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Oatmeal Chowder
3 TABLESPOONS FAT I ONION, SLICED 3 COOKED CARROTS, DICED 2 CUPS TOMATOES SALT I CUP COOKED SPLIT PEAS 2 CUPS COOKED OAT- MEAL I QUART WATER Brown onion in fat, add everything else and cook 20 minutes.
A thrifty camp chowder built on leftovers: yesterday's porridge, peas and carrots become a thick vegetable pottage. The oatmeal is the thickener, so the main thing to watch is scorching.
- Stir, or it will catchCooked oatmeal sinks and sticks, especially over a wood fire or a gas burner set too high. Keep the pot at a bare simmer and stir up from the bottom every few minutes for the full 20 minutes.
- The fatAny cooking fat works: 3 tablespoons of oil, butter, or bacon drippings. Drippings will give the most savoury result.
- Cooked oatmealThis means plain cooked rolled oats or steel-cut porridge, unsweetened and unsalted, at a spoonable rather than pourable consistency. Instant oatmeal packets, which are sweetened and already thickened, are not a substitute.
- TomatoesTwo cups, most easily canned tomatoes with their juice, roughly one 15-oz can plus a little more; fresh, chopped, would also answer. Crush them by hand or chop in the pot; the recipe expects them to break down.
- Split peasOne cup cooked, which is about 1/3 to 1/2 cup dried simmered until tender. Leftover split peas from a soup pot serve the same purpose.
- SaltUnmeasured in the original, as was usual. Start with a teaspoon in the full pot and correct at the end; canned tomatoes vary a great deal in sodium.
- ConsistencyA quart of water plus the oatmeal gives a loose porridge. If it thickens past what you want as it cooks, thin with hot water rather than cold, which drops the pot off the simmer.
- YieldA good two to two and a half quarts, enough for four as a main dish or six as a first course. Pepper, a bay leaf, or a little thyme are all reasonable additions the original leaves out.
Chowder here means only a thick one-pot soup, not necessarily anything to do with clams or the sea. Everything in the pot is already cooked, so the 20 minutes is only for the flavours to marry -- economical of both fuel and leftovers.