhode Island? Why does Boston Cream Pie act like a cake? Why the hell would a sane human want to eat hot, sticky clam soup near a hot, sticky seashore?

The first two aren’t really conundrums when you look at them. The New York tag on Providence dogs was a marketing gimmick which worked and then stuck. Boston Cream Pie? Luscious goop encased in flour-based top/bottom layers = Pie. Wanna fight on that? Meet me at the Omni Parker House and bring your own ice packs. Afterwards, I’ll buy you a few beers and show you pictures of cheesecake.

But the chowder thing? Who the fuck knows? A nice, belly warming chowder to beat the chill works in late autumn/winter. In the middle of our humid, hazy summers it is the last thing on my mind. Same with all hot soups. Might as well go swimming with a scarf on. The region’s food output, however and if you can believe it, is not about me. It’s all about the tourists. Nobody in their right mind takes a winter holiday to coastal New England so it’s the summer visitors, with their misguided cravings for exotica like beans and clams and breadcrumbs, which dictate the menus.

Whatever. We’ve got the clams; might as well feed them to somebody.

Now, given chowder’s ubiquity, you’d be forgiven for thinking everybody here cooks it all the time. They don’t. Most folks keep a can of Snow’s or Chunky for when the urge hits every other winter. I do that. Matter of fact, I’d been cooking professionally in New England eleven or twelve years before I ever made a scratch chowder. By then, all but two were jobs in kitchens which didn’t serve it as they were far away from both sea water and The Freedom Trail. An early gig in Woonsocket, RI, bought theirs frozen from a meat purveyor. Another was at a Jamestown shack whose owner claimed to personally make his crowd-favorite chowder early every morning. Turned out he was buying it in bulk from another place famous for it. I’d arrived once to him sprinkling pepper into a big pot saying, “Ooooo yeah! This is my best yet!” while the plastic tubs it came in were still in the trash behind him.

There never really was a need, see? Until Y2K, the year everything changed...

Well, not everything. Or much at all. It was just the year I that returned here from San Francisco and answered an ad looking for a chef. A guy from a medical background was trying to open his dream restaurant and had already been through three chefs. His last pan wizard hadn’t even sourced local vendors. He had seafood & meat Fedexed from New York City. At retail prices. Really high retail prices. Bills, rent & sodomy were piling up on the owner. He needed a menu and a grand opening in in a hurry.

While I was drawing up a salvage plan, Dr. Doomed brought me a styrofoam pint of Skipjack’s signature, clumpy bland chowder. That’s what he liked and what he wished reproduced. The moment had arrived! At last, I’d been tasked with boiling up the region’s Royal Stew! No big whoop. I was good with soups and knew what went into chowder…and what might be more fun in one. I agreed to what he asked, proceeded to make something else and presented him with a brothier and more aromatic chowder. One made with leeks, garlic and lots of thyme & rosemary. The rendered fatback base had been enhanced with a swatch of deeply smoky rind from a Smithfield country ham.

It freaked him out. Straight up told me he hated it. I asked him to give it a shot and let the customers to make the call. If it wasn’t immediately well received I’d happily plagiarize Skipjack’s crap for him.

Turned out to be a hit, especially during our growing lunches, which wasn’t so surprising. Tourists will eat the white glop clones wherever it’s sold. Locals, on the other hand, don’t want to order the same stuff they keep in cans in the cupboards. And it was already autumn! It only took a tweak or two to re-engage the working lunch crowd’s interest. And somehow, as those cost-effective bowls of revenue kept marching out of the kitchen, the owner began to like our chowder too.

In the end, sadly but not unexpectedly, that hickory whiffed soup didn’t exist in the world long enough for diners to get bored of it. Without other financial backers, and bills backed up to heaven, the joint went under quickly. With that, I was done with kitchens, and possibly chowders, once and for all.

Then came Bethapalooza. Led by its namesake Beth, this palooza was not a kitchen job. Just a yearly lounging/drinking weekend for old friends on Cape Cod. For the first two years we bought lobster take-out at a local place. Lobsters were lukewarm when they arrived, the stuffed quahogs sucked and the chowder was on the low-end of mediocre. I couldn’t handle it. The third year in Falmouth we pitched in funds and turned take-out night into a backyard clambake. There were huge lobsters, killer stuffies, nice chowder, hedges and chairs and fences set on fire… The fabric for wonderful memories

The chowder below had been the mainstay for that weekend for years. The group seemed to like it. There was even a tag-along guest one year who howled how it was the best he’d ever had. All while smearing mustard on his chest at 2:00AM. Fabric of memories, baby.

