Shrimp and Corn Chowder: Encouraging that passion

For you, AK, maker of great chicken

If anyone wants to know what sort of students I teach, I have no one single answer.  I've made it a personal goal that the students who end up at my door, asking for writing challenges and support, come from various walks of life, ethnicities, life stages, and abilities.  My students are from over 10 different schools and range in ages from the elementary school to post college. I like to teach all different needs of students for one primary reason: I don't want to get stale teaching the same type of student and I don't want to get bored of my work.  The variety of students in my pot are what keeps the day to day work super interesting.

One of my students attends a progressive and innovative local school, and this summer he had to do a passion project.  There was some sort of abbreviated "passion defining" process the school required that he went through online with me, and while answering these questions about his "passion" I had a running conversation with him.  His initial passion was basketball, for which I said measuring and executing passion in a meaningful way this summer doing basketball would be challenging. I offered him cooking as another idea, and his eyes lit up and he said, "I can do that. I want to try that."

For a couple of weeks, he and I did some cooking together, and mostly I would leave him in my kitchen with some instructions and a recipe that we had chosen together, and he would try and execute it to the best of his ability. I would often be teaching while he would be prepping ingredients and then in between sessions I'd pop my head out and check to make sure things were going well.  A part of the reason why I was excited about his cooking was his ability to directly impact his own family - with two working parents with busy schedules, meals at home were hurried and in short supply.  A part of his focus was being able to alleviate some of the pressure on his parents to provide meals. We did BBQ chicken, salad, grilled corn among our dishes. (extra side benefit for me - he cooked, my family ate too!)

We also worked on a chowder.  I was in midst of some experimentation of flavors like shrimp and corn and asked if he might want to help out and he came over and we made simple meal of chowder and to be served with crusty bread.  (again my family benefitted)  The chowder is so simple and easy and yet so satisfying and delicious it's hard not to love it.  It comes together quickly with some straightforward ingredients and becomes an elegant and scrumptious meal.  Our entire family (minus the dairy allergy son) loves it and we have it fairly often as a light dinner on its own or part of a larger meal. Enjoy!

P.S.  I'm happy to say that this project has made him excited about cooking for his family and given him motivation to cook more for his family.

Shrimp and Corn Chowder
Serves 4 as a main course, 6 as a first course

Ingredients
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 slices of bacon, chopped into small pieces
2 cups corn kernels (fresh off the cob is best, but go ahead and use canned or frozen if that is what you have available - reserve cob if you are using fresh corn))
3 scallions, finely chopped, both green and white parts
3 garlic cloves, finely minced
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper (less if you’re worried about it being too spicy)
4 tablespoons flour
4 cups dashi stock, fish stock, shrimp stock or some clam juice mixed with water
¼ cup creme fraiche or heavy whipping cream
1 ½ lbs peeled and deveined shrimp, cut into nice bite sized pieces

Method
In a heavy saucepan over medium high heat, melt butter and cook bacon until golden brown, about 4 minutes.  Add corn, scallions, garlic, and crushed red pepper and cook, stirring frequently until corn is crisp tender, about 4 minutes.

Add flour all at once, and cook, coating all the ingredients in flour another minute.  Add stock all at once, and if you have the corn cobs, add corn cobs for extra corn flavor.  Cook until thickened, about 4 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

Remove corn cobs (if you used) and add shrimp and creme fraiche and cook until shrimp is pink and opaque, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Serve warm, with a garnish of scallions if desired.

Printable recipe

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