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CHOWDER
Continued from Page B1
recipe and defi nitely will not
reveal the composition of
Sez’, she did give me a few
hints. She uses red onion (I
decided to go with both red
and yellow for my chowder),
but she recommends against
putting any red onion scraps
in homemade vegetable
stock (though, per Brown,
yellow onions are fi ne for
that purpose). She thumbs-
upped my plan to make a
quick-ish vegetable stock
using the corn cobs and
day-of vegetable scraps for
those of us who fail to keep
a bag of scraps going in the
freezer (bad us!). She also
disclosed the proper dairy
substitute: oat milk. (Also:
I happened to mention that
I do not like green bell pep-
pers because they make me
burp green-pepper burps,
which she ha-ha’d. And —
guess what — the great
Kristi Brown does not like
green peppers, either, so all
the rest of you who do are
offi cially wrong.)
I’m just going to state
fl atly that the vegan corn
chowder I have devised is
not as great as Brown’s.
It is, however, very, very
good and absolutely worth
making. Maybe someday
she will give us her recipe
and/or Sez’s. I would
encourage you to experi-
ment with the spices here
— I’ve kept mine pretty
light-handed, though a little
bit of zip from the cay-
enne does come through.
Like Brown’s, this corn
chowder evolves beautifully
with reheating, thickening
and richening (defi nitely a
word), if you don’t eat it all
at once (or eat all the left-
overs cold).
Choose your corn care-
fully. The leaves should be
nice and green, not dry-
looking, and the silk peeking
out ideally should be pale
and even slightly sticky. Be
bold in peeling the husk
back — not just at the tip,
but all the way down. You
deserve good corn! Look for
plump, fi rm kernels. And be
sure to buy our marvelous
Washington sweet corn,
for it is the best, as I’m sure
Brown would agree if I were
to pester her about it.
B.J.C.’S
VEGAN CORN
CHOWDER
(With thanks to chef Kristi Brown)
Serves 6 as a soup course, may-
be 4 for a lunch or light supper
OK, vegans, please don’t
yell at me, but for those who
consume dairy, the oat milk/
creamer may be swapped out for
half-and-half (preferably organic),
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and those defi nitely-other-peo-
ple-not-us-vegans also might in-
corporate a little butter in with the
olive oil. And Kristi Brown said this,
not me: Her original, nonvegan
corn chowder recipe had salmon
in it, so ... — Bethany Jean Clement
6 medium ears fresh, sweet
Washington state corn
2 medium carrots — 1 whole
and 1 small-diced
3 ribs of celery — 2 whole
and 1 small-diced (plus
any celery tops)
1 medium yellow onion, 1/2 diced
and the other 1/2 left alone
1/2 medium red onion, diced
(reserve the other 1/2 for
a salad or something)
4 fresh bay leaves or 2 dried
Kosher salt
White pepper
3 tablespoons high-quality
extra virgin olive oil (plus
more for garnish)
2 tablespoons fl our
1 large potato, peeled and 1/4
-inch diced (about 1 1/4 cup)
1 small-to-medium sweet
potato (orange or white,
up to you), peeled and 1/4
-inch diced (about 1 cup)
1 cup unsweetened oat-milk
creamer or oat milk
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Dash of cayenne
Chives, snipped, and/or green
onion, fi nely sliced on
the diagonal, plus more
olive oil for garnish
1. Shuck it! Then stand each ear
of corn on its butt end on a tray or
in the bottom of a large shallow
TUESDAY, JULY 26, 2022
bowl, and use a sharp knife to
carefully cut the kernels off ,
reserving the cobs (and, of course,
the kernels). Warning: If your corn
is nice and fresh, this will be messy.
(Optional: Some recipes say to
“milk the corn,” which involves run-
ning the back of a knife down the
denuded cobs to get all the juices
out. It’s my sense that we’ll extract
those precious corn-fl uids by mak-
ing the stock next, and I’m also just
going to say that life feels too short
to spend time milking corn.)
2. Break your corn cobs in
half and put them in a 3½ — or
4-quart pot, along with 1 whole
carrot broken in half, 2 ribs celery
broken to fi t the pot (plus any
celery tops), the 1/2 yellow onion,
2 fresh bay leaves or 1 dried, 1
teaspoon salt and a sprinkle of
white pepper. Add water to almost
cover, about 4 to 6 cups (the pot
will be crowded). Bring to a boil,
give it a stir and then reduce heat
to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring
halfway through. Remove from
heat, and let rest.
3. Heat the olive oil for a minute
or two in a large soup pot or Dutch
oven over medium heat, then add
the diced yellow and red onions,
diced carrot and diced celery. Salt
and white pepper them, stir and
cook about 6-8 minutes, stirring
again about every 2 minutes.
Sprinkle on fl our and cook, stirring,
another 1-2 minutes. Remove from
heat.
4. Carefully strain your stock
through a colander into a large
bowl.
5. Add the potato, sweet potato,
1 teaspoon salt, a sprinkle of white
pepper, and 2 fresh bay leaves
or 1 dried to your vegetables in
the large pot, then add enough
strained stock to cover it all. Bring
to a boil, then reduce to a simmer,
stir and continue cooking until
the potatoes are tender, about 15
minutes, stirring maybe every 5
minutes.
6. Add the oat milk/creamer,
corn and spices, then stir and sea-
son lightly with salt and pepper.
Add a little more stock or water
if it seems very thick, though the
corn will release a fair amount of
liquid, so don’t panic. Turn up heat
to bring back to bubbling, reduce
heat to a simmer and cook for 15
more minutes, stirring occasionally.
7. Add more salt and white
pepper to taste — you probably
want to add a teaspoon or more
of salt, a little at a time, to balance
the sweetness of the corn, sweet
potato and onions. Don’t be shy!
8. Simmer another 15 minutes
to half an hour, stirring occasion-
ally. At this point, the chowder
should be thickened and ready to
serve; cooking more or reheating
later will thicken matters further,
amalgamating the vegetables and
breaking down the corn, which is
also good.
9. Garnish with chives or
green onion plus a swirl of your
high-quality olive oil, and enjoy.
Also good served cold during
summer heat.
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