The cooler temperatures of fall always seem to signal the comforting call of soup. One of the most cozy iterations of the spoonable meal in coastal Canada is a well-constructed seafood chowder.
In his recently-released cookbook Chuck's Home Cooking: Family-Favourite Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours, chef Chuck Hughes shares both his no-fail recipe for seafood chowder as well as a heartfelt anecdote about how he became enamoured with local Quebec seafood at a young age.
"My love of seafood is one of the reasons I got into cooking. A lifetime ago, my mom was a flight attendant for Quebecair, an airline that serviced Québec’s Gaspésie and Côte-Nord regions, where most of our local seafood comes from. She would come home with whelks, shrimp, crab, and lobster, and we would sit with my grandmother and dig in like a pack of sea lions!"
The chef continues, "I’ve loved to cook and eat seafood ever since, and this chowder is one of our favourites today. It can be made with any seafood or leftover fish, and topping the thick, creamy chowder with homemade croutons makes this dish hard to beat."
Chuck Hughes' seafood chowder
4 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
½ cup water
3 tablespoons salted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 leek (white and light green parts only), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
3 stalks celery, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cups fish stock
1 cup whole milk
1 cup table (18%) cream
1 can (10 ounces/284 g) whole shelled baby clams, drained and juice reserved
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
11 ounces (300 g) haddock, cut into 2-inch cubes
7 ounces (200 g) cooked snow crab meat, picked over for bits of shell
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Croutons, for garnish
Combine the bacon and water in a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often. Once the water has completely evaporated, reduce the heat to medium and continue cooking the bacon until golden brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Scoop out the bacon, leaving the fat in the pot, and set aside.
Add the butter, onions, leeks, and celery to the pot and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables are soft and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.
Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in the fish stock, milk, cream, and reserved clam juice, then increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, stirring often.
Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, toss in the potatoes, and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Add the clams, reserved bacon, haddock, crab meat, salt, and pepper and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Stir in the parsley and ladle the chowder into bowls. Top with the croutons.
Store leftover soup, without croutons, in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.
