We are in the 207 kitchen at all main
studios where I am joined by Ellie Allen.
She is the chef on the Mary Day schooner,
which is part of The Maine
Windjammers Association and
she is going to be making some
lobster corn chowder for us today.
So let's jump right in.
What do we do first?
Alright, so the first thing
that we did yesterday we had a
little bit of a prep session.
So first thing we did was we
roasted our corn on the wood fire
in the stove so it's pretty cool.
You just pop the inserts out and put
the corn right down and just let it go.
Does that make the flavor different?
Hugely different,
it tastes like it's been barbecued,
except like on wood smoke.
Yeah, so we're going to get our pot
going on full here and then we're going
to start with some bacon fat just to
make contact a little bit better.
Alright, then we're going to put
in a whole bunch of diced bacon.
Who doesn't love that?
I'm going to take the fat out of that,
so this is just going to sit
and hang out with this through a
little bit on a gentle heat until
it all melts and we get goodness.
OK, so that's gonna hang out.
In the meantime,
we've got a red pepper here,
and we're going to dice this out.
So just take the top off the bottom off.
And then trim the sides.
Is this one that you make a lot?
We make this on a lot on the boat.
It's really popular.
We always end up having leftover lobster
every cruise on main when grammar associate.
This sociation boats includes
lobster bake ashore so we
always end up having a little
bit of extra leftover lobster.
This is good when we only have a couple.
Sometimes we end up with a lot of leftovers.
Sometimes we don't.
People are really good.
We tell them that they're not allowed to
come ashore until they finish the lobster,
but they don't always listen,
so we end up with leftovers.
You can use it for something like
that exactly. You end up eating
it twice and people love that.
'cause like people come to Maine for lobster,
so why wouldn't you, exactly?
Alright, so these are just dice. Those up.
Yep, just nice small dice on the Peppers.
Same size as everybody else is
going to match our potatoes,
so we're starting to get the
fat out of our bacon hair.
Yeah, I'm just going to stand right here.
Just smelling.
This is a nice local bacon.
It's from a farm up by Camden Nice.
A lot of the boats try to keep
everything local as possible so
this came from a farm near Camden.
The corn.
Unfortunately it's February so you know corn.
So in the mean time we can take our
corn off the cob and we roasted
whole and we're going to end up
using the cobs in the soup as well.
OK, I have never heard of that.
We're going to take them back
out before we serve it,
but like when we trim the corn off,
there's still a little bit left on the cob.
And why wouldn't we put that message, yeah?
So it's kind of like when you're
making like a stock or something,
exactly like we're making a corn
stock at the same time that
we're making our chowder.
So our bacon is pretty well ready to go here.
We're gonna drop our onions on top of that.
Oof. And how much onion is that?
That is about two onions, two onions.
OK, So what do we want this to look like?
Like? How will we know when this is done?
The onions are going to get
translucent and they'll start to get
a little bit of Browning on them.
You can definitely tell,
usually on the boat we let this caramelize
all the way and you end up with like
a really rich caramelized onion flavor
for lack of a better descriptor.
Yeah, yeah. And her salary.
Just all goes, everybody goes in the pot.
They're not like colors too.
It's pretty alright, so we're going
to deglaze this with some white wine.
Get this stuff off the bottom.
Further bits that are on
all the stuff that burns to the
bottom is actually just flavor,
so we gotta pull that off
the bottom into the suit.
So we've got a little bit
of potato starch here.
I like to use potato starch instead
of flour because it's gluten free,
obviously, and we're not adding
anything else into the chatter.
There's going to be potatoes in
there already, so adding a little
bit more potato doesn't disturb.
Yeah, and what does this mixture called?
So this is going to be a slurry slurry,
yeah, so a slurry is just a dry
ingredient that you mix with a wet
ingredient before adding it into the web.
So this keeps it from getting
all clumpy if you've ever tried
to make a gravy and it ended
up clumpy if you do this first,
you could take out OK.
Westmoreland milk and cream.
Drop your potatoes in there.
This will be done when the
potatoes are cooked OK.
So now we've got it up to a boil.
We're just going to make sure
nothing stuck to the bottom.
And we're going to add our slurry
in there and this will make
it nice and thick and a hurry.
Slurry in a hurry.
So now that second we would take out
the corncobs and it's ready to go.
So we just garnish it with
some tarragon on its way out.
We don't chop it up too much.
That way you're not losing anything
until the cutting board and stir that in.
You can smell it. It's right there.
Last thing that goes in is the lobster,
'cause we don't want to overcook it,
because remember this is leftovers
from our lobster bakes, onshore,
right? Mix that in.
Oh yeah. That looks so good.
I'm just gonna sit and simmer
until the potatoes are cooked,
but this one here is ready to go.
Let me give you all of that.
Look at that. Ah. So good. It's so thick.
Yeah, sticks your insides nobody is going
to go hungry when they're eating this.
Yep, a little bit of parsley.
And couple of oyster crackers.
Alright, it's perfect.
We've got the recipe and
instructions right on the
207 section of our website.
We're going to dig in
and we'll be right back.