The Sacred Art of Eating

Feeling funny on a Sunday night, I went for a soup from the Instant Calmer chapter. It sorted me right out, and no mistake.

• Chowder with Asian Flavours

This soup has many things going for it. Firstly, it was dead easy to make. There was a little initial standing around chop-chopping, but thereafter all the prepping of ingredients took place whilst previous stages were cooking. I made things more difficult for myself by not having pre-skinned smoked cod fillets, but even with the additional effort of skinning the fish, this was easy peasy.

Part of the reason it tasted so good was that we had amazing chicken stock to use. (The first step is cooking up leeks and potatoes in chicken stock). We’d followed the advice of the mighty Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All (a god amongst mortals) on stock making, which included the note that Nigella says it’s not worth making stock with only one chicken carcass, and so to save them up in the freezer until you have plenty. We had the leftover carcass from a roast pre-christmas and some well picked at chicken wings. Also in the freezer were the un-cooked bones and skin from my making Dougal butcher six chicken thighs into thigh fillets for the Pollo Alla Cacciatore, and the fat trimmed off the beef for Steak Slice with Lemon and Thyme. I gave the various raw bits a blast in the oven with some garlic, olive oil and thyme, and then the whole lot went into the stock pot. Let me tell you, the results were awesome!

I didn’t deviate much from the recipe. I had no baby corn, as they’d been on special offer in Somerfield’s and as such had sold out. The recipe also called for small/medium prawns; I had a bag of king sized prawns in my freezer and wasn’t going to buy more prawns when they were available. And anyway, I’m from by the seaside, and where I come from chowder is a tricksy dish! All calm across the surface, a little glimpse of potato or sweetcorn here, but what lies beneath? The first spoonful might bring up a whole mussel! Then a huge langoustine, eyeing you in its beady way! I felt, therefore, that my upgrading of the prawns was entirely justified.

What a soup this was. Warm and filling in its own right, easy to make, largely speaking pretty healthy, and with a lip tingling glow provided by the generous sprinkling of fresh chilli and coriander on top. This was a huge hit here at Caledonian Place and will certainly feature again.

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