Soup 3.0

Being the odd bird that I am, when the forces of darkness (ice storms, sickness) want to overwhelm us, I turn not to chicken soup but to Manhatten style clam chowder. When I can get to the store for fresh cherrystones, I make it from scratch and here is my building plan:

24 ea Fresh cherrystone or chowder clams
4 c Water
1/4 lb Salt pork, diced
2 ea Onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 c Chopped celery
4 ea Potatoes, peeled and diced
3 c Tomato juice
1 ts Salt
1/4 ts Freshly ground pepper
1/2 ts Thyme

Wash the clams well and place in a kettle
with the water. Simmer until the shells open.
Discard any clams that "do not" open. Drain and
reserve 3 cups of the broth. Saute the salt pork until
it is crisp and light brown. Add the onions and
celery and saute until they are translucent but not
brown. Add the potatoes, reserved clam broth, tomato
juice, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, and
simmer for about 15 minutes, until potatoes are barely
tender. Meanwhile, remove the clams from their shells
and chop fine or put through a food grinder. Add the
thyme and chopped clams to the potatoes. Cover and
cook for 5 minutes longer.

This is an old NYTimes Cookbook recipe. Mess with it and put your changes in the comments below.

You can make this with bottled clams in clam juice. It takes about two bottles, I reserve the juice and start the whole mess with chicken broth and then saute the veggies as above and add them to the broth. Drain two bottles of clams and add five minutes before the end of cooking, with one of the bottles of clam juice, reserving the other.

Freeze the leftovers with the extra clam juice added. You'll be glad of it on some rainy day this spring when the scent of the ocean will make you feel like a human being again after a couple of dark days.

For me this soup is always about a return to myself as citizen of the planet, concerned about our deep seas of consciousness as much as the deep atlantic. It awakens me to remember that I'm responsible for more than my little patch of the planet.

That's not so bad to get out of a soup, eh?