First thing today, this recipe arrived straight from Ashley Lonsdale at NYT Cooking in the midst of their bitterly cold winter.
I received it on the other side of the earth on a hot, sultry summer day.
Rather than copy it and store it in my winter soup files for later, I looked at the ingredients and thought it would be perfect to make with my newly made vegetable soup stock and 2 sweet potatoes and potatoes I had in the cupboard that needed to be eaten.
I looked at the comments and added some fresh garlic, sweet smoked paprika and dried ground turmeric which added flavour without any one spice dominating. It is spicy but that can be adjusted or eliminated depending on your preference. Cooking the chowder with one large, dried habanero pepper and taking it out at the end produced a lovely, well rounded spiciness.
It may due to living many years so close to the equator that every day seemed much the same, that I grew to enjoy hot, nourishing food even on sweltering days.
Spicy Sweet Potato And Potato Chowder
Ingredients
1 large brown or white onion, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, cut verically twice and thinly sliced
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and finely chop
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1/4 tsp dried ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp Himalayan pink salt
1.2 kilos of orange sweet potatoes and potatoes, scrubbed, bad bits removed and chopped in to bite size pieces
4 cups homemade soup stock (no salt or fats added) (see post dated 3 January 2022)
400 ml can of organic coconut milk
1 dried habanero pepper
1/2 cup frozen peas, per serve
handful of green beans, washed and trimmed, per serve
fresh lime juice or wedges, for serving
Method
Trim and chop the onion. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Scrub the sweet potatoes and potatoes removing any unsavoury bits. Wash, slice and chop the celery.
Heat a large dutch oven. Add the onions and garlic and cook covered on a low heat for several minutes stirring occassionally. Add the sweet smoked paprika, ground tumeric, salt, celery, sweet potatoes and potatoes and continue to cook covered for several more minutes.
Add the soup stock, coconut milk and the habanero chilli. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer covered for about 45 minutes until the vegetables have cooked thoroughly.
At this stage, the soup can be stored in a glass container and refrigerated.
Leave whatever amount you are going to consume right away in the pot and add frozen peas and the fresh green beans. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat. Ladle chowder in to a bowl(s), add a tsp of fresh lime juice to each bowl.
Serve immediately.