SC - Betony

[Jenne Heise]

- --- Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> wrote:
> Chris Stanifer wrote:
> >  
> > How can a New England Chowder, containing
> Tomatoes, be
> > at all legitimate?  You have not read the Chowder
> > Doctrine closely enough...
> 
> No, actually, the trouble is that I have read it
> _too_ closely, or at
> least more closely than the Revisionists. The style,
> as Officially
> Defined by most of its religious adherents, is no
> older than 150 years,
> I suspect, and it evolved alongside tomato-ey
> versions _in_ New England,
> as chronicled in books by New Englanders such as
> Lydia Childs, who adds
> a full cup, IIRC, of tomato _ketchup_ to her fish
> and clam chowders, and
> she specifically states it is optional, but an
> improvement. She is
> roughly contemporary, BTW, to Herman Melville, whose
> novel "Moby Dick"
> provides us with one of the earliest, if  not _the_
> earliest, written
> recipe for  what we would recognize as New England
> clam chowder. 
> 
> Adamantius

While my original comment was made in jest, it does
bring up a point regarding the "authenticity" of New
England Clam Chowder.  Like so many other dishes, this
one can be drastically different from region to
region, and even from town to town within the same
region.  To call any of these variations
"authentic"...or rather, to call any of them
"un-authentic" would really require access to the
original recipe for the dish, and a clear
understanding of what the inventor intended the dish
to be like.  Tomato?  No Tomato?  Flour or no flour? 
Cream or no Cream?  

The best recipe I have for New England Clam Chowder
does not include tomato, flour, celery or cream.  It
is simply clams, onion, salt pork, clam juice, water
and lots and lots of potatoes.  Very thick, very
tasty, if a bit grainy due to the potatoes... is it
authentic?  Don't know...I've been told it is by folks
up in Maine...

Balthazar of Blackmoor

=====
"The half full glass and the half empty glass both contain the same amount of liquid...the half empty glass, however, has a fly in it."

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