Quote:
| Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste |
For seafood chowder, I really like to use a specific sea salt, you'd be surprised at the flavor difference. The one I like is the Sel de Guerande grey salt. I get it at the health food store for $4.59 for a one kilogram bag. "Sel Marin de Guerande, Unrefined Sea Salt from Brittany, Le Paluidier Coarse grey salt" (or fine is ok too) "This sea salt from Guerande is hand-collected according to an age old ancestral method. Simply drawn and sundried it is kept gray intentionally in order to preserve its clay particles, and the smell and flavour of Dunalliella-Salina seaweed."
This is the same company that makes the famous Fleur de Sel. When it's hand raked into triangles, the fleur is the stuff on top (the flower). This cheaper grey stuff in the bag is the stuff from below the fleur. Less pretentious more tasty IMO.
Also for the pepper, for seafood chowder, I really like to use Pink peppercorns. They add a nice flavour. For quantities, I grind them in a well cleaned coffee grinder. This also helps as the pink are softer and can have a tendency to clog up a pepper grinder.
For the hot sauce, sometimes I like to use my own home-made hot seasoning, which is home grown hot peppers dried or half dried and cut up seeds removed, and toasted in barely enough olive oil to cover just until it gets a heady aroma. Then I put a few drops of the oil only for flavor. It adds a rich, heady flavor version of the hot. But standard tobasco has a nice fresh flavor too.
For chowder, I like to go "sub clinical" for the hot, you don't perceive the taste at all as hot, and people who say they don't like hot won't notice, but the inclusion of hot pepper or cayenne or whatever dilates the taste buds and makes the taster perceive more flavor in general. It's sort of a nicer msg type effect in a way if you know what I'm sayin'
10-13-2007, 07:32 PM
Chowder 
Similar Threads 
