Sunday is normally Robert’s night to cook. Frequently he gets the night off due to family events or those times when I feel like making a meal with lots of prep work that just isn’t suited for the weeknights when I normally cook. So, for a long time now he has gotten by on a pretty small repertoire of tried and true dishes including tuna fajitas, green (or red) chili stew and his famous “bastard ramen” (noodle stir-fry.) Recently, he decided it was time to branch out a little. I suggested that he try making a chowder (yes, in case you’re wondering, it is still chowder weather here in Seattle.) Last night, Robert took my suggestion and made chowder but not your average, everyday chowder. Instead, he made a very special Salmon & Sunchoke Chowder!
They have been selling sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) at our farmers market for a couple of weeks. Sunchokes are knobby, brown tubers similar in appearance to ginger. They can be eaten raw, in which case they taste sort of like a nutty water chestnut, or they may be cooked just as you would cook potatoes or any other root vegetable. I don’t know if this is always true with sunchokes, but the ones at our farmer’s market have been amazingly cheap ($1.00 per pound) making it nearly impossible to resist buying them. Last week, I used them to make a delicious sunchoke and potato puree. When he decided to try his hand at chowder this week, Robert thought it would be fun to add in a few sunchokes.
To make Robert’s Salmon & Sunchoke Chowder, do the following: Open a beer and turn on some sort of punk rock or 1980’s music. Relax for a moment, then begin cooking. Cook about a cup of diced onions in bacon fat (or oil) until soft. Then, add a couple pinches of dried thyme and a spoonful of flour and cook for another minute. Add a couple handfuls of cubed sunchokes and/or potatoes and then slowly stir in a few cups of chicken stock (enough to just cover the vegetables.) Simmer until the vegetables are just cooked through. If you like, add a small handful of frozen corn. Gently, lower a fillet of skinned and deboned salmon into the soup and cook through. Once cooked, break the salmon apart into bite-sized pieces using a large spoon. Add cream, half and half or whole milk until it looks like chowder and season with salt and pepper as needed. Serve with crusty bread and a salad on the side.
Robert rarely follows recipes when he cooks so this is my approximation based on what I observed. This is obviously a very rough recipe but that makes it very adaptable too. You can add or subtract vegetables as you wish. You can also easily substitute any seafood for the salmon. Salmon does make it a very colorful chowder, however. I buy the frozen skinned and deboned salmon at Trader Joe’s. It’s not the most premium fish out there, but it is wild (very important) and cheap and incredibly easy to use in this recipe. Sunchokes need only to be scrubbed before eating, but I prefer them peeled for this dish. They are firmer than potatoes, even after lengthy cooking, so this soup has a nice texture to it (or, as Robert says, it gives you some breathing room - if you accidentally cook the soup for too long, you don’t have to worry about everything turning to mush.) We enjoyed this chowder very much. It was tasty and unique and the perfect remedy for a cold, rainy June evening. Yippee, Robert has a new recipe to add to his list!