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Lake Champlain Fresh-Water Fish Chowder
2 POUNDS FRESH-WATER FISH 1/2 POUND SALT PORK, CHOPPED 5-6 POTATOES I CAN TOMATOES I LARGE ONION, SLICED SALT AND PEPPER Cut fish in 2-inch pieces; dice pork in 1/2-inch cubes; pare potatoes and cut in 1/2-inch slices. Sprinkle a little pork in bottom of kettle, cover with layer of fish, then some potatoes and part of the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and repeat the procedure until all ingredients are in. Cover with cold water and boil gently 40 minutes. If your fresh-water fish are all perch make a Vermont perch chowder, as above, and tradition demands that they be scaled, not skinned, and along with the tradition Vermont anglers have usually inherited a scaling iron which removes the tightly attached scales in a jiffy. (From America Cooks, by The Browns.)
A layered kettle chowder in the old New England manner: no milk, no thickening, just pork fat, fish, potato and tomato cooked down together. A few points need translating for a modern stove.
- The 40 minutes is for the potatoes, not the fishFreshwater fillets are done in 8-10 minutes and will disintegrate over a long boil. If you want recognisable pieces of fish, build the pork, potato, onion and tomato layers first and simmer those until the potatoes give to a knife, then lay the fish on top for the last 10 minutes.
- Gentle means gentle"Boil gently" here is a bare simmer, barely moving. A true rolling boil breaks the potato slices apart and clouds the broth.
- The onionThe ingredient list calls for a large sliced onion but the layering instructions never mention it. Distribute it with the pork and potatoes, a little in each layer.
- Can of tomatoesRead this as one standard 14-16 oz can, roughly 2 cups, juice included. Period cans ran a little larger, closer to 20 oz, so err on the generous side if you want a redder chowder.
- Salt porkStill sold at good butchers and in many supermarkets near the bacon. If you substitute unsmoked pork belly the result is close; bacon works but pushes the chowder toward smoke, which this recipe does not intend. Render the cubes lightly in the dry kettle before layering for better flavour and no raw fat on top.
- Season at the endSalt pork varies wildly in saltiness and it will not be obvious until the broth has reduced. Salt lightly between layers, then correct once the potatoes are cooked.
- Choosing the fishPerch, pike, walleye, smallmouth bass and lake trout all suit this treatment. Pike in particular carries a row of Y-bones that no filleting quite removes; fillet what you can and warn the table about the rest.
- Scaling ironA serrated metal scaler with a handle; the recipe's aside suggests it was a common inherited possession among lake-country anglers. Any fish scaler or the back of a heavy knife does the same work; do it in cold water or outdoors, as perch scales fly.
- YieldTwo pounds of fish with five or six potatoes makes four to six bowls. It reheats well the next day, though the fish will have broken down into the broth.
Chowders of this kind belong to the inland lake shore rather than the coast: where a Maine cook layered salt pork with clams or cod, a Vermont or upstate New York angler layered it with whatever came off the line that morning. The salt pork and the layering are the constant, and the tomato places this on the tomato-friendly side of the old chowder argument that New England's milk-and-cracker partisans were still deploring well into the twentieth century. America Cooks (1940) was the work of Cora, Rose and Bob Brown, a family team who collected regional dishes state by state, and the aside about the inherited scaling iron is exactly the kind of detail they went looking for.