Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Sweet Corn Chowder With Spicy Seared Sea Scallops

cornscallopchowdercup One of the great things about summer in New England is the abundance of fresh sweet corn and local seafood... And no dish celebrates that seasonal and regional deliciousness quite like a corn and seafood chowder.

A few years (and a few sizes) ago, whether it was corn and clam chowder, corn and lobster chowder, even corn and haddock chowder, I ordered it every time it was on a menu. Sadly, my habit of souvenir eating–you don’t know when you’ll be back so you better eat it all while you’re there–meant I also lugged home an extra 5 pounds after every vacation that wasn’t in my suitcase. (Ugh.)

So once I began re-thinking and re-tooling my favorite dishes, I just had to find a way to enjoy that creamy New England goodness without feeling (or looking) like I’d swallowed Plymouth Rock.

It wasn’t easy. It seemed like every one of the corn and seafood chowder recipes from my favorite chefs relied on white flour, a stick of butter (810 calories and 91 grams of fat) and a cup (and sometimes two!) of heavy cream (821 calories and 88 grams of fat per cup), which meant just a two cup bowl, without the fish, could have up to 800 calories…half the calories I need to eat in a whole day!

Roots of New Year’s Food Traditons

“Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year… Rice for riches and peas for peace.” – Old Southern saying for New Year’s Menu

Collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread and pork are the foodstuffs of the South, rich in legend, lore, and superstition. Money or not, every Southern family I know dines on these same vittles for their New Year’s supper. Not too poor of eating if I say so myself.

According to this Farmer, the New Year’s Day menu is a Southern supper at its finest. Steeped in tradition, flavored with history, and doused with a touch of superstition, this meal encompasses the South’s ebb and flow of classicism and eccentricity–a meal of our heritage. Here in America’s Deep South, the cultures of Europe, Africa and the Native Americans combine with their respected refinements and sentimentalities making this meal fit to usher in a new year.

Growing up in rural Middle Georgia, we knew our food’s legacy before it arrived on our tables. This Farm to Table movement of late has always been the custom for those of us raised in a more bucolic fashion. We know our farmers and growers. In his blessings before a meal, my brother-in-law’s father always gives thanks for “not only the hands that prepared the food but grew it as well...” whereas our New Year’s meal is of no exception.

Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare