50 Chowders: One Pot Meals - Clam, Corn, & Beyond [Hardcover]

New England clam, Manhattan red, and corn--that's the chowder story, right? Wrong. In 50 Chowders, award-winning chef Jasper White explores a surprisingly wide range of these savory one-pot meals while also offering chowder history and folklore, in-depth ingredient profiles, cooking tips, and technique instruction. (Did you know that chowder is best "cured" for one hour to three days after it's made to allow flavors to meld?) Probably the last word on the subject, the book delivers the kind of comprehensive culinary profile that enlightens even seasoned cooks. Everyone will find its recipes tempting and approachable. Beginning with a history of chowder--White sets its birth in the 18th century, citing among its possible "inventors" Native Americans, French or English fishermen, or settlers in Canada and Massachusetts--the book then explores typical chowder ingredients such as the all-important salt pork. Recipes follow for classic seafood chowders and for "farmhouse" brews such as Spring-Dug Parsnip, Shaker Fresh Cranberry Bean, and Nantucket Veal. Other chowder newcomers include Digby Bay Scallop Chowder with Cabbage and Bacon, Lightly Curried Mussel Chowder, and Bermuda Fish Chowder, which is served, deliciously, with a pitcher of rum. White also provides a chapter on chowder companions such as common crackers and includes recipes for Cheddar Cheese Biscuits and Skillet Corn Bread, among other go-withs. With eight pages of color photos and numerous technique illustrations, the book gives a humble but essential American dish its full due at last. --Arthur Boehm

"In order to understand chowder, you must move away from the image of the pasty-white clam chowder restaurants serve in a small cup with a bag of crackers." For White, the popular chef of New England cuisine (Lobster at Home, etc.), chowder is not a soup; it's a hearty dish containing big chunks of fish, potatoes and vegetables in a lake of steaming broth. After perusing this competent and attractive book, many readers will be converted to his view. White begins with a complete history of chowder and a host of helpful tips on selecting the basic ingredients: fish, shellfish, salt pork and bacon, potatoes, onions, cream, thyme, corn, etc. His instructions for filleting fish are excellent, and the rundown of various types of fish used in chowderAcomplete with illustrationsAbeats out similar sections in many specialized fish cookbooks. (Another chapter contains instructions for digging up your own clams.) Still, the beauty of chowder lies in its humble character and simplicity, and White respects that too much to ruin chowder by making it fussy. He provides excellent version of such classics as Corn Chowder, New England Fish Chowder and Manhattan Red Claw Chowder. The problem is that because the dish's basic ingredients are so common, many of the recipes resemble one another: only a devotee could distinguish the flavors of New England Clam (Quahog) Chowder, Steamer Clam Chowder and Razor Clam Chowder. And the closest thing to quirky is a Bermuda Fish Chowder with Crab, made with cloves and rum. Still, White convincingly showcases the ease with which these tasty, filling meals can be prepared, and his careful explanations go a long way toward resurrecting chowder's place in fine New England cuisine. Eight pages of color photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mark Miller author of Coyote Café: Foods from the Great Southwest For anyone who likes clam chowder or any hearty stew with an earthy soul, Jasper White's book will be a revelation of how easy it is to make great chowders. His instructions and knowledge are like having your own personal secret family recipes. Timeless techniques combined with a creative insight that makes fantastic eating, this book has more useful information on seafood than a whole boat of fishermen.

Alice Waters Jasper White cooks just the way I like to eat! His passion, his purity, and his attention to detail make the chowders in this book irresistible.

Jacques Pépin I am a great admirer of Jasper's cooking. Thorough, serious, personal, opinionated, and knowledgeable, the recipes in 50 Chowders reflect his gentleness and his professionalism.

When most of us think of chowder, New England-style fish or clam chowder is what comes to mind, but they are only two of the dozens of home-style chowders you can make from this book. Once you discover the diversity of ingredients you can cook into a chowder and see the scope of styles and colors open to you, you will wonder how we ever came to think there were only one or two chowders in the world.

Authentic chowder is characterized by generous chunks of local seasonal ingredients served in a moderate amount of broth. Another basic characteristic of chowder is its ease of preparation -- even chowders that take more than an hour to make don't require anything more than keeping an eye on the pot. A big pot of chowder is perfect for a large gathering of family and friends, and because chowder truly is best when made ahead, you'll have plenty of time to enjoy your company.

50 Chowders is the first hardcover cookbook to explore the many interpretations of chowders. On the familiar side, you will find a recipe for Corn Chowder explained with the kind of detail that ensures a sweet, mellow broth, succulent chunks of potatoes, and fresh golden kernels of corn. On the exotic side, there is a recipe for San Francisco Crab "Meatball" Chowder, an exciting dish whose deep and robust flavors make it really quite special. Here are a few of the more than fifty other chowders you will find: Shaker Fresh Cranberry Bean Chowder, Nova Scotia Lobster Chowder, Nantucket Veal Chowder, Pacific Northwest Salmon Chowder, and nine different clam chowders.

