Jamie All Week: Soup

Shrimp and Corn Chowder with Parsley, Bacon, and Red Chilies

As a child, I could never wait until Christmas to open my presents. Likewise, I was always greedily requesting my birthday gifts early in advance. I could never cut my mom a break. She’d find me rummaging through closets and other dark crevasses around the house for that “new Crayola box set” or “one year’s worth of Archie comics”. I think my unrelenting eagerness has been transfused to my diet. I have been impatiently waiting (since last fall) for all the summer fruits and vegetables to appear at the farmer’s markets. I’ve also been salivating over thoughts of watermelon salads, roasted artichokes, and corn chowda. I saw the most beautiful bunch of corn at the Alhambra farmer’s market almost two weeks ago and immediately snatched the remaining 5 cobs. This was pre-Jaime Oliver, mind you. I didn’t exactly have a game plan in mind for these succulent veggies. I just knew I wanted to revisit all the wonderful corn memories of summers past.

After my asparagus soup-incident (blender set on high + hot soup filled to the brim = nightmare), I have been a bit wary of making soups. But with fresh corn loafing around in my fridge, I knew that I wouldn’t have better chowder than one made with good quality kernels. Jamie has a corn and shrimp chowder recipe that sounded tasty. The recipe calls for bacon. That’s the magic word.

I was secretly hoping that I’d have to use the bacon fat somewhere in the soup.

I thoroughly read the recipe and found out that my gut instincts were correct: the recipe calls for rendering bacon fat to cook the potatoes and leeks in. Oh my fug. At that moment, the savory scent of bacon memories infiltrated my mind. Bacon, shrimp, corn, leeks, and potatoes– what could possibly go wrong? And in the end, [SPOILER ALERT] absolutely nothing did.

My best friend Diana stopped by with ½ pound of already cooked shrimp. I was too lazy to de-vein and peel raw shrimp. Jamie never said not to cut corners, anyway. With the shrimp out of the way, the soup-making was incredibly easy actually. It’s about two steps short of salad-making. After cooking everything in my pot, I added the chicken broth and cream and let the flavors come together before whirring everything together, this time with my Hamilton Beach immersion blender. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it got the job done. Plus, it was nice to have chunks of potatoes and shrimp with each bite of soup.

An intimate experience with leeks.

This is what gives the soup flava.

The potatoes trying to get up in the mix.

Obligatory action shot. Also pictured: Homestyle white bean spread + chopped salad, both loosely based on other Jamie-recipes.

Shrimp and Sweet Corn Chowder
Serves 4-6
1 large leek
1 pound potatoes (I used new potatoes)
1 quart chicken broth, organic
olive oil
6 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, free range or organic
12/3 cups frozen corn (I used fresh)
½ pound large shrimp, raw peeled (I used cooked)
11/4 cups heavy cream
sea salt & ground pepper
1 fresh red chile
6 cream or plain crackers
extra virgin olive oil

Cut ends of leek, quarter lengthways, wash under running water, and slice across thinly. Peel potatoes and chop them into 1-inch chunks. Pour chicken broth into saucepan and bring to boil.

Put a large casserole type pan (or pot) on high heat and add a drizzle of olive oil. Slice bacon and add to pan. Cook until golden and really crispy, letting all fat and flavor cook out onto the pan. Using tongs, remove and transfer bacon to plate, leaving fat in pan. Add leek and potatoes to pan and give them a good stir. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes until leek has softened. Add corn and shrimp. Pour hot broth into pan with cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, halve seed and finely chop chile. Roughly break up crackers and place them on the plate next to the bacon. Take soup off heat and use a hand blender to ently whiz it up until you have a smooth but slightly chunky texture. Season more to taste.

Serve with chile, bacon, and crackers. (not mentioned: Parsley, which I added)

COOKED FROM

I'm not very good at poaching eggs, don't hate.

For the most part, I have a pretty nondiscriminatory palate. I can eat and enjoy most things. But I’m embarrassed to say that I have qualms about soup. Soup has always been a hurdle. I would cringe whenever the school cafeteria decided to serve grilled cheese with a side of tomato soup. During those lunches, I would try to barter for bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos or tamarind candy. Dinners were just as dramatic. My grandmother, who claimed that her daikon soup would “cure” me of my brattiness and simultaneously stimulate my growth spurt, would scold me for rejecting her steaming hot saucepan of Asian vegetable-goulash. And if her blood wasn’t boiling enough, I’d open a can of Coke and call it “soup”. An angry tirade in Sichuanese would ensue.

Soup is always served too hot, or not hot enough; it lacks distinct flavors when the temperature is at either extremes. It’s like living in Manhattan. There are only a few occasions when the temperature is just right. And soup that comes silky smooth, as if it had been run through a sieve 5 or more times, loses its place in the “food” category. It becomes “beverage” or worse, “smoothie”.

My Jamie Oliver soup experience was kind of a fluke. I picked up scraggly-looking asparagus at the farmer’s market and wanted to find an easy recipe that called for asparagus. His Creamy Asparagus Soup with a Poached Egg on Toast came up, a sign that it was time to transform my aversion towards soup into something conducive to my learning.

So zuppa it was! Jamie’s recipe is easy and seemingly healthy. I started by cooking a mirepoix that consisted of leeks (left over from the fish dish), onions, and celery. Of course my house–and hair–smelled wonderful at this point. Every step that followed was straightforward and easy.

The only mishap happened when the blender, filled with hot soup mind you, exploded. I guess I didn’t really pay attention in my Physics class because hot liquid + blender = scary. My kitchen counter looked like lawn mower-vomit.

Though I’m not quite a changed woman, I do think that farm-fresh ingredients and plenty of good quality olive oil can heighten the quality of any soup. Maybe the painstaking process of blitzing the soup in a blender made me appreciate the finished product… I guess it’s kind of like dating. Yes, it's that other painstaking process that I'm still trying to figure out.