Southwest Seafood Chowder

It's been a couple of weeks since soup. I was afraid I had lost the mojo for weekly soup, but maybe I just needed a couple week break. We'll see.

This week's soup came from a recipe in Food and Wine magazine's most recent issue. This issue was chock full o' recipes, especially soup recipes. Rather than print them out from their

website I spent about an hour cutting them all out and putting them in my ever expanding 3 ring binder of recipes. I realized that I'm going to have to create a binder just for the soup recipes since they are taking up a majority of the space in the current one.

I chose to make this soup for a couple of reasons. One was my love of anything close to Mexican food. The second reason was the occasion at work. My department was having an extended lunch meeting with the full extended staff attending. We do this once a quarter. The department was providing lunch which was Make-Your-Own Taco Salads. I took this as a sign that the Southwest Seafood Chowder was the soup to make.

I have found that seafood can be a polarizing item when it comes to food. It is not quite to the point of people either loving it or hating it but it is certainly less universally liked than chicken or beef. There are also quite a few people that have allergies to seafood items, especially shell fish. Knowing this and knowing that one of my favorite people at work has a shellfish allergy I don't often bring seafood based soups but like I said before, there was a sign and I had to go with it.

I made a few deviations from the Food and Wine (F&W) recipe for convenience and necessity. The magazine's recipe stated that 8 servings could be had from this recipe so I doubled it to accommodate the group at work. It turned out that I didn't need to do that. I usually make soups in 7-8 quart batches but doubling this recipe yielded about 12-13 quarts so I ended up cooking in two pots and had a good portion to leave at home. So the recipe below will yield about 7 quarts which is the size of the larger crock pots. The second change was from Ancho Chiles to Green Chiles. I couldn't find any Anchos so I looked up a good substitute

while at the store and choose Green Chiles (love smart phones). I bought a 24oz can and froze the left overs for chile rellenos this weekend. Anchos are usually sold dry, are heart shaped and look like the picture on the right. Two other deviations I took were the halibut and clams. The F&W recipe calls for halibut but the three stores I went to were all short on halibut so I used Cod instead. Well, Sprouts had some halibut but the guy behind the counter was being a dick and told me to wait a few minutes while he finished wrapping a couple trays of meat. Really? That stuff is more important than me? A guy looking to spend $20 on a couple of pounds of halibut? See ya. I talked to the store manager on the way out so I felt a little better. I do love shopping at Sprouts so I'll be back. One of the many things I like about Sprouts is being able to buy spices by the measure. This keeps you from buying ounces of a little used spice when all you need is a teaspoon or two. I also used a can of clams I had in the pantry instead of the cherrystone clams the recipe called for. If you've read me before you also know that I always use Spice World garlic. It comes jarred and can be found in the produce sections of grocery stores. The last change I made was using Trader Joe's Canned Yellow Corn instead of frozen as the recipe called for. I've mentioned before how much I love TJ's Canned Corn. It is the freshest, best tasting corn not on the cob. As I've also mentioned before I find my immersible blender to be one of the best tools available, especially for soups. This was another recipe where it gets used. It is so much better than having to schlep the soup into a blender in batches. So, that's it for the deviations, here's the rest of the story.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup of canola oil, divided

1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped

5 garlic cloves, smashed (Spice World)

2 large Ancho Chiles, seeded and torn into large pieces

1 teaspoon fennel seeds (Sprouts)

1 cup of dry white wine

One 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes

1 cup of 2-percent milk (oops, another deviation I took was to use half and half)

Half of a big ass can of clams from Costco including the clam juice

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 small red onion, finely chopped

1 celery rib, finely chopped

1 fennel bulb, finely chopped

1 can of TJ's yellow corn

1.5 teaspoons of smoked sweet paprika

1 pound of skinless halibut fillet cut into 1.5 inch cubes

1 pound of shelled and deveined medium shrimp

Oyster crackers or crusty bread for serving

METHOD

1. In a large pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the yellow onion, garlic, ancho chiles, and fennel seeds, cook over moderate heat. Stirring frequently, cook until the onion is translucent, about 8 minutes.
2. Add the wine and cook until reduced by half, about 5 minutes
3. Add the crushed tomatoes and 4 cups of water, bring to a boil and cook for about 15 minutes.
4. Stir in the milk or half and half
5. Puree the soup with your immersible blender or your counter top blender powered by a little under-counter dinosaur if you are Wilma Flinstone.
6. In a separate large pot or pan add the remaining oil and heat until shimmering. Add the potatoes and cook over moderately high heat stirring occasionally until lightly browned in spots, about 5 minutes.
7. Stir in the red onions, celery, chopped fennel, and corn. Add the paprika, and cook over moderate heat, stirring until the celery is crisp tender, about 7 minutes.
8. Add the cooked potato and vegetable mix to the pureed soup and bring to a boil.
9. Add the fish, shrimp, clams and clam juice to the soup. Simmer until the halibut is white and the shrimp is pink, about 5 minutes.
10. Serve!