Among this book's unique features: A chapter of chowder companion dishes, from Parker House Rolls to Buttermilk Biscuits; more than fifty illustrations of important cooking techniques and chowder ingredients; cook's notes for each recipe, giving possible substitutions, required equipment, and serving suggestions; a list of reliable mail-order suppliers of seafood and other chowder ingredients.

Jasper White brings to 50 Chowders the same enthusiasm and flair that made his previous book, Lobster at Home, "like having a Down Easter by your side, distilling years of experience and telling you just what to do" (Corby Kummer of The Atlantic Unbound). With this treasure trove of information and expertise in your kitchen, you will never think of chowder in the same way again.

Jasper White is recognized as an authority on seafood and traditional New England cooking. In 1983, Jasper and his wife Nancy opened Jasper's, the only Boston restaurant ever to be awarded four and a half stars by The Boston Globe. It was also named Boston Magazine's Best of Boston for eleven out of twelve years. Jasper's also won the prestigious Ivy Award.

In 1990, Jasper was named the James Beard Best Chef in the Northeast, crowning his career. Jasper White is currently head chef and partner of Jasper White's Summer Shack, a casual, friendly restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that serves many of the dishes featured in 50 Chowders.

Chapter 1: The Folklore and History of Chowder

Throughout this book, I inject bits and pieces of the folklore and history of chowder as it pertains to the recipe or subject at hand. This time line is intended to put those bits and pieces in order, to give you a clearer idea of the evolution of chowder. Chowder-like seafood stews and dishes occurred simultaneously in many parts of the world, but this book is about a specific dish -- North American chowder, and the variations that derived from it. The early history of chowder, prior to 1751, is shrouded in a lack of written information, but from that point forward, the story unfolds in cookbooks and other published writings. Recipes tell the story of different ingredients and how chowders changed as certain foods became abundant and fashionable. It should be noted, however, that those recipes are often a reflection of changes that occurred years before. Other written material, letters, periodicals, and books, help give us an idea of the cultural importance of chowder, especially along the Atlantic coast. The information I used to piece this history together came from dozens of wonderful books, but three in particular were invaluable: Sandra L. Oliver's Saltwater Foodways, Richard J. Hooker's Book of Chowder, and John Thorne's Down East Chowder. The complete list can be found in the bibliography on page 237. I apologize, in advance, for digressing into a somewhat personal overview in the last thirty years of the time line that follows, but this was my era, I lived and breathed it, so I wanted to relate my own experience of it.

1700-1750

Although it is certain that chowder comes into existence at some point during this period, everything else is speculation, of which there is no shortage. The French word for cauldron, chaudière or chaudron, is often referred to as a point of origin for the name, but the word jowter, meaning fishmonger, and its dialect variations, chowter and chowder, were being used in Cornwall and Devonshire, England, in the sixteenth century. Two seafood stews, faire la chaudière, from the fishing villages of Brittany, and chaudrée de Fouras, from the Fouras region of France, are frequently mentioned by food writers as a possible predecessor to chowder, while others point to the English crusted pye, layered with salt pork and fish. French settlers in Canada, French fishermen, Channel Islander (English) settlers in Massachusetts, English fishermen, and Native Americans from the Micmac tribe are all among the list of suspects who may have cooked the original chowders. Others speculate that it was the mixture of French and English fishermen, possibly in the fishing camps along the Newfoundland coast, that gave rise to the creation of chowder. The basic staples carried aboard most fishing vessels in the early 1700s -- salt pork, hardtack (ship's biscuit), and fresh fish -- make it easy to believe that chowder originated at sea. As John Thorne points out in his book Down East Chowder, given the limited staples aboard fishing boats during this period, one would "come to wonder not how chowder came into existence but what else they ever found to eat." Whether of French or English origin, or a combination of the two, chowder is not claimed by either culture. And although the English seem well aware of chowder during the eighteenth century, it all but disappears from their repertoire soon afterward. It is in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and New England that chowder making flourishes and where chowder becomes an integral part of the diet and culture.

1732

Benjamin Lynde, a New Englander, mentions in his diary that he had "dined on a fine chowdered cod" -- the first written reference to North American chowder.

1751

On September 23, the Boston Evening Post publishes the oldest-known printed recipe for fish chowder:

First lay some Onions to keep the Pork from burning,

Because in Chouder there can be no turning:

Then lay some Pork in Slices very thin,

Thus you in Chouder always must begin.

