Chowderlicious

I grew up in a nominally Catholic family, although my parents' attitude to their faith veers from relaxed (my Dad) to occasionally hostile (my Mum, who has never forgiven her local priest for refusing to marry her and Dad in the 80s, because they'd been “living in sin”). Even so, fish for dinner on Fridays was a tradition we kept to, and out of habit I've mostly stuck with it through university and my adult life. Often this meant fish and chips, but sometimes we would get a little fancier.

This is actually not a family recipe. This is my take on a smoked haddock chowder – I was having friends over for dinner one Friday night at uni, and I didn't trust their timekeeping enough to risk anything like pan-fried or oven-baked fish. Instead I opted for something that would happily sit on the stove doing its own thing until people had arrived and were ready to eat.

Most of the traditional chowder recipes I had access to required ingredients that were a little exotic for the shops of the East Fife coast in the late '00s (creamed corn? Jarred clams? Saltines? Forget it!) so I substituted things in as best I could, and ended up with something so astonishingly delicious that my squad of friends immediately demanded the recipe. I had to confess I didn't have one, and that I'd been improvising – but I've recreated and refined it several times down the years, and it's now my go-to for feeding a crowd, or for treating myself and my hubby after a long week. (Confession: I've been known to eat the leftovers for breakfast.)

This, if you like, is the “final” version. In terms of influences it's taken a few detours via Scotland, France and the Deep South (my French uncle taught me that everything is better with wine, my godmother in Georgia is responsible for the addition of cayenne pepper, and I lifted the leeks from traditional cullen skink) – but despite the culinary mish-mash going on, it's never failed me yet, and it's easy to scale up or down as needed.

 

 

( Spiced smoked haddock chowder )