Week 50: Chowder with Asian Flavours

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p164, "Chowder with Asian Flavours"

This recipe is a disappointment. That's not a spoiler - as if I'd give the game away this early in proceedings - but come on. Nigella is the kind of person who peppers her food writing with words like "rebarbative" and "subfusc", yet here we're expected to be satisfied with "Asian Flavours"? I know I was criticising Ainsley for his twee recipe names just last week, but if Nigella can't deliver a bit of casual pretentiousness, qui le peut?

Despite this, I'm looking forward to chowing down on Nigella's chowder. (Oh, behave.) As often, her introductory words contain a lot of provisos and excuses - apparently true foodies would have legitimate issues with her omission of a roux and, god forbid, the use of coconut milk instead of milk milk - but considering I'm ignorant enough that my only available Mallett's Mallet answer for "chowder" would be "clam", I'm more than willing to be carried along by this Lawsonian wave of culinary sacrilege.

Plus it's midweek and we've just got back from holiday via a traumatic experience involving buses, December weather and Croydon, so a warming and easy dinner - sorry Nigella, not a supper - ought to hit the spot nicely.

The prep: Just when I thought I might get away with it, the Random Kitchen requires me to buy yet another jar of spices I'll end up using once or twice then forgetting about at the back of the cupboard.

Overkill

Yes, it's mace, a word I associate more with self-defence sprays than any particular kind of cuisine, but apparently it's required here, as are lots of vegetables - potatoes, leeks, baby corn and tinned sweetcorn, for a start, many of which might have been in our veg box delivery if I hadn't cancelled it this week (d'oh). The stars of this particular chowder are fish (Nigella wants fresh cod, but it's a soup, for god's sake - generic frozen white stuff will do) and prawns (where frozen is fine, apparently).

There are a few standard ingredients here - coconut milk is already in the cupboard, red chillies are already in the freezer - but otherwise there's quite a lot to buy in (and I haven't even got to the coriander yet). I suppose that's in keeping with the bright, fresh and hopefully quick nature of this particular flavour combo, so I can take a bit of a hit in the wallet department.

The making: There's lots of peeling and chopping buried away in the ingredient list to make the method look more straightforward. Sneaky sneaky.

Anyway, I start by bringing some chicken stock ("not instant") to the boil in a medium-sized pan, before chucking in some chopped potatoes, leeks and baby corn and cooking them for ten minutes along with a couple of bay leaves and a generous teaspoon of ground mace.

Stock photo

Next up, a tin of coconut milk is added, along with 600g of cubed "cod" fillets and a generous glug or ten of lime juice. This concoction is brought back to the boil and simmered for a minute until the fish is obviously starting to cook a bit.

A bag of frozen prawns and a drained can of sweetcorn are added, and back to the boil it all comes once again - for an "express" recipe, this one does seem to require a lot of standing around waiting for things to start bubbling - before we're ready to season and serve. Suffice it to say that this involves two of my favourite ingredients:

Yay

And the chowder is duly bowled up, garnished, and sent tablewards. Since it seems quite substantial in its own right, I even manage to refrain from serving it with a hunk of white bread. Suppressing one's inherent northernness is tougher than it may appear.

The eating: To my surprise, the portion sizes here really are substantial, actually. For once, "Serves 4" means what it says!

It's a decent enough eating experience, with the veggies retaining their bite, the coconut milk adding a hint of creamy decadence, and the coriander/chilli delivering the requisite freshness. Of course, there are complaints too. (There are always complaints.)

Firstly, the texture. I get that a chowder is always going to be a bit "stuff swimming in liquid" (and it's not like Nigella doesn't have history on that front), but this seems a bit more watery than it needs to be, which detracts from the potential luxuriousness of the dish somewhat - or at least from its visual impact, which isn't altogether unimportant.

Glub

And secondly, the seasoning. The chowder is overly salty, but that's fine - it comes with the territory with fish dishes, and it's easily tweaked next time round. What's less excusable is the mace. I don't get it and I don't get what it's doing here. All it seems to add to proceedings is a slightly, well, dirty taste and a generic numbness of the tongue, both of which could surely have been better achieved with more chilli and/or conventional seasoning. As it stands, there's an overwhelming tingly mace-ness to the whole thing that rather overshadows the subtlety of the fish and prawn flavours. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find something do to with the rest of the jar.

The dish as a whole isn't at all bad, though. It introduces some much-needed bright and striking flavours to the darkness of winter solstice week, and while the cooking time and the (not-so-)hidden instructions mean it's an awful lot less "express" than Nigella would like it to be, it's certainly not a complicated or difficult meal to prepare. Coconut milk aside, it's even quite healthy, yet it still manages to feel like a bit of a treat.

Definitely happy to try this again some time, in other words. Just, y'know, I might go easy on the mace.

One-word verdict: Tingly.