Asian-inspired smoked haddock chowder

I really like a clam chowder and I really like Asian food – Japanese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. So, I thought I’d combine the two and use some reduced price smoked haddock I found at the supermarket, rather than more expensive shellfish.

Ingredients

• 1 clove of garlic
• Three or four firm potatoes
• A teaspoon of Thai chili with basil (jar)
• 400ml can of coconut milk
• 150g can of sweetcorn (juice included)
• Fresh ginger, grated (I always keep a hand of ginger in the freezer for when I need it. You can grate it frozen and don’t need to peel)
• Juice of half a lemon (lime is even better)
• A fillet of smoked haddock

Method

1. Peel your potatoes and slice them fairly thinly to help them cook, but not so thin they don’t keep their shape when cooked. Don’t rinse, the extra starch helps thicken the broth. Add the slices to a standard saucepan.
2. Peel a clove of garlic, give it a bit of a bash and add it to the pan. This will infuse the soup and you can get rid of it once the chowder is ready – if you really want to – but it becomes lovely and sweet in the cooking. At this stage, start with half a teaspoon of the Thai sweet basil garlic chilli. You can find this in Asian supermarkets where there are usually several different brands. Each has a slightly different flavour profile, so it might take some trial and error to find the one you like best. My favourite is Por Kwan Chilli paste with holy basil leaves.
3. Open your cans of coconut milk and sweetcorn and add them to the pan. If you feel there’s too little liquid, you can add some soya milk or water to make sure the potatoes get enough liquid. Put the heat on full.
4. Add the grated ginger and the lemon juice as the liquid in the pan starts to bubble and stir the potatoes so they don’t stick. Put the lid on, turn the heat down to 4 and simmer until the potatoes are tender (about 20 minutes).
5. In the meantime, cut the haddock fillet into mouth-sized chunks and add five minutes before the end of cooking time so the fish has time to warm up, but not fall apart.

Feeds two as a main or three as a starter