The Gift of Inspiration

 

My grandmother, “Nana” had an April birthday so this month’s blog entry is in honor of her.

Did you have someone in your life as a child or youngster who fostered your devotion to a particular interest, skill or hobby?  For me that person was my Nana, my maternal grandmother.  By the time I was born she was living beside my parents in a multi-family home.  So I had the pleasure of her companionship every day.  She was born in Eastport, Maine in 1898, one of seven children, five girls and two boys, a poor, hard scabble family.  She learned to cook from her mother, on a woodstove in their drafty kitchen, fetching wood from the woodpile and water from the well.  She inspired me to love cooking because she did it so well and she was a great storyteller.  For every recipe she had a fascinating story, like getting stung by bees while gathering blueberries for a pie when she was little.   My earliest memory of her showing me how to cook was when I was seven.  I recall having to stand on a stool at the stove to be able to see into the pot.  She was making a fish chowder.  She wanted me to see how the fish broth should look when cooking the potatoes and onions for the chowder.  The starch from the potatoes was the only thickening and a pearly, opaque broth meant that the starch had boiled out of the potatoes. 

           A photograph of my Nana at age 7, the same age as me when I learned to make chowder

My Nana kept a recipe book with her own hand-written recipes.  I never saw her use another cookbook.  I used to look at the various recipes, some with funny names like “Ice Box Pudding”.  I still have that book!  She taught me that you don’t always need to measure, just put the ingredients together until the taste is perfect!

She became a widow when her husband died of cancer of the spine at the age of 34, leaving her with a 13 year-old daughter, my mother.  She remarried a few years later, to a Scottish World War I veteran who was a widower with a teenage daughter too.  It was a marriage of convenience.  Together they forged a new life and took on a job as caretakers for a large estate.  She was to clean the big house and cook meals for hired help, and he was to take care of the gardens and grounds.  They lived in the care-takers house.  She baked bread and pies, made doughnuts for breakfast and a full spread of a meal for lunch. Chowder for dinner was very common and something her family had often when she was growing up as you could stretch it far and fill nine empty bellies with a hot meal before bedtime.

I intended to start posting my chowder recipes with the basic fish chowder, which was the first thing my Nana showed me how to make.  But since that recipe was accepted for publication in the upcoming Volume II of the Maine Bicentennial Cookbook, I decided to skip that recipe for now since it will be in bookstores this June.  Instead I offer you a recipe for seafood chowder. It starts out like a fish chowder includes a lot more seafood.  While fish chowder and clam chowder are humble and affordable, this is the most elegant of chowders and will cost you a bundle to buy all of the seafood you will need.  I don’t make this chowder very often but it is worthy to serve to your dearest friends and family for special occasions. 

 

Boothbay Haba Seafood Chowda

 

Chowder ingredients

Serves 6 - 8

1 haddock fillet

½ lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined

½ lb. scallops

1 or 2 cooked lobsters (1 ½ to 1 ¼ lb), cut into spoon size chunks

1 6.5 oz. can of chopped sea clams

2 ½ cups water

½ cup peeled and diced red potatoes

¾ cup chopped onion

1 ½ cups light cream

½ stick butter

Salt, pepper, Old Bay Seasoning

 

Place fish fillet and water in heavy soup pot, (water should just cover the fish). Drain clam juice from can of clams into the pot. Leave pot uncovered and bring to a boil.  Turn heat down and simmer fish for 10 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, remove fish from broth, and set aside. 

Add shrimp and scallops to fish broth and simmer for 5-6 minutes.

Remove cooked shrimp and scallops and set aside with the cooked fish.

Place potatoes and onions in fish broth and return to a boil for 15 minutes.  Potatoes should be very tender and broth should be pearly and opaque.

Return all of the cooked seafood and the chopped clams to the pot.

Add the light cream and butter and season to taste with salt, pepper, and Old Bay Seasoning. ( I often use Aleppo pepper in place of black pepper.) Warm gently without boiling.  Turn heat off and cool chowder, chill overnight before serving.  No chowder worth its salt is good until it sits for a night!