Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Seafood Chowder Let there be no doubt about it: I love seafood chowder. If I see it on a menu anywhere I have to try it. It's my adventure, my search for a culinary holy grail. Sometimes I am very pleased with what I eat, sometimes I am very disappointed. Recently I was having a quick lunch in a hotel bar in Waterford. Seafood chowder was on the menu and I ordered it, only to be advised that it would take twelve minutes to cook, too long to wait if I wanted to catch my train. I made do with a very disappointing tomato and fennel soup. Let's just say if you have ordered a soup with tomato as the main ingredient, you would expect fresh tomatoes rather than canned ones. So, back to my own little chowder venture on the 15th February. Still trying to get value out of our various cookery books, I picked on one I bought a few years ago: Complete Comfort Food edited by Bridget Jones. (I used it last weekend to make boeuf bourguignon and key lime pie for the spouse's birthda...

Wild Salmon Chowder Chowder is one of my favourite things to eat. Whenever I see chowder on a menu I choose it. In anticipation of its arrival at my table, I wonder what will be swimming about in the bowl: will there be a variety of fish?, will there be mussels?, will the stock be thick or thin? To eat chowder in different places is to take part in a big adventure. So, it was with some trepidation that I undertook Angela Nilsen 's recipe in The Soup Book . Wild salmon chowder: starring the spouse's new saute pan. The finished chowder absorbs the flavours of the dill and grated lemon zest. Among the ingredients are streaky bacon, spring onions, thyme, bay leaves, small waxy potatoes, fish or chicken stock, salmon fillets, cream, dill and lemon zest. You need a wide, deep saute pan (I wish I could insert diacritics!), and serendipitously the spouse had bought one during the week - a big beast of a pan! I started by crisping up the chopped bacon, then removed it and...