Anna Sultana’s East Coast Seafood Chowder

Back in December, 2010, I posted the recipe for Ma’s Fritto Misto di Pesce. Don’t bother with google translate - it’s a recipe for a mixed fix fry.

I posted it because I had written about Italian and Maltese Christmas customs.

One of these customs involves eating seven fishes on Christmas Eve.

Back in Malta and Sicily Christmas Eve, also known as the Feast of the Seven Fishes, was a night of seafood splendour.

Most of these holiday customs began when families were larger than they are today, and it wasn’t unusual to have about thirty people around the table.

So, you - and six of the other women - could each prepare one dish, each guest could scoop out one piece from each dish, and, wall-ah!, tradition was respected.

As the years went by and younger family members got busy with their own nuclear families, our parents’ generation made a few adjustments in their holiday menus.

They wanted to keep up the traditions, but there was a limit to how much they could eat, and could fit in their refrigerators.

The fried fish is a bit heavy on a senior’s stomach, so they turned to making chowders.

The leftover soup made a nice light supper for two on Christmas Day.

Ah, tradition…

Hints:

For a smokier flavour, replace the butter with 3 slices bacon, chopped, and brown before adding the vegetables.

Add 1/2 Cup chopped carrots, red bell pepper or corn kernels with onions for extra flavour, colour and nutrition.

Want it a bit spicier? Add a pinch of fish seasoning spice blend.

Want some heat? Add 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes with the seasonings.

This recipe can also be used as a base for a turkey or chicken chowder. Just replace dill with thyme and stir in 2 Cups diced cooked turkey or chicken instead of the seafood.

Curious about other traditional Christmas recipes? 

Here's a post with links for Christmas / Holiday Favourites.

Happy Holidays!!

                                   East Coast Seafood Chowder

Place in a large pot

1 Tablespoon butter

Melt butter over low heat.

Add

1/2 Cup celery, diced

3/4 Cup onions, diced

Sauté for about 5 minutes, or until onions start to brown.

Deglaze the pan with

1/3 Cup white wine 

Scrape until liquid is reduced by half.

Stir in to form a thin paste

2 teaspoons cornstarch

Stir in 

3/4 Cup heavy cream

2 Cups milk

Simmer over low heat for 5 minutes.

Add

1 teaspoon dried dill or dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1/4 teaspoon pepper  

3/4 Cup yellow fleshed potatoes, diced

Cook until the potatoes are almost tender.

While the potatoes are cooking, place in another large pot 

2 Tablespoons butter

Melt butter over medium heat.

Add

3 ounces salmon, cut into chunks 

3 ounces halibut, cut into chunks

Cook until fish is opaque and flakes easily with a fork.

Add

3 ounces lobster

3 ounces scallops

12 shrimp

12 scrubbed mussels

12 scrubbed clams

Once the clams and mussels have opened (discard any that did not open), transfer the seafood into the chowder base.

Simmer 3 minutes.

Ladle into bowls and place dill and a dab of butter on each serving (optional).

Serve with crusty rolls or bread.

Anna Sultana's Bebbux bl-Arjoli - Land Snails or Seafood with Hot Arjoli Sauce, Maltese Style

Ma's recipe for Bebbux bl-Arjoli is one of my most popular posts.

If you haven't tried it, it's a recipe for Snails with Arjoli Sauce.

Yes, snails.

But it's a very good sauce recipe.

This is a slightly different recipe.

Try both and see which you prefer.

In Malta snails are collected after the first Autumn rains in mid-October.

Then the snails are starved before being cooked.  

This is done by keeping them in a pot for a few days.

Ah, tradition!

I have never been able to find fresh snails in my local grocery store.

Neither could Ma in College Point, New York during the 1950s or 1960s.

But Arjoli Sauce goes just as well with shrimp, or clams, or mussels.

And shrimp, clams and mussels are easier to prepare.

Shrimp is also sold pre-cooked.

I'll give the instructions for preparing snails.

If you're using one of the other three, or something else, well,
I trust you to know what to do.

                        Land Snails with Hot Arjoli Sauce

Wash thoroughly in salted water a few times

4 pounds snails

In a medium pot of salted boiling water add the snails.

Simmer until the snails are cooked.

Test if the snails are cooked by trying to remove the snail from the shell.

If cooked, the flesh comes away easily.

Drain and remove each snail from its shell.

Place on a large platter.

Hot Arjoli Sauce

Mix well together

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

1 Tablespoon garlic, crushed

1 hot red pepper, chopped

3 Tablespoons plain dried bread crumbs 

1/8 teaspoon salt 

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 Tablespoon vinegar

Pour sauce over the cooked snails.

The snails should be served hot with the sauce and any green salad.

They can also be served with hobz biz-zejt (Maltese bread with oil) 

cut into small pieces as an appetizer or first course.

