Mid-week feeding can be quite difficult. Thinking up something to eat that doesn’t involve 3 hours of preparation and also doesn’t involve picking up a phone and ordering sweet and sour chicken balls. Well here’s an easy enough quick fix: Seafood Chowder (no mussels in this one)
For this luxurious mid-week chow-down you’ll need:
- Cod loin
- Smoked haddock
- Salmon fillets
- Prawns (big fat ones)
- Potatoes
- Onions
- Garlic
- White wine (not just for drinking)
- Milk
- Flour
- Parsley
- Single cream
- Salt and pepper
First you fry the garlic and onions until soft in some butter and olive oil. Then you add some flour and continue cooking. Then you add the potatoes, wine, milk and some cream and let it bubble away until the potato is softish. Then you add all the fish:
Keep cooking until the prawns go pink:
Now its ready. Serve with lots of sourdough bread (preferably smothered in expensive local butter) and a sprinkling of smoked paprika and parsley:
So this sourdough bread. Its ‘San Francisco Style’. What is that?
Hey, carve out a hole in that bread and make a bowl out of it !!!
Now that’s San Francisco Sourdough/chowder !!!
Oh yum. That chowder looks so creamy!
I suspect that it’s called “SF Sourdough” because they used a fermented sourdough starter instead of packaged yeast to get the bread to rise?
But that is just a guess . . .
That looks amazing. I like how you say lots of butter and love the paprika too.
I know butter is a bad word in many people’s books but its all natural at least
Yum!!!!! Love chowder. Thanks for this post!
@pknewby
Great images – and I love recipes without specific amounts because you can let your creative spirit go. As to the San Francisco sourdough, you might consider trying your own hand from the book, Tartine Bread. Chad Robertson shows in words and pictures how to replicate his famous bread that has caused lines (or is it queues?) of customers going around the block at his bakery in the Mission District of San Francisco
Thanks for the tip and yes we form orderly ‘queues’ over here!)
Have some consideration for an old man’s heart. While I could cod (no pun intended) myself that the fish was doing me good, the slices of butter served over the sourdough are a step too far. It looks delicious. I am doing something with a couple of squid later…..
Conor
Squid – now thats an interesting ingredient; I’m keen to see what you come up with. As for butter I just read that everything we’ve been taught about butter v low fat spread and all the other ‘don’t go there’ foods is all rubbish and just eat what you want in moderation. (Except for bananas for some bizarre reason – they are a definite no-no!?)
i think the banana thing is nonsense. I have one every am on my muesli and I’m perfectly fine, I think…..
You’re right the banana thing is nonsense. But imagine the chaos if they said vegetarianism was bad for you…
I am sixth generation San Franciscan… that might not sound like much to you Brits, but take it in context. Not just the US, not a very old nation to start with, and moreover, California, which wasn’t even settled until 1848. For San Francisco I’m like, old school. Anyhow, the thing with the bread. There’s nothing, and I mean, NOTHING like good SF sourdough. I cannot leave the Bay Area, let alone the state due to my sour dough addiction. Forget the Twinkie Defense, this goes deeper. I live 35 miles from SF and will remain within sourdough radius all my days (much to my husband’s chagrin, but hey, he knew what he was signing up for).
Just what I tell the Mrs when I’m photographing sourdough bread at midnight. In 1848 Europe was trying to pull itself to pieces. Except the UK, we were being British, keeping out of trouble
San Francisco is known for its sourdough bread in much the same way Boston is known for baked beans, New York for bagels and Nassau for waking up in a bathtub of ice, down a kidney with a note instructing you to call an ambulance. Apparently the sourdough in San Fran is delicious. I can’t really speak to the Caribbean specialty however.
My god I’m never going to Nassau
Oooh, now this sounds veeeery good!! Don;t suppose you’d cook some and send it south-west-wards?!
For the last 5 years I’ve been on a fast-paced journey from alomost-vegan-herbivore to almost-total-omnivore (I choose not to venture as far as tripe, insects and kidneys …) and have now cooked multiple pounds of raw animal flesh … for reason, fish is my sticking point … the difference between a juicy piece of beef and a fresh slb of cod is … ?!? Apparantly it’s a massive difference! 
The thing with fish is the bones. I hate fish bones so I have to buy it deboned which is very expensive so don’t do it much
Bloody delicious. I can’t tell you how twitchy it makes me seeing that gorgeous chilled glass of White! I can’t wait to sink a bottle again in a few months. In meantime I will just salivate….
Chilled is a rarity in this house – it doesn’t last long enough to get cold
Your meal does remind me of having chowder on the wharfs of San Francisco.
Me too Karen. I went to a conference in SF in 2006 and loved a bowl of chowder in sourdough.
I vaguely remember visting there hoping to catch a ferry to Alcatraz only to find out you had to book three weeks in advance