Why is it nearly 90 degrees in mid-October? It’s not global climate change, a high pressure heat dome, or the influence of an especially strong El Niño. It’s my fault and I’m sorry.
We had a string of gray and rainy days in the mid-to-high 60s and I decided it must truly be fall. Like an idiot, I packed away all my linen and seersucker and pulled out the tweed and corduroy. Pure hubris.
By way of apology and in hopes of manifesting cooler temperatures and changing leaves, I’m taking part in one of my favorite fall traditions this Saturday: making a large batch of chowder for Men Can Cook…With a Twist, the annual fundraiser for Greensboro’s Women’s Resource Center. Get your tickets here.
The center has been providing free services to women in our community for more than 30 years, whether they’re dealing with divorce, returning to work, starting a business, navigating financial difficulties, or coping with family or health problems. The center serves nearly 4,500 women and their families every year. The annual fundraiser invites men from the community to offer up their signature dishes for an afternoon of all kinds of great food, along with a spirited tasting room, at a big celebration at Piedmont Hall.
When some friends got our family involved a few years ago, I had to decide what I was going to make. While I do handle the cooking in our house, I’m not often called upon to feed the masses. But on special occasions—Thanksgiving, Christmas, a long weekend when we’re all fighting valiantly against seasonal affective disorder—I will break out our family recipe for corn chowder. It’s always a crowd pleaser, as evidenced by everyone’s willingness to take leftovers off our hands at the end of the evening.
I’d love to tell you that the various immigrant branches of my family brought this recipe with them from Ireland, Italy, even Puerto Rico. But the truth is, this became our family recipe in the most American of ways. We stole it.
Back in 2010 my wife gave me a “Best of America’s Test Kitchen” book that had an interesting corn chowder recipe from María del Mar Sacasa. I loved the way she walked through the steps of the chowder’s development, including the specific inspiration she took from Mrs. D.A. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book of 1884, a Good Housekeeping recipe from 1888, and a Fannie Merritt Farmer recipe from 1896. Like most good cooks, she took what worked and made it her own.
In the same way, we started with Sacasa’s recipe—a velvety mix of fresh and canned corn, bacon, onions, red potatoes, and cream.
“This is delicious,” my wife said. “But next time, I think, more bacon.”
The next time, I doubled the bacon.
“Incredible,” my wife said. “But maybe more bacon?”
From there I started playing with all the different elements—vegetable stock rather than chicken broth, the best flash-frozen corn kernels during parts of the year when fresh corn isn’t readily available, a little garlic at the beginning and smoked paprika at the end. I’ve made vegetarian and even vegan versions, depending on who is coming to dinner.
What we came to, finally, was our version of this chowder. You can scale it up for big crowds, as I will for this weekend’s fundraiser, or scale it down for two to four. You can start with the recipe below and then, like us, drive it like you stole it.
Come on out and taste for yourself Saturday and help out a great cause.