Carmela Soprano's Spaghetti with Red Clam Sauce, Anna Sultana's Fish

We don't live like Tony and Carmela Soprano.  

In addition to not having a big house on a hill and not having people shooting at us, we don't live on the east coast.  Not even close.  We live in Manitoba.  That's in the middle of North America.  We're in the prairies.  Not like Tony and Carmela in New Jersey, near the ocean.

Carmela has her pick of seafood.  She probably used to send her nephew Christopher, before Tony whacked him, to Fulton's Fish Market to get fish fresh off the boat.  

Carmela has a recipe for Spaghetti with Red Clam Sauce in Entertaining with The Sopranos.  She gets a little picky in this recipe: "3 pounds very small clams, such as Manila or mahogany clams, or New Zealand cockles (or mussels)".

She just takes for granted everybody waltzes past barrels of fresh seafood every day.

Some girls have it all.

Okay.  This week, as part of Dollar Days, Sobeys is taking a buck off their 2 pound package of live P. E. I. mussels.  This is important because normally our local Sobeys doesn't carry mussels, dead or alive.  They make an effort to get some when mussels are mentioned in the flyer.  Ladies in my neighborhood can get a little ticked off at the "Our supplier didn't send us any" line when there's a sale.  I mean, we're not second class citizens. 

So, I made Spaghetti with Red Clam Sauce using P. E. I. mussels.

Like I had a choice.

Once you get the mussels, the recipe is pretty easy.  Clean the mussels and throw away the broken or dead ones.  Cook 2 pints of halved cherry (or grape) tomatoes with the mussels and some olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper, parsley and salt.  Save some of the pasta's cooking water if the mixture seems a little dry.

It's a bit of a hassle eating clams.  Maybe that's why we didn't have any at Ma's house.  We had fish.  Sometimes it was fresh bluefish which was bought from the fellows at Sheepshead Bay.  I also remember Pop bringing home some clams from Oyster Bay.  

But, we kids never ate them.  Maybe we made a scene or a mess when we were little and Ma figured it wasn't worth the bother.  

  

I'd make Red Clam Sauce - with mussels - again.  Just have to wait for another Dollar Day. 

Another recipe down.  Fifty-four more to go. 

Carmela Soprano's Octopus Salad, Anna Sultana's Qarnit Stew (Octopus stew, Maltese Style)

There are signs and then there are signs.

Last week we saw that Turner Classics was showing It Came from Beneath the Sea, a dandy 1955 Sci-Fi film about a giant octopus that attacked San Francisco.  Imagine how it would've looked in 3D.

Anyhow, I remembered that Ma sometimes made Qarnit Stew.  Qarnit is Maltese for octopus.  I flipped through Entertaining with The Sopranos to see if Carmela fed Tony and the gang any octopus.  Carmela goes the salad route with octopus.

Well, it is Lent and we should eat some seafood.

Okay... here I ran into trouble.  Carmela lives in New Jersey.  Near the ocean.  No problem for her to get octopus.  Fulton Fish Market is on the way home from work for Tony.   

Try telling the fellow behind the fish counter at either Safeway or Sobey's in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that you want an octopus.  I mean, we are in the prairies.  Wheat we got.  Polar bears we got.  Beluga whales we got.

Octopus gets you funny looks.  Especially if you have gray hair.

I browsed through the frozen food's fish section and found something called Seafood Combination.  I saw the picture.  It had octopus tentacles.  Okay... good enough.

Carmela Soprano's Octopus Salad is a pretty easy recipe.  A green salad topped with bite-sized pieces of cooked octopus.  Either salad or stew, the octopus gets cooked a good long time.  I cooked the Seafood Combination.  I made the salad with the Seafood Combination.  I served the salad.

Then I played 20 questions.

Paul poked at his salad.  "What's in this?"

"Fish."

"What kind of fish?"

"Fish.  You know... fish."

Paul got a little testy.  "Okay. I recognize the shrimp and the clams.  What's the rest of this stuff?"

"Oh, for the love of Mike."  I went to the garbage, fished out the bag and read, "Mussels.  Happy now, Sherlock?"

"What else?"

"Cuttlefish," I read.

Paul started to smell a rat.  "What else?"

The jig was up.  I gulped and muttered, "Squid and octopus."

I don't know if it was the squid or the octopus that got to him that night.  Either way, there was a fair amount of leftovers. 

Most of the fish Ma grew up with aren't available in Queens, New York.  Things like lampuki, vopi, cerna, dott, accola, sargu and dentici.  We ate a lot of bluefish, some of it fresh from Sheep's Head Bay.  Ma fried, poached, grilled and baked fish.  No problem getting us to eat fish.  We liked bluefish.  But then, sometimes, she made Qarnit Stew.

Then we'd play 20 questions with her.   

Another recipe down.  Seventy-two more to go.