About the Recipe
Ingredients
Shellfish and broth:
1/4 cup whole butter
1/2 diced white onion 2 cloves garlic
1/2 bottle white wine
1 lb fresh BC clams (Little Neck, Savoury or Manila)
1 lb fresh mussels (Outlandish Shellfish Honey Mussels or Salt Spring Island)
Chowder:
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 small diced medium onion
2 cups Chilliwack corn kernels
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 bottle white wine (we use Naramata Bench white wine)
1 lb diced potatoes (we use Medley Organics from Summerland)
1 litre whole milk 1 litre cream (we use D Dutchmen Dairy in Sicamous)
2 lbs wild BC fish: BC salmon, BC halibut, BC hake, BC sablefish, and BC ling cod. You can use fresh or frozen, diced into 1” inch cubes
Preparation
Broth and shellfish:
Over medium-high heat in a medium-large pot, sauté the onions and garlic in the butter for two minutes, then add the clams and mussels and sauté for a further one minute. Add the white wine and cook for two minutes or until the clams and mussels are cooked and the shells pop open. Remove from heat and stop cooking immediately. With a basket strainer, strain the broth from the shells, keeping both the broth and the shellfish. Remove the clams and mussels from their shells, and set aside.
Chowder:
In a medium pot over medium heat, sauté the onion with the canola oil for two minutes. Add the salt and corn and sauté another for five minutes. Add the salt and flour to the pot and cook for two minutes. Add the white wine, cook for two minutes. Add the diced potatoes and add the shellfish stock (see above) and cook for three minutes. Add the milk and cook for three minutes, then add the cream and cook for a further three minutes. Finally, add the fish and already cooked shellfish (see above) and simmer for three minutes.
To serve: Ladle the chowder into a bowl, and top with some chopped fresh herbs and foraged sumac. Enjoy with some warm, crusty sourdough and some wonderful Naramata Bench white wine. Sumac: We don’t use lemons and limes at the Naramata Inn, we focus on hyper local and hyper seasonal ingredients and as such we forage, make or create other flavours to use in place of citrus. Verjus made from pressed and fermented fresh green grape juice, fresh chopped Sorrel, and foraged Sumac that stand in and perfectly represent the Taste of Place we are looking for her in Naramata. As we like to say, you can only have this dish or meal, here.