That looks marvelous!

Thank you for sharing this recipe! Real Maine haddock or clam chowder is the only kind we like. I spent my summers on the coast of Maine since I was a very young kid and my father used to dig clams. Not sure we ever found the perfect recipe for chowder, so I am definitely going to try this!

Thanks for sharing your recipe, Petalique! We love New England Clam Chowder and I can't wait to try this. Do you have a preference for cod or haddock?

Thanks for sharing that, it looks very simple to make. I've never had fish chowder, only clam or corn. Hubby likely wouldn't eat it, sadly. He's not a seafood fan like me, nor is he a chowder fan. That's OK - more for me😊

This made me recall that our neighbor, when I was kid, seeded quahog clams into the bay behind our houses, and years later, after the neighbors were long gone, I would harvest them when the tide went out. I always flushed them for a few days in a big bucket of saltwater with a handful of cornmeal tossed in, changing the water daily. I used them for clam sauce and chowder - they were huge! The cornmeal made them extra tasty, IMO.

IIRC, they were very easy to find and dig up, with very thick shells - apparently a different kind than yours.

Man now I am hungry!! I too love all the seafood dishes, but am rarely able to get good seafood here in the Midwest, and if it is good, it's expensive. I'm planning on making fish soup this weekend, but it is going to have a tomato base, because I have to watch my saturated fats now, and also I just have tilapia and shrimp to put in the soup, both farm raised . . . that's what I can afford. Plus canned clams, mostly for flavor. If I got my hands on some good haddock, I would splurge with the milk. My aunt used to cook her fish in milk with potatoes. That thickened the sauce all on its own. Delish! Where do you get your salt pork, just at the grocery? Even good ham is getting hard to find at our grocery. We have lots of pork, but the ham is all mushy or chemical flavored. Once and a while I can find some pancetta, but I usually don't splurge on it.

I love real chowder - fish or corn. When living outside of Maine for the first time and encountering the spackle like goop that passed as chowder elsewhere I was grossed out.

I need to make my first ’city’ trip of 2022 to Portland to stock up on ingredients. Harbor Fish in the Old Port has a great chowder mix.

Petalique, I love your description of digging clams. I read it to my Dad, who is now 89 and he got quite a kick out of it. He was never a sportsman, but was a darn good clam digger. He said you either had a sense for it or you didn’t. He used to dig right off the beach near our cottage. But then red tide came along and put an end to it. I’m going to follow your recipe and make a batch of “chowda” for him. Thanks again!

This is my (copied) recipe for clam chowder. I posted it a while ago, but I’ll repost. It’s so good!

clam chowder

1/8 lb bacon, chopped

1 1/4 cup chopped tomato

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped carrot

1 cup chopped celery

1 1/2 tap. pepper

1 1/2 tsp.dried thyme

1 tsp. tarragon

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup clam base (very strong, use to taste)

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 cups milk*

1 1/2 cups heavy cream*

1 cup potatoes, cubed (I don’t peel)

1/3 cup dry sherry (such as Dry Sack)

2 cans baby clams and juice

Saute bacon until soft. Add vegetables except potatoes and saute until barely soft. Make a roux of flour and butter. Add milk and clam juice and cook until thickened. Add to cooked veg and add potatoes and cook until tender. Stir in sherry, clam base and clams.

I love chowder and that looks delicious. I do have some cod in the freezer and it's supposed to be below zero a couple of days next week, so soup would be nice in the meal rotation...

Thanks!

Annie

Sorry, i didn’t intend any disrespect to the OP, but I love my r3cipe so much and wanted to share.

HU -405,

That’s kind of you to share your recipe for clam chowder. I’m still searching for my Down East recipe, with just potatoes, onions, milk milk, fresh soft-shell clams and their ”liquor” (watery juice).

Here is a good photo essay on clamming.

Photos from Clamtown

BY HISTORIC IPSWICH ONFEBRUARY 26, 2020•( 10 COMMENTS )

By Coco McCabeI live on the Ipswich River, a thoroughfare for clammers making their way out to the mudflats. I can hear the whine of the engines on their small boats before they chug into view, one or two clammers per vessel, hunched against the cold. Often, they pass by at dawn, and just as often at dusk: Their lives depend on the ebb and flow of the tides.Low tide is when they work—digging hard in the sticky black mud regardless of sleet, snow, wind, bugs, or brutal heat. Clamming is not for softies, of body or mind. It requires physical endurance and psychological self-discipline.Here, in Ipswich, Mass., clamming is one of the oldest economic enterprises, bestowing the community with its well-earned nickname, Clamtown. Its bivalves are famous across the country.At a time when so many jobs are becoming automated, shipped to other countries, or swallowed by monopolies, clamming remains one of the few types of work individuals with drive and an independent spirit can still find: There are no degrees required and no bosses to report to.This collection of photos is a celebration of Ipswich clammers, a mostly unseen corps of workers whose grit I deeply admire.

link

https://historicipswich.org/2020/02/26/clamtown-photos/

Here isa link to Craig Fear’s website.

