CodFish ChowderSoup

Thanks to our resident librarian, we knew that yesterday was National Homemade Soup Day -- which was perfect for the record-setting cold we were expecting (and received). In preparing this blog post, I noticed that it has also been Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, but the aforementioned conditions made my usual Saturday gingerberry waffles a better choice.

In addition to finding the holiday, Pamela found just the right resource -- the Soup Cookbook from the Jean Childress Country Kitchen collection. More a pamphlet than a book, this publication is 32 pages (that is, eight sheets folded and stapled) and is apparently difficult to find even on sites that carry other works by this New England writer.

Having already intended to pick up some seafood for the day's main meal, we quickly settled on the recipe entitled "Oven Baked Fish Chowder" even though I usually prefer shellfish chowders to fishy fish chowders.

Preparation was simple. I preheated the oven to 375F and arranged the racks so that a Dutch oven (that is, a large, oven-safe covered pot) would fit. 

I then set the pot on the counter and added most of the items from the ingredient list (my choices and variations in parenthesis):

• 2 pounds cod or haddock, cut into bite-sized pieces (I chose 1 pound cod and applied kitchen math to all other ingredients; original quantities are shown below, so cooks should do their own math)
• 12-ounce can evaporated milk
• 4 potatoes, unpeeled and cut into chunks (as I usually do, I partly peeled some Yukon golds)
• 1/4 cup celery leaves (we opted to exclude this, given the tiny quantity would use)
• 1 bay leaf (I used a small one)
• 4 whole cloves 
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 tsp dried dill (I used a bunch of fresh dill, chopped)
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (I used more than this)
• 2-1/2 tsp salt (I used less than this)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (see below)
• 2 cups boiling water (I set this on the kettle while chopping and measuring the rest)

I simply placed stirred all this together gently and placed the covered pot in the oven for one hour at 375F.  After about half an hour, the aromas began wafting into the rest of the house, reminding us that this meal was now preparing itself.

Meanwhile, I gently heated light cream (recipe calls for 2 cups, so I heated 1 cup) on the warming zone of the stove top. Any way of getting the temperature close to that of the soup without scalding it would do. 

After an hour, I stirred in the warmed cream and chopped some parsley for a garnish. I added Tabasco to my serving (this is chowder, after all) and served it with some buttered crusty baguette from our favorite fishmonger. Kyler's Catch is of course the only place I would go to for cod, and they usually have some yummy bread to go with whatever seafood we are having. 

This was both tastier and more photogenic than I expected.

The recipe purports to serve 8, which seems correct. Divided in half, we had plenty for the two of us, and enough leftover for a lunch. I used only 2 ounces of white wine in the soup, so the rest of the bottle served as our beverage. Langhe Doc Bianco Dragon was both a good ingredient and a perfect pairing. 

Some folks use only cheap or leftover wine for cooking, and sometimes we do that. But more often we use what we are drinking in what we are cooking, and we never regret this. I had selected this wine for the label when browsing our new favorite wine store, not realizing until later that the Luigi Baudana vineyard had named the wine in honor of its label, which had been the last work of their beloved designer Gianni Gallo. This is a white wine from Barolo, a region I had associated only with exquisite reds.