SOUP SECRETS
What are you, a used car salesman or a cook?

How to make Clam Chowder, as told to me by Chef Jean Combettes

If you go to work in a first-class house and make this soup as I am showing you, you will immediately classify yourself as a professioNAL. The chef will recognize you, and will know at once that you were not selling used cars last week, like so many who put on a tall hat and think that makes them a cook. The competent cook, unfortunately, is rare.

Here's how you make one good soup, he told me. Always choose a pot you think is too big for the job. Nevair cook soup in a small pot. In fact, nevair cook anything in a small pot. Young cooks always pick out a small pot, barely big enough to hold what they are cooking. Then they have no margin for error, no room to stir and it will probably boil over too. Besides, it takes too long to come to a boil.

Chop up enough vegetables (onions, celery and bell peppers) to fill about one-fifth of the pot. The reason I do not specify exact amounts is because there is no such thing as an exactly correct soup. And also because we are dealing with a recipe which will work with any size pot. Our main concern here is only that we do not wish to choke the soup with too many vegetables, but still we want enough. Therefore we gauge amounts according to the size of the pot. No?

I emphasize this idea of ratios instead of exact amounts, the Frenchman went on, because when pretentious recipes specify exact amounts they tend to frighten young cooks into thinking that the slightest variation means failure. This is a falsehood. Even the application of herbs, seasonings and salt are not as important as cookbooks insist. Far more important are appearance, thickness, color, temperature and texture -- what the soup feels like on the tongue and on the back of the throat.

Now, we have not started cooking the soup yet, but this explanation gives us a good understanding of what we are trying to achieve and is the first step on the road to acquiring judgment, something every good cook must have. Bad cooks know a lot of rules. Good cooks have judgment and an understanding of what they are trying to do. They can think on their feet.

I am taking a long time to tell you this because these procedures are fundamental and can be applied over and over again in making many different types of soups.

So far, all we have in the pot is onions, bell peppers and celery. Some hotshots may object to the inclusion of bell peppers in this clam chowder, and I say to them, bon! We are not dealing here with authenticity as recorded in cookbooks written by people who should know better; we are just talking about good soup.

All right. Now put some bacon grease in the pot and fry the vegetables until they are tender and you have gotten rid of the raw taste of the onions -- You do save your bacon grease so that you always have some on hand, don't you? Tell me you do or I will take away your soup spoon.

Okay, now chop up some raw potato and add it to the pot. Next, fill the soup pot halfway with hot water and bring it to a boil. Add some ham soup base, or chicken soup base, either one is fine. Now, cover the pot and let it simmer till the potatoes are done. Simple, so far, no?

Now, add a couple bay leaves and some white pepper and thyme. The amounts of thyme and white pepper can be widely varied to suit your taste. No salt, of course; the soup base already has plenty of salt in it.

Now, you may wonder why I do not just give you the exact amounts of ingredients. But remember, we are talking here about learning how to cook, while avoiding the bonds of exact recipes. Recipes do not teach you how to improvise, which is necessary in becoming a competent cook.

Too many recipes with exact amounts of this and that have been written by cooks who really make their own clam chowder just about the way I recommend here. They do it by eye. I do not know why it is that perfectly
good cooks lose their minds when asked to write down how they cook something. They write down what they think is the authentic method, but of course they never make it that way themselves.

Chef Jean continues

Now for the secret ingredient. Garlic. Offhand I cannot think of a single soup that is not improved with the addition of garlic. So add some
granulated garlic to your soup as so many of us do. How much? Suit yourself. After making soup this way a few times, you will know how much you want without consulting a recipe.

"Now, check the potatoes to see if they are done. If so, mix together some cold water and flour. (Don't worry about making too much; this 'whitewash' has many applications and can be stored in the refrigrator.) The whitewash must be smooth with no lumps and about the consistency of pancake batter.

Slowly, while stirring the soup with a big spoon, begin pouring some of the whitewash into the simmering soup. Let the soup get about as thick as you want it. Any bacon grease floating on top will be entirely absorbed by the whitewash

Then, still over a low fire, stir in some milk, hot or cold, just enough to make the soup smooth and creamy. Cold milk will cool off the soup a little, but a moment or two over low heat will correct the temperature. Voila!

"But, Jean," I protested, "haven't you just made potato soup?"

"But of course! Oh, that is right, we were supposed to be making clam chowder. Zut! So put in a couple cans of chopped clams. Clam chowder is potato soup with chopped clams and clam juice in it. ##

Copyright (c) 1996 by Vincent G. Johnson
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