New England Clam Chowdah

aka Clam Chowder

Ingredients

• 2 cups (or equal parts) celery, carrot and leak tops and bottoms (seasoned with salt + pepper)

• 1 onion chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

• 1/2 cup sakè or white wine

• 4 medium ladles of seafood stock

• 4 small potatoes, chopped ((seasoned with salt + pepper + a healthy pinch of thyme)

• 1 can of clam juice

• 1 cup canned clams

• 2lbs fresh clams, cockles or Manila’s are good

• 1/2 cup heavy cream

• 2 tbs fish sauce

• 1 tsp Dashi

Instructions

Sweat all your vegetables and caramelize with the seafood stock of your choice.

Once you have used all your stock and there's a healthy amount of liquid in the pan, add your clams, white wine or sake and minced garlic.

Cover the clams for 5 minutes or until they open.

Then, add your fish sauce, heavy cream, dashi, canned clams and clam juice.

Cook for another two minutes and then turn off the heat.

Serve with toasted sourdough!

Side note: With this recipe I added a shrimp head stock. You can use the carcass of fish, shrimp, lobster tails etc to bulk up the clam flavor of any fish broth or chowder. In this case I used the shrimp heads because I had so many clams... I knew it wouldn’t affect the flavor but rather enhance it.