Then season well with Pepper, Salt and Spice;

Parsley, Sweet-Marjoram, Savory and Thyme,

Then Biscuit next which must be soak'd some Time.

Thus your Foundation laid, you will be able

To raise a Chouder, high as Tower of Babel:

For by repeating o're the Same again,

You may make Chouder for a thousand Men,

Last Bottle of Claret, with Water eno' to smother 'em

You'l have a Mess which some call Omnium gather 'em.

These directions teach us the method of layering chowder ingredients, which is how all chowders are made at the time. A few New England cooks make chowder using the layering technique to this day. The fact that the onions are used to prevent the "pork from burning" tells us that the salt pork of the time is very lean. Also take note of the bold use of herbs and spices, a practice that would die out in the early 1800s. Red wine is used in this chowder, but it most likely speaks of affluent Bostonians; it is unlikely that average working people could afford to season their chowder with a bottle of red wine.

1763

Hannah Glasse publishes the recipe "To Make Chouder, a Sea Dish" in the eighth English edition of her Art of Cookery. Her chowder is similar to other layered chowders, with "pickled pork," onions, herbs, biscuit, and cod, but the recipe departs from tradition with its optional "oysters, or truffles or morels." The reference to the sea in the title gives credence to the speculation of chowder's maritime origins. This cookbook was first published in England, but Glasse's is one of the last chowder recipes to appear in an English cookbook.

1792

John Pearson opens America's first commercial bakery in Newburyport, Massachusetts, producing Pilot Bread, a refined version of hardtack, also called ship's biscuit, an important chowder ingredient. Pearson's bakery business would eventually evolve into what became the National Biscuit Company, better known as Nabisco. Under the name Crown Pilot crackers, Nabisco produces Pearson's version of hardtack to this day. Hardtack was used in the earliest chowders. Aboard ships, it may have been the only source of carbohydrates. It is unlikely that hardtack was added to enhance chowder: Chowder was, more likely, a means to make hardtack more palatable.

1796

The first American cookbook, American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, is published. Her first edition does not include a chowder recipe, but the second edition, published in 1800, does contain one. Amelia Simmons's Chouder is made with bass, and although no potatoes are called for in her recipe, she suggests it be served with "potatoes, pickles, applesauce or mangoes." This is the first mention of potatoes in a chowder recipe.

1824

Two different chowder recipes are published. Thomas Cooper, a distinguished educator, uses anchovy sauce as well as mushroom ketchup to flavor his cod chowder in (get this) A Treatise of Domestic Medicine...to Which Is Added, a Practical System of Domestic Cookery. The other recipe, by Mary Randolph, in her book The Virginia Housewife, uses "any kind of firm fish" along with the usual salt pork, onions, and crackers, but her chowder removes the fish from the pot and thickens "the gravy with flour and butter" before pouring it back over the fish. It sounds very thick and heavy, with a small amount of broth, which is typical of early fish chowders. The tradition of little broth or liquid in early chowders is probably reflective of the fact that aboard ships, fresh water was one of the most precious ingredients.

1828

The common cracker, which, along with Crown Pilot crackers, has become the quintessential chowder cracker, is produced commercially in Vermont for the first time (as stated on the bag of the Vermont Country Store's common crackers). These round, puffed, hard crackers were first known as Boston crackers and most likely originated in that bustling seaport.

1833

Lydia Maria Child publishes the twelfth edition of The American Frugal Housewife. In a section simply called Fish, she explains how to layer salt pork, onions, crackers, and fish to make a chowder in typical New England fashion, but she mentions lemons and beer as possible additions and, of even greater significance, she states that "tomato catchup is very excellent" and "a few clams are a pleasant addition." The tomato is just beginning to gain acceptance among Americans, who, until just a few years prior, still considered it to be poisonous. This recipe includes the first written reference to using clams in chowder, even though they are not the main ingredient. Four years later, Eliza Leslie, from Philadelphia, would write in her Directions for Cookery that "chowder may be made of clams"; she also becomes an early advocate of the potato as a chowder ingredient, suggesting "a layer of sliced potatoes."

1842

Famous statesman and chowder maker Daniel Webster records his method for making fish chowder, calling for a combination of the head of a cod and fillets of haddock cooked in a "sufficient quantity of water." He also uses "good Irish potatoes" and just "a few of the largest Boston crackers" in what seems to be the first modern, brothy chowder. From this time forward, potatoes become more popular and important in chowder, as the use of hardtack and crackers in the chowder itself decreases, eventually becoming food that is served alongside chowder.

1850-1860

Several chowder recipes using clams and tomatoes appear. Clam chowders are becoming accepted as a suitable substitute for fish chowders, but it will be another fifty years before they become widely popular. Tomatoes are becoming a popular food, but are used sparingly in chowders,...