Pretty low on supplies yesterday and nearly couldn’t be arsed to cook, considered cereal for dinner but then had a word with myself, rummaged about, found some sweetcorn in the fridge, and made this. The crumb idea is by @nigelslater
A few weeks ago I defrosted some crappy white sliced bread as it was all we had but never ended up using. Eventually I cut the crusts off, blitzed it into crumbs and froze them, and honestly it is the freezer ingredient that just keeps on giving!
For 2:
Knob of butter
2 rashers streaky bacon
Half an onion or 2 shallots
1 clove of garlic
1 leek, white part only
200g small potatoes
2 corn cobs
300ml milk
300ml stock
Handful parsley leaves
For the crumb:
2tsp n’duja paste
30g fine breadcrumbs
Finely chop the garlic and onion, chop the bacon, leek and potato into small dice, and strip the corn from the cobs with a sharp knife.
Heat the butter with a splash of olive oil in a large saucepan then fry the bacon until it starts to crisp.
Add the onion and garlic with a pinch of salt and cook over a medium heat for a minute then throw in the leeks and cook gently for another 2.
Add the potatoes and corn, pour on the milk and stock, bring to the boil then simmer gently for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft.
Taste and season with salt and pepper then ladle out a third of the soup and purée it with a stick blender before adding back in.
Roughly chop the parsley and stir through.
Meanwhile heat the n’duja and breadcrumbs in a frying pan with a little oil until the n’duja has melted. Keep tossing about until the crumbs are crispy and a beautiful brick red.
Top the chowder with the crumbs. We also added some lovely slow roasted baby tomatoes 🍅.
Instead of n’duja (I know it’s a rogue ingredient) you can fry the crumbs with bacon, chorizo or crumbled up ham, or keep it veggie and stir some finely grated Parmesan and thyme leaves into them.
N’duja is a magic ingredient flavour bomb with so many uses, you can get it online, in delis and I think Sainsbury’s.
