Clam chowder

CLAM CHOWDER

This is a mussel’s soup which I first ate in Los Angeles, in 1973 and I never forgot its excellent taste.

In a Pacific Ocean beach, on a pier, there were restaurants of various nationalities.

In a Chinese restaurant they were selling live crabs. They kept them in tanks with water.

Each client was taking a net and chose the crabs he wanted.

The restaurant boiled the crabs on the spot, broke them and put them in large bags and gave them to the customers.

In the same restaurant they were making a delicious clam chowder.

I tried to make this soup at home.

I made the recipes of clam chowder that I found on some American cookbooks, but I didn’t succeed to make a soup close to the one I have eaten.

After many years in a French cookbook I found a very good recipe for clam chowder.

I changed this recipe several times until J managed to make a soup that resembled the one I have eaten in Los Angeles.

I write below this modified recipe.

SOUP WITH MUSSELS

Ingredients

600 grams of cleaned mussels, fresh or frozen

200 grams of whole medium shrimps with their shells 

2 large dry onions

6 cloves garlic

1 medium potato

3 tablespoons sharp flour

80 grams of margarine

2.5 cups milk

300 g. cream 30% fat

                

Instructions

The shrimps have along their back an intestine that is sometimes black and it contains sand. 

This intestine should be removed.
Take a shrimp in your hand and hold it so its back is looking at your face.

With a sharp knife cut the shell of the shrimp along its back.

Open a little the flesh  and find the gut.

Put a toothpick under the intestine and pull it up. Work carefully to avoid breaking it.

If you break the gut, then you have to remove each piece separately.

Remove the head and the shell of the shrimp and throw them away.

In the same way clean all the shrimps and leave them aside.

You can of course avoid this work if you buy cleaned and peeled shrimps. 

Unfortunately these shrimps don’t taste as good.   

After you finish the shrimps you have to clean the mussels one by one.

Take the flesh of a mussel in your hand and with your fingers open it.

Look for small pieces of broken shell in the flesh.

If you find any remove them and throw them in the trash.

In each mussel look for something that resembles a small dark tongue. 

This tongue is often covered with algae.

With kitchen scissors cut this tongue, the algae and the root of the tongue underneath it.

 After you clean all the mussels, mince them with scissors.

Put in a pot the margarine and heat it until it melts.

Put the chopped onions in the pot and sauté.

Stir and add the chopped garlic.

Let the pot over low heat until onions and garlic are completely softened.

Put in another pot the milk and the cream together.

Place the saucepan over medium heat to warm up the milk.

You want warm milk not boiling milk.

Shortly before milk inflates remove the pot from the heat.

When the onions and garlic are completely softened, add the flour in the pot.

The flour sticks easily so you have to stir it constantly.

Mash the potato in a food processor.

When flour begins to stick to the pan, add the mashed potato.

Lower even further the heat and stir constantly to cook the potato without sticking.

Add the chopped mussels and stir constantly.

Mussels should be cooked over very low heat so as not to damage their taste.

Cut the shrimps into small pieces and add them in the pot with mussels.

Cook and stir until all the ingredients are done.4-5 min are enough.

Pour the hot milk into the mussels.

Stir so the ingredients won’t stick to the pot.

The soup should be warm up but shouldn’t boil.

Remove the pot from the heat just before boiling..

This soup is served lukewarm.

Mussels fried

MUSSELS FRIED

You can use fresh or frozen mussels.

The fresh ones are tastier but they are not always available in the market.

You can easily find frozen mussels cleaned, in stores with frozen fish, packed in one kilo's packages.

Ingredients

1/2 kilo of mussels without shells

180 grams of olive oil

80 grams of corn oil

200 grams of all purpose flour

Salt to taste

Instructions

Unfreeze mussels putting them in a bowl of water.

Change the water 4 times.

Take each mussel in your hand and open its flesh. You will find something resembling a dark brown tongue.

This tongue has often algae stuck on it.

With kitchen scissors cut the tongue, the seaweed stuck to it and its hard root that lies beneath it.