Before getting into the recipe, here are a couple “Just So You Knows”:

Firstly, this isn’t the kind of chowder you can stand up a spoon in. A lot of people really like coming off a hot beach to grab a cup of steamy white clam mud. Those silly New England mysteries — all so inexplicably fucked up.

I don’t use clam juice* as the bulk liquid, by the way. It’s a little metallic, often bitter, and while that may be very traditional it very certainly feels like lead poisoning. The liquid from the clams themselves will give you all you need of that action while good chicken stock adds a nicer, velvety umami & upapi oo mau mau feel.

Bethapalooza (White) Clam Chowder

6–8 Servings

• 2 tbs butter
• 4oz. Well-Smoked Bacon / Smoked Pancetta, small dice (See Notes)
• 2 large leeks, white & light green parts, split, sliced and rinsed (See Notes)
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• 2 Celery stalks, thinly sliced at an angle
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 Pint fresh cleaned, chopped clams
• 4 cups (1 quart) Chicken Stock
• 1 tbs. Chicken Powder! (Bouillion/Stock Powder) (See Notes)
• Fresh Thyme, 6 sprigs tied together
• 1.5 lbs small white or red potatoes, cubed (See Notes)
• 2 cups heavy cream, room temperature
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Kosher Salt (for table salt, half as much in recipe and whatever for taste adjusting)
• Chopped parsley, loose thyme leaves (if left over) for garnish (See Notes)
• Good Croutons, Crackers or Torn & Toasted Herbed Bread

1. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot render the bacon with butter over low heat, stirring now and them. Let it take its time. When most fat is liquefied and meat begins to darken, scoop the solids out. Drain them on paper towels or in a strainer set over the pot.
2. Raise heat to medium, add leeks, sprinkle with a little salt and cook until they just start to soften, 2–3 minutes. Add garlic & celery, cooking until they get soft & translucent.
3. Shake flour over leek mixture, stirring to incorporate and cook for a minute or two.
4. Raise heat to Medium High, add wine and let that simmer for a minute
5. Add clams with their liquid, chicken stock, chicken powder, thyme, potatoes and 1 tablespoon of salt. Heat till it just begins to boil then drop heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes become tender. Could take up to 45 minutes.
6. Add heavy cream and taste. Needs more salt? Add some. Doesn’t? Then don’t.
7. If you’ve got the time, turn off heat and let it sit an hour or two before re-warming to serve. If you ain’t got the time serve it immediately. I guarantee it will not suck.

Notes

• A robust smoked bacon is key. Since crap bacon is almost as expensive as the good stuff now, you might as well splurge for a nice pack. North Country Smokehouse in New Hampshire makes killer smoked bacons. Their Uncured varieties are phenomenal but just get what’s best in your region. Smoked varieties of Pancetta are almost universally well-smoked (with juniper, beech or oak) because they come from Italy where they don’t fuck around.
• Leeks take on this fine silkiness when cooked down. Unlike regular onions, they’ll curl and cling around the other components to make for sumptuous spoonfuls rather than chunky scoops. The do have mild earthiness; which might derive from their being grown in sandy, silty mud piles. I can’t be sure that’s the case but they are among the dirtiest vegetables to prep. Slicing before giving them a good, cold bath/rinse will ensure you get all the grit out of them.
• Chicken Powder (said in exclamation!) was the fix-all substance I learned about from Chef Frank Ho when I was his Chef de Cuisine at Boston’s Café Eurosia. If I brought him something which lacked a little something, he’d declare, “Chicken Powder, Frankie! Chicken Powder!!” It’s simply bouillon powder but it’s ubiquitous in Asian cuisines, lending a solid savoriness to food. That’s due to its glutamate components. In the mid-90’s, umami was barely on anyone’s tongue and MSG (monosodium glutamate) was still a bad word. Chicken Powder was the ingenious hack a place could use and, almost innocently, still claim it didn’t specifically add MSG to anything.
• Spuds with waxy starches like Red Bliss, Small White Skinned or Fingerlings maintain their shapes in soups/stews. You can use Russets if you want. Just note they fall apart easily after long heating rendering your chowder awkward and ashamed of its appearance.
• Chopped, fresh herbs make for dainty garnishes and flavor bursts in your spoon. Don’t sweat it if you’re out of herbs, or don’t feel like the extra hassle because you know what looks sexiest on a bowl of chowder? A fuckload of black pepper, a pat of butter and some busted crackers. A little hot sauce is comely as well — nothing wrong about putting lipstick on this pig!

*If you refer to this fluid as the “liquor” which came from the clams you bought either “tinned” at the “grocer”, or fresh from your “fish monger”, you’re a douche and your soups will have no soul.