Easy Manhattan Clam Chowder

Today's post comes to us from Debra of the blog The Harried Mom!  Debra and her husband have recently decided to become pescatarian, and has been trying out various seafood recipes!

Manhattan Clam Chowder

With our new pescatarian lifestyle, I’ve been experimenting with a number of fish recipes/dishes.   This week I tried my hand at Manhattan Clam Chowder and I have to say it was a tremendous success!

My recipe is inspired by a fish chowder one I found in my cookbook bible, “How To Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman.  I was surprised that when I was researching clam chowder recipes that lots of them used bacon or more accurately rendered bacon fat to saute the veggies in.  Obviously that was out for me, so instead I substituted more aromatic veggies  and decided to use some clamato (tomato juice flavored with spices and clam broth) to give my stock a more flavorful base to work from.

It’s important to cut all the veggies to the same chopped size, so they all cook evenly.  While I used canned clams for my version, you could of course use fresh clams, but you’ll need to shuck them.

Easy Manhattan Clam Chowder
Serves: 4
Prep Time: 15 minutes to chop veggies, 30 minutes to cook

Ingredients:
3 cloves sliced garlic
1 cup chopped green onion
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped orange or red pepper
2 cups waxy or all-purpose potatoes
2 cups clam juice (augmented with the liquid from either canned or fresh shucked clams)
28 oz can peeled whole or chopped San Marzano tomatoes
1 cup clamato juice
24 littleneck or other hard-shelled clams, shucked or 1 1/2 cups chopped canned clams
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Tbsp olive oil

Directions:
Put the olive oil in a dutch oven or deep pot over medium high heat.  Once hot, add the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, peppers, potatoes, thyme, salt & pepper and sautee for about 10 minutes.
Add the clam juice, tomatoes and clamato juice and cook until the potatoes are tender – anywhere from another 10-15 minutes.

Add the clams and bring to barely a simmer, making sure the soup does not come to a boil.

Let is simmer for another five minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Thanks for sharing this amazing recipe with us Debra!  To check out more photos from this recipe and see the creative way she served it be sure to check out the original post on her blog!

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