Summary

Preparation Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 1.5 hours
Servings: 6
Meal type: Dinner
Grocery Cost: $33.66 ($5.61/person)

Recipe Rating:  

Ingredients

For Smoked Scallops:

• 20 piece Smoked Qualicum Bay Scallops (cut in half)
  I wish I had more time to find local fresh scallops from Qualicum Bay however since I wasn’t able to go to Granville Island, the local Safeway only had frozen scallops.  I bought a bag for $9.99.
• Wood chips for the smoked scallops
  Chef Whittaker recommends hickory chips.  I got maple wood chips from the local cooking store for $10 but only used so little – $1 worth.

• 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 tsp Salt

For Chowder:

• ¾ cup Cured Pork Belly (cut into batons)
  Chef Whittaker cures his own pork belly and instead, suggested getting a smoked slab of bacon from Oyama Sausage Co. on Granville Island.  I couldn’t make it out to Granville Island so I bought 300g of Pancetta instead for $5.58.  His chowder definitely had more bacon taste than mine turned out to have.
• 2 cups Diced Notch Hill Farms Celeriac

  Unfortunately I couldn’t find celeriac in the two stores I went to so instead, I put in 2 cups of chopped celery instead.  I’m pretty sure that celeriac would add more complex flavours into the chowder.  Let me know how it turns out when you make it!  3 individual Celery stalks was $0.65

• 2 cups Diced Organic Yellow Onion (1 medium onion ~ $0.20)
• 1 cup Diced Organic Carrots (2 carrots ~ $0.26)
  
• 1 cup Organic Leeks (cut into small rounds)  (1 leek $1.19)
• 1 ¼ cups Diced German Butter Potato ~ $0.90
  I got Yukon Gold Potatoes because I couldn’t find this German Butter one!
• 1 tsp  Finely Chopped Italian Parsley ~ $0.10
• 1 tsp  Finely Chopped Thyme ~ $0.40
• ¼ cup Flour
• ½ cup Dry White Wine
  St Hallett Barossa 2008 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc bottle $12.  $3 went into the recipe.
• 3 cups Clam Stock
  3 cans of baby clams with half a pot of water: $7.47
• 1 ½ cups  Heavy Cream ~ $1.59
• 1/3 cup Salted Butter ~ $ 0.83
• ½ tsp Champagne Vinegar
  Couldn’t find this so I used White Wine Vinegar for $3.00 a bottle
• Kosher Salt and White Pepper to taste

Instructions for Smoking Scallops

Ok let’s just say I’m definitely not an expert in smoking seafood at home. A few weeks back when I was in Toronto at the Food and Wine show, Chef Tyler showed everyone how to smoke trout. I didn’t realize you can just buy wood chips get them super hot inside of the oven and smoke fish at home. So this is what I did except that I don’t think I got it right. Chow has a discussion of why doing this is super dangerous at home when the smoke is out of control.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably try to smoke with a wok next time. Or if you have a balcony or can do this outside of your house, follow these instructions.. At the cooking store they had a variety of gadgets of smokers for the stove top and oven but I didn’t end up buying any of it. If you have your tips of how to smoke scallops in your apartment, let me know!!

1. Soak a handful of wood chips for 30 minutes in water.
2. Prepare a brine for your scallops. I combined water, salt and sugar and soaked the scallops in for 30 min. From what I’ve read about brining, people soak it over night. In the interest of time I didn’t do that.

3. I put the oven at 450°F and left the wood chips inside to heat up. I had a shallow layer of water too, in hopes that it would smoke.

4. After 60 min of preparing the chowder, I put the scallops in on top of the wood chips and turned off the heat as the wood chips smoked. Chef Whittaker suggested smoking for 20 min, I left it in for 30 min.

Instructions for the Chowder

1. How I made the clam stock that was called for in Chef Whittakers recipe was to empty canned clams into a large pot. Add 4 cups of water and leave on medium heat. The recipe called for 3 cups, so i figured that after some evaporation, it would turn out to be about 3.

2. Dice the pancetta – I asked for thick slices at the deli.


3.Chop all the vegetables.

4. Heat sauce pan over medium heat and add pork belly and butter.


5. Once melted and bacon has begun to render (15 min) Add celeriac, onion, leeks and carrots.

6. Saute until vegetables become translucent (20 min) and add flour and mix until incorporated.

7. Cook for about 5 minutes on low heat
8. Deglaze with white wine. This just means pouring the wine so ensure nothing is sticking to the pan. Let the alcohol be cooked off (1 minute).
9. Transfer everything in the saucepan into the pot of clam stock.
10. Turn heat back up to medium.
11. Add heavy cream and diced potatoes. Cook for an additional 30
minutes on a gentle simmer.


12. Add champagne vinegar, parsley and thyme.

13. Stir in the raw-smoked scallops and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

14. Season with salt and white pepper.

Quick Notes

I don’t recommend following what I did for smoking scallops and trying out real smoking techniques. Also, I think that fatter/smoked bacon would have matched the smokier more rich taste that I had at the Vancouver Aquarium. In essence, I don’t think I used anything smoked properly but you should!

Also, since I was cooking for 6 people, I was afraid that the three cups of clam stock was not enough. If I were to do it again, I would make sure there were 3 cups – it would’ve brought out a richer thicker flavour.

Result

I’m really happy that I made clam chowder for the first time! I was also happy that I tried to smoke my own seafood for the first time. I’ll try to master this technique for smoked salmon next time! Only after I went to the Ocean Wise event, I realized how different seafood chowders could be. I really enjoyed all the vegetables and meat that was in this soup and it was well received by everyone. My roommate made a garlic onion escargot dish which matched the soup quite well. Now that I know what goes into clam chowder (butter and cream), I probably will refrain from eating chowder on a regular basis But I’d surely do this again for a dinner night in the future!