Cool weather brings more soup to the menu, tonight's is clam chowder with crispy spam
Doesn't quite fit the briefing of food porn (imo it's pretty hard to make soups/stews aesthetically pleasing), but sure did taste good.
Didn't have the cream I'd normally use, but made do with 2% milk and buttermilk powder, and then I added potato flakes and a bit of gelatin for some extra body.
Yep, didn't have any bacon in the house, but I like having a little meaty salty bite in my chowder, and turns out spam fried until crunchy fits the bill!
I've never actually had clam chowder, it's occurring to me I should try it sometime
Looks pretty tasty :) the variety of colors helps
I agree plating for soups and stews is hard, I think garnishes like cream, herbs, crackers or proteins on top help. If it's something you wanna improve at it I'd think you might find some really good inspiration and reference in recipie books at the Library
I pretty much never worry about playing with soups unless something comes to mind, though I also don't eat a ton of soup 😅
Oh certainly try it, clam chowder is one of my favorite soups. Both New England and Manhattan style are delicious, but my inner fatass prefers the New England.
I differ from the usual recipes in that I'm a sucker for really getting some good browning on the vegetables before adding the liquid. The flavor is worth the trade off of having a tan colored chowder rather than the pale cream of the traditional New England style.
New England chowder comes in about 15 "main" ways to make it. It's pretty different from region to region in New England and even house to house. Just eyeballing this, it looks pretty legit. Some in the mighty northeast might accuse you of "being fancy with it," but it looks great to me.
Bacon is kind of a west coast addition because their clams are wicked shitty, kid. Salt pork is used, but crispy bacon less so. And traditional chowder isn't thick. Finally, some might quibble with carrots, but that's definitely one that you'll see regularly with and without. This doesn't look overly thick to me, and I've done bacon add at the end and it's hard to say it's not great!