Not a seafood fan? Then try your hand at these different chowders
Sometimes certain food descriptors have automatic associations. We hear Sunday roast and think beef; when I hear lamb, I think chops, shepherd’s pie or ground burger. These are the most common variations, so, if I invited you over for a bowl of chowder would you expect it to be seafood?
I love chowder. I love the richness of it, and although my personal preference leans towards nice thick chowders full of heavy cream, others in my household prefer their chowders milky. But we agree that seafood chowder, while not exactly elevated to company-only status, isn’t necessarily what we want on a typical Wednesday night in November; it can be expensive to make and sometimes, just a bit too rich. That’s when we enjoy more humble but equally satisfying chowders.
If it isn’t the seafood that defines the chowder then what does? My first thought was that chowder was anything milk- or cream-based, but a Manhattan clam chowder has a tomato base, so that eliminated that theory. If I go back to my French roots a chowder was considered any dish that started with a roux, but by that definition a gumbo would also be considered a chowder. Chowder seems to mean different things to different people. In earlier times, if you lived on the coast it stood to reason that you did eat seafood or fish chowders, but as you moved inland the dish had more meat and vegetables, yet was still called chowder.
No matter where I turned for answers they all continuously contradicted themselves. The word chowder itself comes from the French word chaudière which translates to cauldron, so for the purpose of this exercise I’m going to declare that chowder is any hearty dish that is cooked in one pot with rich and comforting ingredients, the end result being one that warms both the body and soul.
In preparing for this story I knew that I wanted to include a hearty corn chowder recipe because it is one of my all-time favourite dishes. The second chowder was inspired by a seafood chowder that I had at Dhaba; a lovely Indian restaurant in Halifax. They have a seafood chowder seasoned with tandoori spices that is hands down one of the best chowders I have ever eaten. The flavour is unexpected but so wonderfully comforting that I chose to re- create it using cauliflower as my main ingredient.