Chowder Days are back.

I love chowder. I grew up eating some of the best clam chowder in the world at a restaurant called The Grog in Newburyport – a north shore suburb of Boston. Sadly, when I stopped being able to eat milk and cream I had to give up chowder. Recently, my friend gave me a recipe for corn and scallop chowder that looked so good, I just couldn’t not try it. The only dairy was 1/2 a cup of half-and-half which I thought I could either skip altogether or find some acceptable substitute for. Originally, I was going to use 1/2 a cup of finely pureed cooked cauliflower, but in the end I couldn’t find cauliflower the day I was in the mood to make it so I took the simplest option and just added an extra potato. I made a few other minor modifications to the original recipe – in addition to dropping the cream - to liven it up a little bit and the result came out amazingly creamy and hearty. My husband tried it and then kept eating bowl after bowl. “I can’t stop eating that soup you made,” he said. With a comment like that we’ll forgive him for calling it soup.

If you do manage to have any left over, this chowder keeps well for a few days in the fridge, but it does tend to thicken up quite a bit. I added some boiling water to thin it out when I reheated it.


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Corn and Seafood Chowder

1 Tablespoon butter or olive oil
1 cup thinly sliced leek or shallots
1 cup thinly sliced celery
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 large all purpose potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups frozen whole-kernel corn
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
32 ounces fat-free low sodium chicken broth
3/4 pound seafood (one or all of scallops, shrimp or calamari)

1/2 cup half-and-half, if using

1 Tablespoon chopped fresh parsely


1.Melt the butter in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add leek and celery; sauté for two minutes. Sprinkle with flour, stirring to coat.

2. Add potato, corn, salt, thyme, black pepper, cayenne pepper and chicken broth. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and cook 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are cooked through.
3. Add seafood and cook for two minutes or until seafood is cooked through (shrimp turn pink, a scallop sliced open will be opaque all the way through).

4. If using, stir in half-and-half at this point. Stir in parsley.