Then look carefully to see if you can find any pieces of broken shell in the flesh of the mussel.

Most of the mussels are well cleaned, but sometimes you will find small pieces of broken shell. Remove and toss them.

Strain the mussels with a colander and wait until they drain well.

Put little salt on them, so they will not become too salty.                                                

Pour in a nonstick skillet the oil and the corn oil. 

Place the skillet over medium heat and wait until the oil is hot.

First way of frying

Put into the bowl of mussels flour. Mix with your hand well.

Because the mussels have some water, with flour you create thin dough.

This dough surrounds the mussels like a skin.

Get a mussel folded in some dough and drop it into the hot oil.

Sometimes the dough sticks two or three mussels together and forms pancakes with mussels inside.

Drop into the oil these pancakes and cook them until they look light brown.

Once cooked on one side turn them to the other side.   

When browned on both sides take them out of the skillet and put them on a platter lined with paper towels.

The paper towel absorbs the excessive oil.

Second way of frying

There is another way to flour the mussels. 
Put the flour on a shallow dish.

Take each mussel separately and put on the flour.

Turn it in the flour so flour sticks on all its sides.

Shake it to remove the excessive flour and then put it in the hot oil.

In this way in the skillet each mussel is separated from each other.

Mussels do not want much cooking. Once lightly browned on both sides are ready.

In my opinion better taste have the mussels that are cooked in the first way.

So when I cook for my family I always make small mussels pancakes.

But when I have visitors, I prefer to fry them separately because they look better.

 The foto shows mussels cooked in the second way.

Triangular cheese pies

TRIANGULAR CHEESE PIES

Stuffing

Ingredients

1/2 kilo feta cheese or any white soft cheese

300g Cretan gruyere or any yellow cheese

400 grams unsalted cheese or cream cheese

3 eggs,

200 ml whipping cream 30% fat

Pepper to taste

Instruction

Cut feta into slices and rub them with your fingers in a bowl.

Grate the Gruyere and add it in the bowl.

Put the cream cheese, the eggs, the cream and the pepper into the bowl.

Knead all this ingredients well.

Sheet

Ingredients

1/2 kilo of pastry sheet (the Greek stores sell fillo krustas of Kanakis Co)

80 g. olive oil,

180 g margarine

Instructions

Put in a small pan the oil and the margarine.

Place the pan over low heat and heat it up until margarine melts.

Each pastry packet contains 12 or 13 sheets.

These sheets are folded together in half and wrapped in a cylinder.

Unwrap the sheets and open them all together on the working surface.

The sheets are layered one on top of the other.

Keep the sheets stacked together.

Divide the sheets’ length in six equal parts. Cut with a sharp knife, creating six oblong piles perpendicular to the sheets length.

Use one stripe to make one cheese pie.

In this way from a pastry sheet package you will make 72 or 78 pies, depending on the number of the sheets in the package.

Dip a brush in melted margarine and lightly smear the six stripes on to.

On the left edge of each stripe put a tablespoon of filling.

Take each one of the six stripes and fold the left edge diagonally. Stick it to the right size of the stripe enclosing the stuffing.

This forms a triangle hanging from the bottom of the stripe.

Folded the sheet at the upper side of the triangle and it rises on the right side of the stripe.

Fold the sheet diagonally and the triangle comes on the left side of the stripe.

Continue this way until all the sheet of each stripe is wrapped around the filling. 

 This way the filling is enclosed by the sheet.

Repeat the same procedure with the rest of the stripes.

Place the pies in a greased and floured pizza pan.

Dip again the brush in the melted margarine and lightly smear the next six stripes that come on top.

Put a tablespoon of filling on the left edge of each strip and wrap the cheese pies as before.

The stripes of sheets often stick together, so take care to get a single stripe for each pie.

Continue in the same way until you run out of stuffing.

Smear all pies overhead lightly with melted margarine.

Place the pan on the bottom rack of the oven and bake at 170 C degrees for 40 minutes.