Six Types of Clam Chowder

https://fearlesseating.net/types-of-clam-chowder-in-new-england/

petalique,

Thank you for taking me back to my roots. My mother made a fish chowder very similar to your recipe. Though I make fish, clam or seafood chowder, I had drifted far from Mom's recipe. I tend to ad lib with whatever I have on hand so my variations have included bacon, Rice Dream, heavy cream, butter, corn, crab, scallops, shallots, leeks, white sweet potato, etc. It has been over 20 years since I made Mom's recipe. This weekend I made Mom's recipe; it was delicious!

It’s fun to cook in an ad hoc way and add whatever you think fits in it can be really interesting. My family has a tendency to do that and sometimes if I make a really good recipe I have to warn them that it’s already been messed with. They are not to touch it until they try it my way. Ha ha.

There’s lots of ways to cook lots of things. And if everybody made everything just alike we would only have one thing To make from a very thin recipe book.

Carol, ”This made me recall that our neighbor, when I was kid, seeded quahog clams into the bay behind our houses, and years later, after the neighbors were long gone, I would harvest them when the tide went out. I always flushed them for a few days in a big bucket of saltwater with a handful of cornmeal tossed in, changing the water daily. I used them for clam sauce and chowder - they were huge! The cornmeal made them extra tasty, IMO.”

Interesting. lucky you! When we first summered, there were quahogs ( ercenaria mercenaria) with very few soft shell clams (Mya arenarius).

Then they were only the soft shell clams, steamers, and you couldn’t find a quahog for the life of you. The quahogs don’t move as fast, and they’re much easier to catch. They usually are maybe only 6 inches down or 4 inches. But those soft shell clams are like race cars; in our enthusiasm it was easy to have the tines of the clam hoe puncture the clamshell. The quahogs have a very hard shell and didn’t have that vulnerability. As you can imagine once you’ve got sandy muddy soil into the clam, by puncturing it shell, you could still eat the clam, but you better rinse it well before putting it into your mouth. What a lot of people used to do is pour the broth into a separate cup next to ones cup of melted butter. So you can rinse off the clams in the broth before dipping it into the butter and eating it. With practice not so many clamps, punctured.

Pink, I bet you could make a really good fish chowder with a tomato base people do it all the time. I have to watch all the beds as well so you can bet I don’t get a chance to dine on something like fish chowder very often. And I shouldn’t.

I get my lean support at a grocery store but they don’t always have it. But growing up we just used regular salt pork. You don’t have to use very much in fact you could just use a teeny bit I’m not even use it. Something else that you could use to garnish or for flavor is Fried shallots. Cut them thin and fry them in oil till they’re brown. Drain off the shallots on a paper towel. Say the oil (canola is what I use) because you can use that oil over weeks to have a flavored oil and it will add character to something like a soup or a stirfry. You can refrigerate it. The crispy shallots really good day, just go easy, but if you’re frying them in mono saturated fat, you should be OK just go easy. There’s no cholesterol in that but you don’t want to much fat anyway I think.

This makes quite a bit of soup so you could just use a portion of whatever fish you have and not have to make a whole big bunch of the stuff. Let me know how your tomato-based fish soup comes out.

scuse typos

Agmass, there used to be a Shaws in South Portland ( Mill Creek?) And they used to have soft shell clams there that had already been cleaned – – apparently by soaking them in fresh water for a long time or maybe with something like cornmeal. But they were tasty with no grits. OK, maybe not as tasty as clams they have some mud in them and some marine worms and who knows what else they’ve got.

They also used to sell shelled (picked out) rock crab. Sweet delicious, not cheap. But for one small container of crab meat, a little bit of chopped celery heart and a little bit of mayo, you could make yourself a fantastic crabmeat sandwich.

Take your cooler because you can get a whole fish at someplace like the free Range lobster or whatever else is there. And you can get the bones in the whole carcass and make great broth from that. I wish I lived closer. People used to throw rock crabs away. It’s time consuming work to pick the meat out of the shell cleanly, including the body meat, and not get any shell mixed in. But if you’re sitting around with a bunch of friends or shooting the breeze on the back porch, it can be relaxing. But nowadays they probably want $10 for darn 6” crab.

@petalique Harbor fish is great because they will pack the fish in ice and a cooler for you. Although for the next few days no cooler would be necessary. We are starting our first real cold snap of this winter. 8 below tonight and colder yet tomorrow. Brrrrr.... Perfect soup weather...

I actually have one shallot left from a bunch I used for some recipe, have been wondering what to do with it . . . :)

https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/259489/italian-fish-stew/

This is kind of like what I make, except I add a dash of Parmesan on top, and also often use a can of clams or a shot of clam juice, plus some tiny pasta. I like the other kind with potatoes though, just don't often splurge on it. I also love fisherman's pie, which is the same flavor ingredients but the broth is thickened into a sauce, smoked fish gives the smoky salty note, and sometimes chopped hard boiled eggs are added . . . not sure why on that part, gilding the lily.

l pinkmountain,

That recipe reminds me of a fish soup I used to make that contained fresh fennel, orange zet, saffron and garlic in it. It was delightful. I wonder where I put that recipe. Hmm...

agmss — I will try togo there next time I get to ? Portland. Thanks.

Pink — that soup sounds wonderful. here is a photo from that link. I want to make this.

I am eager to try this. Thanks.

Moosemac, try to find your recipe ;)