In the days when I used to do transatlantic business trips, my first meal after a jet-lagging flight needed to provide calories and be easily digested. New England Clam Chowder as served at Howard Johnson’s was definitely not exciting, but it fit the bill.
Modern chowders, like bouillabaisse, are made to a wide range of recipes and have a host of cooks all claiming theirs is either the authentic or the best. Like bouillabaisse, chowder is also a meal whose origins are lost in ancient history, originally a poor family’s meal made from scraps boiled up in a big pot – in fact, it’s the pot that gave it its name.
There are 16th and 17th century records of chowder (from The French chaudière, the name for a big cast iron cooking pot) all along the French coast from Bordeaux to the north coast of Brittany, and across the channel in Cornwall. Although many of the early New England settlers came from Devon & Cornwall, they were of farming stock, and they don’t seem to have approved of the eating habits of the fishermen. They did enjoy eels, but they probably used to catch them in rivers. In the 1620s the Pilgrims fed clams and mussels to their hogs with the explanation that they were “the meanest of God’s blessings” – even though they were a major source of food for the local Indians.
If you’d like to check out a couple of chowder recipes, see how Not Delia rises to a speed cooking challenge from Ainsley Harriott. An excellent, flexible recipe for boat food, in my view.
If you’re on a boat I think you could add just about anything you might catch to the chowder recipe – crabs, mussels, squid, fish, etc. I bet it would also be great with smoked haddock. We can’t get smoked haddock where we live and it’s the only thing I really miss here. But the chowder I made is the next best thing to Cullen Skink. I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback if you make it.
I’ve got some potatoes & onions around the place, so I’ll see what marine creatures I can find in my local supermarket. Maybe I’ll have a go at videoing my efforts…