Salmon and Shrimp Chowder because I can’t go Fishing on the Prairie.

I have a friend, who lives by himself in a beach house on stilts, up the East Coast,  in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.  It is a beautiful bay, deserted for most of the year. He is on the beach every day . Surfing mostly. Or looking for surf. When he goes away to work he takes his boards with him, just in case, as he is a dedicated surfer. When he is home at the beach, in the late afternoon in any weather he will set up his fishing rods.   Then with a strong cast he will send  the hook with its tasty morsel firmly attached,  far out past the breakers. Once he sees that it is settled out there he will jam the rod into the sand and somehow anchor it.  Then he will sit and wait. He is a round strong man, and when he sits by his lines, with his bare feet and his bald head sipping on his beer, he looks like a big golden rock.

Once I tried to sneak up on him as he sat facing the sea, I walked ever so softly across the sand approaching him from behind. He did not turn. When I paused a ways behind him he said Hey Celi! How did you know it was me, I said, (I had come straight from work and saw him there on the beach) Bracelets, he said, jingling. Damn. I thought, forgot about those. He popped the top off a bottle and handed it to me, still without taking his eyes off his rods.  It was that kind of place.

You watch the tip of the rod for any straining, any tiny movement that meant there was a fish on your line. You watched it until the light was almost gone and you could barely see the damn thing. Sometimes it took  hours. At the merest twitch of the line he would leap into action grab the rod, tuck it into his considerable  belly and begin to reel in his fish.  This appeared to be hard work. I only had to get involved if the other rod started to twitch but I was remarkably useless really and probably only made things worse. I certainly never brought in a fish by myself. He usually always caught a fish or two for dinner, never more than we could eat that day, cleaned and scaled on the beach, ready for a wash in fresh water and into the pot.

So while he watched the tips of his lines and there was till light, I would take a bucket and look for tuatua. These are small shell fish. You walk along the sandy shore right at the tide line and watch for bubbles coming up out of the sand. Then with your heel you twirl and twirl drilling your foot into the sand. Now, you know that you cannot dig a hole in wet sand, it fills in with water  as fast as you can dig,  but if you dig with the  heel of your foot, like a mad wiggling dance, ridiculous to watch, it opens up a wider hole with a slightly longer  window of opportunity. When you feel your heel scape on a shell you immediately turn and dive into the hole using your hands like shovels and flip the shell fish out and into a bucket with a little sea water, so it will spit any sand into the bucket and not into your soup before it shuts up tight. If you have a shovel then you excavate more as fast as you can before a wave washes everything clean again. You only gather enough for dinner,  this is the way of these things.

If your companions are feeling generous they will swim out to the rocks with a knife and prize a few paua (abalone) off the rocks. You have to be strong for this. Those paua hold on tight. These are cleaned and the flesh beaten for fritters. Then you line the shells up on the window sill for decoration.

On the way home we would visit other fishermen and sometimes get a crayfish or two from a dory that has come in with a good catch. I know this sounds just too idyllic for words but our walk home also took us through an abandoned avocado orchard. Pick, pick, pick. Lemon tree by an abandoned beach house. Pick. And he had lined his property with olive trees. As you can imagine I visited often. My father had built his father a crayfish boat so we went way back. I even had my own room in that beach house and a key. I left old sun dresses and a battered sun hat in the wardrobe and I was good to go. When my children stayed with their father I was at the beach.

My friend from the beach would sometimes make what I called click clack soup with the days gathering. Fresh tuatua,  pieces of fish and crayfish and whatever else we had collected. I called it click clack soup because your spoon would click and clack on the shells in your bowl. He would cut everything into the same sized chunks, and cook it in a chicken broth with chilli and green onions and wild leeks. Boiled the shellfish till they popped open then dropped them in. Not much else. We would eat this soup, out on his deck, watching the moon on the sea, my skin smeared with lotion to soothe the burning from the beach sun.

He does not have the internet, and has no interest in phones so I shall write to him and try to get the recipe for the click clack soup for you. Though I suspect that he made it up each time.

Because my Dad was a boat builder, when we were kids we ate fresh fish at least twice a week. Fishermen would drop off choice fish and crays for Dad.  I remember Mum making crayfish (which we ate almost weekly) with a parsley sauce,and I realise now that she was probably making an early chowder adapted from a mornay recipe I think.  Mornay sauce was her favourite.  Over the years I have adapted her recipe to make my own seafood chowder that I can eat far away from the sea where there are no fishermen.

Salmon and Shrimp Chowder

In a heavy bottomed pot add the usual suspects

• pat of butter, melted
• 1finely chopped large onion
• 1finely chopped stick of celery
• small handful of celeriac leaves
• 1 teaspoon dill

Cook gently until onion is soft NOT BROWN.

• add 2 chopped washed potatoes, chop one very finely(this will disintegrate and thicken your chowder).
• cut up the heel of a parmesan cheese into bite sized pieces
• chicken stock to cover (about  2 cups, maybe more)
• 1 teaspoon of fish sauce
• pepper and salt

Cook down until the stock has begun to thicken  and potatoes are cooked. Add more chicken stock in you need to.

Seperately, either pan fry or bake  a pound  of salmon with branches of lavender or rosemary, a little honey and pepper.

Thaw about 20 shrimps and de-tail. (Don’t forget to save the tails in a bag in the freezer for when you want to make fish stock!)

If you want a thicker chowder then thicken now, with a roux. Then slowly add  1 cup of milk and  1 cup of cream to your big pot of stock. Or if you are greedy like me 2 cups of cream, no milk  and no need to thicken. Heat. No boiling from now on.

Add cooked shrimps and the salmon torn into chunks. (discard skin and lavender sticks)

Heat slowly and gently simmer for about 10- 15 minutes. Stir carefully so as not to disturb the shape of your fish. SERVE.

If you get that chewy piece  of parmesan cheese it is mine! Mine I tell you!

c